It's the Three Whiskey Happy Hour Special Gala July fourth edition with your usual bartenders, me, John Yu and the International Woman of Mystery, Lucretia. Well, it's the special July fourth edition of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour, brought to you like Yankee Doodle Dandy in a two four time signature, with no rest between the measures. Though more on that point in due course. And of course, I guess we should start out by observing that today is the real
No King's Day. But we're gonna change things up a little bit since it is our sacred holiday. We're gonna skip the news, we're gonna skip the latest cases and does just do some July four themes, although I reserve the right to do a little retribution against John and the third segment. But we are now one year out from I've learned, by the way John, what we're supposed to call next year's anniversary. It's the semi quinn Centennial, which just rolls.
That sounds almost as nice as the Clean Air Act. We might have to we're gonna have to ban that word too, Send me whatever.
All right, But but I thought what we would do today is reflect on some general things and John, I want to start with you, uh, because you know, we've had these arguments on the substance of immigration, both the legal issue of birthright citizenship, but then we also have tangled a couple of times about whether the US needs more immigration. You made the argument theory we need more skilled immigration, that we're actually short of labor and so forth.
Uh.
And I thought, let's talk about your immagate because you are an immigrant and your story I think calls to mind Lucretia and my late friend Peter Shram, who you know, fled with his family after the Hungarian Revolution in nineteen fifty six, and he asked his dad, dad, why are we going to America? And his dad said, because we were born American but in the wrong country. And there was no more patriotic person than Peter Shram, and no more eloquent person to talk about immigration rightly done. So
I don't know. You know, you've mentioned a couple of times that you moved here with your parents when you were what seven eight years old? I saw it.
No, No, I it's much younger. I came to the United States when I was three months old, so I had lots of questions, but no one could understand me at the time when we came out.
Well, we've seen that picture of you talking John, I don't believe.
Yeah, I know, there's these great videos of me now speaking out at last Spanish and Spanish at that with a books sticking out of my hair. So we'll take it from the time I just actually heard my you know one. So a few things. So first, I think it's uh, you know, we appreciate the country, and I want to get to that second. But first, think about we're all descended from immigrants, and think about what what an imposing obstacle it was for all of them to
decide to leave their home countries and come here. And they came here because of an idea, not you know, they came like you said, Steve with your description of the Shams. The Shrams I never met. It's my parents. And I think most you know, people who first come over as first generation immigrants, they have just rumors or ideas about what America is rather than what it really is like, and still they come. I think that's incredible. Think about there, all of our ancestors were rooted in
some place for maybe thousands of years. That's certainly true of Korea, which is still rather homogeneous people and culture that was isolated from the world for about two thousand years. It was called the hermit Kingdom. I learned. So, think about all of our first generation ancestors who came here, had almost no real knowledge of what it was like.
But because of their desire, I think, for freedom, they came here, and because of their rumor that you could make your lives as you wanted rather than be trapped in a hierarchy or a society that was the way it was for hundreds of years or thousands of years, is what brought them here. So I just heard my mother actually tell this story last week. So this is all about the revolution in a way. So I was in Philadelphia last week teaching a class of K through
twelve teachers about the revolution. So here they just struck me. Here's a first generation immigrant, I wasn't even born here teaching a class of fifty K through twelve teachers about the American Revolution. And I made the case to them, and I taught it socratic. So I start out with a statement and then just asked them what they thought.
And I said, the American Revolution is a strangely conservative revolution because it seeks to recapture your guy's favorite topic, natural rights, right, it seems to recapture that from the British who wanted to change things, and how it's amazing that people from all over the world come here, not for the French, a French, Chinese or Russian revolution. They don't come here because they want to sweep away society. They come here because they want something very old fashioned, right,
thousands of years old, the idea of natural rights. Anyway, So after that, I took my mother, who's eighty seven, and some of her octogenarian friends to dinner at a restaurant that pre exists the Revolution in Philadelphia called the Guardhouse Inn, and they were all telling stories about how they first came to Philadelphia. And the restaurant is still in the same town that I grew up in. I mean,
that's the thing. Things in Philadelphia, they don't change. So this restaurant's been there since seventeen there's a date on it's seventeen something, and it's still serving the food from seventeen something. I think the recipes have not changed. I'm just kidding, But there are restaurants in Philadelphia actually where you can go and the menu is like Benjamin Franklin's menu, And here I want to just say there have been massive improvements in human welfare since that time, because we
don't eat that food anymore anyway. So one of the people at dinner who actually used to be an owner of the Philadelphia Phillies, but that's a whole nother story, a very interesting man anyway. So they asked her, how did you pick Philadelphia to emigrate to? And I think this has got to be replicated over and over again in all of our stories. So she said, we didn't
know anything about the United States. Unrolled a map and there were all these cities, and there's New York and there's Los Angeles as the ones most Koreans went to. And they said they were fans of classical music. And in the nineteen fifties, the greatest orchestra in America was, oh, Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Eugene Ormandy, the great conductor. And they said, they have a great orchestra in Philadelphia. It must be a good place to live. Let's choose there.
So I was like, you know, mom, at this time, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra is also a very good orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra. Think, well, how could you pick a city based on the orchestra. There's a lot of bad cities with good orchestras too, But this was all they knew about the United States was just they had heard the music from the Philadelphia Orchestra, and that's how we picked it. But then they took me to a city which is wrapped up in the history of the
Revolution and the Constitution. Where you can go today and visit the room in Independence Hall, which at that time was the Pennsylvania State House, and see the room and the desks are still there, the same furniture, and see where the Declaration of Independence was written and signed, and with the Constitution was written signed. I went to a high school that was founded in seventeen eighty five, and so it pre exists the Constitution. We still learned Latin
and Greek at that high school. You know, it was originally founded to teach ministers of the Episcopalian church because that's who were supposed to go to college back then.
