Well, whiskey coming fame, my Paine, my brain, Oh Whiskey, don't you let Me? 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 Yu and power Lines International Woman of Mystery Lucretia has got a given and let that whiskey flow when you're being in love down in loon, So Lucretia, it turns out that John Yu has been punking us all along, with all of his crazy talk about how it's not really an invasion at the
border, Texas can't do what they're doing. What's the big deal? You know, we've had a legal immigration forever and lo and behold, it turns out here at the end of the week he's not here with us. He's in Mexico. What's he doing in Mexico? He won't say. Expect he's on some clandestine paramilitary mission to introdict to illegal immigrant caravans and he's been hunking
us all along. But in his place, we have a special guest today joining us from New York and as Stepman of the Independent Women's Forum, a co host of her own podcast on Ricochet called high Noon, frequent contributor to The New York Post, the Federalist, first Things, all the right places, the American Mind, and so forth. So welcome in As. I'm going to introduce you more fully to readers in a moment. But I'm very glad you could join us. I'm so honored to be joining you, especially
some of the topics we're getting into today I think are really fun. So I'm really looking forward to it. Well partly, I mean, you may regret that by the end of the hour, because partly we've been quarreling more than usual lately. And one of the thoughts was, and some listeners have asked, why don't you not have a neutral party exactly? But you know,
have a new vector in the whole thing. But I think what we got to do in As, instead of having a recite a biography I'm always bashful about that, we thought we'd give you a sort of ten lightning round questions for listeners to get a sense of who you are and what you think. Some are serious, some are more whimsical, and the last one is actually the most serious one. But it will be the last one. So let me just start, and you know, somebody, can I just say
one thing first. The idea that you're bashful about your bio Steve is appalling, okay, but you may be bashful about actually listening to enez is bio because you know, take away from yours. Now, see, this is what I have, This is what I have to put up with one. It's two to one. The ladies are in charge. Now, all right, this is a post nineteenth Amendment discussion. Oh well, so Cretia's view,
you tell her your view of the nineteenth. I joke all the time that we should repeal the nineteenth a minute, because you know all the stupid women who vote so stupidly. But and that you know a woman worth her soul can figure out one way or another to get her vote across. That's been my argument. But the funny thing was this past year, not just once, but twice, I was asked to give a speech celebrating the nineteenth
Amendment and Women's Equality Day. And that's always a interesting way of infusing my Straussian background into my speeches. I'll just leave it at that. I actually I have some interesting views on the nineteenth Amendment too, So maybe we should add that to the docket. If we have time because I think, yeah, okay, dis question history, that'll be fine. Right. Well, you know we're going to try and get to Woodrow Wilson and that was when
the nineteen event was passed. Okay, we'll save a little, we'll try and carve out spot for that. All right, let me do some I say, halfway serious, but I think some of your biography will emerge. So let's start with the sort of a layup nihilism for it or against it, very much against it, but sometimes it creeps into my brain. Has to be back with a combination of reading and and whiskey. Yeah, ah,
oh good, I'm coming to the whiskey question. Yeah. I mean, we don't have time to get into your essay and first things today, but I did Lincoln in Caroline's pick section the other day. But some other time. Well, let's do whiskey then, you know, we find about whiskey on here because I like the peat, smoky, single, malt, eelay whiskeys, and Lucretia hates them with a passion, and so what's your whiskey of choice? So I think I'm going to be siding with Lucretia on
this one. Generally, because I like Bourbon, and then ray, I'm not as big a fan of Scotch, although I have a Scottish friend and she has introduced me to some Scotches that I really like, but exactly because they're not what you're describing pd and smoky. In my opinion, lafreug for example, tastes very much like how I imagine having surgery in the Civil War taste when they jam a leather strap from the stable into your mouth. So
I'm not into Lafrey. That's my favorite interesting image. I always just tell Steve it it tastes like licking an ash tray. There you go. Yeah, but yours is a bit more subtle. I like it. Yeah, yeah, No, I'm not a fan of the very pead, very smoky scotches, so to the extent that I like Scotch, it is on the opposite. I have a friend who drinks only bourbon, but buys bourbon and then has this contraption that puts smoke into the glass of bourbon. Have you
seen those? I've seen those in some cocktail bars and stuff. Yeah, all right, next one be kind of fun, kind of serious. David French yay or yuck is there even any I hope there's no disagreement on this one. I don't think so he's disgraced himself. Okay, yeah, I thought would be the heated agreement on this. Okay, A little more serious.
Who is your name one or two or three of your most influential thinkers or writers who been you know, important to you or that you still follow or shelp shape your thinking, modern or going on anytime a period anytime, I mean all the usual lame con inc sort of stuff, like the Founders and particularly James Madison, which is the lamest answer to give. I think these days shows that you don't know what time it is but still find an
enormous amount of inspiration there. And then in the more modern era Burnham, who I thought was very prophetic in certain ways. Again not an original observation, Camille Paulia Philip Reef, which is a kind of off the wall one, but he wrote something I think people talk about Christopher Lash, and it's true that that Lash was a great writer who also got a lot of things right far before his time. But Philip Reef wrote something called The Triumph the
Therapeutic that I think even better than Lash. Describes the sort of cultural therapeutism that we live in today. So again, I don't know. I haven't sat down for a while to organize my influences, so I'm probably missing something that I'll be embarrassed about later. No, No, it's fine. I didn't prepare you for that one or the sequel. But since you mentioned James Madison, do you have a favorite federalist paper. I'm not sure I do, but the card now because I, I mean, obviously like some of
the big famous ones. And I again I'm gonna dissemble a little bit because I think some of the concepts that I find the most appealing are the of course ambition against ambition, the understanding of government's role as necessary but sort of a necessary evil, and the understanding of man's nature is between the beasts and angels. So these are some of the So those are all from big ones,
though I wish I had a more obscure one. I was like, I really love what about like the one the one by John Jay about every creation one contribution to the modern discourse? Yeah, poor John Jay, he gets left behind all the time. Well, anyway, I mean that's actually a dumb question. I mean, Lucreasia will probably tell me that now if I ask her, do you have a favorite Federal's paper? You know, we did a whole series online, D have two. Federal is fifty one.
