We're just getting a couple of scratchy notes when you're especially emphatic or loud.
I promise not to be emphatic. This entire pod.
Not what your country can do for you and what you can do for your country.
Mister gorbitchaw tear down this wall.
It's the Ricochet Podcast, but Steve Hayward sitting in for James Lilac, joined by Charles C. W Cook and Rob Long, and we're going to kick around the news ahead of Christmas week.
Let's have ourselves a podcast.
They're a five hundred plus pages related to healthcare policy, which doesn't.
Have anything to do with keeping the government open.
There's a one hundred billion dollars of disaster relief in here, which is desperately needed, by the way, but should be its own standalone bill.
Ladies and gentlemen.
As you know I'm in the final weeks of my presidency. You don't have to clap for that.
You can if you want.
It's the Ricochet Podcast, Episode seven one. This is Steve Heyward substituting for the usual dulcet tones of James Lylyax, who's not with us today.
But I'm joined by Charles C.
W cook and some wandering stranger named Rob Long wandering past right, wandering mendicant, and so welcome, gentlemen.
We don't have a guest today.
It's just going to be us kicking around some holiday thoughts, going over some news of the day. But I do I think want to start by saying, Rob, you have just finished your first semester in seminary on your way of taking fully orders, and I'm interested in that. This is this venture, this quest of yours in general terms. But also I sort of remember my first semester in graduate school a long time ago now, and how much more intense it was than being an undergraduate.
So I don't know how's it gone. Are you done yet? Are you learning? Ara Maic? What are the highlights for us?
I have learned. Here's what I've learned. I've learned it's been a lesson of humility, right, which is good, right, because that's the sort of the especially an advent. He's good to remember that. And the humility comes from two things. One the humility of stepping away from politics for a while and then being humbled by the fact that I had to shell out one thousand dollars from a bet I made two years ago saying there's no way Trump's gonna win.
Was that with Anne Coulter?
No, I think Ann Culter actually, I think she actually agreed with me two years ago. And it is like constant cycles and is like always iterating. She's like a you know, kind of a web app. She's always getting better. I just thought it's just not gonna happen. And also just that I discovered that, you know, I'm I'm a man of a certain age, and at a certain point, your brain, the human brain, my brain anyway, cannot understand how to memorize biblical Greek. Oh, I just can't do it.
And I'm old enough to know I can't do it, old enough also to be mad about it, not at myself, but the idea that I'm supposed to because I because I can't do it. I mean, I just been a giant disaster for me. I kind of feel like, wait a minute, I have a book. Just give me a class where you teach me how to look this crap up. I'll look it up. That and Hebrew. Just give me cocktail party Greek and cocktail party Hebrew. And I'm sad.
There's always a book I'm well enough for every When people said to me when in math class, well, you're not always going to have a calculator, Well, no, I get I literally always have a calculator. There's always a I got this. There's an app for Biblical Greek is an app for Hebrew. I don't need to memorize anything. I can't memorize anyway. So that that is the that that has been very humbling. On the other hand, what I discovered is that it's really fun that that I
recommend it to people. If you've ever had this sort of sense that wouldn't it be great if my job today was to read do it?
Oh?
Anybody tell you you're too old, because you're not too old. You're too old probably to memorize Greek, but you're not too old to do a lot of other great things. So that's money.
Well, you know, I am. They're still saying that youth is wasted on the young.
I've I've well, I've long ago concluded that education is wasted on the young in many cases too are uh and uh, you know I well, so you're I'm guessing probably the oldest person in your graduate class.
Excuse me, back off, buddy, I am one of them.
Okay, but uh, I don't know.
I mean, I think that my observation as an undergraduate, and I had a lot of you know, older Vietnam war vets who had come back to college, they were always that this is in the seventies. They were always the most interesting people in class, always the best at drawing things out of both the faculty and us fellow students who were just right out of high school and stupid. Uh and and and and then you know, now that I'm a classroom teacher again myself, I observe the same thing.
The older students are always the ones who have it together more. Just a little bit of real world experience makes a ton of difference in educate facial venture. One quick question then I'll see if Charlie has any theological increase for you.
I'm available Charlie to be your spiritual guide.
Is there any one particular aspect of this is too broad, I wish I could do more specific, rob But is there any one particular thing that has caught your attention? You weren't anticipating or that's a surprise.
Studies, you're just the idea of being a student.
No, in the studies such a matter.
As a Christian, there's just a tendency. You know, obviously it's a you know, come you can get, you come to it in good faith. But there's a tendency to read the Hebrew Bible as like a preview of coming attractions. Ah, right, are they okay? This is a spoiler alert. It's a giant drum roll. And anytime I'm confused or I am reacting in a weird way to something in the Hebrew Bible, I can say, well, you know, here's the problem. You all need Jesus, that's the problem, and he's on his way.
And I think that's a that's a mistake. And I you know, I luckily I have two professors in Old Testament ex Jesus, who are you know, fairly devout Christians. One is the fact of practicing minister. And I'm gonna say this can sound horrible and racist in one of those Korean churches that I just can never keep straight right, And they've both been really great about never doing that. And it's amazing when you never do that, and you just that's the thing that's a tendency you always fight
how much the whole thing kind of explodes this. There's a really there's a reason. I know, I'm going on and on and on. Although it's ad event, there is no reason in Western political social thought that can explain the explain the persistence of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament and their persistence. There is no reason for it.
There should be no Jews in the world if we believe in the patterns of history crushed by empires to the Egyptian Empire and the Syrian Empire and the Babylonian Fire, and the Persian Empire, then the Greeks and then the Romans. And nobody's going to worship Raw or Jupiter or Zeus or Zoraster or anybody like that. Well, yeah, very few. And there's how come there's going to be a reason. And I think the reason is, you know, that's why the Hebrew Bibles so fascinating that the reasons.
Well, funny story for you on that, Rob.
I remember remarking some years ago now that the Florida two thousand election was so close that any group could claim to have been the swing vote that put Bush over the top, Theoroastrian vote. And the young lady I was telling us to says well, actually I'm sorrow Astrian.