So I had that was my immigration. I still remember I was around for the seventeen seventy six celebration I remember going to parade as a little kid, and I also remember that the following year I got my naturalization certificate, and I still remember, vaguely remember going to downtown Philadelphia to some federal building and getting the naturalization certificate, which I still have. So you probably remember a lot of things from when you were now nine or ten. I
still distinctly remember that, and then just deficient. Lastly, you know, on July fourth, it's the other thing that's amazing to me is not just the travel of our parents or ancestors to the United States, but also it's amazing. And this is why I think immigration should be increased beyond one million a year. Is I think the country is an amazing country because it is founded on immigration and it's constantly renewing itself, but they're always still connected to
the founding principles. The people still come here because they want freedom and liberty, not just I think economic benefits. They don't just want to go to the richest country in the world or the strongest country in the world. They want to go to the freest country in the world. That's why. But it's not the freedom you could find in Europe or Asia. They want to come or even the Latin America. They want to have the unique freedom we have in the United States. So sorry for going
on line. I could go on longer.
Well, I'm want you to back up a step on a couple of points, which is you were Were you naturalized at the same time as your parents.
Yes, the same time, I see, I think almost the same time.
So it took several years, I take it.
Oh yeah, I mean back then it would take you. I think it took nine ten years. I mean it took nine years for me. Yeah, I mean it's it's not the and we didn't apply for asylum or anything. My parents came to fill needs in the healthcare industry.
So well, that's what I was going to ask, is what we.
First settled in New Jersey because it worked there. My parents worked at a veterans hospital. Oh okay, in a mental and a mental hospital in New Jersey. Yeah, well that okay, explain to you a little bits. That's why I'm so successful at navigating this podcast.
Well, all right, and mom makes me better.
Well, I mean, I say, back up a step. So you mentioned that you know your parents were you know, skilled, well educated people in medicine.
I guess.
And you know, the other thing I know is what year was did you come here?
Was it like nineteen nineteen sixty seven? So years two years after the Immigration Act? So as yes, you know, before nineteen sixty five, this really wouldn't have been possible.
Well, I wasn't sure. You know, it varies depending on the status of countries, and in a particular case of Korea, where we had, you know, fifteen years before, been involved in a war, and I think even in the late sixties, South Korea was still a pretty poor country. Today it's a real country, right, and so you can understand why you'd want to seek out better opportunities. I always like.
An interesting thing though in the Yeah, well no, here's interesting in the mid nineteen sixties, so yeah, I went looked up the statistics and so nineteen sixty South Korea was the second poorest country in the world. Yeah, and so you know now it's one of the top ten cos in just two generations, right, ever, really become one of the top ten richest countries. And my parents were a doctor, so if they had stayed in Korea, they would have had you know, they would have been the
top of that wave. In a way, So they actually gave up quite a bit of opportunity in their home country. But I don't they didn't want to live under a military dictatorship. Yeah, even though I mean, this is another other elements of it is I've always been interested in foreign affairs and war because the United States did fight in the Korean War right before I was born. And it's still amazing to me that, yes, the United States had great power reasons to go to Korea, but it
also saved the country, and I find that incredible. I'm still so amazed that, you know, that's tens of thousands of Americans died in combat to save the freedom of South Korea, and you look at the result. It's now
the tenth or just country of the world. You look at that map that Rumsfeld liked to show of the city lights at night between North and South Korea, and North Korea, which is run by communists, completely dark except for one tiny blip in Pyongyang, and South Korea looks like America now the from space.
So let me just add a little something onto that. I attended a Holocaust remembrance ceremony several years ago and included this little anecdote in my speech to eight hundred people at a military ball on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the US Army. And that was at the Holocaust Rememberment ceremony. A rabbi who had been rescued as a child from I think it was Dachau, came
and spoke. He was the major speaker at the ceremony, and the one thing he said to a room full of soldiers was to billions of people across the world, a soldier in a US Army uniform means hope and deliverance. And like you say, John, what an incredible thing that is that our soldiers are not bent on world domination
and conquest. I mean, I don't want to get into a neocon thing, but how proud can you be of a military harry that its primary purpose throughout most of its history has been either to protect the people of this nation or to deliver people of other nations from really horrible situations. I mean, can you imagine anything more noble than rescuing survivors of concentration camps in Nazi Germany? And why is it that we do that? I think
that that's really the important question. Why is our army different? Why is it notvent on colonialism and imperialism and all of those other horrible things we hear from the left. I think it's because of who we are as a country and the one place that I differ with you, John, not differ, but maybe add to is there's a reason why America is entirely different from any other country. And I don't know that it's a conservative revolution. I think
it's a contra revolution. It doesn't replace in seventeen seventy six, we didn't replace one set of dictator with another. It wasn't just a coup. It was for the first time in recorded history of people dedicating themselves to a universal principle based on the idea that the world was ruled by nature, the laws of nature, in Nature's God, not a specific Christian God, not a specific sect, not Islam,
not whatever it might be. But to separate out from our commitment to our God, whichever God we choose to worship, but to base, to base our freedoms, our rights, not in something ephemeral or because we have a constitution that says so, but because we can go to nature. We can go to nature's laws, in Nature's God, and see what it is that we can learn about human nature and why we have those natural rights and freedoms because
of the fundamental truth of human equality. Not equality in everything, but it equality in the sense that over human beings, there are no natural rulers. There's no divine right of kings. There's no evidence in nature from God, despite what ruled Europe for millennia, that God has placed some people in such superior positions over everyone else that they deserve to
be rulers over the world. That's what creates American exceptionalism because we believe that, and it's why we could accept all of those immigrants from countries far from countries with totally different belief systems and so on. Why did they come here? Because the American exceptionalism is a human exceptionalism, and every immigrant from every country, if they're willing to accept those principles and those ideas, can become an American, regardless of where they come from. You can't go to
France and become a Frenchman. I can't go to Korea and become a Korean.