But because it contains the phrase dependence on the people is no doubt the primary control on government. That's the reason that fifty one is my favorite. And for that reason, I think we should abolish the Supreme Court. But that's another story altogether. And then the one that's the I forget. I think it's thirty. It's one of the late thirties. If I'm not mistaken,
it's could be the early forties. James Madison where he talks about he talks about the idea that Congress could make laws that don't apply to themselves, and that's a criticism by the anti federalists, and Madison comes back and says, that's impossible. That's a I mean, that's an absolute impossibility, because the moment that the people are prepared to tolerate a Congress that passes laws from which it exempts itself, they'll be prepared to tolerate anything but liberty. Yeah.
Okay, well, an I'll skip over mine because I want to press on here a similar question though, do you have a favorite president or world leader, pastor president? Doesn't that be American? I like to I like to stick to America. I think favorite is different than most. I think
the most underrated American president is Andrew Jackson. Interesting when I have a bobble heat of behind here, both in his understanding of the Union too as and before leading up to the Civil War, as well as I think exactly some of the we have. Really I think people are very afraid of American populism.
And as far as I can tell, there have been four major successful populist movements in the United States, Jackson's being the first, followed by FDR, which you know, conservatives abhorror, but but Reagan and then Trump. I don't know if he can we can call it successful or not. It's too early to tell, but I think Reagan counts as a populist movement, a successful one in the United States. But anyway, I think it's true.
I agree with the founder's warnings about mob rule. That being said, you know, every every age has its own devils to slay, and I think in our age the devil is more what it was in Jackson's day, which is concentrated power, disconnection of the elite from the people. So populism and mob rule have their own devils, but I think that one's the devil for age. I'll say, er Jackson, Okay, here, here's a real thorny one. You'll see why. Depending on the answer you give Edmund
Burke sage or bore or do you have an opinion on Burke? I have. I have probably a controversial opinion on this one. I think Edmund Burke is a sage, but I I had very little patience for Kirk, who I think is the American you know, like for American conservatism is very much like how we think of Burke comes through Kirk, and I have less patience for him. Yeah, that's uh, Lucretia, how do you grade it is? Lucretia is a very down on Burke, and I sometimes bring him
up just to annoy her. So the sage part doesn't even it doesn't even register with me. The bore part, I mean, without getting into whether or not he's a sage, I just find him an incomprehensible bore, just so boring. And you know the thing is is you can't blame it on you can't blame it on the dialect of the time or anything like that, because you can read many, many other people from around that period and they're quite fascinating. He's just dull as all hell. Never mind why he's wrong.
We'll leave that for another day. So I always mark her down as undecided. But all right, let's do the most maybe the most serious question to ask for this list. We have been very sharply divided about the Ukraine War, and I don't propose that we take it up in any detail today, but I'd just like to get your perspective on it, since it divides a lot of conservatives. And also, I mean listeners should know that you are the daughter of emigrats from Poland. If I got that right, your
parents are from Poland? Right, So what's your general sense about the Ukraine War? What should we be doing? How should we think about this? So? I think we should support Ukraine. I have supported the the aid from the US Ukraine for two reasons. One, I actually do think it's in our national interest, and two, I think there's a lot of mistranslation
politically back and forth between Eastern Europe broadly and American conservatism. And I think in part because the frame of the Cold War is still so strong in Eastern Europe. It's not going away there even now, right And so I think, especially in Poland, you find that people on the right or in the middle have no conception at all of what's happened to the American regime and what's
happened to the West. More broadly, they still they look at the West the way they did in nineteen eighty three, and increasingly that frame is sort of distorting and breaking down. But I think it's something that the right here maybe doesn't understand when they think about like the relationship between you Kraine and Russia, for example, or anyway, I think they still look at the West and liberal democracy in a way that is uncynical, whereas here we really do.
And that's kind of I guess that's a long short answer, but I have a longer to say on that. So I think, you know, American, the American conceit, although earned in many ways, justified in many ways, is that we don't have to learn very much about how things land in various parts of the world, and we project American politics around the world. And so anyway, I think there's often like a schism or disconnect.
Although ultimately, and this is where I do agree with the right when they talk, at least the part of the right that talks about the global American Empire and if you know the Ukraine is going to align with us, then they'll it'll it'll just be all gay there and in twenty years I think there
is there is a lot of truth to that. But what I don't agree with is there's a reason that people there would rather even if they don't even have a conception of sort of where the West has gone, there's a reason why when they're on the border between these two systems, they'd rather not be
in the orbit of Russia. Yeah, yeah, well, to be continued, I mean, I certainly Poland is the most robust and stepping up right now saying we're going to prepare to defend ourselves against Russia or anybody else. But mainly they mean Russia, right, I mean, no love lost there between your parents' homeland in Russia. Going back in the long time, Poland is a nice flat space for Russia and Germany to do tank battles and who wants that, right, all right, we'll find that a way for future
thought and discussion. So let's do one thing. We have been having this episodic argument about the Civil War and how she understood, all precipitated by Nikki Haley totally botching the question. And one of the things that maybe perceived already is that Lucretian I often agree but can't agree on why, and are always attacking each other for defects. And this goes back to what we were graduate students for a moment. I don't know that you've ever found a defect in
my arguments. I see, okay, So the so I think what we will will just give you a sort of a one long paragraph summary of our positions, and then you can come in with your own or your observations or you know, how you react to it and what well on what Nicki Haley should have said, which which is how the Civil War should be understood. I don't think we need to. You know, we'll continue to come back to and maybe do a whole seminar on the larger, multi faceted civil war
questions. But I said to what Nicki Haley should have said as this, she should have said, the cause of the Civil War was the Democratic Party refused to accept the results of a free and fair election after having spent two generations trashing the fundamental principles of the American founding kind of sounds just like today, right, I mean, the election denial stuff is they're saying that's Trump and January sixth and all that. But I think that actually the first election
deniers today, or on the left anyway. That's my basic point, and Lucretia finds that supers of course, so give you worse than what should she have said? Well, in order to counter something superficial, you need to be a little bit more. You need to go deeper. We don't really have time for that. But I would say this that the only part of which what you said I think is critical is the part about the founding principles. The Civil War was fought over whether all human beings were created equal or
not. And what does that mean. It means it was fought over slavery. Of course, it was not fought over economic reasons. This is the dumbest argument. I just I can't even so I'm going to leave that aside.
