You had to ask.
Of course I had to ask. I mean, that's obvious, right, I.
Didn't know you were a big tricky Oh god, yes, oh.
Yeah, oh yeah. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lileox, Charles C. W. Cook is here, Stephen Hayward is here, and we talked to former Attorney General Bill Barr about just about everything. So let's have ourselves a podcast.
Let me say once again to Donald Trump and Christy no end this occupation. Let's be very very clear. This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it's a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.
This domestic act of terrorism to use your vehicle to try to kill law enforcement officers is going to stop, and I'm asking the Department of Justice to prosecute it as domestic terrorism.
Welcome everybody, It's the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and seventy two. Why don't you join us at ricochet dot com. Why don't you you could be part of the most stimulating conversations and community on the web. I'm James Lelax in Minneapolis, peaceful saying, oh so ordinary, Mayberry RFD, Minneapolis, Minnesota. And I'm joined, of course by Charles C. W. Cook and Stephen Hayward, and we're going to go right to our guest. Bill Barr an American attorney, author of one
damn thing after another. He served as the United States Attorney General twice, once under George HW. Bush and again under Donald Trump for the president's first term. Before heading to the DOJ, Barr worked in the Office of Legal Counsel, where he penned an opinion that is said to have formed the legal justification for arresting Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and thirty six years later the same treatment for Nicholas Maduro.
Welcome, thank you, great to be here.
Well, extraordinary rendition. That's the that's the term that's on everybody's everybody's lips these days. The special Forces operation that brings it to fruition. I guess the question remains. I guess some would say, looking at this, hey, what gives us the right to decide that this is the thing to do.
Well both our national security and our law enforcement system. The opinions you discussed really grew out of a situation that had emerged at the end of the Cold War. When I was in the Department of Justice under President George H. W. Bush, a lot of conflict had moved to what we call the gray zone. It involved things like transnational criminal organizations, drug organizations, cartels, and terrorist organizations emerging.
And the question is, how could we deal with these, especially when they were getting safe haven in countries or either no man's land, and although they were technically we didn't sovereign territory of a country, no one was doing anything about it. It was sort of no man's land or countries that were absolutely complicit in the activity they themselves were criminal organizations or terrorists, favored the terrorists in supporting them. And how does the United States defend themselves
in that kind of situation and deal with it? And one of the things I'm just going to give you the genesis of that opinion. One of the things we dealt with was that under the Jimmy Carter administration, they had issued an opinion saying that if something violates customary international law, then it's not even legal under US law, and the United States doesn't have the power to depart from it, and that was simply wrong as a matter of constitutional law and international law, which is customary a
norm that countries follow or don't follow. And so wrote opinion that said that under customary international law, if you go in and carry out your law enforcement activities within another country without their permission, that violates customary international law. But it's not a violation of US law, and the US can do that. The US can do that and can bring the person back for trial. So that question was can we do it? Is it lawful under US law?
There's another question, which is, okay, does it violate customary international law? And the answer is normally, normally yes, it does violate customary international law. But in a situation. There's
sort of two responses to that. One is that in a situation, it's called the enabling, not able or unwilling doctrine, which is, if a sovereign country allows its territory to be used for anti American activity, things that are imposing not just anti American politically, but predatory action directed against the United States, hurting the American people, hurting our vital interests, then they have to stop it. Sovereignty is not a
shield for that kind of activity. They have the corollary responsibility to stop it, and if they don't stop it, the country that's being preyed upon can go in and stop it. And we reasserted that, and under international law that does give us the right to go in and deal with terrorist organizations or drug trafficking cartels if another
country is part of the problem. So the other aspect of it is that something that like that raises our defense powers, and you know, we can go in and use our defense powers to protect the vital interests of the United States. And remember norms. Norms vary and change over time because countries either follow them or don't follow them, and under certain circumstances they say, you know, this norm
is not working and we're going to change it. That's how the twenty mile limit changed, or the three mile limit changed, and then it became two hundred miles. And that happened because some states said we're not going to follow three miles because it doesn't adequately address the circumstance. So countries do have the freedom to respond to changing circumstances and say this is the practice that we think
is necessary to protect our vital interests. I know that's a long winded answer, but it's actually sort of a complicated legal issue, and I wanted to lay out its different facets.
And there's a lot there. And before it toss this to the other smart guys, just one quick question. When you talk about international law, a lot of people say, yeah, well, how many divisions does Brussel have? What specifically are we talking about when we say international law? What complex that we sign up for it? And what does the enforcement mechanism be for them? What are the penalties for violating them?
Other than shrugging the shoulders and saying, well, I guess the norms they be a shift in.
