Mister Gorbachoff teared down this wall.
It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lylax Stephen Hayward this year and we're going to talk to Daniel Mahoney about the totalitarian impulse and whether or not Donald Trump but uh, tone it down or not. So let's everselves a podcast.
We are part of one civilization, Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen air.
Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast. Number get this seven hundred and seventy seven. I'm sure that's lucky somewhere. Why don't you play it in the lottery today or even better investment of your money. Go to ricochet dot com Join up, sign up part of the most stimulating conversations
and community on the web. I'm James Lylax in Minnesota, where it was wonderful and warm, and the sun came out and all the snow melted, and then six inches fell, which taxed the ability of my little Toro to get it my back, my back, But that's neither here nor there. Somebody who was not here but is there is Stephen Yward. Stephen, how you doing.
I'm good, James. How are you snow blowing challenges?
That's a fraud question these days, But you know, here we are. Minnesota seems to have calmed down a little bit. I have no idea if I is working at the same level it did before, but the whistle blowing and the protests and all the rest of it seems to have subsided, so that perhaps and then you know, National Nightmarre has moved elsewhere. But that doesn't mean that the world isn't full of things to discuss. And no, I don't mean to imply that if Minneapolis is having troubles,
it's something that everybody has to constantly think about. I'm tired of it myself. Tariffs by yeah, well go completely sorry, go ahead, No, bring us up to speed on this. This is a new development. I'm sure everybody is keen to know what you think and what is next then exactly what was said, what was struck down?
Right? So what the court ruling released this morning and it's one hundred and seventy pages long, and I've barely gotten through about two pages that I'm I'm trying to grab the main threads because there's all these partial concurrences and then the scent. So it's six 's three vote, I should say that, and the three dissenters were not the three Liberals. It's Thomas, Alito and Cavanaugh. Something of a surprise. I would have thought Kavanaugh would have been
in the majority on this second. I'm sorry Charlie's not here because he's already tweeted out that the decision was absolutely correct and it should have been nine zero. And I understand his argument, and I think I sympathize with it. But what it said was is that Trump does not have unlimited scope to impose tariffs under a particular statute, the What International Emergencies Economic Emergencies Act something like that. I don't have it in front of me, But that
does not strike down all tariff power. He still has Section three h one and retaliatory tariffs, and that goes back decades. And I mean, I looked this up once. You know, Ronald Reagan free Trader threatened Spain in nineteen eighty six with two hundred percent tariffs on everything, because Spain had a bunch of really bogus trade barriers against American agricultural imports, and Spain folded and lifted all those
within forty eight hours. So that power. But that's always retaliatory power, or against clearly determined unfair trade practices by our trading partners. Trump wanted sure stuff.
I mean, doesn't it go without saying that was the motivation that Trump was choosing that it was that they had unfair barriers to us, and therefore we're going to do it to them. I don't buy the emergency thing. The emergency thing is like one of those little weasel words they use in government to just addy absolutely everything,
like interstar commerce, right. But retaliatory yeah, I mean, if somebody's got a big tariff wall against our products and we do the same, why is that not within the scope of the powers?
Yeah, well it's because Trump didn't invoke Section three oh one or it's a tool. I forget the numbers because I'm not a trade expert. But instead he invoked a statute from the seventies and it had, you know, as the words in it about the power to regulate foreign commerce under emergency circumstances, which is up to the President to determine, but regulate is not the same as tax, is what the Court is saying in the majority opinion.
