The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Gonzo Unplugged Edition

Join us if you want. We're actually gonna go a gonzo podcast. Oh and you not can be on it. Yeah, that's exactly what I was gonna ask you.

Whiskey coming Thames Payne, Oh Whiskey, don't.

You leave me?

From power Line blog dot com and produced by Ricochet dot Com. This is the Three Whiskey Happy Hour with your bartenders Steve Hayward, John You and power Lines International Woman of Mystery Lucretia.

You gotta giving let that whiskey blow where you're being in love down in low.

We glad you might have guessed from that little teaser before the bumper music, this is not going to be a normal episode of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour. We're missing Lucretia, who's away on some secret mission for the

But in any event, pull up. This is pretty crazy.

But we were told by a number of lawyers and people attending that they didn't have their regular episode, they were going to be very cross with us. So we like to deliver when we can, So strap in, put yourself a drink.

Here we go.

All right, everybody, this is a special edition of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour. Here comes Ilia Shapiro. Now, John, you and I are at the Federal Society Conference.

Steve John, you sent me specifically to speak to you here.

Yes, okay, Well I didn't agree to be on it with him.

Well you know what, See, we don't have the Cretia with us tonight because she's doing some secret army thing. But we're here with a whole bunch of eminent lawyers. Rafa m Manuel to my right for the Manhattan Institute. Eric Jaffey, a prominent appellate lawyer.

Is that a correct description?

Ilia Shapiro a colleague of Raphael's at Manhattan Institute. So the Manhattan Institute is overrepresented here and from the Mountain States area. Jacob Minus of the Salt Lake City Lawyers Chapter, who we meet up with every year at the Western Regional Summit.

I'm an unemployed ski bomb.

John You is out trying to wrangle a couple of more people and get a drink from the bar.

So hey, cheers, gentlemen. Let me start with the you, Raphael the uh he goes by Ralph. I don't ray for rison't it right? I know? I just I'll answer to almost anything.

Especially if there's a cocktawnall that's right?

Right? Yeah, Well you're reaking the home with that one.

Ah who.

So everybody here is all carry smiles or mostly smiles, except maybe for the Attorney General designate. That's the only one that's getting a lot of frowns, but everyone's excited about the election. I think Raphael'll start with you. M I mean, I guess I can ask a question, but you can say anything you want, which is we actually saw Trump improve his showing in deep blue cities around the crime and crime is one of your beats, and it does seem like that was a big factor.

I think it was absolutely a big factor. And I think you know, if you look at the blue cities and states, that tells a compelling story, right, and can take a look at California, look at what happened. He had George Gascone get absolutely wiped out by Nate Hawkman, who ran an unabashedly pro law and order campaign. You had Prop thirty six, the statewide ballot proper position, which sought to undue parts of Prop forty seven past seventy thirty seventy thirty.

I mean that's amazing. And Caamwa Harris wouldn't take a position, right, You got to ask yourself who.

Is it that she was trying not to alienate with that silence?

Right?

You know, you go up north, you got Pamela Price in shang Taw and Oakland both getting recalled. I mean, that's incredible.

That's and that's just California.

You can imagine what's happening in America.

Well, you can move a little a little bit east. You look at Colorado.

You had ballot propositions funding police to the two to three hundred and fifty million dollars in the state. You had a truth and sentencing regime done through ballot initiative. You had a bail reform amendment to the state constitution, getting rid of the right to bail the murder cases. You go to Arizona, you had a ballot proposition in Arizona that will now make citizens eligible for a tax refund if the government fails to clean up homeless encampments,

I noticed there's an a mission of fornication in that's a tax reform for.

Okay, that's right, that's right.

Roger Poalan has joined us. Where's John Hugh? He was just here a minute ago.

I want to think he's getting more kimchi.

He brought me over for this boondog.

We are taking a live podcast. Roger really, yes, it's, uh, what's the issue? Whatever we want to be although one of the issues is most weeks we do this every week. Most weeks it's me and a third host who's not with us because she's busy beating up on John for his legal positivism.

