Well whiskey coming fame, my Pain, the money, my ray whiskey. Why think alone when you can drink it all? In with Ricochet's Three Whiskey Happy Hour, Join your bartenders, Steve Hayward, John Yu and the International Woman of Mystery, Lucretia. Where the laps it Appen? David? Ain't you busy on the should chaps gotta giving?
Welcome everyone to a special revolutionary episode of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour. I don't even know what the fancy Latin word is for two hundred and fiftieth would be something like sesq with duo tennial or something. But we are taping on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Conquered, and we will get to that in the show itself for our on the
American Revolution. But there's gonna be a lot of deep thoughts in this episode, not the kind of rat attat what's going on in the front page of the New York Times that drive Steve Hayward's daily agenda.
So Steve, where are you? How are you? I'm drinking Lefroyd ten advertised as huge smoke seaweedy note intense pete with as with a hint of sweetness. See seaweedy.
Are you serious, it says, Scenes says, yes, Seaweedy, You'll sell You'll sell dozens in Korea. I mean I grew up eating seaweed.
Korea. That's like George Will's joke about his uh. I forget which book it was. It might have been state Craft is soul Craft the book that he said that sold dozens.
Well, you know, I hope people will go and read your book review of Max Boot where you said within a month it was already on the remainder tape. Boots, bierfy Reagan very five bucks right, and Lucretia, the International Woman of Mystery? Where are you? And what are you drinking? How you doing?
I am home and I'm not drinking whiskey. I'm drinking wine. But there's a reason. This is good Friday and it's evening, but I am fasting, So I figured, you guys really don't need me drinking whiskey and an absolutely empty stomach.
Haven't you been doing that for the last five years on Friday nights.
I miss I eat at noon or afternoon, but I don't usually go the entire day unless I'm fasting for religious as opposed to diet purposes, which I am doing today, and so I am slowly sipping Brunola di Monticino.
You know, just a note of how the tariff wars are disrupting what's really important. The followers of our podcast will know that the three of us went to Italy and had a great time visiting winery. We were setting up for that winery and it's owners to return to the United States. Unfortunately, I just got word that they're not coming because of the terriffs, and Italian wine are so high apparently, and the margins of money they make
are actually not that great. Yeah, that Italian wine makers are thinking of pulling out of the US market.
Well, lucky thing, my wine refrigerator is full. I will tell you that I have not been able to purchase any any wine from our friend Giovanni's winery for about the last year and a half. I was able to get one case and now they have it at the place I bought it from originally, but they won't sell it to me anymore. And that was long before the terrorf So I don't know what the reason for that is. It just says, we can't sell it to you where you live.
So oh, that sounds like a dormant commerce clause violation to me.
Yeah, should I I got a lot of violation's happening. So you know, I don't know where to start. John must leave it that, So let's start.
It's been a busy, busy week.
I mean it's like each week, well, each topic could be its own show. So I think in the first segment we're going to talk about the stunning news that the Supreme Court to the I think the cheers and applause of my Claremont friends has granted sir sure or I on the birthright citizenship question, Steve, what are your thought?
Actually?
And there was a rather long article published in Real Clear Investigations where Lucretia and I are featured. I'm kind of like a punching bag because I think he talked to like eight Claremont people and then me. But I did have a good last line that was the close of the article, right, which Steve didn't even get to because he fell asleep two thirds of the way through.
No, Well, I will post in the show. It's actually article ran back in February and it was is Look, I'll summarize it this way, which is that here tool for the argument against birthright citizenship has kind of been limited to a small circle of Claire Monsters, you know, John Eastman, Ed Earler, a few others.
And what didn't you credit earlier with really being the first person to focus on this in Claremont world?
Yeah? Absolutely, yeah, he was writing about this back in the eighties and early nineties, and then Eastman picked it up some. But now, as that article showed, it's sort of breaking out into the wider conservative legal world with you, Randy Barnett agrees, and a whole of other people. And then I sent you guys out the book What Too.
A new edition is coming out everyone, Everyone, by the United States and Crisis by Edward Earler, the paperback edition.
Okay, well I'll link to that too. If you've got a link you can send to me.
But look that the point is, just as the paperback the book, the book's only one one hundred and fifteen to twenty pages long, right in.
Two new chapters, and it's coming out in paperback.
Okay, the past, just as the clare Monsters were the people who kept alive and spread the idea of the administrative state, which is now broken out into wide currency. Right, I think that the issue of birthrights citizenship is now breaking out into wider currency. And John, you deserve to be the punching bag, because you're a lot of very serious people, not steeped or you know, marinated in the Claremont world or the Straussian world, even who say, hey, wait a minute, this is a lot less of a
slam dunk than people think. And the latest is that long Law Review article that I agree with Lucretia's a bit turgent, but still I did not expect to see the argument criticizing birthright citizenship laid out in such copious fashion from Elan Werman, who I don't know, but you know, he's a young guy. Why is he taking yeah, you know, why is he taking this up? Well, because he thinks it's a serious matter.
And I mean, I've never denied that this is a hard You know that this is not easy. I mean, this is an interesting question of constitutional interpretation. Think you guys are going to lose overwhelmingly at the court, but I could be wrong.