Yeah, that is a super question, and it hits right at the weakness of all these critiques based on international law. There are two kinds of international law, roughly speaking, really three, but let me one is customary there's no agreement between the countries. A second is agreement that don't become part of US law. They're not so called executed into US law. Usually that requires a passing a statute that then has
binding effect. Indiana, like, if we're going to this is gonna be our fishing zone, this is going to be your fishing zone. You pass a Statute and say American fishermen have to stay on this side of the line, then it's part of US law. If it doesn't become part of US law, it's not executed into the US law, then it's an agreement. And uh, it's not something that that has binding legal effect within the United States. It's something addressed to the sovereign of the United States and
essentially the conscience and prudent judgment. It's like saying, Okay, I'm not going to follow it. I understand their costs. I'll bear the cost, live with it, Okay. Now. The other kind are treaties that you know that are agreed to the true and and that that are executed, and then there's those that are not going to execute it. The treaty in question that everyone's sites is the UN Charter,
and the un Charter has two parts to it. Roughly, one is to set up an enforcement mechanism, which was supposed to be the Security Council, and then the other is to say, because we have the Security Council that's going to come in and make things right wherever there's something wrong, you shouldn't use force. And then there's language and it's saying the only you know that this does not preclude the use of force against another sovereign state
if you're under attack, armed attack. And the basic debate that goes on in international laws, does that mean that the only time you can use force is literally when someone has you know, guns and is landing on your beach. And there are restrictionists, Needless to say, most of the professoria that says yes, that's the only time US doesn't follow that. We say we can use force to protect
our vital interests, to defend ourselves. It doesn't have to be you know, if someone conducting cyber attacks, if they're launching poison into the United States, they're drugs, that's an attack on US sovereignty. We can use force to defend it. So, you know, that is the international law issue. But what makes a lot of it crazy is the premise of restrictions on the use of force were based on that there was some authority out there that would come in
and protect you and there that has not happened. It doesn't work. So it's a little bit like saying, hey, we're going to establish a police force and you can give up your guns. In fact, not just give them up we're going to take your guns because you don't need them anymore because we have a police force. And then you never set up a police force. That's the world we're in and so called international law.
Hi, the child's cook kit.
I wonder.
Why, in your view is the president allowed to take this step without congress. Obviously, if another country came in took away our president, we would regard that as an active war. We wouldn't say it was kinetic action or another euphemism. Why then, does the Congress not have to at least pass an authorization for the use of military force to justify this action that was just taken.
Well, because the framers, you know, we were right at the time they wrote the Constitution in the eighteenth century, the idea of declaring war had a very special meaning. It was a juridical concept, and when a formal state of war was declared, it had it had all kinds of consequences. For example, under in those days, that obliged every citizen of your country that has declared war to actually treat members of the other society as enemies, and you were free to go and you know, seize their
property and so forth. So it had it was a formal state in the eighteenth century. Now, the Framers quite realized that wars can be fought, that is, military conflicts, armed conflicts can take place that are not declared wars, and that frequently nations find themselves embroiled in that. So we fought the quasi war with France. We sent a squadron of frigates to actually overthrow the government of the
Barbary Pirates and substitute another pasha. That was what they were trying to do there when they storm, you know, when they were on the shores of Tripoli. And so ever since the founding of the Republic, there have been many instances where we have had military conflict without direct declarations of war, and military conflict without Congress ever approving
scores of them. And I think what has happened historically is that the executive has running room, and I think the Framers would have agreed has running room to respond to particular threats without going to Congress first and getting permission to do that. It's largely a political question uh to be ironed out between the you know, the butting of heads between the branches of government as to where
that line is. And I think that that's a dynamic political process that the Framers, the Framers conceived of, and that Congress holds a lot of cards, they hold the money.
Uh and and so uh, I think in practice what it has boiled down to is that if it is reacting to a particular threat that does not involve, you know, exploding into a major war, Uh, then the executive has as much latitude as as he can without going to Congress and getting them you know, they could they have levers to pull if they don't like it.
Uh.
Whereas you know, starting in cold blood with a you know, major attack that could result in a serious military conflict that embroilers in a serious military conflict. Uh, you know in terms of its magnitude that uh, you know, that's the kind the thing that they would expect Congress to
do ahead of time. So, you know, an interesting area that sort of was on the border here, some would think, was the Gulf War, where we had Congress had allowed us to build up six hundred thousand troops right along the border there, and the question was do we need congressional permission to actually cross the border and liberate Kuwait from the Iraqi army? And I actually didn't think we did, even though that was a major military conflict with Iraq.
But we decided, you know, it was again a political judgment, which is, we think we can get the permission, let's go up and get the permission, because that's a better way to take, you know, to move forward with the country. And that's how we did it there.
So General Barr at Steve Hayward out in California, I want to go back to one follow up question about the Panama business from thirty seven years ago. Now, Wow, I'm getting old now. I don't remember now that. I mean, I know there was the usual fuss from the radical left complaining about American intervention in Latin American imperialism and all the rest of that. I don't remember there being a significant fuss from the opposition party in Congress on
Capitol Hill. And maybe I just don't remember and I missed it, whereas today there's a lot of fuss. And I'm wondering, is that just because Trump is such a polarizing figure and there's this reflex to oppose anything Trump does, or you don't have the politics of this changed since then, or or is there some important difference between them and now I don't see one.
I think the defining characteristic of the last three to four decades, the thing that is driving much of what happens in the United States and our politics, and in fact, in my view, ultimately the reason there is Trump today is the radical move of the Democratic Party to the left and from a party that that was sort of traditional liberals and still you know, shared a lot of the values with their political opponents, and above all loved America and put America, try America first, and had some
different ideas, but still there was a deep love for this country and trying to do what's right for America. And that's not where progressives are. Yeah, and so I think that is the basic difference. Yeah.
