If a man today were to say that if he wants.
A girlfriend that can cook or clean, you might as well be screaming me inward.
Okay, well you sound like a democrat. I'm not retarded.
Well whiskey, come and take my pain, the honeys, my ry, oh whiskey.
Why think alone when you can drink it all in.
With Ricochet's three whiskey Happy Hour, join your bartenders Steve Heyward, John U and the International Woman of Mystery Lucretia, where.
They slapped it up and David ain't too.
Easy on the should tap got to give me and let that whiskey.
Well, boy, I sure learned my lesson to try and do a podcast without real producers, didn't I?
I don't know. John, and I managed without you as a producer just because we were a little crazy.
Well, yes, I preserve some of john little one liners there. Otherwise I am in fact invoking me as I put it in a substack. Note what Star Trek did with their original pilot that NBC rejected because it was too cerebral, and instead of junking it, they recut it and wrapped a whole new story around it. So we're going to do that listeners, okay.
Because we're too cerebral for you, Steve, is that what you're saying?
No, no, no, Maybe you didn't see the note.
But I did see the note. I saw the undisciplined apart. But I prefer to think that that's that John and I were just a little too highbrow for you and you can't keep up.
So okay, yes, well, well, John reveled way too much in avoiding my mention of a certain statute. But I also in the frame of mind of the director in the mel Brooks movie, the producers who we read the script, and he says, all that whole third act has got to go. The Germans are losing the war. So I've shorten a few things to that, but I moved everything around. And so first of all, I do want to refer to the little teaser cold open before our theme song.
You know what, John especially likes to rib me for being obsessed with Sidney Sweeney. But she's back in the news, so you know, on her HBO show, as you heard, if you listen from the beginning, she someone says, are you a Democrat? And she says, I'm not retarded? Looking right now?
The funny thing is.
The social media reaction has been utterly predictable. All these leftists are saying, oh, it's terrible. She would say that, you know, Republicans say retarded, but Democrats don't. And of course the obvious answer is you want to supply.
They are exactly Thank you.
I thought you'd say that, but I did see a squire, but I didn't chase after it. But apparently Candice Owens and Megan Kelly are down on her.
I'm not quite sure why.
I think it's because she's supposedly allegedly has come out saying she likes Trump, she's for the Iran war against anti Semitism, and so guess what she's now taking sides beyond just wearing good jeans. Okay, sorry, all right, enough of that mirth though, I think for at least a couple minutes, so you guys didn't do the order that I kind of had mine. But guess what, it's a simple matter to rearrange them.
So, you know.
I think that the story on the gerrymanderin cases is fascinating, not so much for the law of it, which you guys talked about, but I think it is interesting because of the reaction to it. So let me just cut back in here to your guys discussion and we will pick it up on the other side.
Okay, I do want to ask you what you think about all of these crazy court cases about redistricting. We talked about it last time, so most of our listeners heard the basic thing. But since we talked last time, we had we see Tennessee. Let me get it right, Tennessee and Louisiana. Now District Tennessee is being sued by the na A c P arguing that the Memphis redistricting is in and out of itself racially discriminatory. Right. I
don't know where where they'll get with that. The Virginia Uh did you follow any of that Virginia suit to the United States Supreme Court?
Oh? Yeah, just got thrown out today just while our podcast. Oh that was obvious that would happen. Yeah, that was There was no federal issue. It's all just a question of Virginia is it's the question of Virginia constitutional amendment procedure.
Right, and John unplugged.
That our complete election state in the country would be fit for decision by the Supreme Court.
Yeah, yeah, crazy, It was crazy, but we also have some I mean, the Democrats have decided to go crazy on this whole thing. Okay, I'm not going to be my usual dismissive self about everybody in the Democratic Party, but they seem you know, Kamala Kamalama ding Dong came out today said there are no bad ideas. And yeah,
she came out and said, there's no bad ideas. There's no reason why we shouldn't pack the court, why we shouldn't try everything we can to get around this silly Supreme Court decision about you know, not discriminating on the basis of race and districting. She just went on and on and on what you know, the all of the things that the left that lost the left the election in twenty twenty four she's doubling down on and so are lots of leftists. I mean, in Virginia they were
going to pack the Supreme Court. Then they were going to just abolish the whole thing. They did try the Supreme Court, you know, to the US Supreme Court. Is it really an existential crisis for the Democrats? Do you think John's so?
One thing is I listened to your guys Pod episode where you talked about it and I think you're quite
right about the effects of the decisions. That this is not going to produce I think a huge change in the midterms, but there will be maybe six to eight extra seats that will be added, could be added by states that thought they were thought they were acquired by the Voting Rights Act to add majority minority districts that they're called, and now that they don't have to under Klay, they can go back and draw the districts they wanted to.
And there's nothing wrong with eliminating, for example, a Democratic seat in Tennessee that was sat in Memphis if you just want to create the maximum number of Republican states. And one thing that Kalay said is that it's now the burden is on the plaintiffs to show that what the legislature is doing really isn't just about maximizing partisan advantage or protecting incumbents or all the many reasons that states usually engage in redistricting.