So okay, he can probably still impose some of these tariffs under other legal authorities the President retains that have not were not challenged or not before the court. Whether he can do things like, for example, the threatening the big tariffs on Indian and other countries to stop them from trading in Russian oil. They may have just wiped out that power, and gosh, that's something an awful lot of pro Ukrainian people are. People are critical of Trump
kind of like right now. So this is an odd circumstance. There is an interesting, curious subtext to the case that I picked up on so far, which is that the case relies in part on statutory construction. That the statute simply doesn't grant that brought a power to impose tariffs as a remedy for controlling foreign trade. But the major
questions doctrine. That's what Chief Justice Roberts brought up, which is, look, whatever the ambiguities may be, and I'm paraphrasing very widely here, Congress needs to be clear about it and specific under the new doctrine the Court embraced two three years ago, the major questions doctrine. Well, guess what the three liberals
on the Court who sided the Roberts. They filed separate concurrences saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we don't want to Essentially, what they're saying is, we don't want to use that major questions doctrine because that is a major impediment to the administrative state ruled by bureaucrats that the left depends upon these days. So I think it also means not
to go on too long about this. I think it also means that the the big move we talked about last week, repealing the endangerment finding for the EPA to regulate climate I think it means that that is, the Trump's moves are likely to be held up under the same doctrine of a major questions doctrine, And so in a collateral way, this decision is bad news for the environmentalists and the climate cult.
Is there a minor questions doctrine? Imagine when it comes to when it comes to government and emergencies, Imagine everything is a major coe. So it the s and P. Five hundred of course leaped up after this, and everybody says, well, great, okay, this is back to the old order. But the old order, we're told, the globalist order of free trade and the rest of it has fallen under. Let's see a cloud, a dark cloud in the last year two years or so,
as everybody looks around us says, wait a minute. What we were supposed to get to was a frictionless world, the end of history, everything being flat, everything being interesting. We get cheap, cheap stuff, there are standard of living goes up. A lot of people looked at that bargain and said, wait a minute, No, this didn't readown to our benefit. What we got was the hollowing out of
American industry. We got barriers to immigration, drops so that society becomes diluted, et cetera, et cetera, all of the things about globalism that people don't like. Does this mean globalism is back on the menu, boys, as they would say, as the orcs might say, or have we moved beyond that to a case by case basis where we're still going to be protecting American industries and attempting to re shure as much as possible, because that's what interests me
about this whole thing. I didn't like. I don't like tariffs. And part of the reason I don't like tariffs is because I was awake in junior high and learned that Smoot Hawley killed everything. I mean, we all have our narratives, right, Smooth Holly came along, tariffs went up. Things were bad, stock market was too frothy. Everyone was buying things on the margin, and then it crashed and the bankers jumped out of the window or sold apples on the corner
or both. You know, if they had a stock pointing. That's what I So I've always had in the back of my head an aversion to tariffs, even though you know they paved the way for the budgets for decades. I mean, that's it's interesting to watch that movie about the assassination of Garfield and realize, you know, how much power the guys who ran the ports and did the tariffs had. I mean, there's an extraordinary money maker for them in the times. But anyway, so I don't like them.
But the part that didn't bother me necessarily was the part that said we are going to look at critical supply chains. We're going to provide incentives for country, for companies to come back to the US and build I like that. Everyone says you're dreaming if you think they're going to make whirlpool washing machines in Columbus, Ohio anymore. Part of me says, but then let me dream, because they're while I pine sort of for aspects of the
past that we may romanticize a little bit. There is something to be said for having a solid, productive industrial base. And then people quote the numbers that you actually with this are the industry we have Now everything's fire. We all know in our heart of arts that we'd be happy if iPhones were made here, if washing machines and microwaves were made here, if all the drugs were made here, if we didn't have to rely on China for everything.
So that's my incoherent, romantic and unsubstantiated beef against Tariff's promo con which is why I'm not on the is why I'm not in the Supreme Court.
Yes, well, I mean, the big problem with trade going back decades is not so much to other countries have tariffs against this, straightforward tariffs of ten percent or something. It's that they employ a lot of non tariff trade barriers. They're called in other words, yes you can send American cars to Japan, but then they let out a bunch of conditions which make it expensive or impossible to do so.