I'm going to take up with James separately later about how different Minnesota might look today if Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale were still with us since changing there. Right, that's a serious question. Let me shift gears to Greenland. I don't know if you have an opinion about Greenland.
I mean, it's mostly thought of as a foreign policy defense question, I suppose, But do you have either a a general opinion or a specific legal opinion about what is going on with Trump's ambitions to acquire Greenland.
Well, you know, I am actually I do not think we should invade Greenland and start an internal conflict within NATO. I believe he's right in wanting to. I mean, I think it would actually be a good idea to have America control Greenland and control it a sovereign territory, preferably. And I do believe it's important to the defense of the West, not just you know, naval things in submarines, but space and so forth, And it's critical, and we know that Chinese and Russians are very focused on that,
and so I am sympathetic with it. I think I hope it can be worked out without a military conflict, and I expect it will be. I think the important thing is that the United States has essentially plenary authority to do what it needs to do to defend Greenland and the West. And second, I think it's important that the United States be able to control where those where the minerals and the important resources of Greenland go, that they go to the of our allies in the West, not to our enemies.
Yeah.
Well, opposing an invasion places you with ninety five percent of Americans according to polls and including ninety two percent of Republicans, So not exactly a bold or outrageous place to be. Let me ask you a question about Trump Two's I'm calling this non consecutive second term. And you know your book was called one damn Thing after another. I have to confess I haven't read it. And wondering if you got that from the old Edna Saint Vincent Malay line that history is not one damn thing. No,
it's not one damn thing after another. It's the same damn thing over and over again.
She said, yeah, where I got it from is when Reagan won he asked William Smith to be his attorney general. And William French Smith wanted to do his homework, and he went to visit Ed Levy, who had been Attorney General under Gerald Ford. And as you know, Levy was an academician. He had been the head of the University of Chicago Law School and then president of the university.
He wore tweety, you know, the epitome of a professor. Professor, and William French Smith said, you know, hey, could you could you tell me about the the position of attorney general, what it is to serve the Attorney General. He was expecting a discourse about the rule of law and all the constitution and so forth. And Levy puffed on his pipe and looked at him and said, it's one damn thing after another.
I say, right, right, yeah, right right, I see.
Yeah, William Prince Smith lived.
General Smith lived down the street from my parents where I was growing up.
But so I didn't know him.
But well, the reason I bring this up, and you know, you may, you know, not wish to answer it too fully, but so Trump one, I'll put it this way. You know, you suit it up again. You had a number of people appointed to cabinet position who I mean, there were a few of the so that we say, idiosyncratic people around Trump in the first administration, but you also had
conventional Republicans you might expect in any Republican administration. You know, what's his name from Exxon for Secretary of State and so forth. This administration, Well, put it this way. Just give you one example. The contrast between alex Asar a good friend of mine, and RFK Junior and Health and Human Services is about as night and day as you can possibly get. There don't seem to be any conventional Republicans in the cabinet, with one or two exceptions like
Secretary of State Rubio. And you know, it's a lot more a loyalist, which I understand a reason for that, but also non conventional, non belt way or is the mag of people will put it, non swampy people, right? What do you make of all that? Is this deliberate conscious wise? How do you evaluate this difference between Trump one and Trump two?
Well, I would say, you know, it's Trump making an adjustment based on what he felt with the dynamics of the first administration, starting with Russia Gate. You know, I think history would have been a lot different had the Democrats not not I won't say democrats, I would say, you know, those involved in that and the progressive way of the Democratic Party and the media plate especially tried
to orchestrate was effectively a coup. And I think history would have been different had he not met that as soon as he walked into the Oval office. And I think the other thing is I felt I think he felt that, you know, one of the problems was the entrenched deep state and the perfidy of the many in the who worked in the senior ranks of the career people.
He felt that sabotaged his administration, and I think he felt that, and I think he believed that you have to fight fire with fire, and that the only way to break out of this trajectory the country was on was the fight fire with fire and really take on the progressives, you know, much more aggressively than our normal political punk Kilio would permit. And so he's off on that course, and he may prove to be right as
a great disruptor and someone who achieves things. My own concern which I don't like fighting fire with fire, I think obviously he's right at the other side has played dirty and Republicans tend to play by the Marcus of Queensberry's rules. But I'm not sure the answer to that is to descend to their level. I'm concerned about that
and what it does to our institutions over time. And the other thing is that I'm you know, I do get worried that that that style may lead to unnecessary blowback and backlash that makes it harder to achieve our harder than necessarily achieve our agenda. But I do understand his frustration, and I think he is accomplishing things that require bold leadership and aggressive leadership, and so I still feel that I am much or happy that he's in charge of things. Alternative.
I have a question about the Insurrection Act. I think Trump may not end up needing it, as he's indicated, because he can send troops in to defend federal assets without the Insurrection Act. Obviously, there are various parts of the Insurrection Act, some of them seem easier to meet
than others. What I want to know is what would constitute as an insurrection, not as a blocking of federal law making it difficult for the federal government to execute the law, which is part of it, but what would constitute an actual insurrection as imagined by those who wrote that law in eighteen oh seven.