In Lucretia, you seem to share some of the common traits of the people.
I do because I have lots of.
Riving your enemies before you destroying their cities.
But what does it mean to be an American?
Really?
I mean, I don't know anything about the naturalization procedures, rules and regulations of other countries, but I know about them here and they what they demand of you is that you understand those fundamental principles. That's what they demand of you. And you have to take a test. And the test is not necessarily about you know, history and
this and that. It's about what are the fundamental principles of American exceptionalism and that's what makes us different and what makes July fourth worth celebrating.
Well, you know, you just did a in some ways a recapitulation of Reagan's farewell address. Ery talked about the story of the fishing out the Vietnamese refugee in the late seventies, the American Navy man, right and pulling the guy up on the deck and he says, hello, American soldier, Hello freedom man. That was the only English he knew, right,
And the importance of a studying history. So, John, I am curious that Episcopal school you went to low those many years ago, where you learned Greek and Latin and probably were given you a sensible instruction about American American history. Do you know if they still teach it the way today? Do you suppose they've gone woke like so many other of our fine elite institutions of education.
Gosh, I hope not. I know they still teach Greek and Latin, oh, which I think if you still learn Greek and Latin and you read ancient history, you come away with great suspicion of these utopian ideas of sweeping away the past and replacing it with you know, some kind of you know, Rousseauian, a Marxist Leninist paradise, because studying all that time in history and learning the language, it gives you a sense of how much of a
you know, world history is tragic. And then you the United States, and yeah, we learned Western civilization in that high school. So actually I learned far more in that high school than I learned in college and law school, without a doubt. And one thing you do come away with is how unique America is. So, you know, response to Lucretia's point, So I have this story in my senior year of college, after I had already gotten into
law school and basically finished my thesis. I was looking around for classes to take the spring of my senior year, and I was looking in the course catalog, which was on paper back then and you could not search it with keywords. And I found this class that caught my eye, and it was called American Exceptionalism. So I thought, oh, I'm going to take this class. It was in the sociology department, and I show up and there's four people in the class and Daniel Bell, who I had no
idea who this Daniel Bell guy was. So he took a special interest in me because I was something of a rack hunteur in class. But also you thought it was interesting because I was an immigrant, so he thought this was really interesting. And I wasn't a sociology major. He was bored with sociology majors. But we basically sat around a table, the five of us, for the whole semester, trying to figure out what made America exceptional. And so his theory takes up on Lucretia's idea, but it's not
I wouldn't say positive negative. He's trying to be descriptive. He thinks that he argued, just I don't think this is actual belief, but He argued that we were trapped in some kind of locke in paradise, that we are committed to natural rights from the founding, but then the country is so vast and the government is so weak compared to other countries, that's impossible to really change the United States out of a local So he would just say,
you know, it's just hardwired. And that's not his phrase, but he would have said today Lochianism is hardwired into the American character, this belief in natural rights, this effort to limit government. But then also the large side. And then one other thing that was really impressed was was the religiosity of Americans. He said, if there's something really different and Western Europe, and he kept comparing us to
Western Europe, is people here just much more religious? And he thinks that He thought that was a really important difference.
And why the problem I have with that. The problem I have with that explanation is it puts the causes over the It calls the causes the effects and the effects the causes. You know, tyranny and oppression have been the rule throughout history, and what is it about America? Because human beings were created equal, they have a right
to rule themselves. For the first time, the Americans demonstrated that you could have legitimate government specifically designed to protect and secure our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They're not given to us by government. Their government exists to protect it. Alexander Hamilton said, you know, it's going to be up to us to prove to the rest of the world that we can do this.
And if we can't do it because of I think some of the things you were saying from your bel lecture, because of the unique characteristics in America at the time, the belief in those rights, the traditional self government, all of those things made it this perfect sort of experiment. But Hamilton says very clearly, if we fail at this experiment,
it can be considered the general misfortune of mankind. And then you have Lincoln coming along and saying, essentially during the Civil War, I'm going to quote this kind of the same thing. He says, we even we here hold the power and bear the responsibility in giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free, honorable alike. In what we give and what we preserve, we shall nobly save or meanly lose. The last best hope of earth. So and just one more point on that, the belief
in human equality limited government. It didn't limit the purposes of man. That's why we can have such prosperity because, as you say, we have weak government and we have this commitment to natural rights. But it also opened up human flourishing in a way that was even inconceivable throughout history. I just protect your rights to property, and guess what human beings flourish, and we have an expanded notion of property, not just you know, I've got money in the bank.
I've got this many cows, but I'm a talented musician, and I can earn money and keep that money. All of those things allowed Americans to flourish beyond anything that the world had ever known. It's not the economic freedom that made this country great. The things that made this country great cause the economic freedom. And that's what I mean. Steve was trying to push you and say your parents wanted to come here for economic freedom and economic opportunity.
And that's true in many cases. But what we need to make sure people understand is that economic opportunity is the result of American exceptionalism and not the cause of it.
Yeah, I want to back. I want to get out of this segment with a couple follow up questions for you, John about your time with Daniel Bell who. First of all, were you aware of him before you took the class? Did you know he was this famous?
I did not realize who he was. And also, by the way, it was the very last class he ever taught, because he retired after he had me in class. He retired.
Yeah, so, by the way, I mean you gave us a little background about him. He was essentially a follower of Lewis Harts and the liberal tradition in America. And remember Heart said, with this lockeyan country, but he regretted that, and I think Bell did too. I mean remember Bell described himself as a cultural conservative, but a social democrat
or socialist economics, an economic Marxist. Yeah. Yeah, well, I will say that I never met the guy, but I read him assiduously, and in particular, it was one really interesting essay of his back in nineteen eighty two in Partisan Reviews. So he'd retired by then, or maybe not quite. It alerted me to some of the interesting and usable aspects of Max Weber and uh if Belle were still
with us, today. I think he would be horrified and appalled at the left of the Democratic Party and people like Montdombia, New York.