But because they're not formally a tariff, you could ensue at the International Trade Court or whatever it's called world the WTO it's called now okay. So as insofar as Trump wanted to use this whole exercise as a way to blast a part remaining trade barriers and also secure supply chains, like you'd say, I was all for it and willing to go along with it. And by the way, if we ever do make washing machines here in the country again, and I think we might, it will be
made by human beings, will be made by robots. And that process is already very far along, right.
I know, I know that's that's the part that you realize that it would not be guys toiling away with a lunch bucket who would go home when the whistle blew that it would be made. Then we think, well, it's going to be made by robots. So we're going to need lots of programmers to design and build those things, and now out of the point where, well, actually we
don't because AI can design and program those things. And you know, essentially what used to be one big, huge factory in the end of town with a smoke belching out of the stack and grimy men leaving at the end of the day to get into their DeSotos and go home to their small little house. The American dream actually turns out to be one guy in Miami who's sitting there filling a winner's laptop. So and what everybody else does for what everybody else does for a living, I'm not exactly sure.
Right, Well, there's one last loose end about the case today that I'm sure some listeners will wonder about. Is what about the one hundred and fifty billion whatever the number is in tariff revenues the Trump is collected from which he was promising two thousand dollars checks to all of us. Do those have to be refunded? That question was not before the court today, and so they said nothing about that. And I think there may be some lawsuits filed saying from companies or somebody saying, hey, we
was one of the costs of these terraffs. Now you owe the money back. Which will further further make our whole fiscal situation so much brighter, won't it?
Oh so much so? All right, let's turn our eyes elsewhere across the pond to Europe. Europe is in a parlous situation.
It is.
Caught in a world in which its influence is shrinking. It has overestimated its soft power, It has made suicidal bargains when it comes to its energy policy, in its demographic makeup Western Europe, and it is becoming essentially sort of a theme park with nice old buildings and in half a little tight town, compacted town squares with winding, twisting little streets where you can get a good pay. Marco Rubio went there and laid down some markers and
some truths. People are seeing it as a book. ND to the last year's fans speech packed the conference, the Munich Security Conference. You know, whenever you hear about Munich conferences, I tend to shift in my seat a little bit, right. But you know, he opened it talking with the origins about how the continent had been riven by the Cold War.
And I remember those days as you do too. Barbed wire laid down in Berlin and the guard posts went up a nuclear proliferation Soviet Union on the March, And I mean you probably, like me, Steve grew up seeing the Eastern Bloc as just a fact of history that wasn't going to be dissolved anytime soon. It just it seemed it seemed set in concrete. But of course Soviet concrete was pretty cheap, and after a while it falls away and crumbles. Rubio said, united not just by what
we were fighting against. We were united by what we were fighting for. And that's true. Underneath that, however, of course, was an anti American strain that was built both perhaps a little bit of resentment, but mostly by resurgent leftism, which regarded the United States as colonial and awful and you know, unfit to lead the world into its brave, new collective future. People are praising this speech as a re establishment of a commitment to a certain kind of
way of looking at the world. Is it passe? Is it just simply return with a V and avatars on X, with the classical statuary and bygun nostalgia for a world that is simply no longer able to be put back together.
Yeah, I liked how you put up that it was a bookend from JD. Vance's very tough speech last year. I think you could call it good cop bad cop, because the substance of Rubio's speech tracked very closely with what Vance said, but the difference was in the rhetorical style of it. It was more reagan Esque. In fact, it reminded me a lot of Reagan's famous to me.
You may remember too, his speech that he gave in London in nineteen eighty two about the meaning of the Cold War and why not only are our ideas better, but Marxism is a failure and we're going to transcend them and they're going to end up on the ash heap of history, heap of history, right. You know, Oh, it was a wonderful larcenary of old Marxist rhetoric. And I do remember the New York Times saying, oh, this is Cold War rhetoric from the fifties. Isn't this terrible?