And I know you'll be on my side on that argument.

Oh, I'm a natural rights man.

Of course you are law two steven.

But I'm not a natural law man.

Well, the natural rights man.

There is a difference between the two.

Yeah, but you know what's a gun the law man.

Yeah, but you know what, Roger, Yes, I understand that distinction. There's also a.

You're one of the rare people who does understand that.

Yeah, are you you fall out of this?

It's not a dumb debate, but it's.

You know, it's this is above my pay grade. You know, this is I'm a simple constitutional lawyer. This kind of metaphysics and philosophy is I can only talk about simple things like the dormant commerce clause.

All right, So, Eric Chaffey, Uh, you do a lot of appellet law, which means you're not going to distract yourself with natural law unless you want to.

But I'm very positivest.

You are you're dang well.

But I'm positivest in the sense that I recognize that the Framers were naturalists, and so.

I think that was incorporated.

Okay, oh, you're you may be redeemable. We better get have the arcist here fast. One is completely underwater. Okay, well they should do decently.

Yeah, underneath it all and just a hobsy And I'm a simple poe.

Okay, well, but Steve, you've got you always have been nasty, brutish, and.

You've got to have a touchstone grounded in reason. Otherwise you're a drift with a pure theory of will, and violence can take you anywhere. And so what you need is some grounding. And that's exactly what the Declaration gives us when it sets forth in that justly famous second paragraph, that we hold these truths to.

Be self evident. No self evident.

Truths are truths grounded in reason, correct, which is available to all mankind and every place and every time. It stands for the idea that there's a higher law of right and wrong from which to derive the positive law and against which to criticize that law at any point in time.

And without that touch or else, well.

Without that touchstone, as I said a moment ago, we are adrift to the will, and all we are left with is a kind of democracy whereby the will of the majority, if you're lucky, carries the day. But as we've seen, that resolves into the will of those who are best able to work the system, and those are the special.

Election was probably hold that thought.

I do want to provoke Roger and say, just as Thomas Aquinas put it in question ninety four of his Treatise on Law, I'm just the bessing on that said.

We're in a heated agreement on that last I know.

But he also had a theory of the good gentlemen.

This is all very enlightening with the capital E.

But if we can get back to your original question about the election, I want to I want to propose that.

What this was all about the election, that was the opening for it. Now as far from you can get, well.

No, but it's it's not.

It might be more Augustinian or something, but but look, here's the point.

Here's the point.

Could this be I'm about to posit kind of a cheeky take on the election. Could it be that the American populace or at least a majority of the voters in seeking a return to normalcy that they tried to get in twenty twenty until Biden started governing as FDR's woke grandson. Have now have now turned to Donald Trump for normalcy?

Yeah?

Are you suggesting that there's a certain absurdity.

To this, a certain at least amusement.

Or paradox or no.

I was writing eight or nine months ago that if you believe and political science median voter theory, who's closest to the median voter?

Oh my god, it's Donald Trump?

I know.

And and that, by the I think, well, the.

Media queen's voter, certainly at Manhattan is too.

We focus on New York and we analyze each borough for itself as representing different parts of the American character.

Who are actually mattan.

Now that Trump is going to be the president, it is important evermore to be an opposition. And we see this with the Attorney general nomination. We see it with Telsea Gabbard as the is that Herny the intelligence? I mean this, this is this is the one thing I'll say about the death's nomination is that it did prompt him to resign from the House, and so there's the positive.

He's already said he's not going to serve in the next term.

Well that's good.

So that's the good that's come from that. Of course, I doubt he'll get out of committee.

Now, Roger, Well, now, Roger, I just have to say, because you're an old pal, you're showing your Cato Institute underwear with your going into opposition status.

I didn't know, Well, Cato goes into opposition.

Whoever wins any life, I know, I know that's right.

I confess I'm somewhat with Roger, which is all government bad. I don't care if we're finding it right, and so yes, I'm you know, I used to joke.

That government is not a client. They'll pray.