So I handled the last the last times it was ever used, you know, I it was involved in sort of orchestrating it. One was I was at the under Bush and it was the breakdown of law and order in Saint Croix, and then after that ninety two in La Those are the last times it was actually invoked. I actually don't have in front of me, don't remember
the exact language. But insurrection really isn't the test. There's you know, best specific language about about uh you know uh uh interfering with the federal function and provoking you know, rioting and stuff like breakdown of law and order that you know, those are usually the things you look for. It doesn't have to you know, overthrowing the government is a specie of it, but it doesn't You don't need over an intent to overthrow the government, uh, in order
to establish an insurrection. It's basically a breakdown of law and order that the that's not being carried out. You know, where the state is is not you know, sufficient to to enforce law in order, and and the and the federal government force is needed. That's essentially what it is. And what's happening now is you know the Bolshevik and Leninist idea of make them feeling the whip of the cossack. That is the way you radicalize the population is by
provoking the government authority to use force. Uh. And that's and that's making him feel the whip of the cossack. And then you say, these people are fascists and you know, look at them, there's a pressing liberty and so forth.
Uh.
That's the tactic that's being used. And I and I you know, there's another thing going on here, which is a subtle legal point, but people have to understand, you know, the law. Justice Scalia wrote an opinion called the Print's Opinion where he basically said that the federal government can't
force the state too to carry out federal law. That law involved gun control, and the law required the state officers to do things and affirmatively do things to carry out the federal scheme, and Skilly said, you can't commandeer the state to do that stuff. Unfortunately, that's been taken to the point where the state feels that it's able to just not do anything to help or to respond to information requests or any kind of help to the
federal government. And what we're seeing now, to me, is intolerable. The police force would protect any other group that was going about its lawful business and was being interfered with by mobs. They would keep the peace on the street and keep the mob from interfering with the lawful activities
of a convention or whatever is going on here. They are abdicating their responsibilities and leaving the mobs to directly attack federal officers and create a variance indiary situation that comes pretty close if it doesn't cross the line into insurrection. They are they have they are promoting the rule of the mob, directing directed against the federal government, where they wouldn't permit that for any other group, and that, to me is unacceptable and something has to be done about it.
But what here in Minneapolis? The mayor has said that he wants the police to fight the ICE agents, and the chief of police was standing next to him as he said this and raised an eyebrow sort of spock like as that was being said.
What is it that is insurrection?
But that's what it seems like to me? I mean, what is to be done? As as the man said, sure of the Insurrection Act? What can we do? Because I mean, we have in this city where I live, and no, I haven't seen it. It happens elsewhere. I did have a woman drive by my house honking and pointing at a black suv and blowing a whistle and mouthing the word ICE, but I think it was actually a tree trimmer guy who was making the neighbor. So that's as close as I've gotten to it. But what
what can we do? Because I mean, every day ends with the culmination of shots of somebody taking of the guys walking out with the pepper bullets and you know, hitting them, the knogging and off they go. But we see cars ripped open, we see documents taken, we see all manner of things that that that border on pe civic disorder that looks like it's going to What should we do short of the Insurrection Act to get my
town a little bit more sane, safe and stable. And of course people will say, well, just pull out ICE, just disband ICE, that's all you got to do.
I think, you know, you have to. You have to be smart about which cases to use and what circumstances to push the principle. But for example, if if someone gets up and makes a speech or does something to promote interference in federal law enforcement, they should be arrested and charged. That's not insurrection. That's obstruction or a conspiracy to obstruct or what have you. You don't need an insurrection.
You know, these people stand up in meetings and say, you know, if an ICE person comes into this school, we're going to have our police officers blah blah blah h. That is interference with the federal function. Could it be insurrection? You could call it insurrection because you don't have to call it insurrection. I think you go for those kinds of examples and you start and you start prosecuting people
for that kind of interference. I do think you also have to consider bringing suits and going after the politicians who have created this situation and are doing it. You know, they're basically withdrawing police protection from the federal government. No one's asking for the local police to go in and make the arrests, but we're asking for the normal protection that every other entity in the United States would get.
And by withdrawing it, you know, I think there's a violation of the law going on, and I think that they should be held accountable for it. But you know, this is why the left is so city is because this is exactly what they want to trigger. They're very good at playing in the gray zone, going so far and then creating a reaction and then demonizing. Of course, the media plays that game. So it's a difficult situation.
The administration is handling the best they can. I would just say it takes good judgment to know exactly you know, where to where to harass, where to take your stand, and so forth.
Well, the optics around here are lousy. But that's what's going to happen when you have the clash of the people who are carrying out their constitutional federal duties and the people who are obliged to oppose them because they don't believe that there's anything wrong with being legal immigrant in the first place. Just if you know, as the man said today, that this is stolen land, an ergo or there's no legal, philosophical, moral precept to arrest somebody
for being here. When you mentioned fighting fire with fire, I mean it's been the administration has been using a flamethrower versus a birthday camble. They have not backed off. They have gone full force at this. Do you see in that a sort of resolution that seems a contrary with the way that Republican administrations have worked before, because usually something bad happens, they back off and say, forgive us, will be nice.