That's one, you know.
The second thing I think you guys are both right was the key relative impact. The real importance of it will come after the twenty thirty census, when a lot of seats.
Are going to shift.
I think from the liberal old states like California, in Oork and ILLINOI and they're going to move to the sun Belt and southern states. That plus Klay could lead to a major shift in House of Representative seats in the South, and then they'll be districted to maximis. Because I think once you've started this, Lucash, I don't know what you think, but I think once Trump said let's go ahead and do this, and a number of states
did it, I don't think there's any going back. I mean, what would be the incentive for a state to say, oh, we're not going to do that. I mean, look at New England, right, New England has basically reached it. All the states of New Ly have basically I think, redistricted all but one Republican seat out of existence in the
entire region. And they've never gone back. This has been going on for years up in New England and they've never gone back, even though no other states retaliated against them for this, and the way you're seeing states do it now, so I don't see why we'd ever go back to the world before. But lastly, I don't see what's so bad about that. I mean, really, what I don't really understand why it's so bad for states not
to because this makes right state legislative elections important. People should care about who they elect to the state house because they're the ones drawing the districts, and so to me it seems like a I mean, this is just a I don't know, a consequence of democratic elections. I don't see what's so bad about jerrymanders. I see lots of people complaining about jerry manning. It's so terrible for democracy.
I don't think it is a federal system where you have fifty different states and they're allowed to draw the districts as Maybe it would be a bad thing if you had one single gigantic districting system for the entire country and you could redistrict a cole you know, whole party out nationwide, but that's not the case in our federal system. So real it is so bad about jerrymandering.
I don't get it. Let me put all play Devil's advocate, and I don't. When I say that, I mean it sincerely. I don't know that I fully believe this, But I even looked a little bit of skance at the whole idea of Trump asking Texas to redistrict in a in the middle until I started paying a little more attention to what, like you talk about what the Democrats had actually really done with districting in the past without ever being countered in any way to speak of by the Republicans.
But I can remember being, you know, in an American government class talking to my students and saying that the problem, for instance, in California is not so much that the voters are choosing their representatives, it's that their representatives are choosing the voters. Right, You've heard that, that old cliche. Yeah. At what point, though, do we stop believing that you can buy demographic information and other pieces of information about
voters determine how they're going to vote. When will they say, for instance, and this is going to be a question, I promise, when will voters look at this whole situation say, you know what, I don't really like that you did this, and now I'm going to vote for the other party they talked about that happened in Virginia if the ten to one thing had gone through, So voters, do voters still have a say? Is what it comes down to.
Could they still elect a Democrat in out of one of those redistricted Memphis areas.
Do you think, Yeah, what if a party said, we're the clean government party and we can't paign on getting rid of jerrymanders, and we can't paign on having a redistricting committ right, and you or the people, as they did in California once upon a time, or in Virginia, vote for a a nonpartisan redistricting commission, or New York and then right then you have these people come in and say, it's actually interesting, it's mostly in blue states who write the blue states who once said we wanted
to have these in the first place, but now we don't like the results, so we're going to get rid of them for one time only, or two elections only, like the Virginia override. But that's something that you can't paign on. First state legislative elections. Right, you could say the people are electing parties to control the state houses in part because of their control. I think about it also.
You know, it's interesting I was thinking about this, Linda. Look, Critia, I don't know what you think, but this must have been the way it was before the seventeenth Amendment, right before right when Lincoln is running for Senate. Lincoln is actually asking people to elect certain members to the Illinois State House because they were the ones who would pick, would pick.
Yeah, all right, we're back. And I'll just add this, Aside from the legal questions about it and the long politics of jerrymandering, I've noticed that the reaction to it
is significant, I think in two ways. One, you had a bunch of people, including I think David French at the New York Times, but who cares having their knickers in a twist about why didn't the Virginia Supreme Court intervene before the vote to save the taxpayers the cost of an election, and this and this and this, and of course the simple answer is the law said they couldn't, And actually, appellate courts don't rule on prospective things unless there's an error in say the language or the law
that's drafted in the initiative. That's happened occasionally. Lots of Supreme courts have struck down initiatives state supreme courts around the country after they've passed, So there's nothing unusual about that. But then the shocking reaction of the Democrats in Virginia, let's fire the whole Supreme Court. I mean, forget court packing. Let's reduce the retirement age to fifty four so they all have to leave and reappoint new people. I mean,
this has been nan Republic stuff. You know, packing the Supreme Court is constitutional, right, this is Congress can change the number, so that's true.
But presumably so can the state of Virginia legislature or change the constitution. You know, it's likely a different process because there are very few states that actually have the protections for the Supreme Court that the United States does. But anyway, go ahead. I'm sorry.
Well, now you add one more layer onto this, which is the Voting Rights Act case. You have the Democrats in hystery about it with the Democratic House leader what Hakeem Jeffrey's saying, this is an illegitimate court that's been a refrain for a while now, an illegitimate court.
Who was it who said?