Well, one thing that came through from the class and from the reading. You know, he wrote a famous book, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism and the argument that our economy becomes so I mean, I can't I think he's right, but you know, it's seventy years later, I think after he wrote twenty years after at the book was no, no, no, wow, it's yes, it's almost fifty years since he wrote the book.
Was that, you know, our economy produces so much wealth and luxury that it undermines the moral basis that causes capitalism to succeed. It's sort of an add on, you know, it's a it's an expansion of Weber's Protestant you know Protestants.
Well, and Speter Schumpeter said that before both yes, right, yeah, right.
But then you know, so that was I mean, he uh, but he became known I think as a future Stephen, though he did not want to be called that. Right, there's this is your time, Steve. The nineteen seventies and eighties, there are these people, the futurists, right. I don't even know really what it was. But you know the other great book that Bell wrote that we read in the class, but it's unbelievable that he wrote this book so much
so half a century ago. Was he predicted that information was the actual right, the actual money of our capitalism, not industry. His book was about post industrial economics, and he predicted everything that's happening now. But in broad strokes, he didn't say there was going to be an internet, he didn't say there was going to be you know, email, but he said that our economy will switch to a knowledge economy because the real value is not from manufacturing.
And it wasn't he right? I mean that's why he was called a futurist, because he was taking sociological trends and extrapolating them into the future in a very vabarian way, right, like he's he's So what I realized at the end of the class was he was the last sociology was like Marx, Weber and Durkheim, and now sociologists do studies of like peer groups and high schools and stuff. But you know, he was still interested in asking these big questions.
As you said, we read Louis. Louis Heart's quite quite a bit. In class, we tried to figure out why, and this goes to both of your points. There's never been a Marxist or Socialist party in the United States that succeeded. And he was really, you know, this was really interesting to him, and he said one reason was because I think his hearts was right that we are, you know, trapped in Lachianism, which I think is I said in class was a good thing, not a bad thing,
like he found. But that also we deliberately, our founders deliberately designed a weak constitution, a weak government that made it impossible for anyone to take over and overthrow, you know, the Lackianism we live in. So I was really I mean, he really showed to me the power of ideas. But he was also, in his way, uniquely American because he wanted to know, he accepted America was exceptional. He just wanted to figure out why.
Well, I think the problem is that he was wrong in some ways about lots of things, but specifically about.
You would not have liked your view, Lapprecia, that it was it was ideas that just sort of caused everything.
Which is why he's wrong, because of course, it's like you.
Can't prove it. You can't prove what you're saying. That's why you and Steve drive me crazy. You guys say these these things as if they're fact, but there's no evidence.
This is why I hate it when Steve wants to go down these pretentious intellectual talks. It's really simple. Of course, ideas are the most important thing, because it's ideas that almost did destroy our constitution. I agree with you that that are we the Founders created a government, a weak government designed only to do those things that were absolutely necessary for it to do, especially at the national level. But it was the Progressives and they're stupid, half baked
Marxist ideas that nearly ruined this country. That's why we have a fourth branch of government in the administrative state. It's why we have, you know, the belief that government should solve every problem it. You know, there's all of these reasons why Progressivism's ideas, which I probably think that Daniel Bell probably didn't entirely disagree with, ruin this country. And excuse me, but I'm going to I'm going to argue that despite the fact that like you, I don't
believe Trump fully understands everything that he's doing here. He is trying to restore us to the point where we get back to the original understanding and get rid of all of the evil that was done by the progressives. And I call it evil because they refuse to understand human beings. They refuse to understand human nature, they refuse to recognize that there's such a thing as natural rights. Their idea of equality is completely skewed and false, and
again evil. It's equality of result, not quality of opportunity. It's equity. All of these things are destructive of the ideas that make the Constitution successful, and those ideas matter. The other thing is is that we should have taken a better lesson from Lincoln. Remember what he says in the Lyceum address. If you want to keep what the founding fathers put together, you've got to teach it as
a political religion. You've got to make sure that every person, every American citizen, from the time there a baby, gets the kind of education you got in that high school. John, That's what Lincoln tells us. And we know that you were an exception to the rule that that no longer happens and hasn't happened for years. You had progressives like Dewey who ruined education. You have others who wanted, you know, Charles Beard, who wanted to teach that our founders were
not great men. They were just simply greedy capitalists who wanted to protect their own property. Those ideas matter. That's why I can't take someone like Daniel Bell seriously. I really can't.
Yeah, I do too. I think you're putting trying to put Bell in a box he doesn't fit in.
But I disagree how you view the progressives too, not the day's purses, but back then in this sense, in this sense, I don't think it's evil. I don't. I wouldn't put this moral view on what they were doing here. I was so. I was just teaching this in class last week to the K through twelve teachers, and they were asking me about progressive So I tried to restore the importance of Woodrow Wilson, not you know. I mean, I disagree with what he did, but here's how he
saw it, right. The progressive thought, and Teddy Roosevelt too, writ it's not just a Democrat or Republican thing. They saw the huge changes being wrought by the Industrial Revolution, huge companies. Uh, there was monopolization, and so they thought the Founder's Constitution was not up to it. I mean, they said this openly, that the original constitution couldn't handle the Industrial Revolution, and so they thought that the government had to evolve, had to get bigger to be able
to regulate. You know, Steve's favorite statute is, you know, is just an ultimate production of this progressive view that I'm trying to get Steve in here to help me out here. But they, you know, they didn't have They didn't I don't think thought about it as a moral thing, that natural law was a morality that had to be rejected. I just thought they believed it had become I.