Well, you had them at least four justices who will thought that worth hearing right, And I don't know, I don't think they did that just to upset liberals who are what's that four panel meme that has what's his name, Vince McMahon, where you know he's brighter and brighter, and so you know they're going to revisit Humphrey's executor. They're gonna, you know, they're smacking down district court judges and tors
and they're going to take up birthright citizenship. Oh my god, I think the left is going to have a very long, sad weekend this weekend.
Lucretia, what are your thoughts about the Court taking up you know, says stress. Not only they tacking it up, but they have scheduled it for a May argument, which they never do. They don't have war arguments in May. The term ends in April usually. But that shows to me is the level of interest in the court by the Court that they've scheduled a special session for this.
So and you'll remember that when you and I did our contributions to the symposium on birthright Citizenship, one of the things that I did was I went to the famous case which is Wan kim Ark. And you know that one's of course been interpreted and analyzed over and over.
But I went into the.
Precedents that the Court used to justify their idea that somehow, even in that case, legal residents of the United States could in fact be considered birthright citizens. And of course all of the precedents are misused, do not support the
court's position in Wan Kim rk. And it really does wrap around the whole idea of the common law, the idea that somehow our constitution is a common law constitution, and everything we need to understand about it is from the execrable Blackstone on this subject only, I mean that because he talks, of course about subjectship, it has nothing to do with citizenship, because the concept of citizen in a monarchy is absolutely an oxymor It doesn't exist because
of course you are not a citizen if you are this subject of a monarch. And he talks about the allegiance one owes to a monarch, and on and on and on. Well, the court misused the precedents that actually said exactly that, and none of the precedents that the Court used in one Kim Mark actually supported their position, and the descent points that out. But so the first place is there is it's neither the juris or what's the other?
Oh you you solace, you sanguinous.
Yeah, that's it. So it's neither because of your you're automatically a citizenship a citizen excuse because of your parents, Nor are you automatically a citizen because of your birth. You are a citizen because of social contract. And the social contract goes two ways. It is you agree to be a citizen and your fellow citizens agree to have you. There's not time to go into the whole John Locke theory of social contract, but it does change the conversation entirely.
So bringing up Blackstone or somebody like that has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to the discussion of birth right citizenship. You must go to the fourteenth Amendment and to the subject to jurisdiction clause, and look to the Civil Rights Act of eighteen sixty six the subsequent practice. And if you do that, we don't have time to go into
the details. But if you do that, you realize that, of course it is up to probably Congress, probably Congress to determine what subject to the jurisdiction means, but it's certainly does and can mean that Congress can choose not to grant citizenship to the children of parents results.
I ask you something because you didn't I don't remember you making this argument when we talked about last time. But why does Congress get to define subject to the jurisdiction rather than the courts?
Because it's the fifth the section Yeah, the enforcement close says nothing about the courts doing it. It's entirely up to Congress to define what all of the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Section.
Section five says in fource not interpret.
By appropriate legislation. Yeah, well, so they have to ask the court before they can pass legislation pursue it to the Fourteenth Amendment. Is that what you're arguing.
No, I'm saying that can Congress change the meaning of the words in the Fourteenth Amendment from what the Court has already said it means?
Of course it can, because the Court's not the final say on that it does the Fourteenth Amendments. Is that the Court is not. I mean that, I can't argue that to somebody who's you know, very much part of the legal profession and very distinguished in the area of you know, the Supreme Court and someone but let's be serious.
Here.
Of course, Congress can determine that subject to its jurisdiction means you must be subject in this way. This is and the Court can't say anything about it.
Could Congress pass a law over turning Wan Kim ark.
I don't know that they need to, because the second part of my argument is that Wang Kim arc of course doesn't apply because he was in fact born to parents who were here, if not legally, before before illegal residents or legal aliens were really a thing that anybody worried about. So it's so anachronistic it really doesn't apply. And if if the Supreme Court decides to rely on Wan Kim, market will just show that they're all about judicial supremacy and they don't give a damn what either
the constitution or legal theory has to say. There you go.
Can I ask a point of clarification lucretia, because I'm having some heartburn right now. Did I take you a couple of minutes ago to reject Blackstone wholesale or just Blackstone as applied to this question, because he wasn't called.
Blackstone in a lot of ways should be rejected. And the whole idea that we can somehow substitute a written constitution for the with the common law should be rejected. But I think there's quite a bit to be learned from Blackstone. It's just if you're just going to accept Blackstone wholesale. Blackstone said this, so we have to do it because the Constitution is based on Blackstone's you know, don't I.
Don't actually think that people on the side I favor and hope aren't saying and the Constitution that somehow in corporates Blackstone. It's more, you know, there are words in the Constitution that are from the eighteenth century legal words, and why not look at Blackstone to see what the kammal law thinks. It's not that the kammalaw controls the Constitution's meaning, because they clearly tried to change some of
the meanings. But it's just like it's just a tool of interpretation, like looking at a dictionary.
But it's not that.
But that is the what I don't get about Edstone. Ed's argument is constantly that the common law is like an ideology that's rejected by Locke, right, and that I think that there's a common law too much.
Credit in the social contract theory. It does. But what I would say is that, first of all, the Fourteenth Amendment was not eighteenth century, So there's nothing to turn to with respect to Blackstone that would inform us in any way, shape or form about what the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment meant.
Yeah.