It turned out I met the only she was from that part of it.
Rod and themmigrants, who is now now a federal judge by the way, appointed by President Trump.
Will just add that little detail for the fun of it.
Charlie, do you have any theological curiosity you want to draw out of Rob?
Yeah, you got to win back the fire worshiping. Wow.
If he's going to find the grayil for us or something.
Well, the first thing I would say is I would strongly advise Perry against using the pull quote from your last there should be no Jews in the world. You paused after you said it, and I thought, O, where's this one go?
Yeah.
I get accused of two positions on religion that I don't hold. It's a strange existence. One is I'm reflexively accused of being an evangelical because I'm pro life. The other is that I'm accused of hating religion or being annoyed by it or opposed to it in some way, which just isn't true. I just don't have it. I'm a very literal atheist. I'm married to it about Catholic
My children are being raised Catholic. I like religion. I wish I had it, but I don't, and I'm not going to say I do until I do, out of respect for myself and others. I was raised culturally Christian. I'm pleased about that. I had a guy on my podcast, Catholic Priest, and we talked about the existence of God a few months ago. It was very good. And someone said to me recently, you know there was a good conversation because you didn't scoff, And I said, well, I
didn't feel tempted to scoff. I'd have to scoff at my own wife. I think that'd be bizarre, and most of my colleagues. So I don't know if I have questions, but I'm certainly interested. And also, you can't escape, and I don't use that word to imply that I want to. You can't escape the poll of this time of year, even if you don't believe in the metaphysical parts of it.
If you were raised with it, which I was, and the schools I went to were Christian and the culture was Christian, you just can't escape the power of it. So I just wanted to throw that in there, because even though I don't believe that it is Troo, at least not yet. My friends keep telling me, Ah.
The.
Power of the story is extraordinary.
Well, I'll just two quick observations and then we'll press on to some of the current headlines. One is, Charlie, you mentioned that people assume you must be a religious fanatic because your pro life. You know someone who is strongly pro life, although it didn't seem to come up that often in discussions, was Christopher Hitchins. It was not just an atheist, but very hostile to organized or even disorganized religion.
Right, he was very strongly. He's not the only one, I believe.
The late nat Hentoff was also pro life. Yeah so, and by the way, they both said it on logical grounds.
Human life has to begin.
Somewhere, well the most logical places, added in your conception, okay. And Hitchins was blunt about that whatever came up, as he was on all things.
Second, you know, I think I'm with you on you know, organized religion.
Maybe he's an oxymoron, maybe not, But I do sometimes like to draw people's attention to something. C. S. Lewis wrote in his book Surprised by Joe, which tells about him becoming a Christian, and in there he really does confess that, gosh, I really don't like organized religion. I don't often like going to church. I find it sort of stuffy and clunky. And so even someone as pious and metaphysically inclined as Lewis has some of your disposition about that.
So you're not so much aboutwire. I'll just I don't know.
I just can I make a pastoral note, Charlie, Sure, I go to church because of something that I need, not something that I have, So you don't have to have it to go.
What do you mean by that?
I mean I feel like that there's something there that I need, and I probably need it more than once a week, and that's why I go. I don't go as a There's a whole there's an argument now, sort of a big debate, and I'm sure we don't have to get into this theological debate here, because there's like as important politics to talk about. There's a department of
the Second Day of the Interior or whatever. But the big debate is who gets to who gets to receive the Eucharist at a church, And the traditional word is you have to be baptized and confirmed or baptizing coff in some way, so you'd have to be not so that church, but sort of very conservative. And I'm cerifically talking about the American Episcopal Church, Anglican slice. I don't
really know any other denomination. The argument as well, okay, well if you don't have to be if you haven't been confirmed, maybe at least you have to have been baptized. And they say the phrase they use is font to table baptism, font to the altered table, to the Eucharist table.
That's the direction you're supposed to go in. And there's a bunch of other like Lucy Goosey, progressive weirdos like me, who think no anybody can come and receive because it's not our feast, it's not our table, it's not our invitation. We're just the caterers, and the invitation doesn't come from us, and the person the invitation comes from famously had an
open door policy. So sometimes you go, and sometimes I go, and I and I feel absolutely nothing, and I simply sit there in the pew and I organize my week. And sometimes I go and I think, why am I here? I had a bunch of reading to do, and I'm hired, I'm going to homegoing to take a nap, or I'm hungry or whatever. I wish I had had that third glass of wine last night. And sometimes I go and I get close to experiencing what I'm supposed to experience
or what is what is? What is what I've been invited there to experience, whether I've been there or not. So you know, that's why I go. I go for something. I don't go as an expression of faith. I go because I need it. So that's a different way to look at it. Just that way be my pastoral note to you.
But doesn't it you know, well, I do, and so I go with my wife and kids. And then there are parts of it that are not canonical, if you will, but nevertheless powerful. For example, the music I grow up that too, So that's partly a matter of reminiscence. The thing that really matters to me is whether or not I believe the claim at the heart of it, And you mentioned C. S. Lewis. He is pretty big on that.
So I can do what you just described, although I don't get the experience that you described unless I'm confusing it for music sometimes I suppose. But it matters to me that I don't believe the core claim that it's being made in the sermon or in the texts. Does it matter too much? Do you think? Do you think I'm over thinking?
I think a lot of people feel that way. I think that's that's legitimate. I mean these are hard things to believe, right, I mean it's filled with miracles and weird events, right, so yeah, that should be very hardly. I don't I'm not. I don't think that's a problem. I just want to I want you to. I went to Israel a little while ago, a couple of years ago,
before before October seventh, but I went. It was in Jerusalem, and I spent the first few days doing this kind of thing where I looked around and I was like, okay, well I had a guide and the guide was like, okay, here around here is probably where this or that happened. And so I spent at least three of the days that I was there just doing this kind of like CSI Jesus, right, there any evidence? You're like, of course, there's no evidence, right, because it's like what happened twenty
feet below whatever? You know, it happened. You know, Jerusalem has been destroyed and rebuilt many times. And then I stopped doing that, and I said, Okay, what if I just didn't worry about that part? And what is the faith that this what is this faith actually asking me to do? And I think we are stuck sometimes in the idea that the faith is asking us to believe a set of principles. We have a nice in Creed, we have apostles Creed. It's interesting with nice in Creed.