But the point is is that Lincoln had never, had never, at any moment, said he was prepared to end slavery in the states where it existed, didn't believe he had the power, did so when he thought he had the power in Congress, in the House of Representatives, when his short term there, he voted to end slavery in Washington, D C. But why he, I think certainly Lincoln thought that in the normal course of things,
slavery would long outlast his lifetime. I think that he thought it could last for many more decades, quite frankly, as long as we as long as we continued to live by the principle that it was in fact unnecessary evil, that we didn't know how to get rid of slavery without causing more evils
than the evil itself. We saw that. Of course, after slavery did end, we saw the difficulties that the country had in in assimilating the newly freed slaves into the Republic as full citizens, and the the kind of prejudice that Jefferson warned about if we freed slaves. You know, all of those things Lincoln was worried about, and quite rightly so. When we get to Lincoln in the middle of the Civil War and he's being asked to end slavery, he says, a, I don't have the power under the Constitution to
do so. That compromise made in the Constitution is still part of the Constitution. The states have power over their own domestic institutions, including slavery. I will exercise power as commander in chief in the States in rebellion as a matter of military necessity. That didn't cause him to refrain from also calling it an
act of justice. But the heart of the matter is that the South could not tolerate as president of the United States someone who insisted on calling slavery and evil, if a necessary evil, because they knew what Lincoln argued was slavery was on the course of ultimate extinction as long as we maintained the principles of human equality. Can I just highlight just two things you said. One is there are those libertarians to say, now it's really about the tariff, and
I agree that's completely ludicrous. Libertarians are idiots. But even the crisis in eighteen thirty two was not really about terrorists, right, right. But the second point is to just sharpen it a little bit. You know, some good friends of ours, conservatives saying, yeah, you know, Lincoln wasn't really that intent on getting rid of slavery. You just want to preserve the union and they've forgotten the hierarchy or architecture of prudence involved. That would be
my friend Dan Oliver, for example. So anyway, so it is what I mean, did you follow this controversy? What are people that you sort of deal with New York saying about it? Or did it say about it? Or you know, pick any any aspect of that question you'd like to offer some thoughts. Well, well, New York has famously been on the wrong side of virtually every war that America has ever fought, so I don't
know that i'd ask their opinion on this question. I mean, look, it's a difficult question to answer, as we've just seen in the last several minutes. It's a very difficult question to answer in a media environment. So even though I'm not inclined to give Nikki Haley much credit almost ever, I don't have a wittier or succinct way to answer this question. So it'll probably
take longer than would be permitted in the media environment. Say that, I mean, I think really three things to answer this question, and a somewhat somewhat truncated way, although not nearly as truncated as necessary for twenty four hour media. So again I think she had. It's a difficult question to answer
for media. One is that I think it's a very good example of how, ultimately, while you can tolerate plenty of dissent, especially a nation like the United States that isn't just built around a tribe, it's a particular tribe, right, requires at some buy in, at some level of a common view of justice and some fundamental principles. And when that breaks down, all of all of the mechanisms that man can devise, the best ones of which
are in the Constitution, ultimately fail. So slavery is the pause of the war. Got to jump in and say, I mean, the way I'd summarize what you just said or add to it is it's very hard for anybody to give a chrisp answer when you have, you know, the two generations at least of students and American citizens who have been so badly miseducated about those
fundamental principles of justice, right, I think, right. And it's it's very difficult because when you say things that are like very obviously true, people think that you are lying because it's so they just like immediately tune you out. But so that's the first thing is that the lesson for us in this war about slavery is that there are some there are some disagreements on some level that a nation cannot tolerate. And I think that that's a warning sign for
us. And the second warning sign, to make it relevant to what we're going through now, is that it's easy to forget that politics is war by other means. And what happens when there are two irreducible disagreements, and in particular when one side or both sides decide that the process for resolving that is illegitimate is this is when tragedies and civil wars happen. That's kind of just that's really interesting the way you put that, because I think, let me
try and sharpen that or have you sharpened it. What I just heard you say, if I restated is one of the direct criticisms of slavery is you're governing people without their consent, and today the administrative state sets out to govern us without our consent. Not exactly slavery, but similar principle at work. Yeah. Well, and I think also a sort of pre constitutional point as well, because I think the left governs through the administrative state, but also
in a day to day politics. And you see that with the lawfair against Donald Trump and everything, as though their opponents and really their enemies as they see it, will disappear if they just take out leadership, right, Like they imagine that if they get rid of Donald Trump, somehow seventy five million Trump voters will evaporate. Yeah, or Fox News is the other thing they
hate, right, right. They always think people are basically you know, they're having a watch spun before their eyes, and they refuse to confront the actual disagreement and take that seriously. For all the crying about white supremacy and domestic violent terrorism whatever, right, all the crying and the persecution of people under those banners, they don't have any real appreciation for the fact that if you push millions and millions of people to the wall hard, that you'll get
a pushback outside of the political process. That politics has that like delicate nature to it, that that in the state of nature will just kill each other
over these things. And so that would be kind of the I guess the thing that I'm thinking about a lot with regard to the Civil War or especially the Abraham Lincoln's lyceum address before right, when the government tolerates disorder and essentially heaps uses the law to heap sort of disdain on the people who are actually productive, who are generally law abiding, who are good people, when they use the law to heap sort of insults upon them and don't and not punish
those who are obviously doing wrongdoing something that I think applies equally by the way, to John Brown is to abolitionists who refuse to let them know or sorry the Southern states who allowed or disallowed abolitionist tracks from traveling in the mail. Right. So I mean, I I think there's a lot of lessons in
that kind of breakdown out of politics into war. And then, finally, because this is why the question was asked, right, because she's from South Carolina, and because she famously took the Stars and Bars down from the state capitol, these modern debates over monuments are framed wrongly. The remarkable thing is not that America fody civil war over slavery. It's that not only it was able to abolish slavery with extreme amounts of blood, but also that it was
able to reunify in a real way after the war. I mean, if you look at you look at other civil wars, haven't It was a very open question as to whether the United States would really be able to be put back together again. The fact that you can go from the Civil War and then into the twentieth century where the boys landing on Omaha Beach are overwhelmingly the sons and grandsons of people who would have fought for the South and the Civil
War is a remarkable thing. And part of the reason that Lincoln played Dixie right after the surrender at Appomatics is a recognition of that how important it is to put the country back together and so ripping down the statues that make the South the South, disallowing people from having pride not only in their region, their state, but in their families, their ancestry is not an act of justice, or it's an act away from reconciliation. That was really remarkable and
again delicate. I guess the watchword from me would be the peace and legitimate politics are a delicate thing, and we shouldn't we shouldn't be so cavalier about messing with it because we can see the gallons of blood in the Civil War that it cost. Let's turned to a second subject that it's actually somewhat related, which is, if there's anybody who's in some wady's an architect of the contemporary possibility of civil war and division, it's Woodrow Wilson. And so there's