And that was you know, a year later it comes back with the Evil Empire speech. Right, that was sort of the JD events at Reagan. But look, the content was, I say, tracked pretty well but well received, partly because Rubio's stock is rising. Second, I do think I got standing ovation, they say, I did notice, like Reagan's speech in eighty two that the sainted Alexandria Ocasio Cortez complained that he was talking about Western civilization, and how terrible that is.
I mean, he promoted those Let me read the quote, which our producer has kindly provided for me. It says, here we are part of one civilization, Western civilization. We are abou to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen. Heir. I mean, yeah,
but a lot of people get angry about that. And oh, on the on the mind Cortes, I love the fact the last name is literally a Spaniard who came over and wiped out an indigenous empire. But I mean people have been nitpicking this apart and saying this is absolutely preposterous. Somebody living in Lithuania has has nothing to do whatsoever really with somebody living in Portugal, somebody in the Hebrides. What have they got to do with somebody living in Greece?
And to me, it's a petty, even meritricious way of looking at it, because obviously there is something called Western sieve, and it's you know, the only time the left seems to acknowledge it is when it's sandwiched between the phrases haho and has to.
Go yeah yeah. Well, I mean, I think that that's not even the subtext of the speech. But I think what's really going on here is Europe has lost confidence in itself and its heritage when they're not in fact hostile to it, right. And I think that's what's different from say forty to fifty years ago, when we were often frustrated with our European allies for being weak, for being two appeasement minded to the Soviet Union. But now
it's worse. And I'll just give you one instance right now that's not getting a lot of attention in the American press. Is so, you know, when Reagan decided to bomb Libya nineteen eighty six, after they had bombed the disco in Berlin, our bombers took off. You may remember this, James, from an airfield that we run in Britain which we still have the base rights there, that had to fly around the straight of Zibalder because France said no, okay,
leave that aside for the moment. But right now the British are denying us permission to use that base and also the Diego Garcia base and the Indian Ocean for any operations against Iran. At least that's what's being reported right now. And you know, this is an outrage, right, this is an exact and because look, the attitude of Europe toward Iran, especially England has been in full appeasement mode really since nineteen eighty, right, so this is very frustrating.
And I'm sure, well Rubio is, you know, a kinder and gentler version of Vans in his speech. I hope and expect that behind the scenes he was giving him the business about this.
I hope so too. There's nothing I read out of England and their politics that makes it well, actually, there's quite a bit, because you have a group now, a new party, which is at full throated expressing what a lot of people have said needs to be done for Britain and whether it makes you know, it makes reform look like look frankly wet. But we can get to that in a minute right now, we're going to talk
to Daniel Mahoney. Daniel J. Mahoney, Professor Emeritus at Assumption University, where he tried from eighty six until twenty twenty one, Senior Fellow with the Claremont Institute, Senior writer at Law and Liberty, and Executive editor of Perspectives on Political Science. Is twenty twenty two book The Statesman as Thinker Portraits of Greatness, Courage and Moderation received the Award for Conservative Book of the Year by ISI in twenty twenty three.
In his latest book is The Persistence of the Ideological Lie, The Totalitarian Impulse Then and now fascinating topics. Let's get right to it, Daniel, welcome my pleasure. Well, so earlier this week you were a piece called discipline at a moment of power. And it's a critique, a measured critique of the administration from a and let's use your description. I believe a friend but not a flatterer of Donald Trump.
All right, so let's just get right to it. Why does Trump have a duty to outgrow the worst of his excesses. Everyone always says, oh, it's the mean tweets, but it's it's it's more than that.
Look, whenever you proper this kind of advice toward Trump or the administration, a thousand voice rise in unison and say, but he won't change, it'll do no good. Look, we're obliged to point out these things, partly because some of this behavior affects self presentation are very self defeating, and partly for intellectual and moral hygiene. You can support this administration. It's brought goals many of the specifics of what it's done.