Well, the Founders are right. It's a necessary evil. So necessary because in the state of nature there will be differences and if we can't agree over them, then either there will be injustice that is elected, or there will be force.

But which founders? Has it turned out that the anti federalists were actually right.

Oh, no, federalists went not right because they gave us a government it was too lean to address the three major problems that we faced. We were surrounded on three sides by powers greater than our own.

We had a.

Debt from the Revolutionary War that we didn't know how to pay, and states were electing terrorists and other measures they were leading to the breakdown of the free flow of commerce among the states. So to overcome those we needed a stronger, separate federal government, but one that was restrained.

Well, yes, at the time, this is this, this is the argument at the time.

But but but.

Is it the but but in the end, is it now that they've you know, won their uh, you know, ultimate victory, even if they were wrong at the time, or is it that kind of circle back to complete the circle and go all Claire monster that it's all Woodrow Wilson's fault.

No, they founders got it right, as corrected by the Civil War amendments. But of course we've never lived up to the principles that we've articulated, which is not surprising. And there have been better or worse times, whether of course the Great Watershed, the progressive era when they fundamentally rejected, of course, the Framer's vision as corrected by the Civil War amendments.

So John You has entered the chat. He's trying not to step. Oh, he's got his food flake. I'm winning at John.

Don't don't go away here and finish.

You know, Jonathan and I went to I'll fill a buster while he finishes his chew of his slider here.

But we went to law school together.

But you know, yesterday you were mentioned in several kind of side conversation as a contender for for SG. I don't know, are you are you? Are you going to go into uh government?

You think they gave it to someone else.

Well, I recognized that.

I recognize that the SG was announced today.

Last night last night, probably.

To be reopened.

Step on up, haadly we are we are in media address, as they say a Latin.

We're rolling.

And the problem is is I was hoping to round up enough natural lawyers to out number John You, and right now it's like fifty to fifty.

Roger's pretty sound.

Oh yeah, Eric, we're not sure about yet, But I want to talk.

About it to himself A positive I did, But I'm a positivist who incorporates the sad delusions of the Framers.

So I'm okay, well, you know now John's run away Roger, but I taunt him a lot, saying I still believe the two of the greatest books for modern constitutional thinking are Corwin's Higher Law Background absolutely and what's his name? The Constitutional Nation of Modern I'm blanking on the author's name, Charles Howard McElwain.

I thought you said you were a fan of that book once. I remember you.

Saying that twenty years I am a fan of the Corwin John. But you know Corwin, uh think out during the Roosevelt Revolution.

Did you know that to Steve Yes, Yes, yeah he did.

I don't understand why.

I don't either. But but his other defects his.

Book was was actually it was two essays in the Harvard Law Review that constituted that book.

I still assign them to students again over John Hughes's objections.

But why would you Eric Jaffy, that was trying to get away. I don't blame him. Why would John object to that because he's a positivist.

What about you signed Harry's books. He's seeing the price of the house of album.

Not the law students. But I want to change gears. We can come back to all this. I want to change gears a little bit while Derek's still with us.

Uh. Terrific panel today.

You weren't on it, but I think maybe you were there in the audience on administrative law, and usually that's a snoozer.

Did you go to that panel?

I went to the Q and A because you know, I was busy with the SCC panel, because right, I hadn't hear of the NAP, right, right, yeah, I know.

I went to the the International Court of Criminals.

That was I went to this hideous oh Richard. Richard was a classic for.

The entire.

And there's a certain history.

No confusion, no, no, not really nice try but this guy said, of course, of course that should be arrested to of course violation.

The panel was in general agreement with this guy.

This guy, I.

Would say, the arrest of panel, except for Epstein, was whether they were whatever the Republican or Democrats they were part of, like the Foreign policy established. And it was fitting to me because the last time I was in this hotel was thirty five years ago in high school for Model U N where we were brainwashed into the international and now I'm back.

Audience.

If your audience, UH can go when this is available online to that session and listen to Epstein. They will be rewarded beyond belief.

Was just remarkable.

Tour four.