And second, and there are in fact sources whatever you want to call it, that that should be turned to. Again, the debates in Congress over the Fourteenth Amendment, that debates in Congress over the A teen sixty six Civil Rights Act, those things are, in my opinion, absolutely controlling, to the extent that any kind of reference to something outside the words of the Constitution should be controlling. It's certainly not Blackstone, That's what I know.
Well, I would agree, I don't think any of those sources are controlling. They're just ahead.
Sorry, and I didn't well, I didn't mean to get off on the black way. Maybe we could do a whole half sec or half an episode on Blackstone sometime. I just wanted to suggest that, No, I agree with you the creation that it is not useful for the Fourteenth Amendment in this particular question or other Fourteenth Amendment questions. But I do think Blackstone was very influential with the
founders and understanding on law, and John correct me. I thought in the Heller Oral arguments way back when, Blackstone's understanding of the right of self defense, Oh yeah, was part of the oral argument and thought important. And I think the logic of the logic of Blackstone is still compelling on that and many other issues.
So actually, you look at like opinions by Scalia and Heller and the Second Amendment cases, the justices don't see Blackstone in law as being in contradiction. Generally they think of them as kind of That's what I mean, Like the common law is not to lawyers. We don't think of it as an ideology or political theory. It's just the accumulation of practice. It's just like what the British were doing at the time.
It doesn't natural law, John, See, I don't think it is even And what.
The reason that I have a fundamental suspicion of using Blackstone.
Is exactly you don't want to use them at all.
No, no, no, A suspicion that doesn't mean not at all, but a suspicion about it is because we have a written constitution, The British Constitution is in fact, what what did you call it whatever you said. The British Constitution is not written law. A written constitution is something entirely different than the common law, the common law, good practice,
over time, et cetera, et cetera. All of that's great, But we have a written constitution with one purpose to define exactly what the powers of government are and to make sure that they're no greater than that, because the people are sovereign. Blackstone wrote for a monarch who was sovereign, and all power emanated from the monarch. That's why Blackstone is not generally speaking applicable to the American constitutional system.
Well, appreciate it. Just blew a hole in the unitary executive.
Theory then, no, no, not at all.
The unitary executive theory stands on its own. It doesn't need Blackstone.
No, But the definition of what the executive power means under the people write about this, A lot of it comes from Blackstone. Well that's where Hamilton looks too in the Pacific. Okay, what a wonderful conversation we're having, and we have hit the first of our commercial breaks. I'm sorry I have to call this to a temporary help, but I'm sure on I think it's May fifteenth, when the arguments are going to be held, We'll have a live play by play commentary by your friends at the
three Whiskey Happy Hour. So we will be back after these messages. Well, one place that is no doubt going to have no debates about birthright citizenship because they don't let John Eastman on campus was going to be Harvard University. I just probably had you know there used to be I think it was. Was it a McLoughlin group, basically a great segment like Winner of the Week, Loser of the week. There's no doubt that Harvard University has been
the loser of the week. It started out with the Trump administration on Friday, and then Harvard I think, I guess came back with his response over the weekend, and then on Monday saying that it was going to cut Harvard off from twenty two billion dollars in.
Federal two point two billion.
Oh that's a two point two billion, maybe nine billion, maybe go.
Up to nine with another six billion in questions.
Yes, because US Harvard is refusing to cooperate with the Trump administration's demands that it stopped DEI, stop the use of race, protect Jewish students, you know, attack anti Semitism. But then the list went a little farther, I think
than I was certainly expecting. It included things like changing Harvard's governing structure, requiring viewpoint diversity and emissions and faculty hiring and the running of departments, requiring that certain departments be placed under special scrutiny, and something like, you know, being thrown into bankruptcy proceedings as it were. And so Harvard said, no, no, we'll never do this, as interferes with our academic freedom and the First Amendment and free
speech and refused. The next day, Trump said, well, maybe Harvard doesn't need its tax exempt status anymore, and the IRS is apparently currently investigating whether Harvard ought to be stripped of its taxis and status. And then the next day Trump said, and maybe that I shouldn't be allowed to have any international students because they have not been providing records and keeping tabs and reporting to the federal government all the students and where they're from and what
they're up to. So lucreat it sounds like Trump has been listening to the podcast and doing all the things you want to do to universities. But let me ask you do you think they went too far? I mean, it seems to me they're on safe ground with the anti semitism ending, the use of race ending, the use
of DEI. But what about all these other things, like these departments have to start hiring people of diverse viewpoints, and emissions has to be restructured, and the governing system of Harvard has to change.
Uh.
You know, I suppose you can argue that those other things that the follow on things, as you put it, that might be going too far, they're probably necessary if any of the other instructions are going to be at all effective. Here's what I think is a really important point to be remembering this is a political thing. It may be a little bit of revenge and so on,
because but this is a political thing. And you know, I might even if you'll forgive me, I don't want to get into the other discussion yet, but I might even go so far as to say that it is on par with the Brago Garcia scumbag thing going on on the left, where Trump understands absolutely. How does this play to magaland how does this play to those independents that are continue to move toward Trump? How does this perhaps even I'll throw a bone to you two overcome
the tariff discussion. Because if I'm a middle class, lower middle class household, and you know, I'm looking at my federal income taxes, which we all just paid last week, or you know, paid war last week, I guess I should say then, And I'm knowing that a Harvard has this huge endowment that people who give money to Harvard get tax exempt status for giving that money, that their
endowment is not taxed. That there they're tax free bonds, on and on and on, And I'm thinking to myself, Okay, how many students would you guys told me what their their freshman class is? Four hundred?