You could acknowledge that Donald Trump has been the only person in the political class in recent years who's willing to face up to the crisis the country is facing, the sort of active subversion of our constitutional order, the moral foundations, and democracy. But you can also acknowledge that his modus operendi is a sometimes a self defeating mixed bag. And you know, I think the president really never learned
that there's a veryubstantial difference between campaigning and governing. When you govern, I mean, even maga partisans want you to sometimes be presidential. And as I said at my piece, we owe in the language and the Declaration of Independence a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.
Before we go further some examples. Do you think of the self defeating behavior? Just we got some stuff on the table.
Well, look, I said, probably the most extreme and dramatic example I gave, and I gave it because dozens of people I knew who were generally supportive of this administration were very much taken back by it. The remarks about Rob Reiner and his wife when the son was killed, but the son killed them, and Trump's reaction was just unacceptable. It was narcissistic, it was brazen, it was petty, and the high minded thing to do would have also been
the self interested thing to do. Just be magnanimous. We didn't agree on anything, but this is a human tragedy, absolutely lamentable, et cetera. And that small mindedness hurts, and there's no there's no use in pretending it doesn't. And I happen to be in Europe during the whole Greenland thing, and I saw something very ominous. I saw conservative and conservative populist thinkers very very were well disposed to trumpet it defended him, really react extremely negatively to what they
perceived is bullying. And and you know when Stephen Miller says, look, how did the Dans get Greenland. Well, you know, three boats went there and all that. Well, does anyone get anywhere you got there by boats?
You know.
Evan Burke says, never looked too close below the initial, you know. And the fact is, you know, they sounded like settler colonialists, the Danes. So there are many Europeans who won uh one take some pleasure in uh in ticking off. But the Danes were reasonably friendly government, you know. And you could have handled this in a far less blastic way. I can give other examples, but by the way,
this is a pro trum piece. I'm I am trying to say to the President the people around him, if you want to succeed, and we want you to succeed, you you can't double down on the things that undermine the larger course.
Well, Dan, by the way, great to see you. Listeners should know that you and I have known each other for a long time. I hate to say along.
Spid went back to nineteen eighty one.
Yes, I think that's right. We were both interns in Washington. It was those glorious days, right I did. I'm not chose with you, but I I did get thrown out of the Hawk and dove once on Pennsylvania Avenue. There are you and I used to go there some for happy es.
Yeah.
Absolutely, I got through thrown out there once along with Martin Morris Moooster if you remember him, because we were eating too many of the free chicken wings.
I remember Mark Morris was he was a watch at a conservative statement. Oh that's right, yes, centric intellectual.
Oh my goodness. Yes. Well, anyway, back to the main point is you know you, you and I have talked a great length about you know, Churchill and de gaul and you know, gall could be a nasty piece of work. Also, I mean, maybe arguably lacks some magnanimity. But here's the point question I'm coming to. Maybe this is too broad, but I think that in the fullness of time, but I mean, you know, ten, twenty thirty years from now or longer, we're going to look back on Trump for
some reasons. You already articulated in others as one of the most consequential and necessary presidents in our history. That's sort of my pre casting, but I think it's going to be in the future. But he does lack that magnanimity, except he does surprise sometimes, and so yeah, I was right with you. I thought the mistake about the Rob Reder tweet was most America is not on social media.
We think everybody is, but they're not. And so most people didn't know about Reiner's, you know, derangement about Trump. And so this is called attention to the fact that Trump is a thin skin and and most Americans knew Rob Reiner is this beloved filmmaker. Right, So what a blunder because it could only hurt Trump. On the other hand, here two days ago, I wonder if he did this on purpose. He sends out a very effusive, true social
post on Jesse Jackson. Right now, if there's anybody who has it, there's a dossier of I mean, we don't speak ill of the dead, except Trump usually does that very effusive posts about someone about whose dossier of bad deeds and effects in American politics is quite long and quite serious. Right. And did he do that just to mess with liberals heads? I don't know, but he can't do it once in a while.