my old pal. He's not really my pal, but I know David Frump pretty well, and he's out in the Atlantic in the last twenty four hours with a long article about uncanceling Woodrow Wilson. And oh my goodness, is it a caught awful mess. I don't know if you had any time to look at it or not. Did you have a chance to look at it, Lucretia, of course, of course, go ahead. It was before I read it, so sorry, go ahead. Oh just one quick thing. Before I read it, I said, I hope this is not just
because he founded the League of Nations. And then the first sentence or the first paragraph was basically like, well, we need more internationalism. Oh yeah, and that's why we should rerovibe Woodro Wilson. Sorry, go ahead, yeah, No, I mean, Dave was a smart guy. And by the way, let me say one thing in praise of well, first of all, I got to drop some names because it annoys Lucretia and many of our listeners. I mean, when I lived in Washington, I went to
many a party at David's very fine man's up in Upper Georgetown. It's where I got to meet Christopher Hitchens for the first time. So there, I just do that to annoy Lucretia. And David did write about twenty years ago he's always been very good on the immigration question, and he wrote any of you and You're right and several things he's going on, I think. But in his book on the seventies, How he got here, I think is pretty good. That's a twenty five year old book he wrote around twenty years
ago. He said, you know, the left keeps saying, I'm paraphrasing here that anyone who wants to have strict border control as a fascist. But that's what the American people want, and if responsible parties in Washington will not deliver it, and he meant people in both parties, of course, then the American people will sooner or later turn to a fascist to get it.
And I don't think he meant that literally, but in other words, he was predicting and did say I'm not surprised that Donald Trump has made such progress on that issue, and he wrote that back in twenty sixteen. So I'll just give you my grump about the article. You can quarrel with not only internationalism. I think you can quarrel with a lot of his rendition of Wilson in World War One and certain other things. I think he doesn't have the
story right. But I just quote two things here from the article because I think there's a big omission in the article. So one of things he says, and i'll quote David here, he says, in our zeal we refuse to understand past generations as they understood themselves. That, by the way, you may or may not be familiar in as is the famous interpreted principle of Leo Strauss. Okay, good, this is an article for this whole discussion.
I should have gone back and read all my claaramonunt materials from Lincoln Polish. Well, you know I didn't have to do that necessarily. But look, but the point is is that that is manifestly what David does not do
in this article. Because what's missing from the article is the way that Wilson and his other intellectual allies completely trashed the American fact and deliberately set out to rewire our understanding of the principles of the country in the way the constitutions should work, setting a stage for aggressivism of all its forms today in the administrative state and so forth. I mean, Wilson was an open advocate of the
administrative state right and more than any other political figure. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know is responsible for the mess that we're in. But then one more sentence from David which shows how what he's missing here quote and the gradual progress that the US has made since seventeen eighty seven has all depended on the respect Wilson and other leaders had for the original plan. And he
goes on from there, and I no, that's exactly the opposite. He did not respect the original Plan direct As Harvey Mansfield said, Wilson was the first American president to attack the Constitution. So that's my biggest grump with the piece. And I can pick lots of other details, but I don't know, do you have any greatest hits want either one of you you want to pick on. I would just say that from reminds me in some interesting ways
of Wilson. First of all, because he's a Canadian sort of almost forced into becoming a naturalized citizen. Because instead of having any principles about saying, no, I won't work for Bush, when I find I don't even think he should be president, I've got something backwards there. He worked for Bush, he was a speech man. No, instead of saying I don't think he should be president, I don't think. I don't support him, but
I'm going to go work for him anyway or whatever. Anyway. First of all, Canadians should not be commenting on American politics, on American statesmanship. All right, let's leave that aside. Woodrow Wilson. The damage done to this country by Woodrow Wilson, and not because he was an abject racist and a filthy you know whatever, the damage he did can never probably be undone.
I mean, we have conservatives saying his you know, wow, we need to readopt FDR, and FDR was able to put into practice what Woodrow Wilson wanted to do and couldn't do. The main the problem is, again what I said about the Civil War. Woodrow Wilson did not understand that human nature is fixed, that human nature has a tilos to which all good regimes should be working, and he believed that a human beings were infinitely malleable.
For that reason, we don't need the checks and balances of the Constitution. We need instead a demagogue. He tried to tried very hard not to call it or try to differentiate his idea of leader of the people from a demagogue. He tried very hard. He didn't succeed, in my opinion, in
his different writings on the subject. But he is responsible for people like Barack Obama who believe that somehow they are the expression of the will of the people, as opposed to an expression of the people's rationality and what is good for the people. We're gonna we are going to use leadership, you know how much I love that word leadership to convince the people what we think is good
for them, and then they'll back us in. That's democracy. That's and so because of Wilson, the whole notion of democracy to the extent that it's anything good at all, which you know, if you're a good federalists you don't believe that, but to the extent that it's any good at all, it has been so corrupted by Wilson's heirs that it's meaningless, so that we can say about, for instance, Liz Cheney after she's defeated by sixty percent
of the vote in a primary, that democracy is threatened because Liz Cheney didn't win. So that all of that from Wilson, never mind the administrative state and all those horrible things. He's responsible for the end of real, genuine checks and balances, the idea that we should take any institution of our government and turn it into something that advances the the leftist, the progressive project. All of that he's responsible for, and the idea that David from thinks he
should be praised for anything. It was absolutely right. His globalism, his international view probably equal to the administrative state and the damageed st done of this country. Yeah, and as do you have any greatest hits from the piece that jumped out you well, really just the predictability of what was going to be praised was funny because I guess I thought, Look, I liked Bobo's too, all right, Bobo the first Bobo's in paradig is fantastic. The
essay the follow up as well, that was David Brooks. They're easily confused, but that's okay. Yeah, Wait, Oh yeah, that's a different guy. Yeah, okay, I didn't ask you that David Brooks question. Oh sorry, that was a no. But it was very predictable in terms of like what would be praised. And I'm I'm sort of, I guess conflicted about the merits of canceling Wilson, Like he's probably the one person I'm not gonna ride in to the fire to try to rescue for a lot of
the reasons that Lucretia said. But yeah, because his philosophy is really the first of all, the most important thing. Never elect somebody with a PhD the president, absolutely, but the birth of this kind of technocratic use and I think again we see it now of quote our democracy, when in fact the procedures, the administrative takeover of it's politics without politics, and it's actually very anti democratic. But there is this this sort of payon to quote unquote
our democracy. I think that that does ring is very Wilsonian, as Lucretius said today. But yeah, I mean there's also this naivete about human nature where he believes that democracy can still steer the ship of state in this sort of grand way, but the actual details of politics can be reduced to a science and handed over to experts, Whereas now we see the result of that, which is a ship of state the size of the Titanic directed by the
rudder of a dinghy maybe half maybe half broken off at this point. And so there is this like very naive idea that experts and technocrats don't have normative assumptions, that they don't have political assumptions built into what they do. So think we saw that again a lot during the pandemic, where people were willing to outsource the actual judgment, you know, in the best case, and we didn't have the best case, but in the best case, somebody like
could tell you the virus spreads this way. Turns out theyre wrong about that. A lot of that too. But let's say even in the best case they do have the correct information, they say it spreads this way, it's this deadly, it has these risks. Right, Still, there's an element of judgment in politics, in balancing all the other things that are necessary in a country, in balancing the freedoms of the people, balancing economic concerns.