Now that's you know, no, I think that's the that's the thing that is is good. You know, there are many things. Is Trump is taking the bull by the horns and tackling difficult issues that everyone else has just kicked the can down the road. And I give him a lot of respect and and applause for for that, and this is an example of that.
Uh.
You know, we at the end of the day, we need to control our borders. That requires not accepting the fact that millions came in illegally under Biden and now they have to be they have to be deported and we have this insists on the rule of law, and that's a difficult process to carry out, and I think he's right in making sure it's carried out. So you're right.
I mean, one of the reasons things have gotten as bad as they have is because Republicans, you know, frequently in the past have been in the situation of because largely because of the pressure of the media and the and the monolithic media we have in this country at in the country, you know, would pull back and not take the heat for doing what had to be done. That's why I support what he's talking about on the cartels.
You know, it is ridiculous that we have these narco terrorist states right south of us carrying out these predations where the casualties are higher than they were at the peak of World War Two in the United States were killed in action, And what are we supposed to do about it? You know, it's not a problem of locking up, you know, all the the pushers on the corners in our inner cities. That's not going to stop it. It's going to the root of the problem, the head of
the snake. And when we've done that, we've made great progress. We wiped out the Cali and the Mediane cartel. Clinton comes in, pulls back from engagement over there in South America, they get re entrenched, and we have to go down there and take these organizations on. We can crush them. And you know what venefit I've been saying all along. You know, the war is not the way it used to be. Where a carpet bomb city. Okay, we can be very precise. You know, Siria showed that where we
destroyed isis very small group of American special forces. We know where these people are, We know exactly where they are, and we can take care of the problem and those countries. Even if even if you think Mexico government is not complicit, even if you thought that and you thought they really wanted to deal with it, they couldn't do it. The only way we'll get done is the United States going down there. And so Trump is right, he's taking the
bull by the horns. And when we discussed this in the first term he said that, he said, you know it's this is tough, but you know I came into office to deal with the tough problems, not kick the can down the road.
Who's going to do it?
How are we going to deal with this? And so I support him taking on some of these tough issues, the immigration issue, the drug issue and so forth, and delivering you know, the hard, the hard medicine that it requires, and not chickening out. That's what's good.
That's what's good. Bill Barr. We thank you for being back to the show. It's been a delight to have you and to hear your opinions again. The last book is one damn thing after another. Go buy it and wait for the next one. And we look forward to the next time we speak. Thank you, thank you, yep
bye bye, hie. The he is when it comes to the cartels, I was I thinking as he was speaking about that, that we could indeed, you know, use Oh, now we know what it is that we had the object lesson of the Special Forces versus the Cuban soldiers. There was a film today that I saw on Twitter, and I think it actually may have been Charles who responded to it. They were bringing the bodies home from Venezuela to Cuba. And was it you Charles who actually asked the question, why are they in shoe boxes?
It wasn't, but I did want to oay.
Yeah, yeah, because there were the very small coffins and they had it's all that they could probably get up with a spatuel on a tweezer. Oh so, yes, there are things that can be done. Question is, gentlemen, now is let's quickly whips saw around the world and put on our other hats of expertise that we do not deserve to wear. Did we flinch with Iran or did we tens in such a way that revealed all the
things that they were planning to do? In response, That's been one of the theories that I've been There's a couple of people that have been following who are quite quite interesting. I'm not saying they're right, but they're quite interesting in putting together what this means, what that means, what this mobilization means, what that mobilization means. And they made the point that a when we seem to be on the verge of a blow we got a pretty good idea of what lit up. And secondly, at this
very moment, the pizza tracker is hitting record numbers. So who knows. So I'll shut up and let you guys tell me what you think.
Oh boy, what problem is is we're really only speculating by what we can get out of the news media, which may not even be close to accurate or penetrating to what really is going on behind the scenes. A couple of things I think we do know or can conclude. One is, apparently the scale of the massacre in Iran is massive, and maybe even more than it's been reported.
But now i'd heard a week ago, by the way, when the so called official figure, whatever the heck that is, was a few hundred and I was hearing then from somebody in Washington. No, no, it's many thousands are being killed now, And three or four days later, that's what started to get out into the reporting. On the other hand, you did hear that Iran paused at least planned executions of several hundred people. Now is that a concession they got, a concession they gave to get Trump off their back.
I don't know. It could just be a pause. I wouldn't for a moment take that to the bank and say, ah, we've made real progress here. The third question is this may be a case of where we did not have and this has been reported, we did not have sufficient military assets to make an effective strike. Apparently our one carrier is not yet in Persian Gulf.
The Lincoln was over.
Somewhere near Asia, I guess, and is steaming at top speed to get there. And then I Ron a huge country, densely populated in places, and so how do you do strikes that are going to actually erode the regime? It's one thing to take out their nuclear facilities and so forth. So you can see that there are some difficulties, practical difficulties. Well, all right, what are we going to do? And I
have no idea what might be done. It's also reported again who knows accurately or not, but the Jerusalem Post has usually got good sources that Prime Minister net Yahoo asks President Trump to hold off for now. Who knows what the Israelis are doing inside the borders of Iran. We tend to ascribe magical powers to the masade in Iran, and they have done some amazing things in the past. But bringing down this whole regime is a tough thing
to do. The last thought. Sorry I'm rambling here, but I do worry that we now look like we did in nineteen fifty six when we encourage the Hungarians to revolt and then did not lift a finger to help them when they did. I think it would be shameful. The outcome of this is the runnine regime survives, and Trump essentially said, well, never mind any other fears, Charles, or are.