Never never has Oh no, he I've heard him say that he can't even give the same lecture once.

Of course, Well you can never step into the same river twice.

Yes you can if you move with the current.

Or if it's the Aga river on you were a metaphysician, not a physicist.

Remember, Richard inst for me is going the bomb cars. I didn't talk.

So he sits on the table with his legs dangling and he gives what economics said, This is the most coherent account he's ever heard of the logic of insurance.

Well, you know he's taught every class in the University of Chicago, syllabus, every duct trintal class, and so we're not talking like poetry in the law. But you know, from antidiscrimination law to securities to whatever he's taught. I took them for Roman law. The court description was great. It said knowledge of Latin not required, but helpful. But

Is that coming out January fourteenth?

Now available for pre order wherever you fine and not so fine books are sold online.

Well, we'll do a podcast about it when it comes.

Back, Steven.

How long does this go on?

Because I want to get some.

Food, Yeah, and I need another drink.

Is this for the record, Yeah, we could raise the money, but it would be wrong for sure.

You think if you want how the arcis is here listeners. By the way, I hadn't already figured that out, So can we have the excuse me? Your excuse me? And Juliana had a great article.

Oh yes, smacking down her latest book on Jews and the liberalism.

Yeah, I will shea it is this something new?

Oh?

This in the last year.

I mean she she writes more books than I can read.

Believe this or eighth book.

Yes, that's great, Steve.

We'll be all right.

I tuned in another cocktail, so we'll be in touch when I'm back after renew my passport to come busy in California.

Another steak you know.

Yes, well, we have a consolate near us. We can help that out with excellent, excellent American consolate.

It.

We can do something.

We're doing it now, we're.

Rolling, we're recording.

Okay, now let's get on the record.

Okay, okay.

No, No, I think I think we're the verts of something really important.

Oh yeah, I was asking, Sorrydrup, you send me an email.

Uh.

And then we had a brief conversation.

And before you got here, Raphael Monguel for the Manhattan Institute was talking about the election results.

So you said, and now go.

I think the other side is so deeply dug in with their narrative.

It's like Prince print the legend.

So Letitia King James comes out say I'm here to I'm going to protect the New Yorkers.

Wait, is Donald Trump? Donald Trump came after you or something? Donald Trump coming after it?

Was it you who came after Donald Trump?

Do you?

But do you think she's deluded or saying what she thinks her voters want to hear?

No.

I think she ran on the basis of get Trump. I know it works, I know in terms of here getting elected, not getting Drump.

No, but she's I think the narrative is taken hold with her like Prince Grew gets up. I'm gonna protect my people. I got they're playing into our hands because we say, what are guys gonna do? Is say, yeah, we're gonna deport. The worst case is we're gonna we're gonna deport they. We're gonna port the guys with cheese, and you guys can get up and now defend that.

Okay, Hatty, we have John you here for five minutes, and he has to go off to the Metropolitan Club, because of course he does.

We're having a reception where I expect Steve will be and by being freely of our free Scott give me a free.

Well this isn't improv free whiskey happy hour. Okay, Patty, I know you listen regularly.

I'm a great fan of Lucretia.

Well, yes, oh, you're a great man of Lucretian.

I love tastes. I love you all, I love you all, I love you all. It's a great trio. Okay, Pantimax said, and lever.

We have no time now for the complete case, but we have time for two brief bullet points and reputation of John's Benthamite utilitarianism and positivism.

So give him too fast balls singing by the ear.

No, that's true.

If we just just confiscate the property of those Jews and everybody's income goes up, and you know, it's it's the best.

It's a great utilitary farmer. What's the next problem?

Well, yeah, we yeah, better off. Okay, we do have I think you about know this, and I should send it to you. We're doing online a sort of back and forth debate which I think we may turn into a book.

I think it might once edited. It would be a nice book. I'm gonna write the next response because you gave.

Well, I know, usual nonsense. It gets in the way, but I will do it soon. So and we can continue next week when.

We're all, what's what's the book.

Positive and debate something like that. Yeah, we're debating positive and natural.