Somebody tweeted out some Democrat packed the court. Now I thought, okay, let's give from five more justices. I mean, they're not even thinking this through at all. But the point is is that I am now I'm going to recant something that I think I said in some episode many months ago that well, I think we are both reflecting that wonder about getting rid of the filibuster. And I still don't like the idea, But now I am convinced that the Democrats, if they get the chance, they will abolish it.
They will pack the court, they will admit DC and Puerto Rico.
They will elect college or try.
Or abolish it correct one of those things.
And well, they're already, They're already they do have statutory statewide, statutory methods whereby they're going to undermine the electoral college. And yes, I do think they will do that, you know, the idea that the elector all electoral college votes will go to the popular vote winner, and that sort of thing. I need to think sometime sometimes, I need to think through what the actual practical ramification as that are, because I'm guessing it wouldn't turn out the way they expect
it to. You know, I had to. I was going to send you something and I just thought busy. I apologize, But who was it in California that now wants to change your jungle primary of course, back to you know, a party based system, because hey, this isn't working out what way the way we thought it would? You know, that we would have one hundred percent full time forever. Uh one party advantage with this jungle primary.
Yeah so typical, right, yeah, I mean so as you know, our democracy trademark is actually literally true.
Our democracy means we.
Win, right, we will if if we're not getting our way, we changed the rules. But here's the This gets back to an even older conversation we had along with John maybe three years ago now maybe more.
We were speculating about, you know, could there really be another civil war?
And you know we we you and I tangled a bit about whether the Spanish Civil War is a model or not. I am proposing, not highly facetiously, what I'm calling. You'll see why it's half facetious. I want to propose the Union of Concerned Political Scientists doomsday clock, and I'm gonna I'm gonna move the clock up to four minutes to midnight. Right, people, remember the the action was the bullt of the Atomic Scientists, and the Union of Concerned
Scientist was even worse. But the point is is they made lots of publicity for decades with their doomsday clock, and it would go up a minute.
We're a minute, We're a minute, We're a minute.
That's right.
Yeah, but you know if oh so, let me add one more data point and then we'll go on to the next legal question.
Uh.
We've essentially seeing the we mentioned this before a week or two ago. We've seen the mayor of New York City essentially threaten Ken Griffith, you know, one of the the great financial titans of our time, by standing in front of his apartment around the corner from where that Luigi what's his name guy shot the seat Mangioni and became called hero for the Left. I guess there's even a stage play about him, already celebrating him typical.
But we've seen two things.
You see, by the way, from a female point of view, he's not that cute. He's a soy boy. Go ahead, all those women who want to marry him or do something with him anyway.
Well, you know there's there's always that cohort of women who write love letters to like Charles Manson in prison, right. I mean, this is not it's ridiculous. But you know who wanted to have a date with Jeffrey Dahmer.
I share and he wanted to eat them with dates?
Well, okay, I was gonna say he wanted to share open face sandwiches with him.
I know that's worse there. Sorry, so you'll set.
Me, okay, I sent you a text.
Well, here's the serious point. You have these polls showing a parality of Democrats thinking the Butler attempt on Trump and the White House core respondesced and attempt were faked, which is Looney Tunes territory. But then you also have especially younger liberals and Democrats coming along like forty percent saying violence is justified for political uh, for your political goals. So if it comes to pass that you have always reformed and I agree with you, probably wouldn't work out
the way the Democrats think. Uh, then what happens after that possibly bad stuff. And so that's why four minutes to midnight is it is a gimmick. It's I want to make fun of all those you know, Union of Concerns scientists.
But it's not crazy to think about.
So let me just throw something a little And we didn't talk about this, but I'm want to throw it at you anyway. You know, I'm the one who always complains about Republicans refusing to recognize the war that they're in. And you know, wanting to be gentlemen, wanting to to and wanting to stick with principles, wanting to defend institutions, and even being willing to lose because they're defending their
principles and their institutions. I wonder how much longer, you know, the Republican Party can veer toward Mike Pence if the Democrats continue to go down this road, which I do think is it's becoming worse. You know, you're four minutes to midnight, whatever you want to call it. I just you have to wonder. I'm not saying civil war necessarily, but Trump is popular in large part because he doesn't care to play the game the way it's always been played,
which is they get to do whatever they want. John brought up a really good point in this regard about the jerrymandering that you know, come on, let's be real. Democrats have jerrymandered both racially jerrymandered and politically jerrymandered, partisan jerrymanderd for years. It's part of the reason why they're
so desperate. There's nothing left for them to jerrymander. Steve right, right, I mean, and so Trump and I confess to being a little bit unnerved by Trump, you know, encouraging it in Texas and didn't feel right right me of all people, but you know, John convinced me that this is what we have to do. We don't have a choice.
Yeah, it's it's a rare day when Sean is more ferocious than you and I are. But all right, I'll just add this. You know, I think it's our friend Tom Klingenstein, who's been writing for several years now, the phrase that we're in a cold civil war, like the Cold War is so cold and so that the question is when does it become a hot civil war for real?
And I also I just add a plug Haret, And you know I interviewed.