It lists the very very specific aspects of Christ's birth, the very specific aspects of his death, the very specific aspects of Chris Christology, which people been fighting over for years. It doesn't really say anything about the stuff he did or said or taught. It's like you're getting a sandwich with just the pieces of bread and no meat inside.
And I think it's kind of easy, actually not easy, but it's easier to believe or convince yourself, or convince others, or believe even truly believe in all of those events. It's much easier to do that than it is to actually live the way he told you to live. Yeah, which is one of the reasons why we well, we focused on them.
Well, there's a reason that's called faith.
Charlie and Rob and I some other time, you and I can argue about salvation by grace alone or other aspects of it.
And for the listeners who haven't chased away, who came to.
We're just don't you know, hot.
Well, I'm going to extend the metaphor divine intervention because maybe the House Republicans could use some divine intervention right now, having completely flobbed the continuing resolution to keep the government open.
And I mean there's a whole lot to be said about this.
The usual people in the chattering classes are aghast that Elon Musk and Twitter may have whipped up the mob to prevent the House from passing a resolution. Other people in the grassroots are pointing to a lot of a technical term is crap that was in the bill.
We could list some and you know, Charlie may one list a few of these.
I don't know what I make about this, Charlie, I'm sure you're following this, probably more closely than I am.
I have a big problem with the tactic that we're now seeing, which is to wait until the end of the year, throw everything into one bill against the deadline, then focus in on one part of it that you think is the most politically popular and claim that those who don't want to pass the bill as is are opposed to that. They do this every time, they push it and push it and push it, and then they come up with this behemoth of a bill, one section
of which is the Saving Kittens Act. And then you say, I don't think we should do this because of all of the other things that are in the bill, and they say Representative Cook opposes the Saving Kittens Act or is blocking the Saving Kittens Act. And now they've added on to this blame for Elon Musk. Now it's Donald
Trump's billionaire friends are blocking the Saving Kittens Act. Well, you know, Congress could right now, literally right now, on Thursday, December nineteenth, take that part of the bill, bring it to the floor, and vote on it. The argument here is that there are portions of this continuing Resolution that have overwhelming bipartisan support that would never be fit lebusted. They wouldn't even need a full chamber in either part of the legislature.
So do it.
If it is imperative that we have disaster Aid, which is this year's Saving Kittens Act. I think there's a lot of pork in there, and a lot of problems by the way that it's been structured. But if that is imperative right now for North Carolina, for Florida, for elsewhere, go do it. Just pull it out, do it, and then keep arguing about the rest of the stuff. But of course they don't want to do it. Now. You are going to have some degree of that in any
democratic system because people horse trade and they should. You can't have politics without it. I would love it if every single part of every bill were voted on separately, so we could see who voted for what. But you're never going to get that. You are going to get quote pro quote, but this there has to be some space right between every part of every bill being voted on independently and yes or no at the end of the year. So I really object to this tactic, and
I think it is a good thing. Irrespective of the motivations or whether or not there's a plan. I think it is a good thing. That's someone has finally said no, just to make the argument against it. Even if we end up with a bill that looks very much like this continuing resolution and then we have to have the same fight next year.
Yeah, yeah, oh gosh.
I could go on all day about the incompetence of this whole scene.
The fact that it doesn't follow the law, which.
Is now almost fifty years old, about how Congress is supposed to pass the budgets every year. And then second, I mean, but even if you're saying, oh gosh, we've once again fritted away an entire year and we have to do a continuing resolution to keep the government going, it seems to me that if you had any wit about you, you would pass a budget resolution that reduced spending by even a small amount.
Spread the pain around. Second, I don't understand why.
Somebody is an alert to all the things being snuck into this bill so or another one.
I take some hostages.
What I've said was is, look, if I was a member of the House and unhappy about things, you can.
Have my vote.
If you gave me five budget cuts, cut funding the Planned parenthood, cut funding, the NPR cut the State Department grants to leftist NGOs around the world that are essentially subsidies for left wing activism.
It wouldn't amount to much money.
But you take it this time, then you go and do it again the next time, and that would be some progress. Oh there's also some definitional changes. Some people have flagged this on Twitter, where the language in the bill says, for like the appropriation for the Justice Department, They're want to change the definition of defending.
To justice involved individuals.
It's always, you know, woke euphemistically involved individuals.
I mean, how in the world, how do Republicans run the House? Let this slip through. No one's reading this, no one's paying attention.
I have theories about why the capacities to do that, even mentally have an atrophy to almost nothing.
But now I'm with you, Charlie. I'm delighted they're turning it down.
And by the way, last point, government shutdown we always hear well as we know, if you pay attention, social Security checks still go out, Care and Medicaid still get paid. The military is still on watch and getting paid. Oh, by the way, is your local police department still patrolling the streets? How about your local public schools? Is Governor
Newsom sadly still on the job. In California, we have something like thirty thousand governmental units in this country, and only one is partially interrupting its business for a couple of weeks. This is Washington media theater is what's going on. And you know, I think most people wouldn't notice. I don't think maybe in some small ways you know the mails,
but even the mail gets delivered. So this whole government shutdown to what's the end of the world has become a real farce, and I can't believe we haven't figured that out by now.