We just going to leave it at that? Well I don't like spiders, Well there we go, rachnophobia. We can add to your other phobias and the things that are are bad. So we'll see. Yeah, we will. I don't think it's over, but I have been up and I can't tell you how many times I've seen, you know, the street rise up and then nothing happens. There's an inexhaustible supply of thugs that they can get from other countries to come and shoot and be we'll see you.
One of the reasons this one's so depressing, other than that it's been promised on so many occasions and our hopes have been dashed, is that this is one of the few examples of a country that needs and would do well out of a revolution. I'm a conservative, I'm not reflexively in favor of revolution or chaos or the
overthrow of the existing order. And as I've said many many times when discussing the American Revolution, the American Revolution was a strange one relative to say, the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution, in that it was small, c conservative, it was restorative. It was full of people saying, we want to be more like the country that we thought we were, rather than we wish to get rid of them. There was no reconstituting the clocks or forcing people to
call each other comrade or any of that. All the letters to the king in seventeen seventy four said please give us our birthright. Usually that's not.
The case, but in Iran it's sort of.
Ease because the transformation that that country underwent. It wasn't perfect, of course, nor was the Shah, but the transformation that that country underwent from nineteen forty to nineteen seventy nine was remarkable. There was massive increases in literacy. It was an educated populous. It was secular, by which I don't mean it was irreligious, but that it was not subordinate to a politicized form of Islam, and a revolution would presumably give an awful lot of that back.
In other words, it would.
Remove the crazies, it would remove the totalitarians. And this is why it's just so depressing watching it not happen, because it's an undoing of a wrong and I keep thinking, oh, finally, you know that thing that happened is going to be fixed, and it just doesn't seem to. But it's an odd sentiment to feel as a Bourkian.
Well, yes, but no, as much as it's obvious that the country suffered went backwards as endure hideous mismanagement. I mean, there's a post on a ricochet ricochet dot com, by the way, the side that you all should go to and join and sign up for and comment at a well, why people weren't marching for the protesters when they were marching for Gaza And it's one of those it's not a real head scratcher. Nobody posts something like that because they really can't figure out the answer. What do you
guys think? I mean, obviously, so it's the fact that it's anti American, it's the fact that it's anti Israel. It's the fact that it is. As many have pointed out, you know, Islam has been conflated now and redefined into being a race. So if somebody is protesting against Islam, then they are giving aid and comfort to all the mega hat racists in you know, VFW club somewhere. No, they've seen what it is. But the other thing is that perhaps it is a command economy in a lot
of ways. Now it's a very corrupt economy, it's incredibly but it is a command economy in many ways stifles that you know, Persian bizarre instincts. And some people are saying that, you know, we don't want to give them too much, the protesters too much credit because they you know, the ideas well. Yes, Iran has handled it badly, but real, real theocratic socialism hasn't been tried. Which I'm quoting. I'm quoting myself there and sounds something I came up with spontaneously.
So there's lots of reasons for people not getting behind this, and it'll be interesting. I also think that if there is a successful coup and the SHAW does come back, or the SHAW is integrated into whatever they come up with afterwards, that it's going to irritate all those people who are who are bringing up the coup of the early fifties over and over and over again. Is one
of the dominating original sins of the Middle East. You know, how could you expect anything to go well in twenty twenty six when we topple you know, when we toppled most of the day the Kami in nineteen fifty one or fifty three or whenever it was. They'd have to stop talking about that then.
Have a national security interest in making sure that all those beautiful Persian women don't have to avail.
Yep, that's a big part of it. It's a big part of it. And you were just so pretty. And they're all behind these pieces of claw, I know, but they've taken them off now and they're lighting cigarettes with pictures of comedy. Come Inny and I love that. It's a gorgeous still hot, I know.
And did you pack into one picture some beautiful Persian women lighting a cigarette she's going after a theocraft.
Yeah, I know. It's just beautiful. And you'd think that she would be out there as a as a you know, knocking Gruta Thunberg of the off the pedestal the most preferred, but unfortunately she's pretty, so we can't have that.
Uh.
The Bill Barr talked, we were talking before about Greenland, which I regarded right now is just sort of an interesting and amusing diversion. And I Stephen wanted to say, ninety two percent of people don't want don't want to. I want who are the eight percent of people who are? Who are? Who are?
It's only one right?
The seven said yeah, you're packing their kit bag and saying over there. I mean no, I have not, in my entire life, given more than an hour's worth of thought to Greenland other than well, it looks big, but I think that's a distortion of the mercader perspective. It's probably not that big. And why is it called green when actually it's full of ice? And why is called ice when it's actually quite an eye? Yeah, that's it.
But you know, what's what's there that we need other than the fact that it's where it is?