Is that right?
No?
No, No, it's much bigger than that, But whatever it is.
It's sixteen hundred a little more.
We talked when we talked about the Harvard case, you mentioned that they could triple the size of it.
But anyway, oh yeah, I mean, I mean an undergraduate body here at Berkeley is like six thousand.
Yeah yeah, and ours is even much bigger. But anyway, my point is, why am I the struggling homeowner? You know, my working two jobs can't pay this or that, can't go out to eat more than once every month, whatever it might be, Why am I subsidizing Because tax exempt status is a subsidy for an a an entity that
has proven itself to be anti American politically. We don't even have to go into all the evidence of Harvard other than John who didn't give his usual a full disclosure that he is in fact a Harvard graduate.
Not only am I a Harvard graduate, I'm one of the greatest Harvard graduates, the greatest.
John is a rarity at Harvard because not only is he conservad you made it out of Harvard relatively with some relatively conservative.
I mean was I was actually the conservative columnist on the student newspaper, which maybe there's one every five years. Oh yeah, I wrote all kinds. I wrote a comm endorsing George H. W. Bush for president, which drove the rest of the which is why.
They are afraid John's head paper mache head that people can throw things at ye. But my point is very simple. All of these, all of these tax issues and DEI issues, and and you know the idea that Harvard's you know, raking in money because they're they're contributing so much to the world. Really other than John. I don't see anything that's a great argument for Trump. It's an absolutely great political argument for Trump, and I think he probably believes
in it too. I'm not saying it's totally you know, crass and that kind of thing. I think he believes it, but he recognizes that framed properly, nobody gives a damn about Harvard losing their tax exempt status or their nine billion or whatever it is. They're rich, they know, we know they're rich. Stop letting people give money to that, and let them give to a real charity.
There you go, Oh, I am rubbing my Steve.
Steve's strip tax exempt status from all universities in the country.
Well, well, so, first of all, I'm rubbing my hands with glee because for a rare occasion, I can be much more radical than Lucretia on this subject.
Real.
First of all, I won't go in precise order, but since you raised the tax exempt status, you know, I'm so old. I remember the Bob Jones case in the nineteen eighties, and the issue there was, well, they did well, they lost in court of it ultimately too, but which is important because the Reagan people said, wait a minute, the irs does not get to enforce civil rights laws. That has to be done through the Justice Department or somewhere else. They didn't actually say Bob Jones was exempt
from civil rights a vulnerability discrimination, but said IRIS. And then the Supreme Court disagreed and they said no, no, actually they get to. And so it seems to me that if the IRS can use Title six and the Civil Rights Act against Bob Jones University, they can. The IRS can do it the Harvard University today. And this gets onto using the left's rules against them, which maybe we'll come to in a minute. But look, I mean, I like to think that Trump escalated because they thought,
you know, we gave in too easily to Columbia. We didn't. We weren't tough enough on them. Here's the point. If you can break Harvard, if Trump can break Harvard, you will break every other university in the country. So I think the extreme demands, all of which I like. By the way, I'll just stipulate that are designed to make this a fight to the death. And maybe it's the right week for it. John, I know you wanted to bring up that this is the two hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of the firing on Lexington Concord. Well, this is the week we fired on Harvard University to start a new revolution against our corrupt universities. Oh my god, I'll just see. I told you I should compete with Lucrestian this. Let me just say two more things about it. I could say a lot of it. I'll just say two. And there are two related thought experiments. We saw two weeks ago that at Princeton University you had a mob of students yelling at Jews go back to Europe. So far,
i've heard no disciplinary measures or whatever. Now suppose at Harvard you had a bunch of white students yelling at black students go back to Africa. There would be a five alarm fire nationwide for weeks. At Harvard would have expelled all those students within fifteen minutes. Okay, Now on the foreign students. My favorite part is excluding the foreign
students overall. One is it's gonna it's going to hurt the revenue streams for a lot of universities, because Chinese students is a revenue model, an important one for a lot of programs. This is well known, probably not Harvard, but I think it's the middle Eastern students and the you know, anti Semitic, anti American ones they're bringing in.
So a related thought experiment, suppose forty years ago, whatever it was, that South Africa was the big issue on campuses, right, and if Harvard had said, no, we're not taking any white South African foreign students who defend apartheid because those values are repugnant to us, They're poisonous, and so we won't do it. I think this is exactly the same.
I think our government is exactly right to say we are not going to let you universities admit foreign students who are anti Semitic or anti American, and you know, universities, you just have to shape up. The other issue is I will just leave aside for the moment, because I could go on on the viewpoint diversity thing for a long time too. I will just say, listeners, if you want to know what's wrong, what's wrong one of the
things wrong with universities. And maybe Lucretia wants to come back in on this, just google cluster hires at places like Cornell or in California. Right, cluster hires, Right, but we're missing.
Before he goes on, before you go in I just have to address the cluster hires really quick, John, because when I was being pushed at one point to make a cluster higher for all of my military friends out there, there is a different word that the military is fond of using, and the first part is cluster. The second word starts with an F and ends with a K. So I will let you use your imagination family show.