Noel Rothman on the Ricochet podcast, who's got just got a brand new book out this week on violence of the left right. And so there's that. But we're going to go to a quick ad break with some bumper music. That is the baseline that is blowing up the internet.
So the Internet says, we'll be right back.
Hi, everybody, it's Steve. I know you were expecting one of those automated drop in ads, but instead today what I want to do is encourage all of you who are regular listeners to the Three Whiskey Happy Hour. To consider subscribing to our group, Substack Political Questions. You can
find it at Steve Hayward dot substack dot com. It's completely free to subscribe, though, if you'd like to become a paying supporting subscriber, our rates are much much lower than your average substack and it would be a nice
token of support if you're so inclined. It's not just me, but you will find John Yu from time to time, Lucretia from time to time, but in particular every Thursday and Friday, we have the very popular novelist Max Cossack, and on Friday, Ammogirl shows up every week with her humorous stylings and sometimes snarky observations.
On the world.
So please join up with Political Questions. You'll have a lot of fun and we'll enjoy having you there. And now back to our regular programming, beginning with some snark from John from our original taping session that went so sideways.
You know, guys, if you let Steve have his own addendum and appendix to our podcast, it's just going to be about air quality. I mean, does everybody want to listen to Steve talk fifty I and class have lifted to Steve talks for fifteenth straight minutes about clean air, during which time he used up all the oxygen in the room.
All right, let's resumed with lucretia and John unplugged, this time about a recent important case from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that I completely missed.
So take it away, guys.
Well this gives me an opportunity. John, I'm going to
jump right in. There was a Ninth Circuit Court decision a couple of weeks ago now, and I of course don't remember the name of it, but it was actually one of those COVID area era decisions where an employer held health employer, medical employer some kind would not grant religious exemptions for the vaccine, and that people were placed on leave and ultimately fired because they wouldn't they couldn't get the exception, and the place wouldn't allow them to
come back. I should have sent you the case. But the reason I want to mention is we have brought up a couple of times this whole question of the free exercise clause versus say, you know, we talked about transgender protections for transgender people and things like that, and how the courts have not been really good about it.
But this Ninth Circuit decision actually really got me because here was the argument, and it's unfair to do this to you because you haven't read it, but it was that an employer, a health employer needs, you know, medical employer, needs the people to be healthy. They need them to be healthy. They don't want them to pass any diseases on to other people, and that therefore the requirement that
you get the vaccine or get fired made sense. It was one of those reasonable accommodations, a reasonable compelling interests that the employer could do, and it was something about what was reasonable. Well, here's my point. If you fire people, if your reason for demanding that they get a vaccine is so that you don't lose your workforce, and then they fire people who don't get the vaccine, didn't anybody on the court think that that was problematic? I know,
again unfair, but there is a bigger issue. When are we going to have courts that actually take the First Amendment seriously?
Again, Well, this is interesting because it depends who the employer is. If the employer is a private company, then the First Amendment doesn't apply to them at all.
If it's a state.
So if it was a state or local government, doesn't sound like it was. But if it was a state in local government, then you would have to go back to the arguments that we were having with Phil Munnos.
If you remember, is the government allowed to pass a generally applicable law and if it just happens to affect religious groups more under this case called employment division versus Smith, unless there's a compelling I mean, unless there's actually it sounds like there's almost no cases where the religious minority could prevail unless you could prove that the law was really a pretext and was really drawn to discriminate on
the basis of religion. Here's the interesting thing, Lucretia, is that prohibition on hiring and firing by private employers is not from the First Amendments from Title seven of the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four. And you could make the argument that the Title seven does not create the use the same standard that the First Amendment does, that it actually could be tougher on employers, that it
could require them to accommodate religious minorities. So, to take an example, I think that and am player could not get away with something that said, we're just firing everyone who gets who won't take a vaccine on religious grounds because we don't think religious grounds are right, genuine and honest, right. I think that would the employer would clearly lose.
I think that that issue was addressed and dismissed that they had, you know, done whatever due diligence to determine that it was in fact religious exemptions. I don't know how you actually prove something like that.
So then the real question is, you know, so you have a you know, like IBM or Microsoft, they fire someone because they won't take the vaccine, and then the employee says, I have a religious reason for not taking the vaccine. Usually the government employed, I'm sorry, the employer would have to show some kind of what they call something like a reasonable business justification for why they have
that rule. And I don't know. I mean, I think some of this is then going to depend on the science of whether you can read, you know, whether you really need to demand everybody have a vaccine to have a functioning workforce. It's really interesting, though, I just don't I don't know how court resolved because I think this is really I don't think this has reached the US Supreme Court.
This is the Ninth Circuit case two weeks ago. But that was the other thing. If at some point the the it was absolutely determined, which of course I think it already has been, but absolutely determined from a scientific point of view that the vaccine was not only not effective in the ways that they claimed, but harmful to many people. That was not addressed at all in the opinion. Would that make a difference, because wouldn't you be looking at the employer's state of mind at the time. That's
my first question I had to follow on. No.