There have been references to you, Hadley, not all of them good. I'm just kidding, all very favorable references. Okay, the listeners can't see he had least arched eyebrow of anger.

Then I just don't know. It's all good publicity. It's all good publicity, all right.

John, you're excuse if you want to go absortion.

I have to go set up the reception while Steve, Steve's just going from one free drinking station to another.

He just polished off of martini.

I think about thirty seconds before you go at the Metropolitan Club tonight, Well we might be able to interview someone else for the podcast, like that'd be fun.

Okay, before you go, you think this was really a pivotal moment, that this could be something like thirty two, thirty six.

Well, it depends on events.

If you know, the economy goes bad, there's a war, you know, if something goes bad the election.

Now, except first, the first moments are easy to deliver. You're going to get rid of the Green agenda, yet the Greens.

I mean, there's a huge upside if the economy booms the world calms down, but.

GM doesn't have to make cars.

The people that want to buy, you know, hold them these impossible standards.

We get rid of the deregulated prices are not coming. The things within reach are thinks are going to work. I don't think those are not the hard cases for him.

Yeah, no, those aren't.

But you know what's the old Harold McMillan line, events, dear boy and the things that can wreck you. Herbert Hoover, very able man got wrecked by the depression, and Anthony Eden got wrecked by the Suez crisis.

And you know that nine eleven comes along for George W. Brook and you don't know what's coming.

Right, that's right, and you know we okay, So no, I'm I'm yes. I think it's it's hugely significant the way the vote turned out. All the pieces are in place, and we'll just have to, as Trump likes to say, we'll just have to see what happens.

But as people point out, never point out to me, Look, I told somebody, and I was writing to informac in Line to say, give me an anthropological report. I'm jewishly was in New York, and what they thought about this, Why they're still good wing to vote for for Harris and everything. The differences on Israel I try, I thought were paling, but at one.

Point I found myself saying, look, Jamie Diamond I could could rightly consider himself a better person and a better businessman than Donald Trump.

But even he has to concede he could not have brought forth what Trump had been best to accomplished in this last series. He couldn't have done it. He couldn't have me if he'd been in the candidate, I couldn't have done this kind if.

You would have been a conuity type Democrat like a Normy.

Right, yeah, I.

Couldn't have done it. I'm the best person I.

Know you could.

I couldn't have done it.

So, by the way, had it? Did you know?

Trump won Beverly Hills and he also won a heavily Jewish Hills.

He won Beverly Hills. First Republican Beverly Hills in sixteen years.

Nixon won definitely Hills. I think Nixon did. I'm not sure about that. McGovern won Beverly Hills in the primary in seventy two. I'm not sure about the November election, but won Beverly Hills.

Talk about how that is.

That's a telling thing and also a very Jewish neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley.

I forget which one.

Then Sena or something like that, and you don't even know who won, because I would figure that liberal Jews would be the least likely to report honestly voting for Trump. Like, how do we know based on your dad, I imagine the exit polls underestimate.

Oh, yes, correct.

This was pointed out in actually nineteen eighty when Reagan the exit polls said one about forty percent of the thirty eight or forty, which was the huge number then because Carter had angered Jews.

Well, John pot Harts and some other people.

A commentary looked at some heavily Jewish precincts in Brooklyn where eighty five percent of the vote was for Reagan and traditionally Democratic thirty six. By the way, those same districts in Brooklyn, they're different now from forty four years ago, also went heavily for Trump.

Of course, Orthodox, Yeah, I'm his Crown Heights in Borough Park, you know, the Beverly Hills Jews.

I think, I mean, my mother grew up in Beverly Hills a million years ago.

That was you know, they're not Orthodox.

Jews, just think so.

So he so he carried the land of Jack Benny Ronald. I think I'll drink that.

All right.

So Sorry, Jacob, what what's your practice area? You're in private practice.

No, I'm retired.

You're retired practicing.

You weren't kidding about me.

Too young to be retired, too young to say to.

Old guys, we're carrying on? What the hell are we doing? It's ridiculous.