Well, I think that's the feature of it, right. I mean, if I just have cut out the date of the newspaper and just started reading articles about the eminent government shutdown and the budget sealing debate, you would know what year we were in. You would know you were in twenty twenty four. I think that we were in nineteen ninety five for that matter, because we had this conversation nineteen ninety five. This is actually the way it gets done, and it's the worst way possible, and we sort of
can't bestir ourselves to fix it. I mean, this is what you do when you put everything off the last minute. You then can't be blamed for the fact that it's all crap, because of course it's crap. We did it in forty eight hours before we all want for Christmas. The downside of a government shutdown is the shutdown. The downside is what it turned when they eventually turn it back on. And when they turn it back on, they pay everybody in the arrears. Everybody gets paid and they
get paid even more. It costs more to shut the government down. That's the problem. The other problem, I think is that we don't we don't have a real sense of what it is we want this federal government to do. And it was much easier when we thought, here's what we want them to do. We want them to make sure the Soviets know we're going to obliterate the Soviet Union if they try to obliterate the United States. That was the goal. And if without that then we're kind
of a drift. And so I'm always I'm always surprised when I read the America First Crowd, which is, by the way, a philosophy that I find very compelling a lot of ways, but also arguing to make the military bigger. It's like, well, wait a minute, we're not going to have those wars, so we're not going to fight them. We let other people fight them. We should just be protecting our borders. We it's a much smaller we need
a much smaller military. We're going to do that. So there's all sorts of big decisions we just don't want to make, notwithstanding the fact that it still is about entitlements, it's still about Medicare and social security, and it's not it's not going to change until we have a big I mean it may it may end up that we all look at each other and say, you know, that president that we didn't really like very much that got us into a stupid war in Iraq, George W. Bush
turns out he was right about social security, and we pass social Security reform when we had a chance, we would be in a much different fiscal place than we are now.
So can I give you the devil's advocate on that? Because I agree with you? So I just want to steal man this. I I agree with you. If you think about where we would be now if social security had been privatized, if you look at the gains of the stock market over the last twenty years, it would have fixed the problem. Here's the one worry that I have with the counterfacture two thousand and eight. We know this now, yeah, but in two thousand and eight, when
all of the markets crashed. Bush would have gone from approval eighteen twenty eight percent to two. The Republicans would have been wiped out in greater numbers than they were, and the Democrats would have renationalized Social security. I just can't see any other outcome. They would have looked at it and said, not only do we have all the problems that we had in two thousand and five, which is when they would have changed this, we're now in the hole. The outlook for it is impossible. That's the
problem I've got. I just don't think it can sustain. Maybe now it could because you'd have had twenty years agains back COVID. It would have been another one you remember that day in the stock market where it went Yeah.
But I mean there's there are ways. There were solutions to that. They may may may may have been a danger zone in the early days of it. But the idea, what look, if you if you could, if you can convince the lenders, all the lenders, not just worldwide but in markets every day, that in thirty years, in forty years, this won't be a problem. You will feel the effects today in the economy. Positive effects. We're talking about fifteen thirty year notes section. So there's there are ways around it.
The problem is you just you you. Nobody really wants to do it because everybody likes big government. Even people who say they don't like big government, they just don't like your big government. They like their big government. Now you are I remember that great. I saw what once. This is a million billion years ago. I was driving through a town, a small town in California and Central Valley,
and it was a tea party rally. This is before the tea parties became sort of a basically a political grip based in Washington, when it was still a bunch of old people marching around with signs, and one of the signs said say no to socialism, hands off my.
Medicare medicare right.
Okay, well I'm not sure these are all right.
I'm going to defend that too. Yeah, I'm serious.
No, I get agree.
Yeah, I agree that there is a complete paradox in the way a lot of people think about big government. I agree that we have big government because we want it. I agree that nobody wants to fix it. It hasn't gone a miss on me that the Republican who has won the last two times has explicitly run against fixing entitlements, so totally agree. Here's why I'll defend that sign. The Obamacare debate was in full flow. Obamacare took money out
of Medicare, which annoyed people. The Democratic Party, since Social Security was passed and then thirty years later Medicare was passed, has told people erroneously and dishonestly that it is just an insurance program. There was actually Supreme Court case about this where Social Security was taken to the Supreme Court and the government had to admit that it was not in fact an insurance program, that it was a welfare program.
The reason that I have some sympathy for the person who held up that sign that thought some of the mockery was unfair, was that that person has been told over and over and over and over again that they have paid in to an insurance program for their retirement fund and for their retirement healthcare, that it's their money that they're not getting out anything they didn't put in, and that it's unreasonable for people to take it away,
and they believed it. What trolled me about that incident was that those people who have been told this at that point for seventy eighty ninety years then turned around to the Democrats who were trying to change this with Obamacare, and said, hands off my Medicare. I paid into it's an insurance program. And the Democrats started mocking them for it.
Right.
I just thought that was sort of deeply unfair. Of course it is silly, but for the Democrats, not Europe, for the Democrats to do what they did when they saw that science, I just thought it was.
Like, come on, well, the important thing is I think the case you're referring to charity, if I remember, right, is hel Ring v.
Davis from a long time ago. And what it means is.
You know, we talk about social security, medicare as, entitlements.
That case means it's not an entitlement.
Strictly speaking, it can be taken away from you by the legislature.
You don't own anything now.
I think an additional difficulty is a lawful lot of people, probably a majority of Americans, are risk averse. If you tell them we will guarantee you, quote unquote guarantee you two thousand dollars a month, or we can have this private account system where you have a seventy five percent chance of having thirty five hundred dollars a month, and you retire a lot of people are going to opt for the first one because it's certain and the other one has And then add in, as Rob points out,
a couple of crashes. Now, I'm a contrarian. Every time the market tanks like I did this week. Not so much this week, but the supervious ones, I get greedy and I buy like crazy, handover fists and yes, but see, you know, if you're contrarian thinker about these things, you do very well on markets like that you bought the day, if you bought an October twenty, nineteen eighty seven, you
did really, really well. And you know, Okay, I'm not going to brag about my I mean, I'm not Warren Buffett, but I've done very well by being You got.
An nice house in the you got an nice house on the coast.
I knew.
I'm looking out the ocean right now out my window. So there's that problem. And I do think that even if you have some shock absorbers, a robort of suggest that you could solve this problem by sort of reinsurance. In a certain way of it, I still think the mass psychology of a crash and the uncertainty would make it politically fraught to try and maintain it.
I would see the government would regulate it today.