Not a family.
I'm tired of hearing about these cluster and I use the wrong word by honestly, by accident. Military it was. It was quite the moment, let me just tell you. But that's what I think of when I think of cluster hires.
Yes, right, So just one last question, though, do you worry you know, since we're conservatives who like to have a federal government of limited powers, all these policies in that letter from the government, I think would be entirely beneficial for universities, great improvements. Oh but do you worry that it's too it goes beyond what the federal government should be doing. And do you worry about what happens
when President GRETCHENM. Whitmer comes into office in twenty twenty nine, what they would do with exact same power let me just.
Say that I'll answer the second part. First, John, they did do that, Bob Jones and others. I mean, how many diniversities other than Hillsdale are out there refusing to take federal dollars? And secondly, what I will argue is is from the point of view of conservative smaller government, less powerful government, all of those things, what we have
is the opposite. And what Trump is doing is threatening to take away something Harvard never had a right to in the first place, and that is, you know, massive amounts of government funding, massive amounts of you know, what's essentially revenue generated by the fact that they don't pay taxes on so many things, so many things including tuition. This is this could possibly actually tax the revenue that they make from tuition. Why is a university exempt from that?
Most most corporations, and Harvard is a corporation, are not exempt from taxes like that. They're not a religion, they're not a church. So what's the purpose of them being tax exempt in the first place. And so I just want to make it very clear that what we're not talking about is additional government interference. We're talking about less government interference.
Here, Well, I can i add to that that, first of all, I'm not afraid of that at all, because it's what they've been doing already, and if they go into higher gear, it's just going to make it worse for the universities down the road, I think. By the way, let's to Lucretia's point, Let's keep in mind that there has been this growing and for time thriving for profit
educational sector. It's mostly for vocational education, things like the University of Phoenix and certain other ones like that, and starting with Obama, the federal government has persecuted those institutions ruthlessly, and the reasons for that were entirely political, because they were actually competing for students for things like nursing degrees that you know, bookkeeping, practical things that could get you a job instead of going to a liberal arts college
where you're going to be converted into being like simple.
And accessible kinds of constructional methodology. Yes.
Right, Oh, and you know, I've known some people in that business and they say, you can't believe the kind of harassment we get from the federal govern Starting with Obama and Biden double down on all that. So you know they're already doing this and this gets back to or it gets onto that I think terrific article in the news article in the Wall Street Journal that has raised a ruckus on the right, quoting quist Roofe on others sayings.
Okay, we're getting to that after the break, so let's still Actually this is actually the perfect time because we are bringing up on our second good break, and since Steve already started the segue, although I wasn't really sure how, but we're going to interrupt the right in the middle and we'll be back right after these messages. Okay, So Steve, you were going to bring up this article, which I'll
describe briefly a very interesting Wall Street Journal piece. It says that the real guiding philosopher of the New Right and perhaps of the Trump administration is none other than Antonio Gramshe. Gram She's famous early twentieth cent from Marxist. I had to read him in college for our sociology class, which was what I actually thought was really interesting. But his main argument was that it was very interesting because
you know, you know, Marxists have a problem. You know, the communist revolutions occurred in the least developed economies Russia and China when they were supposed to occur the most advanced capitalist societies like the United States, England and France, and so Graham She's solution was that it was to switch the focus of Marxism away from or at least explain why it hadn't happened in those economies by saying that had to happen with culture first. It wasn't really
descriptive so much as a call for action. And you can see all these I actually was. And so then Christopher Ruffo, a friend of ours who's at the Manhattan Institute, who's been really the guy who is beating the drama
about critical race theory, yes, very successfully, you know. He he says he's a great reader and admirer of graham sheet and admitted that he's been guided by gram Steve is quite taken with this article, because Steve, I think his little red shirt he's a little Marxist in art anyway, he's a red shirt wearing lafoud drinking Marxist. Steve.
All right, Well, I mean I think Lucreatia will agree with me on some of this, or maybe most of it. Look, the argument is, so why you left out John that Ramsky is credited with having come up with the phrase, we need to have the long march through the institutions. Apparently he didn't, it was someone else, but it's very congruent with his thinking, which was, Oh, and then the Frankfurt School that you know.
The Frankfurt School. You know, it's just like people who were not as profound as gram she, but were just kind of applying.
His Arguably, they were more profound but more insidious.
I mean, look, God, I found the Frankfurt School people so turgid and people She's actually fun to read, I think, right, I mean, well, he was more political.
The other guys were more philosophical, but but they shared this insight, which is culture is more important than economic material forces. And so that's why you want to capture the cultural high ground, which of course the left is done Hollywood.
Universities, public universities exactly, media entertainment.