Haven't read enough progressivism then, no, I mean I've read RJ stuff and they no.
But I mean they thought that. I mean, I don't think Widgrow Wilson is a particularly admirable guy morally, But they just thought the the government had to evolve to keep pace with the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. And they were looking around at what was happening in Europe, particularly Germany. The Prussians were doing a much better job. They thought of you know, regulating the economy. But I don't think it's a moral, immoral thing. I think they
were just off. They were wrong about the solution.
Well, okay, I hadn't met for I don't think they're evil men.
I mean eugenics. Eugenics is the natural follow on. No, no, no, no, no, it's not that eugenics is not some sort of thing out there that just you know, if your progressives happen
to pick up. It is the natural outcome of progressive ideology that if there is no human nature, if human beings are not equal to each other, if some people are so superior and elite because of their education that they can decide for the rest of us, one of the things that we should probably do is get rid of them, as they called them, undesirables, and that, as you know, when all the way to the Supreme Court, it was a very powerful idea, and it was roundly
embraced by the progressives, not because it was a sort of extra thing they thought of. It was integral to the way they thought of how society should be remade so that it could it could fulfill some progressive utopia. Get rid of the dumb people, get rid of the minorities, get rid of the immigrants, get rid of the disabled, get rid of the poor because we don't want poor people, and then we'll have a perfect society. It's a little bit like the beginning of Shrek.
So the great book on this subject, and then we're gonna change. Then we're gonna change subject. But the great book on this subject a lot about ten years ago called Illiberal Reformers by Thomas Leonard, who is a liberal Princeton historian. But boy, you read that book about all the people Lucretia's talking about, and you can't think they're very good people. I don't think. But we're gonna leave that for another day. I hadn't thought we'd get off
in this direction. So fully, let's turn to you, Lucretia. I thought you might have something interesting and provocative. Not you never to say about this survey data out Why should back up? By the way, you know, I was been saying for a while that if Kamala Harris was elected president or we're going a second term of Joe Biden that next year on the semi Quinn Centennial Declaration, we wouldn't get the tall ships of nineteen seventy six. We would get the slave ships of the sixteen to
nineteen project. And there are some local governments in Washington State has said we're going to celebrate the declaration by talking about the marginalized voices, in other words, the usual lefty slot. So you saw this survey data out from
a Gallop and Pew both. I think in the last couple of weeks, raising a lot of eyebrows showing that among Democrats, and especially younger Democrats, patriotism or pride in America has fallen off a cliff And I guess maybe we shouldn't be surprised, But Lucretia, I thought, what should we think about this? What should we say about this? I think you've already given us some of the remedies, but this is pretty how much.
Yes, it's ominous, and it really goes back to the question of education. It absolutely goes back to the question of education. And God, I've been paying attention to this debate going on in the academic world about whether or not we should reintroduce vivics and you know, that's just scary because I know the people who will be in charge of new Civics education, and oh my god, there was a you probably saw it. Steve an awful article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about this a few
weeks ago. Here's the problem. How do we teach civics to younger generations when they've learned nothing about anything of consequence because of progressive ruination of education in America? Okay, how the only way to do it is to stop all education until John can teach more K twelve teachers. And if John teaches enough K twelve teachers to spread out over the whole country, then I think we'd be okay. But in the meantime, teachers go to our universities. Teachers
go to our universities, and they learn slop. If they learn anything about American history, American civics, American national government at all. What they learn is wrong. And sorry, I'm going to say again evil.
Well question for you though, yeah, I mean I agree with all that, of course, except you have to answer this question, which is why you're Republican. I mean, what that data showed, by the way, is Republicans their pride in the countries remain very high, you know, eighty to ninety percent or higher for decades, and you know, maybe it takes a little dip when you get Obama bad mouthing and apologize with the country. But so Republicans seem
somehow immune to these insidious teachings. Why is that? That seems to me to point to some deeper problems beyond just our rotten education.
Not entirely, but yes, I get what you're saying. You know, I guess the choice to be Republican in those cases when you're choosing versus Democrat, probably especially now comes with it in certain you hold certain beliefs. And therefore, in my wildest dreams I cannot imagine, under any circumstances voting for a Democrat. Why because to me, the Democratic Party stands for everything I despise, and that probably became was
clear just a few minutes ago. We see some Democrats out there who struggle with the progressive, illiberal bent of their party. But you know, how how can you be proud of America when the central theme of your own political party is that it's an that you know, America is a terrible place, that the American founding was a bunch of white, racist males. All of those things are the central purpose of the party. And let me go one step furtherest drives John crazy when I do it,
but I'm going to say it. A major tenant now that the Democratic Party is embraced is the idea that nature does not inform how human beings ought to live, and everything about the Democratic Party seems to be denying
that nature. What I would say is, Republicans who choose to be Republicans are are those people who understand maybe it's God, maybe they're more religious, maybe I'm not exactly sure what it is, but they understand that nature is not something to overcome, it's something to guide your life by.
Well.
And and we think everyone who's a Democrat is immoral and evil, which is connecting what you said in the last segment.
But you know, what I would say is that they may be unconscious of the fact that they are aligning themselves with a party that believes in evil.
I don't believe every Democrat is.