I would also say that probably our and I think, Charlie, that's a very good distinction, because I think even our language of calling them entitlements is wrong, right, Because there's a retirement savings, old age savings, rainy day fund, which is sort of what SO security is in general. It's a rainy day fund for some people. It's got disability insurance associated with it, it has early retirement, has like you know, dependent and orphan widow stuff, and it also has retirement
fund all wrapped up. And that's a financial instrument essentially, or more than one about three different financial insurance. And then there's health Insurancehreich is Medicare, which is not a financial instrument by any means, and isn't really insurance in any meaningful way. It is simply an account with which we as a culture and a country, fund each other's
health in some ways. And we often, and this always bugs be when people say things that, well, you know, Americans spend x percent of this on that I they shouldn't spend that much, Like, well, what on earth you're spending your money on. If you're not spending your money on your health, actually, what are you spending it on? Well, we don't have the same outcomes. We have worse outcomes than they do. That's because we do more, and maybe
we do too much. Maybe people are going to the doctor too often, or maybe they're taking antibe autist when they shouldn't, and that may be another problem. But we actually have a very very very aggressive and innovative and
incredibly flexible health system in this country. And if you'd said ten years ago that I would be able to go on my zoom and go to a doctor and get my you know toe looked at, and get a prescription at the and the CBS would down there around the corner would send me a push alert telling me that the prescriptions ready for me and within ten minutes. That's an amazing thing. You don't have that in any
other country. And so I always think of like, well, maybe we're not spending enough on help, Maybe we don't need to keep the cost of health insurance down. What we what are you going to spend it on? I can spend it on that.
One reason that we spend so much is that Americans simply won't put up with the outcomes that you get in say, Britain. My parents are experiencing this at the moment. My dad had a knee operation recently before they had a hip replacement. Get to go private because the hip replacement would have taken three and a half years. Americans
won't accept that. And so both within the government spending and the private spending, we don't have the rationing that we have in other systems, which means we spend more money. We're also a lot richer, and as you say, when you're rich, you spend money on healthcare, because why wouldn't you.
Yeah, No, I think that's absolutely true. But I think also just in terms of how we just the accounting for outcomes, you don't have a bad outcome for hip replacement, you didn't yet, and you don't have a bad outcome for a procedure that you will get somewhere else. So in France you don't have these bad outcomes because they don't. You don't get it. Same thing in Britain or in Canada. You're in line. You don't get it.
When you come to America, you're really sick, Yeah, come to America.
Yeah, and you get and you may and that outcome mean. Look, look, spending more on health, health insurance or health care doesn't mean that you're not going to die of a disease. It just means that we're going to probably spend a whole lot of money making sure that trying to make sure that doesn't happen. Well, and that's gonna mean, that's gonna that's going to mean your outcomes aren't as good.
But but I still say, like, I hate it when people say, well, we should be spent we should not be spending as much as we spend on healthcare, and I don't know, well, what else are you going to spend it on.
Well, we might be able to spend it better, But that's uh, well, I'd be two things here. At least one is I thought Obamacare fixed all this right, and this has been conspicuously missing, uh amst for gun control out of this terrible episode of assassinating the head of United Healthcare. And then the second one is you still hear people like aoc I guess saying we ought to have Britain's National Health service here. But Charlie, my understanding is I mean you and I know and people are
informed know that it's dreadful service. But I understand it's widely unpopular in Britain right now. People are mad about it. It's a huge political issue for whatever parties in government.
Yeah. Well, a couple of things on the health service. First off, the British have a very odd relationship with the National Health Service, which is that they hate it, but also it's a national treasure.
And these two things very British response. By the way.
Yeah, so if you're an American then you criticize it, they will immediately get their backs up and say no, it's the end of the world. But between themselves they will accept that it's not good. The American left's love for the British National Health Service is and I think many Americans don't understand this. It is extreme even in world terms, because the National Health Service is usual within Europe in that it is a government organization that is
run directly by the government. Every single hospital is owned by the government or the doctors and nurses work for the government. It is quite literally a nationalized health care system. Both the funding and the provision are the government. That's not how most systems, even those with single pair work. France does not work like that. France has a system of private health insurance and private hospitals and doctors and so forth that is mostly, although not all, funded by
the government. The same is true of Germany. The same is true in most prosperous countries in the East. The British model was contrived in nineteen forty eight, and I will try not to go on here, but I think this matters when the Labor Party that had won after World War Two had a huge mandate and mistook the public's desire for much more equality economically for a desire for nationalization. If you look back at the election of nineteen forty five, it is true that people wanted a
national health service. It's no point pretending otherwise. What they mostly wanted was two million new houses built because we've just been bombed to Smithy, inspy the Nazis. That was the main thing that got that government elected. But the national health service was popular. But the popular part was the payment. People said, I don't want to go broke if I get sick, I don't want to pay to go to the doctor. I don't want to pay if my children need an operation. That was the principle that
people liked. No one cared how it was done. They didn't say I need the government to run all of this. But because the Labor Party of nineteen forty five was extremely left wing, was quasi Marxist patriotic. That was a good thing about that party, patriotic, but quasi Marxist. It said, we have a mandate to nationalize everything. And so when Winiston Churchill comes back in nineteen fifty fifty one, the
Conservatives reprivatize quite a lot of industry. They just can't do it with the National Health Service for a couple of reasons. First off, the footprint of the NHS in the fifties was actually quite small, in that it really was covering doctor's appointments and glasses and that sort of thing. Second, by that point you had a whole bunch of infrastructure that had been placed into the government, that had its
own interest groups, and it was very, very difficult. But I just wanted to point out that when AOC says this, what I always think is, no, you want France's system, that's what you want. You don't want Britain system where the government literally runs everything, or at least I assume not.