So Trump is quite capable of being humorous and self deprecating and generous, and he has an act for making up with people he called terrible things. Think of Secretary of State Rubio no and I think a problem that the the officer class, you know, the guardians of democracy as it's been redefined. The mistake they make is they take everything Trump says literally. Half the time Trump is
kidding around, or exaggerating, or or or pushing buttons. And I recognize all that, but but I do think one point I am at one point I emphasize on my piece, and I think this is no mean political consideration, is that President Trump is exhausted.
And yes, I.
Have talked to untold number of people who voted for him two or three times who say this president to see is exhausted. He's people need a bit of a break. And but I do think acting presidential doesn't mean that Trump shouldn't be Trump. It doesn't mean he shouldn't take on the the woke, censorious, neototalitarian left. It doesn't mean there's a way of doing all of that and yet just avoiding those those self inflicted wounds that give powerful ammunition to his to the despising right.
I've been saying the same thing about Trump is that actually George Will was saying this in the first term. Of course, George has really got a full blown case of TDS. Unfortunately, I think. But you know you're also.
One from being a Burkie into a hyperlibertarian. Yeah, I know, that's a good life crisis.
Yeah, I know. That does an interesting change, right. Yeah. Yeah, we'll leave that for some other day. Where's that going? Oh yeah, so you may remember this. Trump took a weekend off here sometime last year, and again social media, what nuts, where's Trump? It's been thirty six hours since we've heard from it. Has he had a stroke because he thought was he died? And Trump had a lot of fun with that the next day. But that's just his nature is to do, you know, fifty things before lunch.
Look, I think a lot of people on our side have forgotten a fundamental truth about politics. And Monesque talked about this in seventeen forty eight and the spirit of the laws. When you win, immediately those people who with your party, who voted for you, a certain number of them are immediately going over to the other side because everything you say and do creates a certain amount of discontent,
and that means public opinionshifts, and there's the waivers. The most people are used to be partisans, but a small number go over to the other side, and the other
side wins elections. So it means even as you're taking on as both premp has done impressively, you take on this censorious left, you take on the deep state, but you also have to keep in mind those ten or fifteen percent of the voters who they may be annoying, they may be uninformed, they may underestimate the crazy, you know, the nasty character of the other side, but you have to persuade them in some way. And persuasion isn't just through a series of rational arguments. It's just not giving
them reasons to go over the other side. So you know, in politics, it's always that judicious balance between doing what you were elected to do and not offending, needlessly offending people so that you give of. In this case, we're in a dark plays in our politics because we really can't afford for the other side to win if we keep the public, and that means there's a special responsibility not to be in permanent campaign mode, but to persuade
that fickle part of the country. These these no one annoys me more than independent voters who.
Oh, oh, I'll go off on rants about how you usually have the last presidential debate every four years is with undecided voters in a town hall format, and it's always a room full of morons, right, who could be undecided three weeks out from a national election? And they asked the dumbskie? Okay, we know that story.
George Will wrote a column and he said, do we really want the fate of the Western world to those who are listening to music in their car and driving on November fifth and still deciding who they're going to vote for? But it's just a fact of life, and and yeah, and also with the foreign policy stuff, a
decent respect for opinions of mankind. I was very worried when I started seeing serious publicists, editorialists, others in Europe who are pro national minded, very much opposed to the despotism of the extreme center, as some of my European friends call it, who were really appolled saying Trump, you know, does Trump really care about us? We got to recognize, well, it's perfectly legitimate and necessary and welcome to be American patriots.
We need to encourage other national minded and patriotic people and a big coalition, a kind of conservative international where we say we're in this together against globalism. The erosion of national sovereignty, the replacement of you know, sound morals and common sense consensus with woke nonsense. And when they these people start saying, you know, Trump's Trump just doesn't like us, you know, he doesn't distinguish between you know,
good and bad Europeans, it's worrisome. And that's where I think that Rubio's talk in Munich was perfect because he didn't say anything wholly different from Vance, but he didn't he didn't exude contempt.