Well. If you want to put it this way, if you want to summarize the Democratic Party, as I think you can, as the party of slavery, secession, and segregation. It's a lot of their history, yes, historically, right, that last one out. But the point is is that if they're concentrating on their own history, then maybe they have a point. But I think there's a clue here about how Democrats, and well, I'll say Trump actually better than Republicans, who I think have fallen into a mistake of adopting
liberal and democratic language. So you listen to a democratic leader and I think about he Actually this goes back to Trump's first inauguration in twenty seventeen. Chuck Schumer was the Senator in charge of inauguration that year. So he gives a little welcoming remark, and what does he do. He lists off all the different types of people in America, you know, blacks and Hispanics in this group and that group,
and gays and all the rest. In other words, the typical language of a Democrat is to list different groups, emphasizing differences and of course calibrating their degrees of oppression. What did Trump say in that inaugural dress? And ever since, how does Trump talk about us? He says, doesn't matter what color you are, whether you're black, brown, yellow, whatever,
you're all Americans. We're all the same America. There's a start, I mean, there's a I think a significant implication of the differences just in the way the two parties talk about Americans and are different citizens, right, Yeah, And I think.
That's I think that's they're just disguided. But they're not. They're not. I mean, all Democrats aren't evil. The Democratic Party is like a Republican party. It represents a coalition of people. I mean, there are Republicans in the party who probably don't believe with don't agree with what Lucretia is just saying either, right, like that doesn't make all
Republicans evil. They are aspects of what Trump's doing which are not I think true to natural rights, particularly as you know, excessive intervention in the economy, I think, but I don't. I don't think Lincoln thought everyone in the Democratic Party was evil either or you know, some of it is some people think things which are wrong, some people think things which are moral in the Democratic Party. But when Lincoln say we shouldn't think of them as the enemy, but does no, not them?
I think of their ideas as the enemy because those ideas would destroy our constitution, our constitutional republic, and our way of life. Because they've done a very good job so far of doing that. And the fight is against the ideas, not the people. The fight is against the ideas, not the people. That's what it comes down to. In the same way that I would never discriminate against a person who is Muslim for any reason. I find Islam
the greatest source of evil in the world today. The ideas here are what matters, and the whole point of this is to try to convince people of why the ideas are wrong. Steve the reason I mentioned and fanticide, Yesterday was a great day. Yesterday was an amazingly great day. You know what happened yesterday? They defunded Planned Parenthood out of the federal budget. Finally, I mean, what in a wonderful thing? And I won't they shouldn't even bring it up.
But my friend A Hadley has to be happy about that. We had some debates with him before the election and he didn't want to support Republicans Trump because they didn't go far enough. But no president, no matter how much they gave lip service in the past, managed to do that. And there's there's an example. I mean, that's the progressives have embraced abortion as a right above all rights. If that's not evil, and the kind of rhetoric they used to support it. If that's not evil, I don't know
what is. And it is now the case that for it's almost a clear division. Democrats support without limit, because that's the party line, abortion up into birth, and Republicans somewhat apt is it. I'll leave it like that, And so you know that to me, that's to embrace the idea of abortion and to be taken in by something like, oh, it's a woman's right to choose what she wants to do with her own body. What a dumb thing to say, but it's compelling for some reason to Democrats.
I still think that there is something several layers of meaning to be made out of the fact that Republicans and now maybe people self sort of understand that, but the Republicans seem to be immune from the Howard zenification of our education in the schools, and maybe that comes down Yeah, well, okay, I said that I did not like the way too many Republicans start using the language of the left, that that makes a rhetorical concession they
shouldn't And that's by the way, Steve right. Well, so you know, one of the things Trump said he's going to do next year on the semi Quinn centennial is have a UFC fight on the White House lawn.
Come on, see this is what I'm talking about.
No, see, I love it.
I mean no, I I have The spectacle amuses me, but that shows he doesn't really understand anything of me.
Maybe maybe not.
Have you ever watched I was possibly consistent?
Have you ever watched.
Where Trump is there?
John?
Yeah?
What has that got to do though? With the revolution and the founder? Because I would think.
That of all of the sports, if you can call it that, of all the entertainment out there available to Americans and you know, celebrated by Americans, that UFC is the most patriotic.
Oh come on, It's two people beating the hell of.
Each other, and it's and you know, it's open. But what you see very very often, even in the ring with the loud mouth fighters and so forth, is that American patriotism comes through. And many times it's people who have been from countries like Brazil and others who recognize what it is about America that makes it great.
And if you what is it about this kind of fighting that makes America great?
Well, no, no, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm seeing is the whole culture of UFC from the watch.
Sometime when culture it's a lack of culture. That's UFC.
And what happens when Trump walks into the UFC. You don't see. I mean, it used to be NASCAR was patriotic. We got that stupid eat it Bubba whatever his name is, whining every other day about how he's oppressed.
Oh.
There, they put a noose in my garage. It was it was a garage pull. Oh oh, let's get the FBI out. I mean, all of those other sports have become corrupted by the left. The UFC is the most patriotic sport out there. Well, I don't even watch it.
Audience you mean you mean the audience.
But there's one thing, there's one more dimension that I think Lucretia leaves out. By the way, I was on your side John against Lucretia on the Daniel Bell question. I'm with Lucretia's side on this question.
Uh, which, what is your defense of this?
Here's why it's savage.
I mean, so there's no this is the worst of it entertainment. It's like, I mean, really, it's just it's just professional wrestling. But you said professional wrestling is also it's not at all American, but the spectacle around it is very people waving American talented asset.
May I interject and say, there is a it's a bit of a morality play going on now. Professional wrestling is completely fake, but UFC has good guys and bad guys. It's a melodrama of sorts. And so I think, by the way, there is a Lucreatia may dislike this comparison. I think there's a connection between Trump's perception of fake news and what you might call fake sports. It's not completely fake, I'm not saying that, but it is people
know that this is an entertainment. You put your finger on the right phrase, John, it's entertainment, but it takes on a sort of a moral character, on a patriotic character that the other sports, despite having the national anthem song and having the flag on the field, have generally let erode from them. And it does huge box office. The fact that it's not a sport the elites like, and so the New York Times ignores it, the networks ignores it. They're ignoring this huge phenomenon in our culture.