Well, I mean and we have we do have templates for this. I mean, not that we want to recreate this, but the government issues food stamps. They didn't think go out and yea farms. They didn't go into the food making business. I said, here, use these little stamps and go you buy food. You can go to supermarket. They didn't open a supermarket. There's ways to do this. And I just kind of my general point on about healthcare, just separated from retirement and other financial instruments, is that
what do you spend it on. I think it's great that rich people are spending a lot of money on healthcare. It's fantastic. This is good. The innovation trickles down, everybody makes it cheaper. That's good. First the first adopters always make it cheaper for everybody else. We should encourage that. But what does it matter to us that A that a that A that a hospital. I mean, it doesn't matter to me at all. I mean, I think this
is something that we should be encouraging. And I don't think the expenditure on health insurance or health care is by defect, by definition, something that we need to stop.
So you know, Charlie, I'm going to file away Rob's argument here, which I understand, but I think it could also be misinterpreted along with his.
Remark on Jews earlier here today. Charlie, Right, but look, this is you know.
Now for the for the for the listeners that we didn't lose with theology and now haven't lost with health care.
Yes, we're hitting all the hits today.
Look the other I mean this is all absurd, not the theology part, but the other thing that happened this week that I think a lot of people might have missed because it went by really fast. It was Kirsten Gillibrand, the Senator from New York, demanding that President Biden direct the Archivist of the United States to enroll the Equal
Rights Amendment, defeated forty years ago by the States. But for this quirky reasons, demand of the archimist enroll the Equal Rights Amendment in the Constitution and deem it ratified. And this is a backdoor way of trying to revive Roe versus way without having to pass it through Congress or a constitutional amendment. And the Archimist, to her credits a woman now said.
We can't do that. Sorry.
The law, this is very clear legal opinions are very clear, and we're not going to do that. Charlie, I know you've been following this and related matters. Do you want to add to that minoritive which is very brief and whatever GLOSSI want, because I have a few of my own.
But well, you say it's illegal. That's why the archivist said no, this is yet another attempt to circumvent the Constitution. The era is in a strange way that as well, because if she say the aim of it is to resuscitate Roh, it always has been, which is why Ruth Bedagins both liked it so much. She thought that if you could get the ra in they even though it doesn't explicitly mention abortion, then the court could say, while we have this equal right to memdment, men and women
have to be equal. Women can't be like men unless they have abortions. Therefore, but this, irrespective of whether or not that would happen, is just an attempt to circumvent the rules. And the original rules for the ratification process were that the ratification had to succeed by nineteen seventy nine or nineteen eighty two, depending on which version of the rules you pick up. But either way, I mean, the nearest one is forty two years ago. Then it died.
If it wasn't done by then, it died. And it's just a fact that not enough states ratified it. In fact, since then, although others have ratified it outside of the timeframe, other states have rescinded their ratification. The thing that I find the most instructive about this is that no one in nineteen eighty three said, aha, we can keep going.
It was universally understood by the advocates of the era, by the opponents of the era, by the Senate, by the States, by neutral observers, by everyone that this was dead. So what this is now is law fair. But this time the Constitution is the victim.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's another lesson to me that when the progressives want something, they'll get it by any means necessary.
But by the way, I mean, I was surprised.
I didn't see people coming on as there seems a four on their logic that the ERA would revive abortion because we now know that men can have babies, right right, The bi deministration now refers to birthing persons, and so it seems to me that the ERA would be no bar to prohibiting abortion since it applied to all fifty seven genders equally.
Okay, I mean we laugh at this, but this is what the left also thinks at the same time.
Right, So, yeah, but that went out of the window and row was overturned. Do you remember the day before Row is overturned, men could have babies. The day after Row is overturn, if men could get pregnant. The day before Row is overturn, men and women are interchangeable. Everyone is on some fluid spectrum. The day after over you, right, this is an attack on women which we can now conveniently define.
Yeah. Suddenly, well that's why. Yeah, I think that always happens after these watershed political events. Suddenly suddenly everything's recalibrated, And it sounds a lot like the argument that we were making all along, I say saying this before that. If you ever want to know what's really happening in America, just read the newspaper two weeks after a Republican has been elected, because that's when they print the news.
Of that I used to write in my head. The New York Times news reports, the Associated Press news reports about inflation. If the president were a Republican because you could see them in front of your eyes. Literally. You know, Manny Hernandez is a construction worker in the Bronx. All he wanted is to live the American dream, but inflation has been killing his family. I can't afford conflicts, many said, I am so angry. But they didn't run it.
They didn't run it.
Instead, they pretended it wasn't happening.
Yeah, but can you imagine it? Am I jumping the
gun step? Just today in the Wall Street Journal there is this riveting and i'm an astonishing article about everything that you knew already, which was that Joe Biden was an adult, out of it president, surrounded by a bunch of sort of alice guards who kept his own cabinet from calling him directly, who reshaped and rescheduled crucial national security meetings during a time in which there are there's a there's a war with half a million casualties raging in Europe and a war with I don't know how
many thousand casualties raging in the Middle East. And some days he is a bad day for him. Can we reschedule to tomorrow?
Yeah?
And it's something that we all knew was happening, and they and they probably knew was happening, and they just didn't want to print it. And it seems to be no sense of the lack of the lack of surprise in the part of most Americans.
Well, can I add rob that the I mean, the.
Maybe the most startling thing of that story was the clear implication. It's worded very softly, but the lead of that story in the opening made clear that the problem of Biden was a parent of the people around him during the twenty twenty campaign. This didn't start in twenty twenty two. And then one of the telling details was I forget the name of the House Democrat, but it was the chair of the Foreign Relations or Intelligence going to me, and he said, I tried to call the president.
This is before the bug out in Afghanistan. I tried to call to express my concerns about what they were saying they thought was going to happen, and why I thought there were things they weren't thinking about. He said he could not get through to Biden. They wouldn't let him talk to the president. And he said, I've always was able to talk to Obama, was easy to get a hold of him.
I can talk to.
The House.
Yeah, now is this has ought to be a scandal for the media.
By the way, we're now being told that the Politi factory, the lie of the year is Trump and uh uh and Jade Vance saying dogs and cats are getting eaten in Springfield, Ohio. Okay, that was sort of a ridiculous exaggeration, I suppose, But it seems to me the lie of the year is the media covering up what they had to have known was true about Biden and the White House. And this is my hypothesis. I want to spring on Charlie see what he thinks. I actually think a sycophantic
media is the worst enemy of the Democratic Party. They want to blame Biden for sticking around too.