Right.
Well, when you say the opinion of mankind though, that's one of those phrases, I'm not sure what you mean by that. I mean, to me, it would seem to be Europe and Canada perhaps, and some friendly nations in Japan perhaps, you know, in Australia if they want to come. But the opinion of mankind is self interested, and they're self interest of course, is going to look at us and say, you know, what do we get out of this place?
Well, you left out a word I decent respect for the ads in mankind, which means all that mean is the factors didn't just for the out of seventy seventy six, didn't just or seventeen seventy five. Didn't just revolt against the Brits. They gave reasons to the world, candid facts, you know, they laid out the reasons for it in a very and very civil, pugnacious but civil terms.
You know.
I think that means he make a case, make a case. It doesn't mean we should defer to what the editorialists and Laguardian or Lamone said.
God forbid, I know I'm in agreement with so much of what you're saying. I just want to come back to the change and whether or not if it happens, what effect it would have. Is anybody persuadable at this point? Now doesn't Europe as it ever matter. But it was talking about the undecided, the people who hate I mean, I don't think that anybody would have who hates Trump would have hated him any less if he kept his yap shot during the during the winer tragedy is it.
Can the needle be moved at this point?
It has to be moved or we'll lose big. In twenty six and twenty eight, Chris Caldewell had a column and The Spectator World the Less Issues, saying Trump's losing supports from his supporters. You know, some people in his coalition are turned off. And you know, I think Minneapolis, of course, the press covered over the an teeth of militants and the nonsense and turned these two rabbl rousers into martyrs and and but you know, the Tom Holman
approach of making distinctions. And you know, I think Trump listened, and I think we have an approach here that doesn't make him the enemy, doesn't highlight you know, there is a consensus in this country about sealing the border and deporting the worst of the worst. It probably isn't a consensus to kick out twenty to twenty five million people. But the point is in Minneapolis, when Homan came in there,
a troubled situation was righted pretty dark quickly. And I do think it makes a difference, especially if Coldwell's right that a certain number of Trump's natural supporters are disillusioned and tired. They have no illusions about the left, but they're enthusiasm or Trump. Not a majority, not maybe even a significant private of enough and it's five or eight or ten percent. It's a game of change.
Dan, one more question about your article, and then I actually want to introduce something beyond the scale for your article and shift gears a bit. One of the things I really liked about the article is you saying very forcefully and clearly, look, all this talk of Trump being a dictator and authoritarian threat to democracy is all nonsense. And you know, sometimes when people hear a criticism of Trump like you've made, they'll default to saying, oh, you're
really a closet never Trump or something. So anyway, that was a very valuable part of the people Trump.
Three times right, and I wasn't exactly holding my nose like.
Yeah, right, that's right. But then the other thing is, I'm not quite sure I completely agree with you when you brought up the old distinction time honored in American political analysis between campaigning and governing. In other words, I think that I think you'll understand my analysis and probably agree with it, so so restate your arguments so that
I get it better. The sort of the structure of our government, with the administrative state, the deep state, what everyone want to call it, the way the media operates, the way the opposition operates, is no longer possible to govern without being deeply political and being on the offense all the time, and That's why I think you can't really separate those two realms anymore. Like you know, the first president Bush said, I've in campaign mode and I'm
in governing mode. I think that distinction doesn't work anymore.
Yeah, I largely agree with that, But you know, there's multiple ways of campaigning. I think it's good of Trump to do these rallies. It energizes the base, she taught the media and the lies of the political class. But he can do other things, you know. And you know he went to Higoway recently. He was supposed to talk about the economy, as I say, and the piece there's such good news share with the American people seeing the border. Everyone said it was undoable and it's being done, and
it's been done. But I do think you know, when he went to Highway he was supposed to talk about the economy, he immediately started praising his accomplishments and saying, there's no real problem with the economy, and look, the
economic news is much more good that it's bad. But nonetheless, if people see the prices of groceries going up and have formed a certain impression, probably fueled partly by propaganda and the media, you got to meet them a little bit of the way, yeah, and all that, and so these are these are not questions of really a radical or fundamental reorientation. It's just you know, he says, well, you know, up said, I'll be presidential when I have to be.