Sorry, what was your well, I.

Was just talking about something else.

I was a corporate finance lawyer. But what's good stuff? You know?

That's why he gets to retire.

Yeah, but no wife or kids that I know of.

But you, So you come to the Federal Society meetings for fun and interesting.

Yeah, I'm like a lady who lunches.

Now, who's the singer? Is saying that? Who's a great singer?

Saying that the lady, the lad who runs from from the front of them from the seven.

Kill us?

Yeah, I'm going to a concert.

You think I'm bad, Ladies, We're going to the Taylor Swift concerts and various places.

I don't get it, but I get the people.

I got it.

I'm a disgruntled X member of the Church of Taylor.

She's got to dump that guy. She belongs to me. We'll see you down there.

Okay, So are you off to.

We're going to the u C.

Berkeley Federal Society reception down at the Metropolitan Club.

And it's only there because John likes these fancy clubs, you know, he belongs to all of them and whatnot. So Donald, okay, while you hear it all tomorrow.

Yeah, I'll be right, we'll catch up. Okay, continue, Yeah, just leave that.

I'll take care of them. Okay, hopefully all work. I think they will.

So I just felt like when I was standing over there, people were talking very softly and it's boomy, and you know how voices discibility, these things do really this thing especially does really well, even though the place I.

Know those are really use this for your record? Yeah you you do? Someone that Berkeley did recording with.

That, Yeah, I did. And that mind these two backups.

But Steve, since you asked me for a story, let me tell you, I'm honored to be on this podcast with you.

But let me tell you the podcast.

And I listened to you on podcasts all the time now since since we met two years ago. But let me tell you about the podcast that I really wanted to be on with you. Is you had I think your hiszonion and you were talking about you know, you wanted to have like a throwdown of Locke versus you know, natural law, and I wanted to. I'm team Locke, man. I mean my mom wrote her PhD dissertation on the Second Treaties of Government?

Really, what did you do with that? Clogo Harvard Radcliffe?

Uh huh?

And so, I mean the first thing when I just just to offer the feedback that whenever I deal with you know, the the natural law types or the you know, the more prescriptive you know, uh, common good constitutionalists, it's like we don't have.

The votes for that.

Like if we well, it's like you think you're gonna I mean, Christianity is declining, like you know you're not going to win.

So yeah, So I mean Hozoniti, of course is anti Lock.

Yeah, I know, that's why.

That's why I wanted to throw down with.

This, right. It's uh.

And and Mule Actually, John, you and I are cornering Vermule a week from now in Italy. We couldn't get him to come to Berkeley, but he'll meet us in Italy.

Well, yeah, I.

Still want to take one of these guys on.

Yeah.

Yeah, Well, hopefully we'll make a podcast out of it. But okay, okay, Lap, thanks for dropping by. Okay, I think I think we're I think listeners.

You want to say about something you've cared about me.

No, I'm just a simple First Amendment lawyer who thinks that all governments.

Sorry, you know, my friends are right.

Yeah, I mean my favorite libertarian sticker and I you know, I'm a libertarian on Tuesdays and Thursdays and today is Friday.

I think.

My favorite libertarian bumper sticker is there's no government like no government.

I mean, that's how I feel a lot of days, you know, But I'm too much of a foreign policy hawk to actually go that far.

Yeah, well right, yeah, so there's that.

Yeah, but you know, small government would work fine for me. Yeah.

Government that didn't have public schools or anything like that would work fine for me.

Yeah.

But yeah, this is why I couldn't accomplished anything if I was up for election.

Oh go to the crazy guy.

Oh I'm a god.

I mean if I thought about sometimes about running for office, only because the poor opposition campaign, their opposition researchers would have to read to four million words, that would be.

Punishment, that would be conduct punishment. Apparently they only have to read until they find the bad one.

Yeah.

Well that, yeah, they can find that right.

It wouldn't take very many words.

All right, great to see you guys, Thanks for dropping by, Thank you.

Yeah.

Ricochet joined the conversation