Long and not getting out of the way. But if the.
Media had done its job and reported on this, Biden would have dropped out a year sooner than he did, and they would have been a whole, whole different circumstance. And oh all that had one other thing. Chris Silizza, formerly of CNN and The Washington Post. Today he posted on x an apology just one sentence. As a journalist, I should have pushed harder on the very real questions about Joe Biden's physical and mental health as president.
Well, I would like to.
Ask you why didn't you Is it because you're a coward or an idiolog which.
Isn't, because the implicit question from that administration would have been to any reporter who asked that question who wasn't already aligned with a conservative outlet have been like, hey, whose side are you on?
Right?
Yeah, well it was that.
It wasn't even yeah, but Charlie I pitched a question to you and then rambled on pitched to Rob But you know, is it the media the Democrats worst enemy?
And what are they going to figure that out? Probably never?
I think it is, and it isn't. There's clearly a problem for the Democrats here in that they lost the last election in part because of the media. As you say, their ability to debate the Constitution as atrophied because of the media. Conservatives got busy building the Federalist Society, and the Democrats in the media just talked about consequences and outcomes,
and they're now absolutely outmatched where it matters. And I think much of the failure of the Biden administration was attributable to the media in that the press absolutely loved that American rescue plan so called. We've spent two trillion dollars and it led to the worst inflation in forty
years and Biden never recovered from it. Where I think the media is not good for conservatives or not bad for Democrats is that on the average issue, I think it's probably responsible for three to five points to the left. Timothy gross Close has written about this.
Yes, yes, yeah, his work is terrific.
Yes, it is very good. And Ricochet member Timothy Grok was a contributor for a long time.
Oh, it was interesting. Well, his book on this is fantastic. I think, for example, about the first presidential debate where Trump ended up arguing not only against Kamena Harris but the media. Now you could say what he won, he did. But because the press behaves like that, it makes it quite difficult to make progress on issues in a way that I wish were not the case. All issue debates seem to get corrupt and waylaid by a press that is invested in helping the Democrats or the progressive side
of it. And if the point of politics is to advance issues and policies and not to win elections, that's got to matter. Yes, when you put people in the sanctity of the voting booth, they will say, screw it, I'm voting for who I want to. But does that happen in quite the same way at work? Does it happen in quite the same way in social situations? If people are constantly being told only widows, think that that's a minority position. You're insert ist here. I worry that
the press corrupts our society in that sense. So I'm a half yes, I suppose yeah.
And I agree with all that.
And I'm actually been meaning to reach out to Tim Grows close to see if he's updated his estimates of these matters in light of the way the media is fragmented in the rise of social media and Twitter and.
Muscle and so forth, And maybe you should do that sometime.
I made okay, last subject, since we have Rob here, a couple of things from the Hollywood world. And though even though you may not be following it day to day, you know you'll have obviously some insights on this one a quick story, and then the two news items. It's a couple or three years ago now. I was talking to a young screenwriter. I know a closet conservative in Hollywood. It's actually written for National Review Online a couple times under a pseudonym, And he said, it's a little like
you hear about New York Times editors. Everybody in Hollywood, all the suits are terrified of the young Wolkesters they've hired. But everybody really wants to get back to writing stories with pretty women in short skirts and boy meets girl because that's what people want. And I know this guy has sold it, you know, a few scripts shows here and there. But then the news items out in the last few days is that Disney apparently has a disaster on its handles to the remake of Snow White, and
it have been extensive reshoots. The budget has belonged to two hundred and fifty million dollars. And then on top of that, I don't know if you saw this, but Justine Bateman, you know everyone remembers from Family Ties in the eighties, has come out as a very ferocious anti Wolkester. I'm saying, maybe she's going to be our first woman
president elected some day. I don't know, but I don't do you get the sense that that Hollywood, like some other precincts are starting to shake off their torpoor and say, boy, we really made a mistake with all the wokeism.
What do you hear? What do you think? What are your instincts on this?
Well?
I mean there's two ways to look to some two separate tracks for Hollywood, right There's there's their own HR problem, yeah, and then there's the content problem and the content and they were linked in this case. But I think the tide is turning slightly, mostly because there are fewer people working at these studios. They've had massive layoffs they're going
to continue to have. I mean, twenty twenty four was actually not as bad as twenty twenty three, but twenty twenty five I think it's going to be going to be worse than twenty twenty three. And that is actually a good thing. I mean, I hate to be a total free market conservative or a libertarian, but the truth is that Hollywood is never better than when it's broke. When it's broke and against the wall and falling apart, which it does to itself about every thirty forty fifty years.
For the forty years, at least it gets good. It figures it out, figures out what the problem is. And usually what it figures out is, oh, oh oh right, right, I forgot people like movies where the bad guys are clear and they get taken care of and then the people the romance gets together and I can project myself onto one of those two people on screen. I'm either carry Grant or I'm you know, even Recaint. And that's right.
When they figure that out, you know, they still you know, what's that the regions say is like, do not attempt to grow a brain. This is Hollywood. You don't need a roadmap. This is what just a simple movie, like a simple show. We need a beginning, middle, and the end. And the end's got to be something somewhat satisfying and so people like and and it'll get back to that.
What needs to happen is what's kind of happening. What needs to happen in Wall Street is that Wall Street needs to start having you know, tough earnings calls with these studios and say you're in big trouble. Uh. What needs to happen is a lot of private equity people need to go broke, which is gonna happen probably next year, who have invested a whole lot of money in these ridiculous valuations of these ridiculous production companies that have done nothing.