Right there isn't a one technocratic answer, even if you have good inputs. But I think we saw a lot of that Wilsonianism during the pandemic. That being said, when you say that Wilson is the root of all of our problems today, I think he laid the structural groundwork for a lot of the powers that are exercised. But he would have I mean to the extent that I think Wilson shouldn't be completely canceled. The guy was still very very clearly
American, you know, in a certain way. He had that strong Southern Southern connection for good and bad. I think it was the last American president, the last American president who grew up in a household with slaves, interesting little biographical detail that most people forget, right and shared with his fellow progressive Miriam both an admiration for the exact view that we were criticizing in the last topic, right, the Calhounian view of human inequality very strong with the progressives
and naturally tied into their system of government. I think in a way that the left criticizes sort of superficially, like, oh, look at these terrible racists, but doesn't look at the connections between the sort of government that they would recommend, or somebody like some of the public intellectuals in the South before the war in the forties and fifties, right, who would recommend Was it Fitsu who recommended slavery for nine out of ten people? Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, So you know, I think they don't want to grapple with the ties between the vision of government and the racism. Right, let me hear simplify that a little bit and say that if you reject human nature and the basic principle of human equality as we understand it coming say from Jefferson, it's very easy to be either a racist in the fits you or the Calhoun or whatever you want to say mode, or in the Imbram Candy mode.
Right. I mean, if we are not talking about fundamental human nature, the idea that nature did not make rulers unruled, and all of the things that flow from that, then you can just pick whoever you want to be on top at any moment, and you can pick whatever the category should be. And you know, it was race for the longest time, and then sex. I hate the word gender, and now it's of course, you know, sexual orientation or sexual identification, and God only knows what it'll be
after that. That will become the you know, the the white supremacist that we're going to promote to the top of the food chain this week, because you can do that when you deny fundamental human nature. Yeah. So my objection, I think, though, to what you said, Steve, is I'm not sure that the essence of today's left and the problems that America has
really Wilsonian. There are certainly with Wilsonian elements and the structure of the government that allows them to implement much of what they want while circumventing real small d democracy and democratic will. That's Willsonian. But the content of it, I think is much more new left in the nineteen sixties. You know, I know some people like Sarah buch Mari or whoever, like We'll say, the
problem goes all the way back to Jefferson. I really see the roots of the current woke age or whatever in the sixties in actual normative substance rather than in like structure. Well, two things, and then I wanted to shift gears here because John Hinderrocker is joining us. First of all, I didn't tell you this, And as we ban the word normative from this podcast, it's just our hatred of social science. I'm kind of kidding, but I
banned from my classrooms. Actually, I think Lucretia does too. It's fine, I mean, know what you mean, but using it as a positive in the sense that there must be you can give me a different word, but there there must be a positive vision of the good. And we talk about politics is purely procedural. A lot of the time, we're still probably about Max Baber and all the rest of that. But now you're Roger point though I actually agree with you that Wilson simply crystallizes a lot of things that
were bubbling up before him. The attack on the founding on a natural right that was that was exploding in the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties, but as a contingent manner. Without Wilson, who knows whether it would have galloped a him. All right, John Hinderocker joins us. Now we want to catch up on some news. But for John, say hello to Anes Stepman,
who you've not met before. Lucretia, you know. But and then listeners if you're reading the site or even seeing the news elsewhere, because it's making news internationally. John, your office was firebomb and that was no little trash can fire or little bonfire outside the door. I'm shocked at the photos. I've been in your office. I know that building, and that was a serious uh uh. This was no mayor prank. This was something really serious.
What's the latest? What can you tell us about what you know? And you know where things stand? Well, let me just back up for a moment, Steve and start with the basics. So what happened a week ago tonight? It was two o'clock in the morning, Saturday night, actually early Sunday morning. Some person's unknown person or person's unknown broke into the building where American Experiment and two other conservative organizations are located, a lot with lots
of other small businesses. So there are chiropractors and psychologists and financial advisors and so on. Can I just jump in, John and say that you know, you're it's like a six story building, eight story something like three stories. It's three story. It's a good sized building, but it's only three stories high, and it's part of a complex of three buildings. But the
remote from that business park is remote from downtown. I mean, this is not something that people someone really had to go to a lot of trouble to single out your building and get oh yeah, well, somebody somebody hates our organizations. I'm guessing they hate mine the most were by far the biggest, you know, and we operate across the broadest range of issues. But somebody went to the trouble. It's not hard, you know, we all have
our addresses online, so somebody figured it out. We used to joke about this, you know. Our building is really the epicenter of the conservative movement of Minnesota. If the liberals were smart, they would vombit, you know. We used to say that as a joke. Well, they put two and two together. So somebody broke into our building about two o'clock in the morning, and it's easy to reconstruct the crime. They were at the south end of the building, so they would have started on the third floor.