I mean, that's a really great question. So I think one of the things that would have to get to the Supreme Court is if the employer made the decision, say in twenty twenty, right at the beginning of the pandemic, before anybody really knew very much, maybe they could say
we're going to require everyone to get the vaccine. But then suppose over time you learn more information, For example, as you say the Cristia that the vaccines not really necessary if you're under forty, or the vaccine isn't necessary if you're healthy, you could go on and say or you're in the age group where the vaccine might actually be harmful. Then you know, this is interesting. Does the employer have an obligation to update the policy in line
with new information? I would think you would have to.
Don't think you could.
I don't think an employer could say I'm meeting Title seven because i have some anti antidiluvian policy that was made before scientification, and I'm allowed to just stick through it no matter how much new information comes up.
So there's some back and forth about this in the chat. And that's the question back to the question of whether or not it's a public it's an agent of the state involved. The employer is actually a public employer, not a private one. But there are cases that deal with religious persecution of religious minorities or single persons who are claiming a religious exemption or the right to practice a religious belief. And is there no First Amendment protection for that at all.
For non people not connected to the state. Yeah, I don't not under the Constitution. Again, it has to come from Title seven. And look, maybe it's an interesting, I think fundamental question. I ask you, Lucretia, does political theory require that we have that we make private firms and individuals not discriminate on the basis of religion when they act. I think we could make a strong, a very strong claim that the government shouldn't pick amongst religions when it's acting.
But why do you and I care whether you know, if Lucretia only wants to drink I don't know Mormon
made whiskey. Why can't you just buy Mormon made whiskey, like there would be such a thing, Or you know, why can't Chick fil A, for example, say we don't want to hire people who want to work on Sundays, or we're like, why can't Why can't a private company decide to discriminate on the basis of religion in its operations and right if that's offensive, then people don't have to work there, they don't have to buy the products.
And theoretically other competitors will come in and say we are more religious or we're less religious, buy from us, work for us. I don't so explain to you, why do you want Why do you think private firms or companies or individuals should be under some non discrimination standard for religion?
What about hobby lobby not wanting to purchase insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
That's to me, I know, to me, hobby lobby should be free to discriminate on right, that's because the state made them. That's my point is the state was trying to force them not to not to and it's thought discriminate against we're you know, groups. I think this hobby lobby should be allowed to.
Okay, So this is a little bit of a changing of the subject, but it follows on what we're seeing, the rise of anti Semitism that's tied so clearly to supposedly to anti Zionism. Right, you can hate Israel, and I hate Israel, but I don't hate Jews. Now we know that that that's just simply not the case. Israel is going to sue the New York Times for that ridiculous, ludicrous, obnoxious. I don't have enough negative adjectives to describe the Nicholas
whatever his name is, christof piece that. You know, anybody with two brains in their head realizes that not only was it just an absolute lie and made up a bunch of stuff, but it was also done to try to mute the mute the impact of the testimony and the vision, the images and so forth coming out from what Hamas did on October seventh, which you know, was barely recognizable as human as human, and so they had to come up with something even more inhuman to try
to get people's attention away. But can the State of Israel sue the New York Times for for libel?
No, I don't think so.
I mean, I read a book, I read a note about that, and uh, you know, so you know Ash, so you know the New York Times versus Sullivan's standard, And I think we I think we discussed this many years ago. I think we both agree that is not part of the original understanding of the First Amendment free speech clause that you used to have more robust libel
and defamation laws at the time of the founding. There was no idea at the time of the founding that since she simply because you were a public figure or government official, you were somehow not allowed to sue people for a libel and defamation unless they had committed actual malice. Right, That was the standard the Supreme Court has come up with in the New York Times case. But if that is the standard, right, then then Israel and Israel would
have to And it's interesting. I also don't know here's a I share.
The thought, is.
Ken a country claim that it's been defamed. Usually it's the idea is it's an individual's reputation, and you know, you look at the founding. They almost talk about reputation as if it's a property right. It's like an property interest. It's something that you own that can be harmed.
If they do understand that in the context of what Israel's going through right now.
Oh yeah, But I just wonder whether it's a legal concept. Can a country have a reputation like you and I can have a reputation and then sue to say you've harmed our reputation or could it be the case that you and I allowed to say whatever the hell we want about other countries?
Right?
There's just is there any this is That's an interesting thing. I've never seen anyone try to excavate what the First Amendment free speech, free press clause meant in terms of protecting the reputation of a state, a country, or even maybe this came up in an American state. For maybe an American state might have done this, but it'll be
the same question. But putting that aside, then you'd have to prove that Nick Christoff had violated the actual malice standard when he wrote, and that would mean what did he actually do to try to verify that this outrageous accusation had any basis in fact, did he call anybody? Did he talk to anyone? Or was he just repeating something that was in the most fevered swamps of the internet.
Now he actually his source was a pro Haamas journalist. I guess that was his source. I'm to understand. Let me go back to the Sullivan case New Times, the Sullivant case for a moment, and carry on with what you said about you know what Israel's reputation so on. Remember that the justification for adding the extra requirement of actual malice. So the defense against libel is the truth. You cannot see someone for libel if they have printed
something that was true. If an unknown person like me is the victim of some outrageous slander libel in a publication, I can sue because nobody knows who I am, and therefore all I have to prove is that they lied behind you hide behind what if they defamed the great Lucretian name, that would be awful. But anyway, but if somebody writes some scandalous things about you. You have to prove the intent behind the falsity, not just the falsity.