That's going to collapse, and then there's gonna be no money. And when there's no money, you gotta fire people. When you fire people, you get smaller. When you get smaller than there's enough, not enough people to start overthinking whether in fact we should have whether one of the kids can't, can't one of the kids be trans like you. That's a conversation you have only when you have plenty of
time to think about it. So I suspect that that's all gonna that's all gonna change, because what people don't want to see is revenue and revenue which does not matter. It has not mattered in Hollywood for ten years. With interest rates at zero and everybody trying to spend money just to build up this their streaming library, that's gonna it's like going broke is embracing mind, focusing back to basics, kind of zesty feeling for Hollywood. It's a good thing.
Last time Hollywood really really really went broke was in the late was in the sixties late sixties and ushered in one of the greatest years in entertainment in American entertainment ever, which is the seventies, which are incredible, incredible box office years, TV years, amazing that could happen.
Yeah, I mean one little data point on this that I noticed and just recalled is I've been watching this Netflix series with Kerrie Russell called The Diplomat, and it's very lavishly produced and very well shot. And Carrie Russell is compulsively watchable. She was always she plays this sort
of hard as role. So that's all fine. But the first season they had a conspicuous trans character who was only there to plant the rainbow flag, had no real plot point and conspicuously missing if you're paying attention, from the second season, which just wrapped, so that was quietly dropped from the from the production.
So you know, maybe that's one.
I will still tell one story, and I want to tell you who said it to me, because he eventually had me too trouble, so that you know, I'm already deep in the hole here in this podcast by I uh like easily missed the street comments. Uh, we were casting a show. Uh it was the head of the network. We're casting a show, and there were two two actresses were testing the Usually they come and they test in
front of all of us. So we would do all the additions, and we bring two choices to the network in the studio and we'd say, look, here's where we are, here's kind of who we like, here's who we you know, here's what you like. But we got to decide in this room together. And it was an actress. She's really good. She went on to do great stuff. She was incredibly good. She's very talented, and and she was just a little
prettier than the other one. And and there was silence in the room and like nobody wants to say that because it's like it's like it's you know, you don't want to say that. So I but I said, I don't know, I kind of like her. I just feel like she's more she's more appealing in some way. You know. It's got to wheel the wording it, you know, and she feels like she's like, I don't know, I could kind of like feel it. I gotta feel this vulnerabiling it just it was just it was just nonsense words
just to not and the pad of the network. It was sort of an old style guy who like he was alone at that point, even a rare character. Then he said, yeah, you know, it's never a bad idea to put a pretty girl on TV.
Rob.
I'm like, yeah, that's that's really true. Let's just that's just you said it. Let's go. I like that that these seems it seems very simple and everybody watching it knows, but people making it don't often know that.
Yeah, right, all right, We've got about maybe two minutes of slack time to see if either one of you want to say anything about ABC's settlement. ABC News settlement with Donald Trump over the libel case, which I think is hysterically funny but also significant in a number of ways.
Charlie, I think that there was a conversation that was probably recorded in some way, likely over email that would have come out during discovery. ABC was told by its insurance company settled this now or the jury will give some Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, we went through discovery in the Fox News dominion lawsuit, and that settlement ended up costing seven hundred and eighty million dollars. So ABC got off easy. But you do hear these stories that there's mayhem inside of ABC. Stephanoppholops is very upset and so forth. There was a little tidbit as gets the legal geeking men. There was a little tidbit in the Wall Street Journal account of the dissension in ABC saying Disney's lawyers, remember
Disney owns ABC. Disney's lawyers were worried that with the current Supreme Court, this might reopen the New York Times versus Sulliban libel standards, and they were afraid this might happen and be open season on the media. But you know, Trump is, he's not sick everybody else in sight.
By the way, a little slat tangent here.
This talk of investigating Liz Cheney, I think is a psy o patrolling operation. I think what Trump wants to do is provoke Biden into giving a pardon to Liz Cheney and faut cheat everybody else, and then Trump can say pardons for it. They didn't do anything wrong, cleterally, they're guilty. You know how this is gonna play out? Right?
Something like that? Is that the storyline? You're right?
Rob? Yeah? I mean I don't. I mean, I would like I'm an as you know, I'm an optimistic pessimist, right. I would like the House Republicans and the President and the House and the Senate Republicans to get clear on how American politics works, which is that you really don't have a big window at this moment. You really don't. It doesn't work that way. There's gonna be another electually, gonna be a midterm. Someone's gonna mess up, there's gonna
be trouble. You got a moment, you have some runway here. Pick five important things. Just do those five things right. Do not attempt to boil the ocean. Just do five things. Do not get distracted with all of your little Twitter maga stuff. We're gonna get Liz Cheney in prison and all that stuff. Just do the five big things you
need to do and live to fight another day. What often happens with these these sort of moments is that the reprobagans go in all different directions and decide what they really want to do is they want to have fights on Twitter and on Hannity and on Tucker, and those never get you what you want. And then you end up after four years of a Trump administration in twenty sixteen, without a wall and with a lot of
a lot of the stuff that he promised. Because you spend a lot of time just talking nonsense and you want to put Liz Cheney in prison, go right ahead, but make that number one hundred and ninety seven on your journey. Don't have that much time.
Well, well, there's the Rob Long of hope and forgiveness at the Advent season. Charlie, I don't forgive, Charlie, you are not politically agnostics.
Certainly, I'll give you the last word before we have to get out for the day.
Well, I will say Merry Christmas, which I celebrate with my family and love.
Oh excellent, All right, Well, this podcast was brought to you by ricochet dot com and as James likes to say, and I will try to do it as well as he does and will fail at it. Please help the keep the podcast going in twenty twenty five by joining Ricochet. It's the best place for civil center right conversation. See, we don't even make fun of Rob for being the rhino squish that he is.
I'm I'm diversity, I'm the d hied here.
That's right, right, And as always, please, if you have a minute, leave.
A five star review for us on Apple Podcasts.
Uh.
It turns out that's really an important metric.
It you know, it boosts the podcast brings us more listeners, which brings us more sponsors. We are sponsored free this week, but this helps us keep the show going and so we will see you in the comments. Everyone at Ricochet four point zero. I think that's what we call it, Charlie, I think it is right all right. Next week, guys, Merry.
Christmas, Ricochet, ye
Join the conversation.