Oh well, first of all, I'll be really brief because I want to toss to Charlie on this because he wrote a terrific piece about how we can't afford this. Uh, And I think I mean I entirely agree with that. I mean, I think the main point is right, it's a lot of money that we don't have right now. However, I guess it's mineral rich. I mean oil gas precious uh uh, you know, the rare earths and stuff that
we'd like to develop a supply independent of China. That all makes some sense and strategic important, That all makes
sense too. One worry that I have is that if we do acquire Greenland, then it's going to be federal property, and that means it's subject to the political control like all other federal property that has been a plague on us for mining and oil and gas production for decades now, right, I mean the energy boom in this country has almost entirely occurred on privately owned land and state owned land out west where the federal government had minimal tools.
To obstruct it.
And so if you have all of Greenland is federal property, well guess what The environmentalists under a democratic administration are going to declare it a national wildlife refuge for you know, ice bacteria or something, and good luck extracting the value from it, because I could see, you know, admortizing the price of acquiring Greenland if Denmark would sell it from the economic potential of the place. But no one's ever
talked about that. And I think the idea that you privatize it right away, which is what you ought to do, who would buy it right I mean, there's all kinds of problems with the idea that Charlie just just barely begins to get in this piece.
Charlie, No, that's all fair.
And that was a really good counter argument to my piece by John Perry at National Review in which he made some of these points. My argument really was just that I accept that we are broke, and indeed not just accept it, but talk about it all the time. We have thirty eight trillion dollars of debt. We're spending more than it would cost to buy Greenland on servicing the debt every year nine hundred billion to trillion dollars. At the moment, Medicare is more expensive than that, Medicaid
is about the same price. You know, Congress is not going to do this because it would require cuts. But leaving aside that it is unlikely that we're going to buy it, and I hope unthinkable that we would invade it. Seven hundred billion dollars for Greenland is a steel. It is enormous. It would increase the size of the United States by twenty two percent. It has so much oil and natural gas that have all of the world's production everywhere other than Greenland ceased. It could feed the need
for oil and natural gas globally for three years. It has an enormous number of rare minerals that we need, and it's militarily useful. Now you're absolutely right, Steve. The United States has been really suicidal when it comes to the use of public lands.
I don't think the US would be worse than.
Denmark, which has treated it like a zoo and declined to permit any extraction. But if you were going to do it, then you would have to buy it, homestead it quite quickly, and set in place a set of rules that permitted private enterprise to go and get the stuff that is under the ground and under the snow, which would be more expensive than it is in say Oklahoma. Granted, if we did that, I think seven hundred billion dollars
is a pretty good price. And the last point that I made is that an awful lot of America's land, about forty percent of it was bored in the Alaska purchase. The Louisiana purchase, we bought much of the Southwest. It wasn't bought so much, but Florida was in the eighteen twenties added to the United States. We took on their debts.
And every time we've done.
This, it's worked out pretty well.
And every time we've done this there have been people who thought that it was really stupid. Thomas Jefferson was mocked for the Louisiana purchase. Seward in eighteen sixty seven was mocked for wanting to buy Alaska. It was nicknamed Stewart's folly. It didn't become popular until eighteen ninety when we discovered gold everywhere in Alaska.
It's worth saying as well.
Seward was the guy who originally wanted to buy Greenland. That was part of his plan. He only got Alaska, but he wanted Greenland. Harry Truman tried to buy Greenland in nineteen forty six. This is not something that Trump streamed up. So I don't think we're going to do it. I don't think we're going to afford it. I don't think we would make the necessary sacrifices. And I agree
with you. There might be problems going forward with the rules that Congress would set or a democratic president would impose, But in the abstract the idea is treated as if it's lunacy. Donald Trump's crazy idea.
It's not crazy.
It's actually very sensible if you look at it as a purely commercial transaction.
It's entirely possible that at the end of the day, what we will get are some mining concessions, and we'll be able to go in and extract some things to further decouple from China, in which case one might say that the whole thing about invasion and the rest of it was just setting up an absurd point that actually got everybody's attention, and this was sort of, I don't know,
clever deal making. We'll see. I do know that when you mentioned Seward's folly, that it's been a long time since anything has been called a folly, and I always enjoy those because they always point to the most successful things that ever happened in the human history. Somebody was calling it, you know, we're going to they're going to be saying, you know, Elon's folly is the rocket that
that begins colonization of Mars. For example, there will be a I'm always curious how many of those were they Well, I know they do, so I don't know how many of these, whether or not being called a folly by some drunken wagon the press is actually, you know, it's actually a guaranteur of success.
Well, now, James, speaking of folly and rockets to places, I have an important cultural question for you, all right, have you had the misfortune of seeing the new.