They had a plan to to to commit arson in the office of the Upper Midwest Law Center and in our office, and I think the Office of Take Charge, which is a black run organization targeted mainly to black young people. You know, be a victor, not a victim, you know, that kind of thing. So I think all three organizations were targeted. So the only way to do this would be to start on the third floor. If you started the first flaw, you're blocking your exit, you know, start
the floor. And they had time, you know, they wanted to do this quickly, but they had some time at that point. So they actually broke into that office and they started the fire inside the office of the Upper Midwest Lawsuit. It's only four people, you know, who use that who used that office, and we know that accelerants were used. I assume all that means is they had a couple of cans of gasoline. They poured gasoline all over it, a couple of matches. That office is completely destroyed,
completely destroyed. They then ran Now they're on the clock. You see now that once they started that fire, now the time agains credit because somebody's going to see the flames, see the smoke, call the fire department, call the police. So now they're in a hurry. So they run down the steps to the first floor, and they're right close to that south exit that they broke into in the first place. So now they use again accelerants, as we are told, And I think all that means is a can of
gasoline. You know. I think they just doused that end of that third or so or half of the corridor with gasoline or maybe some other accelerant, you know, lit a couple of matches and ran out that same south door that they had broken in through. So that's fundamentally what happened. It was obviously arson when you have two separate fires completely to stake no damage on the second floor. You got one on the first floor one on the third floor.
The first responders knew that it was arson. That was never a question, and they immediately contacted ATF alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, which news to me, But they do fire investigations and the FBI. Those agencies have been on the case from the very beginning. The way they have divided it up is that ATF is doing the fire investigation per se, so they're documenting you know, points of origin, use of accelerants, that kind of thing,
and FBI is in charge of finding the perpetrators. And I have been cooperating closely with the FBI and trying to identify potential suspects. Yeah. I mean they I don't know anything about how this is actually done, but I'm guessing they're not telling you very much because they want to keep you know, Look, you're a media person. You're going to be on TV and all the rest of that, And I don't want you blabbing too much, I suppose, but do you what do you know? Do you know anything?
So far? Or well? They've been reasonably forthcoming. I don't know, of course what they're not telling me, but I think they're keeping us pretty much in the loop. One thing, one of the FBI guys told me, we have a camera. There were no cameras in this in these corridors. There's very little security in this complex, virtually none, but we and a soda nice, right, you guys are too nice up there, right, yeah, okay, yeah, well or cheap, I don't know what,
but any of it. We have a camera inside our office that points at the door. Now, these guys didn't break into our office, you know. They were trying to get two for the price of one by setting the corridor on fire, I'm sure hoping that it would, you know, spread into our office as well as the take charge office, which we subleased to them, actually across the across the hall. But what happened was that the fire department got there really very quickly, and they got the fire put
out before it made its way through the what do you call it? You know, there's this very solid wall there, you know, very solid and and and so our office didn't burn, but we've got a couple of inches of water and there's you know, smoke damage and all that kind of thing. So so we have a camera and it's pointed at the door, and there's a there's a thin glass panel next to the door. And one of the FBI guys didn't tell me they got they got the footage from our video
camera. I'm not even sure where they got it, but they did. They didn't get it from me, but he told me that you could actually see some of this arson activity through that little window into the corridor. Interesting, we know, and this is the most important thing we know in terms of catching the culprit, at least I think it is for sure. Just when I first read about it, I thought, well, lucky thing,
John wasn't there. But it was at two in the morning, and so you wouldn't have been there on a Saturday night either, So it really was just an arson. It wasn't not really a violent attempt against you or any of your employees or anything like that. I mean, obviously wanted to do it at a time when there wasn't anybody around and they wouldn't get caught,
you know. Yeah, I'll hold that thought from it. The other question, John, is I know you were going all week and if we have time, maybe we'll say one minute about the Trialey you're covering in DC. But it happened last weekend, but you didn't didn't tell us about this or didn't write about until on Thursday, I think, And so why did you wait? Was it a reason for waiting or we want to wait till investigation got rolling, or you know, what were you holding back from us?
John? Well, I did wait for just a couple of days. And the reason I did that is because my hope was that the ATF or FBI would make an official public announcement that this was an arsen We all knew it was. I was talking to them and no question about that, but I thought it would be advantageous if they gave a press conference, you know, let then announce to the public this arson was committed and then and then we
weigh in. They didn't do that, and it was clear to me that they didn't have any intention of doing anything public for a while, and so we as well as other groups, thought, well, what the heck, we may as well jump in and start talking. Now. Is the whole building shut down? I mean, the whole building is shut down. It remains to be seen what, if ever, that whole building is going to
reopen. I mean, fire is unbelievably destructive and so is water right and remediation of that building I think is going to take, you know, six months if you optimistically assume it can be remediated. But I want to make this point those step because I think it's important in terms of catching the culprits. And by the way, one person could have carried out this crime. And I'm no expert on crime, right, but my feeling is that it
would be really extraordinary for one person to do this. I think that you would need two people to egg each other on, you know, and to feel like they are representing some kind of a group. But let's come back to that thought, because I've given they by some ideas about who these perpetrators might be. But in terms of catching them, I think the most salient point. For one of the first questions I asked the FBI guys, are
there cameras on the frontage rope? Okay, so our office is located off oftage road, which is parallel to a major highway that runs west out of the city of Minneapolis. We're three or four miles west of Minneapolis, and south of our building. There's a there's a lake, you know, a small lake. Remember, there isn't there isn't really any practical way to get to our building without driving on this frontage room. You know, you just I don't know how you would do it, you know, paddle a canoe
with your gasoline cans of the canoe. I don't know. But it's the only practical way to get to the building. And so in the first question, I asked the FBI guys, are there cameras on the frontage and he said, yes, there are. No, I haven't gotten any further information about about it. At the time I was talking to him, he had