But the court's rationale is that not requiring that would have a chilling effect on free speech, which is again a made up rationale. Why that would have a chilling effect on free speech? I think it would have a chilling effect on lies. I don't think it would have a chilling effect on free speech. But that's what the Court is said. Do you think there's any chance that they will abandon it?
So there are I think Justice Thomas and maybe gor Sich might have joined him, but Justice Thomas has written an opinion calling for the Court to re examine New York Times versus Sullivan. It's obviously not an opinion that's rooted in the original understanding of the free speech and free press clauses. And this Court is trying to guide its decisions by originalism.
And if you do, then you.
Would want to look back at it.
You know.
The other thing I think to follow on your point about why the Court thought this was necessary was, or at least some scholars have said the real point of the free speech clause is to create a robust space to criticize the government, that that's really what the free speech laws allow us to engage in self government, and we need to therefore be able to have even stronger
protections for speech that hacks the government. But you know what, we could actually figure this out because there are lots of other countries in the world that are Western democracies that don't have the New York Times versus Sullivan, and we could say, you, has free speech really been curtailed? Right England? Famously, you can go to England and sue people for libel for the very same things you can't sue here, and that's not uncommon that you see those
kinds of cases. Is free speech in England?
Now?
Free speech in England's under attack for by other reasons, for different reasons, not because of the libel law. It's being too strong there.
All right, that was actually a great discussion and I do want to add this and you can respond as you like. I think one thing, by the way, that should be said about the Nick Christoph piece is that remember he's an opinion journalist and not a news journalist. That are trying to skirt the line there because they did give him three thousand words. I think for that piece. Is that right anyway? And he he likes to represent himself as a reporter, but you know, they don't really
edit opinion pieces. And I think it's significant that the news pages there have not picked up on the story. They're not trying to deepen his reporting so called reporting.
Are you making apologies for The New York Times here, Steve.
No I just I want to make this point that opinion journalists often get away with something that news reporters would not get away with. I think it's a bad practice. I think it should not be done.
Especially when it's factual reporting supposedly as opposed to it's my opinion that the Israelis are just as bad and less human than even Hamas's. That's something entirely different than making up facts.
Well, now here's actually I wanted to bring back something you and I have called a few times in the last few years. When I heard that crazy story about dogs being trained to rape Palestinians, my mind ran back to the McMartin preschool case and all those related cases at the times when the media and law enforcement bought it, hook line and sinker. And you know, there was a case a couple of years later down in San Diego, our friend and contributor Lloyd Billingsley reported on it at the time.
This is Daniel Lachike guy.
So he was Asian, apparently had some I don't know if he had some congenital birth defects. He looked kind of creepy, you might say, in the ordinary sense. And he got convicted. I think he was convicted. I got to check the facts on this, but some of the testimony from the kids working on recovered memories was, Oh, they slaughtered horses and elephants in our classroom. They borrowed
from the zoo. I mean, absolutely preposterous things that then the news media would report without any skepticism at all. When you know, you know, you know I've mentioned this.
You know.
Jaffa walked in one day in the middle of the hysteria front page of the La Times every day and said, I don't believe a word of this. I thought, huh, he's a pretty smart guy. Turned out to be absolutely right, and we saw a bunch of this hysteria and utter credulity of the media and prosecutors. Right. Janet Reno did a case in Florida. There's a horrible case out of Massachusetts. They all got eventually overturned, but not until many people
spent several years in jail. And so for the media in this case to say, wait a minute, how does this actually even work? Anatomically right? I mean, not to be.
Too deep, I guess that's what I would say. The difference is a little bit, Steve that I read Douglas Murray's column, I think in the New York Coast yesterday, where you know, he said that there's never ever been a single recorded incidence of dogs being trained to do anything like that, ever it ever, you know, And so I mean, I don't the hysteria that followed McMartin, et cetera, that there is a little bit of a basis in fact for you know, child molestation, that sort of thing.
So I do see them as slightly different. You would you would have to be what I accuse the New York Times of being to run the story so deluded and committed to a horrible ideology. Even to allow that story to run, I can't even imagine that there are very many New York postscuse me, New York Times news reporters who would be willing to put their reputation on the line for something that atrocious, right, But what the editorial board was.
Yeah, yeah, and the one of comment I'll offer on it now that it's gonna want to write an article for a while on this now is what John was asking. And I can't, I can't. I don't remember now exactly how you put it. But where is this surge of anti Semitism coming from? And I want to suggest it's coming from, uh, where it came from back in the Really a lot of what you're hearing now is an invention of the Soviet Union propaganda arms starting decades ago.
Uh.
And you know, I remember hal Roud Armont taking us through tracing out where this was a different subject, but it would trace out where some of those crazy stories got into the media, especially like the Black press about how AIDS was creation and and and crack cocaine and cocaine was you know, a CIA plot undermine Inner city.