And so Rufo's point and the people who say, well, maybe we need to do that, and the criticism, and I won't name any names, but I've been reading it the last yesterday and today from some people, Oh, this is terrible. We should stick to our principles of conservatism and Burkinism and classical liberalism, And I'm thinking, here's the whole problem and why I'm like what Trump is doing,
even when I think it's being done clumsily. Even once it's done clumsily, I like it because we've been playing nice for fifty years and slowly losing on all fronts. And let's take them Skins at their word that everything's a struggle for power. Said, fine, it's a struggle for power, then we're going to compete for it, and we're going to We now have reached the point where you need some exercises of raw power to turn back the damage
they have done. Trying to be nice to universities into Hollywood has not worked and is not going to work full stop. And so the you know, I think what you've got is the I didn't like this phrase during Trump won, but now I kind of agree with it. The sort of vs Conservatives as someone called them. It might have been our pal Michael Walsh, who really understands the Frankfurt people. Well, you know, they're willing to continue losing as long as they can be nice and play
with the old rules. And I think we're done with all that. I think that's what we've seen from Obama and the Biden administration. So you know, we need to crush them. I mean, it's that simple. It's a fight to the death. Mitch Decor said that forty years ago, said a culture wars are matters of the heart and their fight to the death, unlike fighting about tariffs or labor policy or other kinds of things where they're economic winners and losers. That's small potatoes. So I'm all for this.
I agree with it. I will add this one last bit and see from Lucretia, Greece. There's really nothing in the Frankfurt schools criticisms and epis on culture that you actually can't find in the classics. You know, they say language is a tool of power. Well, that's what Plato's Gorgias was all about. It turns out that to all of the arguments, and Plato's trying to teach you a deep appreciation for not only natural right but also the
necessities of politics. But we become so illiterate starting in the mid twentieth century that these crazy German immigrats come along like Horkhimer, and people think, oh, this is something new. It's not new at all. It's one of the oldest arguments in political philosophy.
Steve is trying to outflank you on the radicalism now measure, but he.
Did somewhat conflate two different issues. One is the cultural culture war per se, I didn't disagree with anything he said, And the other is the methods, the means versus the ends. So by beginning and even giving credence to those idiot conservatives, vishy conservatives we'll call them, who say somehow we can't abandon our principles. I don't know if Steve remembers this, but this is this was a defining moment for me, and like Steve, this is where I become analogy lucretia.
I fit many many things into the framework that this that this created in my mind. So our professor Harry Jaffa was talking about how Ted Kennedy had invited Pat Robertson. I think it was Pat Robertson. Somebody who at that. I mean this was in the early eighties, guys, I'm really old. In the early eighties, Ted Kennedy had invited Pat roberts Robertson. Let me do that the other way.
Pat Robertson invited Ted Kennedy to come and speak to some some conservative group, and I think I have the name right, but it could have been one of those other people. And they gave Ted Kennedy a standing ovation, and Ted Kennedy returned the favor, and they booed Pat Robertson off the stage. Now, think what you want about that anecdote. That is a microcosm of conservatives versus liberals. We don't want to be like those liberals who those
leftists who would boo somebody off the stage. That's not gentlemanly, that's not h So those are not our principles. Those are our methods. And the problem with conservatives, over and over and over again is that they refuse to fight dirty. They when Obama says, we don't bring a knife to a gunfight, and then we don't bring and then we bring knives to a gunfight, over and over and over again. So that's the first thing I'll say about it. And I do think Graham, she has a great bit to
teach us there. I cried when Andrew Breitbart died. It really did. I mean, it caught me and I was like the tears were running down my face. I was very sad. That's how seriously. I took Andrew Breitbart. You can think what you want about him, but I thought he was amazing. And so the second part of that is we're not abandoning our principles when we decide our
principles are worth fighting for. That's the argument I'd want to make, and learning to fight the way we need to fight, and not oh my gentleman friend across the aisle McCain style, or Lindsey Graham's style or Mitt Romney style. Screw them. I'm done with those people. It is the things that we believe in that we care about. I would argue that not one of us on this podcast, and probably not one of our listeners would disagree about the things we care about. Where the debate happens is
how do we get there? And we have let ourselves be kicked kick We walk around wearing the kick me sign on our back, and the left says, happy to do so. Trump the last thing, Steve, you said it yourself. Trump is successful because either because of resentment over the way he was treated. I don't know what it is.
I don't know how much of this he gets. I read John's book and I still can't tell you how much of it Trump gets and how much of it's just instinct, But he gets it one way or another, and ways that no other conservatives do.
Sorry, well, it was, it was. John Gabriel of Ricochet had a great tweet about this yesterday today. He said Mitt Romney tried being the gentleman, the left called him a Nazi. You know that's all you need to.
Know, right, Okay, But do you guys worry it? It's like my worry with the last worry again, John, Yeah. I mean, you know, in a liberal society, do you want the government, And of course the left has been doing it, but do you want the government when we're in charge to be you start nakedly advancing certain moral and cultural views.
This way, I'm happy if they'll just advanced constitutional views, and that to me partially answers your objection, John, if I make any sense to you, do I necessarily want the government advancing my Catholicism and the things I believe in as a Catholic. No? Do I want them advancing the idea that a man is a man and a woman as a woman, and that children shouldn't be turned into some freaks of nature? Absolutely?
Yeah, right, Yeah, John, I mean, the way you phrase it in the abstract, then it's hard to escape answering no, you don't want the government doing that. However, when do you break it down, as Lucretia just did in a specific instances where public opinion is overwhelmingly against what the left is doing, then to use force against them, I'll put it as bluntly as possible, is to defend democracy and to defend the rule of the people against the people who want to rule over us without our consent
and shut things down our throat. You know, I've been radicalized on this. I did not talk this way ten years ago. But I'm so disgusted with things that partly is Lucretia's baleful influence on me after all these years, finally breaking through. But so that's why I think, you know, we again, we've reached the point where it's become necessary skeptical.