not yet seen the footage from those cameras. But at two o'clock in the morning, you know, the number of cars driving on that frontage road, I'm sure you could count on your fingers, you know, at the most. And so if those cameras are sharp enough to pick license plate numbers, as they should be, we might very well have a very small universe of suspects. Well, so this lucreaksous point that, well, they weren't trying to actually harm any human beings by doing the middle of the night. Maybe
that's right. I don't know. I my mind runs back to the late sixties and early seventies when there was a wave of bombings around the country, some of which were fatal, you know, the bomb at the University of Wisconsin that killed a graduated students, and some of those were you know, the weather underground deliberately did want to hurt people, you know, the plan bombing at four Dix, things like that. I am wondering if, for
an no how back to that. It seems to me that having sacked the police station in Minnesota during the George Floyd Jamboree, Antifa type people or maybe Antifa itself, has said, oh, maybe it's time to start targeting these conservative groups. And you know, what begins as a middle of the night bombing or arson might not end there. And so I don't know. I'm very I think this is the foreboding of some a step increase of bad things
happening. I'm sure you've gotten death threats over the years. I have a guide in a lot of them, but I've gotten some. You know, I've never taken them. I've never taken him seriously. I know we're both bummed. Steve and I are both bumbed because John, you gets them all the time, and Steve and I don't. So but also I do how well I know how well armed you are, John, And that's a bad idea. Yeah, yeah, you got a point there, So so you
know, I've never taken those seriously. But what I will say is that there is a huge difference between getting attacked on Twitter, you know, or an email or a comment and somebody firebombing your office. That is a big, big difference. I think one thing that's going on, Steve, is that these leftists have concluded that they can get away with almost anything. I think it's the kind of escalation of violence that becomes inevitable if you don't have
strong law enforcements. So, as everybody knows, we had the George Floyd riots and they burned down the Third Precinct station. It's never been rebuilt. They went on for days before our governor you know, called in the called in the National Guard and finally put an end to it. And we have a were Our office is located in Hendupon County, which includes Minneapolis and some suburbs. The county attorney we've hend up In County ran on a platform of
not prosecuting criminals and one handling. And you know, we've got the kind of revolving door that you hear about in New York City, you know, right, And I think I think a lot of bad people have looked around and said, you know, what the hell, you know, what can't
we get away with? Yeah? So, and as you do, you want to get into the question or comment for John, And before you do, let me add that you had a great tweet yesterday that about the people protesting out in front of the Holocaust Museum, blocking the road and washing the Holocaust museum. And did you say you said something like it was What this was about is showing who's in charge. It's not really the issue, but
we're in charge of the city. And that's it fits with your point, John, that people think they get away with anything, so they're going to try to get away with it anyway. And that did you want to ask or say, make a comment on this whole business? So yeah, I
think I just retweeted that was actually my husband. But yeah, yeah, it's a great part, but I don't think I was the one that made it well, no, I was okay, anyway, go ahead, and is no, I mean, I completely agree that there's a very I mean, they're related, obviously, but they're also related in a very pragmatic way, which is one is the ideological breakdown in law and order and in arresting people who have obviously committed crimes, and the other is the escalation of political
violence. And I think those two things are probably gonna interact badly going forward. But I'm really sorry I hadn't heard about this. I'm really sorry that that is, like, as you say that, there's a big jump from I mean, to get a lot of like death threats and from angry zoomers
on Twitter. And I'm really not worried about that at all, because most of them seem incapable of leaving the house without somebody affirming them every step of the way, so you know, imagining that they could do something serious is quite remote, but that that has got to fuel very not like I guess I don't want to insult you by saying that you feel vulnerable in that way, but it is it's a more direct threat than you know, kind of you can imagine a lot of jag offs on the internet, but that this
is it's got to be very disquieting. Yeah, I was thinking that the more disquieting part would be not just the lack of law enforcement execution against perpetrators of those kinds of crimes. But I wonder, were you to take anything into your own hands that was slightly outside of the law, John, if they wouldn't come after you with guns blaring. And I'm sure you get what
I mean by that. Which is my problem is these days less with the lack of law enforcement, but the very biased and one sided law enforcement that seems to me. Well, let me make a couple of comments on that, Lucretia. One, I think we are going to get full support from the authorities, or are getting full support from the authorities in this case. We are a very well respected organization, and if I can say so modestly,
I'm a pretty well known guy. And I got a very nice call from the United States Attorney for the District of Minnesota giving me his personal cell phone number, saying he's appalled at what's happened. You know, this fire bombing, saying that he is he is following the case closely. You know, we're getting strong attention from the FBI, and anytime I want anything, need anything, I should call him directly. Right. I don't think we're
going to have you know, one sided law enforcement here. I think I think they're going to do their best to catch these perpetrators. As far as physical danger, you know, we have a We're one of the few policy organizations. We've got a policy fellow who specializes in public safety and criminal justice. And he is a thirty three year veteran of the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office. He retired as a captain at that time, the fourth highest ranking person
in that office. He has spent years on the street. He has arrested countless criminals. He is adept with firearms. He is a big, tough guy, and he knows, you know, he recognizes dangerous situations in a way that the rest of us don't. You know, we haven't lived our lives, you know, coping with danger. Well, David Zimmer has.
He's a great guy. And so one of the things I just haven't had time to do, partly because I was in Washington most of speak last week is I really want to sit down with David and I want to get his thoughts on physical security, you know, for our organization. You know, I've got to carry permit. In recent years, I have rarely carried you know, a firearm. I may start doing that again. I may start
routinely. You know, after the last time I got a death threat, which the police that thought was you know, relatively serious, I carried a gone to the office for for a couple of weeks, just in case. And I might start doing that again routinely. I don't know. But but you know, we are going to be going to be looking at issues of security. But I don't you know, having said that, no, I don't feel unsafe at all. You know, my phone number has listed my
The address of my house is you know, well known. It's not it's not hidden in any way. And I I have never actually felt unsafe. All right, let's let's do one last question on a different subject. John. Just briefly, you mentioned you're in Washington, and you're there for a lot of reasons, but a lot of it is attending the libel trial of Michael Mann against Mark Stein and Ran Simberg. We'll do a whole separate show this. By the way, because there's a lot to be said about that.