I didn't get it either, Hill. I had some very shrewd people point out to me the late John von Cannon used to go to professional wrestling, and I was always found that astonishing, right, But okay, you don't get it. You never will.
There's not the two. Professional wrestling and UFC are not the same thing. UFC just means that they got m m A training, whether whatever, mixed martial arts training. They are the best of the best. John, this is not hull Cogan out there throwing people around, fake. This is real. I like watching because I.
Don't like the vib gladiatorials games were the high a great expression to know there's just the savage and brutal.
Well, I don't know. I mean, it's uh. I guess the only comparison overseas I can think of right off hand would be bullfighting right in Spain, and.
I've been to that. I didn't get that either.
Yeah, I.
Watch it, by the way I would. I wanted the ball to gore so many Spaniards it was not fair. I really wanted the.
To win something else. You don't get John to change subjects and take us out today.
Listeners, Let's have some comments on.
That one, yes, please, but on whether the bullshit. What I'd like to do is let a bowl loose in one of those uf C rings and see if those mma, guys could stop a bull right.
All right, John. Something else you don't get is well, uh, well music, I'm gonna put it that way. So in that Unplugged episode three weeks ago, you threw calumnies at me saying, you know this is Unplugged episode. You know you used to have studio albums, but now you know, you get the unplubbed album where things like Steve, like Moog synthesizers are gone.
Steve, you you defended like didn't you defend air supply and Earth?
No? No, no, no, no, no.
You know you know other seventies.
No no, not those guys. Air supply was eighties and Clint Bullocks remains a fan of air supply, which I've oh, I know it's horrible stuff. But look, I'll just say this late on a mark. You are getting yourself on the wrong side of the person in my household that Hugh Hewitt likes to refer to as the lovely and talented Missus Hayward. And I'll let you know and let listeners know that next month, the Lovely and Talented Missus Hayward is playing and singing in a duo in Upstate
New York with Adrian Blue. Now you're gonna say, of course, who's Adrian Blue?
Right?
Never heard of him? I figured he's He's progressive rock royalty from the seventies. He was in King Crimson, he played guitar and backup singer in the Talking Heads, and he was the tour guitarist for David Bowie.
So he's gonna wear a big suit too. He's he gonna wear one of those gigantic big.
Suits like David Burns.
Like no, Steve is like one of Steve suits before he lost weight.
But here's another question for you, John. There was the time of the bi centennial in seventy six, a song that Elton John put out in tribute another big No No no Ah, I see You Increase you gave it away. I was gonna quiz John to see if he was familiar with it. It's an absolutely dreadful tune conversation. So of course you are. That was part of the point was to appall you. Uh uh. The The point is, John, no one's going to recall that song next year because
it's something I've never heard it. Oh well, uh well, I'll play a few bars for listeners can remember the full pain of it.
See, I told you it was awful.
By the way, John, it's not the synthesizer. It was the melotron that revolutionized rocking the music. You don't even know the difference. There's a huge.
Difference, Steve. You sound like the dungeon Master and dungeons and dragons or something. Now there's a big difference between the wizard and the magician. Come on, don't you know anything?
Well, so, first of all, I'll just assert this that the melotron did for rock and roll what smartphones did for cellular communications twenty years ago. And by the way, and it starts, everybody always slags me for liking progressive rock and roll, or, as Jody Bottom put it, rock and roll that went to college, because I.
Just will slag you for talking about it.
Well, but no, no, I'm on him for liking it. I don't even know what progressive rock is. Aggressive, well, automatically not win anything progressive, Steve.
Well, ah, this is the one exception why because it is inherently conservative in some respects. It represented, yes, it represented a rebellion two and reaction against where rock and roll music was going in the late seventies, late sixties. I mean not late seventies, which was complete nihilism, by the way, some of the leading problem state nihilism. Yeah, well, no, no.
It's I'm serious. I want to under explain this. How are they worshiping it the altar of Nietzsche and then we're saved?
No, no, no, progressive rock. Well, I am happy to be your tutor, John, because you clearly need it. You cretnous philistine. So, first of all, when I say that sixties late sixties rock was increasingly nihilistic, what I have in mind is that it was increasingly politicized. It was self consciously part of the protest movement that grew up with a student New Left.
Uh.
And you know, the stylings heavily degenerated from the Beatles romances. It was the acid rock of Jimmy Hendrix and the early drug culture of people like the Grateful Dead. But the proud rock people come along and they do several things differently. First of all, they drew away from, you know, the acid guitar stuff of Hendrix and people like that.
Uh.
The melotron, you say, you don't know what it is. It's a highly unusual instrument that no longer really exists. Because it's all digitized. But in those days it was actually tape loops of different orchestral sounds and connected to a keyboard, and when you pressed a key on a melotron, you were actually then playing a tape at the back of the machine that had certain orchestral sounds in it. It was impossible to do that before. Then. The synthesizer
is a different thing. It's really just a souped up organ. The second thing to say about it is this was challenging music. I mean, all those early progressive rock bands starting in nineteen seventy they did twenty minute songs. They weren't interested in airplay, they weren't interested in conventional popularity. They got no radio airplay. In other words, they're kind
of like this podcast. And in third, they weren't part of the protest or the political scene at all, with a couple of partial exceptions, they were influenced, believe it or not, by epic poetry, things like even Ts Eliott, and so it represented a as I say, a rebellion to, a reaction against where rock and roll was going. And think what replaced it or rivaled it in the mid seventies. It was the horrible stuff like disco and later on
punk rock, which were rebellions of their own. So I think, John, to complete the torture, I need to inflict upon you a couple of samples of what the early melotron did, just because it's good for your soul. Starting with one of the classic King Crimson tunes or another classic early moment of the melotron is Watcher of the Skies from
I think the second or third album by Genesis. Okay, So those are just some opening bars of some very long songs that get a lot more complicated, and I know they won't impress you very much at all, John, But the point is when you got into the middle of some of these long and complicated arrangements, the old dominating electric is conspicuously missing, like from this short sample from one of the more obscure tunes from Yes in
nineteen seventy or seventy one. Okay, So you get the idea, and thus ends your tutorial in the greatness of the melotron. I will just mention for listeners who are familiar with some of the names that among other leaders of the genre, Rick Wakeman, one of the premier keyboardists who pioneered the use of the melotron. He was a huge Thatcherite in Britain in the seventies and eighties, for example. But no, I'm not going to go through the musicology sense of
the noise in the Fens Lucretia, I think. But I do think, though, John, I find.