Well, we just bring up the sort of the crucible of all this. So we know that who was Van Holland from Maryland? Right, Christian Holland decides to go down and he asks and asked and asked, and he finally let him into the prison, and he has Margarita's or Mihido's or something with that scum bag, gang banger, wife beater, et cetera. Okay, they're desperately trying to make this argument, and they may succeed because the problem is, here's what I'm gonna say about it. Every time I turn around,
a conservative is waffling on this point. This is their argument. Sure Trump won on illegal immigration, but he can't go around deporting murderous scumbag sex traffickers, child sex traffickers, et cetera, et cetera without due process because he does that, and the next thing they're gonna do is come for you. It's a powerful argument, the thin end of the wedge, camel under the tent, camel's nose under the tent, whatever stupid analogy you want to put there. But my point
is this, we cannot give into that nonsense. We need to talk about why it is Americans can choose to remove people like that from their country. They don't deserve due process and it is not the same as doing that same thing to Americans. And just a little aside, those same people screaming about poor Ms three, gang banger wife beater said not a word when members of the DOJ showed up with a swat team at Roger Stone's house, at that pastor's house. At one last story, Steve, I
don't think you weren't with me. I got pulled aside at a conference we were at by a gentleman because you and I had been talking about January sixth, and
he pulled me aside. He says, I don't want anybody to know this, but I was at January sixth, and I'm afraid every day that someone is going to recognize me and they're going to show up at my house and they're going to take me away and put me in solitary, and I won't hear from my family, etc. Where were those those despicable, hypocritical, hypocritical right wing, supposed
right wing conservatives when that was happening. Shut up, go away, Send every MS three thirteen, gang Bang or anyone who might be affiliated.
Without any judicial hearing, due process, just pick them up and send them none. Well, that's on constitutional No.
It's not. The Constitution doesn't. I don't care what the Supreme Court is. It doesn't protect people who are not citizens.
It is a package. It says due process applies to persons not citizens in the constitutional text that we were just reading together.
Yeah, and I guess due processes. You come to our country as an illegal alien, you're out. That's my due process.
Okay, So Executive branch just gets to do it without any judicial review at all.
Well, a real American citizen, then due process is okay with me. They don't care about due process. Don't give me that they didn't care about due process for the January sixth protests.
Well, they all did get presented to a judge and had a trial. That's due process, just like the way many of.
Them spent months in solitary confinement before they even saw a corrupt to Washington DC judge.
So when they get through process, it doesn't count because they're all corrupt judges anyway.
In Washington, DC, they are all right, well, this.
Is a good time to take a break when we're going down the conspiracy theory wormhole, and we will be right back and then take up the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Lexington and Conquered, where I have to say, in my view, the colonists actually thought very much the way that Lucretia does. I was just accusing Lucretia of being conspiracy theorists. But I don't mean that in a bad way, because I would say that our revolutionary forefathers
were conspiracy theorists. So let me put it to you, guys. Let's not talk about Lexington and conquered specifically. But the question I always like to ask is why did we have a revolution at all? So if you go back and look, I think objectively at the situation of the colonists in the seventeen seventies seventeen sixties, they are already some of the freest, wealthiest, equal people on the face
of the planet. Now, they don't want to pay taxes, they don't like the exertion of parliamentary supremacy over their legislatures. But they had been living, you know what's called under a policy but non neglect, where they had basically been self governing for over one hundred years, and the one most important source of wealth in Old Europe, in fact, in the rest of the world was plentiful and cheap.
I e.
Land. In America, you had no aristocracy. You had I think, a society that was I would say, freer and wealthier and more equal than any other society in the history of mankind. Up to that point. So why have a revolution at all? Think about how great things would have been if America had stayed part of the British Empire. John, there's there's my question.
Indeed, you accuse us of being monarchist. John, Now the shoes on the other foot, I want to say, Lucretia, who wants to tell him? Is that meme goes? Look? John, I know that we spend way too much of our time. We conservatives are re expire monsters, especially looking at the second, first and second paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. But the answer to your question is, in all the specific indictments of the king, very little witch had to do
with taxation. It wasn't a tax revolt. It was a revolt against the erosion of self government. Right, All the indictments of really a parliament that said the king. But that was a clever rhetorical trick that they played. But the substance of it was, you know, we're being tyrannized step by step by step, and that has to stop. That's why I have a resolution. It was not going
to change without a forceful rebuke. And here, just to just to annoy Lucretius slightly, you know Edmund Burke sympathized with the grievances of the colonists, and for that he was nearly expelled from the House of Commons for expressing sympathy with our point of view.
Whatever you said that before, I'm unimpressed.
Take away, I mean the British. I mean undeniably the British made several errors and how to handle the colonies, errors, mistakes and mistakes of part. They were too harsh on the colonies. They didn't certainly have to send troops right until even after Lexington and conquered. There are you know, Americans trying to heal the breach? Why why did the revolution occur just because of parliamentary supremacy.
Of the Romans? Ever done for us? Argument from your John is that what we're getting the Romans.