You're not the Francis Menton is writing some great pieces on this. Just give us a very brief summ review of how you think this is going. And by the way, I'm calling this the Scopes Monkey Trial of our century with the roles reversed a little bit, if you can follow my meaning there. But what my impression is is this is going very badly for Man. Is that right? Well, let's not, you know, I hope, so, I hope. So let me just start by saying that you can
view the trial online the court. This is the Superior Court, Washington, d C. The court has cameras and audio and anybody can sign in and view it online. As I've had time, the trial's looking on for a couple of weeks now, and as I've had time, I have periodically tuned in, so I heard things like Mark Stein's opening statement. I heard some of Man's direct testimony. I heard most of Mark's pro see cross examination of them, which is you know, we went. I hope this all ends
up on YouTube. This sounds just anyway, Sorry, John device of admission but then I went out there and I spent a couple of days. I had other meetings, but I spent most of my time for a couple of days in the courtroom, which is kind of fun. As you know, Steve, I did nothing but litigation for forty one years. I tried many jury cases all over the country. This is the longest I've spent in a courtroom since I left the law business at the end of twenty fifteen and started
running a nonprofit. So it's kind of fun for me, in a stress free way to be back in a courtroom. Kivincing a little bit, I will say this, there is no one in that courtroom who has more than a nodding acquaintance with the rules of evidence. This is one of many areas of American life where standards have gone downhill. So how is it going? You can't really opine on how a trial is going when you've only seen maybe
a third of it. Okay, you know, I don't know. This is there's a reason why man and his lawyers venued this case in Washington, d C. They could have put it anywhere, and they chose Washington, d C. And that's because they knew that they would get a jury of registered Democrats who are politically aware, who are liberal, and who in all probability have swallowed the climate uh theory whole. And and so one of the things I wanted to do is spend a lot of time just observing the jury
and trying to size that jurors reactions. The problem with that is, having spent you know, years of my life doing this, it's very hard to tell what a jury is thinking. You know, it's very very open, and occasionally you think you get a glimpse, but like is not, You're wrong. You know, this is a relatively young jury. There are there are tenderers. Nine of them are registered Democrats, one of them is actually a Republican. All of them believe you know in quote climate change close quote.
And you know, it's a it's it's a very uphill it's a very uphill process. You know, Michael Mann is the eminent scientist, you know, the famous guru of climate. You know, I would have said it before the trial started that that Mark and Ran Simberg had only a very very very very slim chance of winning the jury verdict. Having having followed, you know more of the you know, some of the trial, I would up
that I think they've now got more than just a fighting chance. Michael Man comes across as very thin skinned, as not very in my opinion, not very likable. And and Mark made a comment in his opening statement that I told him, in my opinion, is his winning theme, and that is Michael Mann is a guy who loves to dish it out but can't take it. And one of the things that's come out is that is that man is just vicious in talking about other people. You know, he smears them wantonly.
There's an email where he passes on a false sexual rumor about Judith curR current right, just science al happens to disagree with him, and Judith is going to testify at the trial. She spent all last week in d C without ever getting on the stand. And if you ever met Judith Curry, I'll just say, you know, this is not a plausible smear. It's not It's crazy. And so I think I think that's something as a basic
point of fairness that is going to come through to the jury. Another fact that came out that could be it's not technically relevant, but it could be relevant in how the jury thinks about the case. Michael Man hasn't spent a penny his lawyers. Three law firms have been working on his behalf for twelve years, hasn't cost him a nickel. Now they might be working on a contingent fee arrangement. I very much doubt that. My assumption is that,
like Hunter Biden, he's got a sugar brother who's paying the bills. Mark told me how much he's spent on his defense. Yeah, and you know, it's just this is this is ruinous, and we don't and we don't know who's paying Man's legal fees. Right, that's still I don't know's I mean, I suspect it's Tom Steyer, maybe sol Us in one of his units, but tom Steyer will be my first nominee. Ye who knows,
And there's no entitlement to find that out. But everybody in the courtroom I could tell you it was stub and Michael Mann said that he hadn't spent any money in twelve years of litigation. And another thing, it's kind of funny, and again it's this framing of Michael Mann. You know, who is this guy and what is his reputation? He was obsessed with this false claim that he was a Nobel Prize winner. Oh, yes, that's right, but he actually had to put out a statement saying that Michael Man is not
in fact a Nobel Prize war yet. And you know, in the original version of the complaint, it'll in this case alleged three times that Michael Mann, the Nobel Prize winner you know, was defamed by these people. They later amended the complaint to take that allegation out because it was it was false. But one of the things in evidence is a long email thread between Michael Mann and editors of Wikipedia where he is bombarding Wick with demands that his bio
be changed to reflect his status as a Nobel Prize or yet. I mean, the man is just you know, he's just an awful human being. Well all right, well sorry, John, we're running along here, but we'll have you back for when it's over, a complete recap of it, and also, you know, the sequel to what's happening with certain pyrotechnic developments in Minnesota. But we need to draw to an end and stick around for a second. John, You might have a thought or two, and we
usually end things as we have some fun. We usually try and pick out the Lake this ridiculous thing. Kambel Harris has said, I haven't had time to do that this week, and then Lucreatia shares her favorite Babylon B headlines of the week, and then we close pretty quickly. I don't know if you've listened to this lately, John, but Lucretia, do you have any Babylon BE headlines for us for the week? Yes? I do, indeed, Uh Biden Sorry, nation has a vague distant memory of some old rule
where the president just couldn't declare Warren anyone it wanted to. We didn't even get to that topic. As you know, where's my Nikki my Nikki? Hayley uh uh insists that we not make peace in the Middle East. That's Joe Biden sees Shadow attempts to shake his hand. Majorca says, how can he be impeached when he hasn't done anything that's right on the money, right, And then I'll sort of leave it at this one. Oh wait, wait, wait, surprise, We at the Babylon B would like to reveal
that Fetterman has been doing a bit for us all along. Well, it's starting to see that way, isn't it good? Gret what a surprise that has been. I know that's when you said at our our New Year's Eve podcast that despite all of the places that we were wrong on our predictions for twenty twenty three, not one of us the wrongest we all were was not one of us could have predicted that John Fetterman would become our favorite Democratic senator.
So that's all right, right, right the pat and point the hand of our times, right we all right? Well, thanks for jumping in, John, I know you've got a ton of media coming. Thanks and us for joining us. This has been really fun. And listeners, you should add high Noon to your podcast rotation. And with that, I have
to give John's end of this too. We usually end by saying, John Hughes, which is what is always drink your whiskey, neat, Let's go Brandon and God saved the Queen Man began and all the Joe Biden's greatest hits the we were talking about. Are we down? No mngos somethody it happened. Time we learned we shouldn't fine you find me? So time Ricochet join the conversation.