This really interesting your effort to link pop music to political philosophy. You know, no bounds to the depths you will travel to win your argument.
I'll just say that the I'd say the golden age of prog rock lasted less than a decade, and that's an important point, and it begins in nineteen seventy. Coincidentally, the same year the Clean Air Act was passed. All of our listeners to say they want to it is.
An uplifting show, and instead we're all going to fall asleep into a deep coma from boredom. No, you won't Sweet Home Alabama. That's not progressive rock. That's a good old rock and roll. Sorry, and that's the best most conservative song there is.
Correct. I will say this that I think prog rock in some ways the style of it explains this podcast, because unlike Yankee Doodle Dandy with a two four simple time signature. A lot of prog rock had different artists or different members of a band playing different time signatures, changing them up. It'd be like fourteen thirteen time exactly the way we do this show, right, Okay, it all came apart, and I think I can explain the details. Well.
It ends with when prague rock tried to especially Yes tried to equal Elton john for really bad takes on American music. I don't know if you can remember back to the twenty sixteen primary campaign, but Bernie Sanders had a very fetching television spot that was set to the old Simon and Garfunkle Standard America, which was, you know about a bus strip from New Jersey to Michigan, and it's very sentimental, and she struck some patriotic notes.
To them.
Well, then Yes decided they were going to do a cover of it, and it couldn't be any worse and farther away from any kind of genuine Americana Jacobs, that's where it all starts to fall apart, and by nineteen seventy nine it's all kind of gone.
Can I just make a point to this progressive rock you speak of, it's really it really comes from Great Britain.
Yes, yes, well, King Crimson, they are partly American gentle giants British Jeff Brotal. Genesis is I think the premier band in those early years.
Genesis is the uber progressive rock band.
Yeah, except you only know them from their modern stuff in the eighties, when, as they said, we had to start doing some more popular tunes so we could get dates. Because it's the very male thing, which explains why Lucretia hates it.
No, I prefer men to women any day of the week. I just.
All right, all right, let's see if this just shows once again your guys, you political philosophers, and your strange inferior already complex to the British and the Europeans, that you would look to them to save American good Americans, not me.
Give me sweet home Alabama every day of the week.
I see, I'm not going to get fir I mean, it was that a bunch of inbred secessionists. What is that song? John, I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding.
I've heard this song Birmingham, We love the Governor's Rightsionist. Does your conscience bother you?
Yeah? And tell like Neil Young to go to hell. I'm I'm all for that.
Yeah, Neil Young. Hope Neil Young will remember this other man. Don't need him around anyhow. Yeah, he wasn't the best song ever.
And by the way, Neil Young is Canadian, so it gets even better. So he's even worse than a Yankee. So all right, let's uh, let's let's move to our Babylon Bees for the week and get out for this special episode.
Okay, Well, first of all, Happy happy fourth of July, Happy Independent Day. I hope everybody is starting their incredible celebration year long celebration leading up to the actual two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Decoration of Independence by drinking, putting off fireworks. By the way, I have to just tell you guys quickly for fourth of July, my crowning achievement today is I'm making a
being cherry bourbon cherry pie. I'll send you a picture and grilling grilling a cowboy rabbi, you know that sort of thing. Anyway, back to the Babylon Bee and happy fourth everyone. I'm going to begin with whale of agony heard from Satan's office as planned parenthood defunded. You get it, Ah, that I did not. I did not send what's his name an email and said make sure you have a Babylon bee. That that proves my point about planned parenthood
and abortion being evil. But anyway, Continental Congress reluctantly agrees to trim down name a big, beautiful declaration of independence winning. By the way, John, I saw that article the other day that said we had so much winning that it was now shwinning. And you know, why did you ever see the watch Wayne's World.
Wing?
This is such great winning this past week that it's shwinning. Okay, journalists up late trying to decide whether to compare Trump's bill to Jim Crow or the Holocaust.
That's true, o ed.
The problem with kids these days is not enough of them smoke cigarettes. Subway names Diddy as new spokesman.
Oh god, oh man report Trump bill will cause one hundred and seventy five billion people to lose Medicaid and die.
Oh yeah, that's fun to watch. Yeah.
Yeah, we didn't even talk about that, which I know we didn't intend to, because you know a lot of people have talked about it, and this is our fourth of July edition, But it really was a week of winning between the Supreme Court, just at the barely last week, the big beautiful bill passing all of the things that happened in foreign policy. So I think we probably, I think we probably should say that winning also makes us patriotic. On the fourth of July. I'll leave it at this.
Cold hearted leftists demand immigrants stay in evil, oppressive states.
Right.
Yeah, there's a perfect illustration of what I was talking about, John, just for you. Okay, I'm done.
Well, I can start the ending by saying, how first, happy July fourth. Everybody happy July fourth, Steve and Lucretia, and always drink your whiskey. Neat and Steve, what new haiku do you have for us from the our robot overlords about the three whiskey happy hour?
Yeah, not this week. I'm saving one appropriate for today. As Thomas Jefferson said to King George two hundred and forty nine years ago, thank you for your attention to this matter. You guys.
Next week, Ricochet.
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