Those stories always showed up first in some Indian newspaper, I mean as an India Indian not you know, the Maveajo reservation, and then would gradually creep their way through into Western press and break out and you know, whispers and you know the Chicago Defender. Maybe I don't know, and uh so I'll bet that's happening now on a very big scale from the same people. Russia. Iran I
think is pretty good at this. Not sure, but Tar yes, probably, katar oh absolutely, And not sure about China because I think if they tried it on social media would sound too much like a Nigerian prints trying to your bank account. I don't know, am I, but here's a little interesting tidbit for you. So I'm I don't know how I stumble across this, but uh you know, ts Eliot had a mixed reputation, shall we say, when it came to anti Semitism, right, you know, jaff It was not fond of him, and.
He deserves it.
I mean, Elliott wrote some really nasty stuff and some early poems, and there's some lectures he gave in the forties and fifties that have some typical anti Semitic tropes, and you know, you might be I don't think you should be, but you could be suspicious of his idea of a Christian society book. I read it recently because I got curious and I didn't see a difficulty. But whatever,
somebody wrote to Elliott in nineteen fifty three. So you know, Stalin I think is still alive in early fifty three, and I asked him if he would sign a statement deploring Soviet anti semitism, and he wrote back a long letter, and he said, of course I'll sign this. But on the inter hand, how hard is it to deplore Soviet anti semitism? You know, I mean, how can someone decline
to an appeal to protest Soviet anti semitism. But then he went on and I'll just quote a little bit from this letter that I think is quite interesting, and what is it? Explain some things going on now? So here I'll quote him. The only striking difference between the present anti semitism in Russia and the anti semitism of Hitler's Germany seems to me this that the Russians have learned from the mistakes of the Germans and are much
shrewder propagandists. The Nazis persecuted Jews for being Jews, and thereby incurred at once the antipathy of all civilized people. The Russians refrained from any overt doctrine of racial superiority, which would too flatly contradict their supposed principles and interfere with their foreign policy. And he goes on their say more about it, but he says this is a matter of policy to stoke hysteria. Well, that's curious about Elliott.
I don't know if he had a big change of mind or if he was just thoughtless in some of his earlier expressions. But that description of what's going on again that's seventy years ago now, I think is really quite extraordinary.
And I hate to tell you, Steve, but anti Semitism long precedes the Union, I know. But yeah, and I don't understand it. I really don't understand it. But I meet people who are, Oh I'm not anti Semitic, I'm anti Zionist all the time.
Uh.
And it's but you talk to them for very long and it's you know, who made that movie Jews kind of thing? Right? You know? I find it despicable, I really do. But you know, and it's not just because some of my best friends are Jews, but they do happen to be so.
And many of our favorite.
Teachers, right yep, absolutely almost all of them. It was a funny thing that, you know, all of those good Midwestern Protestant Catholic boys came back to California to study with that nice old Jewish guy. But I always thought that was strange.
While we're on it's not directly related, but I just got my latest copy of First Things magazine in the mail, and I can't believe I'm this many years old before I've heard this phrase. The lead story is called tomophobia. Tomophobia. In other words, it's it's a tomistic. It's again, it's about a quiles see if you if you're if it's uh, it's Mary Harrington, who I don't I'm not that familiar with.
But what a great phrase. I am going to keep that and use it and throw them back in the face of all the people who say homophobia.
Okay, okay, all right, it's a little obscure, Steve, But okay, yeah, I know, good question for you, and I'm sorry to spring this on you. I would probably ask you this offline if we were offline, but we're not.
So.
I have seen three or four articles in the last couple of weeks about Harvey Mansfield, two of them two of them in the Chronicle of Higher Education. What's going on there?
Uh?
Well, I think it's newsworthy that a person who's taught at Harvard since at nineteen sixty four, what is that? Sixty years almost?
It's amazing long time. But it does have this book out.
I've got the galleys and so it's coming out on where Harvard went wrong, and it's a collection of a lot of his articles over the years, some resolutions he wrote the Harvard faculty meetings that did no good. Of course, so there's a certain valedictory nature to it. I think
I mentioned once being on some zoom meeting. I'm vague about what exactly the providence of it, but one of the participant was Pippin Norris, who's very prominent in the Harvard government faculty, and she was arguing against trying to diversify, arguing against the viewpoint diversity and now though it was pretty weak, so I finally interjected and said, so, you know, Harvey Mansfield's going to retire soon. Will the government department at Harvard try and replace him with somebody like him?
And there's a long pause and she said maybe. I said I'll take that as a no until I see different, right, And you know, so we'll see about that. But the point is is that what's the old saying the only good conservative is a dead conservative.
Well he's not.
He's still with us, but he's now retired, and so you can say, ah, he's a national treasure, whereas a year ago he was still a fascist.
Okay, well they're saying retired but still roaring was the latest title that I saw of the article. So anyway, anyway, I had to ask I just I thought it was strange.
Yeah, he's getting his due, and you know, he's getting his due and he deserves it.