Not even not going there? No, no, nope, for the first time you how for that it is for the first time in my life, For the first time in my life, I have refused to even begin to watch a Star Trek show. And I cannot tell you how painful this is. I've been there for every single one of these bleapity beliefs, including Discovery, for which I had a certain amount of hope at the beginning, until that rapidly just ebbed away within the first fifteen to twenty
minutes of that thing. No, I am not going to watch it. One of the things that I saw, I mean everything that I see. First of all, to me, the idea that a thousand years hence that the Federation stills is like that in a speaking English and the set design is basically the same as ridiculous. And I don't want to go there. I don't want to look at a gem hadar klingon high Bred. I don't even
want to think how that happens. I don't like the look where she looks like she's from hr and she's come to say something about a joke that you heard. I told I don't like her. I don't like the pictures of Holly Hunter all catlike crawled up. You know it's all cozily crawled up at the captain's chair, reading a book and with her glasses in three thoy twenty a d instead of somebody who's striding to the chair, sitting down, gripping the arms and firing fate. I don't
want to look. They have somebody there in the crowd scene who, honest to God, has got half of her face painted white and half of her face painted black. Now we all know what that means. We all know it's Frank Gorshan and his You know that, shall I say, delicate racial analogy that they made and let that be your last battlefield. I supposedly that rates is extinct, but I guess somebody brought it back in blow Decks or Prodigy or something like that. I don't care. They killed
it for me. They gave me and I send off at the end of the Card three. They got the gang back together, they got the ship back together. They kicked ass, and they sat down and they played poker. It worked and that was the end, and that was good. And now it's on.
I knew that would set you off on epic Ram. What listeners should know, I mean, I watched the form in a trailer, and if that's the best they can do, it's got to be awful. All listeners need to know is that the lead king On character is named Jayden Cayden, I know, I mean, what next the governor of California named Gavin. It's almost that side job.
I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, And I like Strange New Worlds, even though I think the third season just got lost in its off and I'm looking for them to conclude it with a fourth. It's been good, but no, I mean I used to just sit down and wait, how they going to start this? What's the theme gonna be, what's the reveal of the ship gonna be able?
Look?
Look, look, at that look at the voyage you're coming out of those gaseous clouds with that Oh I'm here,
I'm there already. I know. The first season sucks, as it always does, but you stay there and you seven seasons on it concludes and you feel like you've actually it's been a contribution to the Lord that you remember you were there eight years old your grandfather's television color television in horror with North Dakota watching the very first episode in color terrified because it was really scary stuff,
and you've been there ever since. And then you finally hit a point where you say, no, it's not that it's not for me, Oh, this is for the kids. It's no, no, no, no, it's because it's bad. It's because it's run by people who just do not get it. There was a if you look at all the sci fi of the fifties and sixties, there's still a military
ethos there with their navymen. There's command structures, you know, there's icer, there's you know, oh god, there's all that stuff, and all of that has just washed away into this sort of gallivanting about space and these nice little ships with these enormous, pointless bridges, so that we can give somebody a lecture on what they ought to do and feel good about ourselves for watching it. I say, it's spinach into hell with it.
Well, my theory is, oh sorry, My theory is that behind the scenes, the executive producer is a pseudonym for Kathleen Kennedy, who's trying to kill two franchises.
So that's been entirely possible. Well, all I have gone.
I've never been in a particular treki orthough. I did like the movies, but the one that I watched when I was a kid had Captain Picard.
Is that good?
Do you like that?
No? It is good. It found its foot It found its feeding footing after about a year or so. It started out odd and tried to the tone wasn't right thing that everybody inhabited their characters by the second and third and then I got really good and has the best cliffhanger in television history. Fire. It was good, but it was very nineties because the Cold War was over and now an international group of people were cruising around
in the Hilton solving disputes and luxury. Right, it was basically in the nineties and then deep Spaces nine comes along, and that's the post Soviet you know, the Empire's fallen there on the borderlands and the rest of it. And then you know, I mean, you can find these analogies that I'm not the first to say it, you can find analogies to the time in every one of these. But yes, Picard was good. It also gave us marvelous technobabble that we could you know, that we could repeat
to ourselves. And you know, it was like it was like a vision. It was like a documentary of the future. It felt like this was a possible thing that we were going to have at the time. And then they didn't. Okay, that's that's it. That's it. You did it to me, you made me do it. What I'm not going to make you do, however, is go to give us a five star review. Because I'm not going to ask you
for that yet. I am going to ask you to go to Ricochet and check to see if there's any meetups in your area, because that's what Ricochet people do. It's not just a website where you get together and blather and plath. You collabor and throw bricks at each other. Now, no, no, no, early February couple of meetups, one group in Detroit, another the Florida Space Coast Canaveral. Probably I love that, and if you'd like to learn more or have your own, go to ricochet dot com and go to the meetupage
at ricochet dot com slash events. Now, I'm going to ask you for that five star review, because if you do well, well, more people see the podcast, more people listen, more people go to Ricochet, and that ensures that we go on oh, not just past version five point zero, but to six point oh and beyond and beyond, as Buzz would say. So I have to ask you, Charlie. We're not at five point oh yet, but we are at last it was four point nine point one point four point one point four something like that.
Yes, it's something like that. We've been doing small, little updates, but you know, more exciting than that is. We have some new podcasts well, which yes, with our friend Henry Olsen, Conservative Crossroads with Henry Olsen, in which he hosts a debate each episode between conservatives of different factions, different views.
And right down to the studs as well.
This isn't superficial, Henry says, right, what about Ukraine and then he lets them argue it out. So that's a really good news show at Ricochet.
Ah, I hope you've enjoyed the show, folks. We have enjoyed making it and bringing it to you. I'm James Lillack's Minneapolis, Stephen in California, and Charles in Florida. It's been a pleasure as well. We'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet four point whatever. We'll see you there. Bye bye, Ricochet.
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