Then into a serious conversation for a moment. Mind you. First of all, what it says in the Declaration of Independence that prudence indeed will dictate that government's long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. And all experience has shown that mankind is disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable to write the forms to which they are. They've become accustomed. Why because engaging in a revolution against the regime and power puts you back into
the state of nature. And what we know from Hobbs, your favorite John, and from Lacke, but from Hobbes, the state of nature life is solitary, poor, Nazi, British and short. Nobody wants to live there. Okay, but prudence dictates that, you know, you should think about this. But Jefferson goes on, and this is when a long chain of abuses evincing,
you know, basically absolute tyranny. Okay, you could quibble. I get that, you can quibble with whether or not in the long history of humankind what the colonists were experiencing was indeed absolute tyranny. You could quibble. And let me just point out not part of my soliloquy here, but the king owned all the land as long as they were colonists. But we'll leave that one aside for another day.
The other thing I want you to remind you of is Hamilton's admonition in Federalist Number one that it is up to the people of the American people to decide the important question whether societies and men are really capable or not of establishing good government based upon reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions upon accident, force, and whatever we do, he says, well, decide it for all of mankind.
Right.
There's two really important points there. One, you don't you shouldn't have a revolution every time you don't like something that happened. Prudence dictates whether or not you should exercise what is your natural right to revolution? And there are several elements to prudence, but one of them is you can can you affect this revolution? Can you bring about what Hamilton said we needed to bring about with this new constitution, which is a government based upon reflection and
choice that protects the rights of people, etc. Etc. That's why Lexington and conquered, and then the subsequent revolution. The Declaration of Independence makes sense because in fact, the American colonists were disciples of Locke, disciples of the notion of natural right, the disciples of the notion of social contract, disciples of the notion of the sovereignty belongs to the people.
Jefferson even argued that in the Summary address. But they decided, yes we can do it, Yes we can actually form this government based upon reflection and choice because of the unique circumstances of the American experience, exactly as you described them, John, they already had the habits of self government. They already had the habits of understanding the difference between liberty and
license and all those other things that we've seen. Sequent attempts to establish some kind of constitutional government fail miserably because they don't have those habits. So that was a
unique time. I don't know if I since it's Easter weekend, I might even go so far as to say that perhaps it was providential that at that moment, at that time, a people well versed in their rights in their own sovereignty were able capable of affecting a revolution and imposing a new government upon themselves, likely to affect their safety
and happiness. But perhaps I do believe that that maybe there was some providential good fortune blessing the Americas at that time, and continuing even despite all of our complaints to bless the United States today.
Linda's running for office.
Elect me with that, I you know, I mean, we don't have a live audience, but if there were, a stillness would fall over the room. At this point. That was really great Are you kidding?
I fell asleep. Oh so that's a perfect time, I think to take a break. We're nearing the end of the show. Will take one more commercial break before we hear from Lucretia about the Babylon be headlines. And then Steve, I'm told, has a new sign off for us, and we're back at the end of Lucretia's patriotic soliloquy, far better than anything that ever appeared in Shakespeare. I am sure we are now demanding that she conclude with Babylon b headliness.
There's so many you guys will just have to say, shut up, Lucretia and you're done. Okay, So first I'm going to go with all the ones we've talked about today, and that on the first one, Harvard confident it can harass it's Jewish students even without Trump's federal funding.
Yeah, I should laugh at that, it's true.
But okay, liberals warn enforcing immigration law is a slippery, slippery slope that may lead to enforcing other laws. That was kind of my point. You remember that it was a while ago, but okay. China retaliates against US tariffs by stopping payments to Congress I know, Steve, you some of these Steve, I saw you had in your substack. But I'm not sure everybody's reading your substecks, so forgive me if I'm repeating them. Okay, Trump summons Elon Musk
to Oval office to help them open a PDF. Sometimes I wish I had Elon Musk to help me with that too.
Uh.
You know, Trump reveals he took which Harry Potter house? Are you in quiz? And he's a gryffindor I heard him talk about.
I don't get it.
No, I haven't heard that one, but I'm sure some listeners know this.
So oh god, you guys, I know you saw the the Taylor Lawrence thing about. Uh, we didn't discuss it.
I don't know who that is.
Who's Taylor Laurence was washing a post.
She was this whacko at the Washington Post who they fired, I think, and they fired.
And she's the Luigi Mangon she's a moral Yeah, he's just awful.
It was just a hero, and right on and on and on.
So terrified Luigi MANGIONI files restraining order against Taylor Lawrence.
That makes some sense, right, yeah.
Concentrated excuse me, concentration camp prisoners concerned China being bullied by America. Right, okay, because it's Eastern.
Happy Easter, my friends. I hope all my.
Good Jewish friends had a lovely passover. Donkey entering Jerusalem, glad to be finally getting recognition he deserves. You gotta love those guys. I'm sorry, you just gotta love them.
You're sure, I'm done, Steve oh Well, you got anything for us, But let me preface it with always drink your whiskey, neat and Steve.
Well, courtesy of AI, I have a whole lot of song lyrics for three Whiskey Happy Hour, and here's the one I'm going to give you this week as an ending three Whiskey Happy Hour, past and present, twist and tower, toast to time, the fleeting power of the three Whiskey Happy Hour. Bye bye, everybody, see you next week.
Happy everyone, Bye.
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