And by the way, Steve, I wanted to tell you also, since the AP has determined that musket that what are they called loaders the seventeen seventy six, why can't I never remember not muskets, muscleloaders. Muscleloaders are are they're not regulated? Did you know that? Did you know that, Steve? And he's passed and I wanted to have a chance to
get it out and I didn't. I didn't, So I was going to come on the three Sky Happy Hour with my muzzle loader just to see if somebody from the AP would turn me into the The ATF is the perfect example of why muzzleloaders should in fact be regulated.
Yeah, so I'm if Richard Samuelson were with us, he would have a quick punt about you know, if you ban muzzleloaders, then you'll ban muzzles or something like that, which we really need for Okay.
Yeah, okay, all, sorry, that was my fault. I deserved. I deserved the bad pun.
Okay. So, okay.
The last segment from you guys that I'm keeping in our reformulated episode is John surprising me and maybe you with how presidential Trump is being. So let's roll that now and then we will multi a conclusion.
So can I ask you, but what do you think about Christia? I actually think that Trump is really acting most presidential now for this reason. He's doing something which she really thinks is in the national interests, even at the cost of his short term political standing. Right, So everyone thinks, oh, Trump is so craven, he's a populist who's appealing to write this megabase. But isn't he actually
saying I agree with them. I think the idea of Iran having ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons would be very, very bad for our country and our allies. And he's incurring large short term hits to his political standing in order to pursue I think something that most rational people should think is in our national interests, and that to me is the leader. That's like the definition of leadership.
I mean, so I said, as a friend of Neil Trump, you know, I think in contrast to these quick strikes like Venezuela or in his first term killing SOLMANI you know, those were things that were calibrated to not hurt his short term political est. But now I think he really is sort of acting like a war president, where you have to do some things that are going to be politically unpopular because you think it's in the best long term interests of the country. So I actually I admire
him for this. And even though he's getting enormous, right, enormous criticism from his own side, the Democrats criticism criticizing him is just predictable. And you know, if he if you figure out a way to remove China as a threat, they would still the Democrats would still criticize them.
Or as people say, if he found a cure for cancer, the Democrats are still criticizing for you, although you know, I agree with everything you just said, but sometimes I sort of have to shut him off because the fifty first Venezuela being the fifty first state.
Wie.
Sometimes I just don't even get why he does this sort of thing.
You know, he's just like taunting the media, right, do you think that's it's just the the cats. I think, yeah, I think he's just taunting people, taunting the taunting the media, saying crazy things that drive him us. He can't be but at least we should make Venezuela territory first before he made it a state.
No, it just anyway, So, uh, we actually are almost at the end of the hour, believe.
It or not.
All right, Lucretia, it's time for our help the Babylon B.
I have to say that this has not been This has been a week that I think the Babylon b agrees with me that there's not a lot of news. So there some of them are a little fun like that. The whole thing with Christopher Nolan and so the thing is, it's a picture of Steve Bischemi and it says too far Christopher Nolan casts Steve Muskimi as Helen of Troy.
Well, he cast Ellen Page is what somebody hector or something.
I don't know it's crazy.
Elliott Page, Elliott Page, Sorry, I just yes.
Yeah, I know, I know who I believe will end up being the next James James bond.
If oh god it yeah, and nobody will go see it. Faux pas. Trump gives President g with pot of honey from White House beehive and the picture. The picture. He really, I mean he looks like Winnie the Pooh in the picture. Right, go ahead, I'll.
Bet the Babylon beet is censored in China. Just a hunch, just a hunch.
Conservative too exhausted to form opinion on Thomas Massey, you know that feeling? Man oh man? Okay? The New York Times updates slogan to all the news that's fit to print, plus any rumor, no matter or how implausible.
Yeah, that's too true.
I know it's not funny. Some of these things are enough. And you won't get this, Steve, but I'm gonna say it anyway for our younger listeners. Millennial figures out how to use six seven signaling the end of the fad.
I know what that's about. I've got him, you know, I mean, I'm going to kid who was you know?
Yeah, I know, I forgot you're right, and then, along with my muzzle loaders, about that, I'm sorry, sorry, along with my muzzleloaders, Associate Press warns that trey bouchets are exempt from US gun laws. So how you say it?
Yeah it is, Yep, you got it.
Okay, Okay, I want one of those two. Actually, I want a can into my front yard. Right, one of these days we'll get one. But next time I'll bring my muzzle loader, I promise, Quinn, Quinn, right, That's all I have for today, Steve.
Okay, Well, John Point always says, always drink your whiskey and eat, buy more books. And you have been listening to the three Whiskey Happy Hour, sponsored by the Civitas Institute, produced and hosted by ricochet dot com. The podcast dedicated to what single malt singular metaphysics advanced Sidney Sweeney studies, which we've proved this week. Uh And we'll be back again next week, hopefully with a more ordinary and normal edition of a whisky Happy Hour, we hope.
Are you kidding?
Christian?
This has been the best podcast since sement on Vacation Gone.
What are you talking about, Ricochet? Yes, Join the conversation