Well, well we're waiting, Yeah, you have to be Yeah, you know, and.
You mentioned, Look, I've spent my whole life and as you have, Steve, you know, talk you know, talking up the nobility and dignity of high minded statesmanship. And I'm obliged to admit, you know, if Trump nodded every once in a while in that direction, yeah, well it's in his self interest. Occasionally he does, I.
Know, well cheer up. Maybe long story and won't count now. But I've talked to some people, some of the speech writers and people in the Domestic Policy Council at the White House, and you know, they have serious ideas about July four coming up, and if Trump stays on message, I think it will be really good. So let's just put a pin in that and hope right.
I only talked about Trump briefly at the end of the Statesman as thinker, but I said, look, you can criticize, you can criticize him, but I said, in the summer of twenty twenty, when the political class revealed themselves to be cowardly createns, if not insurrectionists, Trump spoke in defense of the country. The talk, the speech he gave Mount Rushmore was a tour de force of intelligent, spirited patriotism.
And I hope this is a twenty twenty six will be a wonderful opportunity for Trump to play in the higher ground. But in a way that makes clear what he's defending, what we're defending. He's quite capable of doing it. And it's just that I don't think we do this presidency any good by saying, well, he won't change, or you know, the other side's terrible because in retrospect, eventually people will admit all this when he's gone. You know,
you have to sometimes it's better to admit it. Well, it's going.
On, right, Well, what's the online of Churchill's was you have to take the rough with the smooth, right. He used to say that, exactly right.
Let's say that we live in an alternate dimension in which rondas anss had won. Do you think we would have gotten what we've gotten from the last oh, you know year of Trump administration.
You know, I mean, look, I don't know the answer to that. I think you would need Solomon's judgment, you know, because Roder Sanders has done wonderful digson Florida, tough minded, determined, pugnacious things. He was a terrible candidate, and I think he decided to he's stiffened up somehow. Whether he would have he certainly hasn't had that bearing as governor. And
look a little bit. But I'm tempted to say Trump Trump is one of a kind, and uh, he's he is willing to take on what everyone says is untouchable.
You know.
He, as I say in the piece, he has he is the only person in the political class who from the get go had utter contempt for the secular religions of climate change, gendary theology, the racialism and all that. He feels it in his bones. By the way, I think, I think the governor Florida is against all those things too.
But maybe Trump Trump where there have been the same determined assault on the elite universities which have become bastions of illiberalism, and intellectually, I don't know, but I think just could have been a very good president, even yeah, even if he was a mediocre candidate.
Right, So Dan, let me uh the last question here, last topic, and we can go on a long time and don't have a long time, but it's already it's over to Europe a bit because listener should know that you have not just detailed expertise about European politics, but you're acquainted with, as I like to put it, all
the most sensible people in France, both of them. I'm tempting to joke, right like you know, but also you are I think I think i'd be so bold as to say, and you'll disclaim it, but you're maybe the leading or at least one of the three or four leading American scholars of social netson.
I think that's fair to say.
Yeah, okay, good. I was afraid you're gonna accuse me of hyperbole because I do that's true. Look, so I don't know. I want to confine the question and we'll be here all day. You know, you mentioned we've all talked about rubio speech, how good it was, and I'm thinking he was trying to, you know, grab Europe on lapels and say, have some confidence and respect for yourselves please. That's one way. But then there's France. You know, Trump
maybe at forty percent or less. Mat Prone is down to what sixteen percent approval rating.
I think it's even lower.
Than Yeah, and I don't know.
Matt Crow was you know this conservative of a consertive fellow got kidnapped and murdered and leonned by some Antifa people who are linked to the left wing party Frances friends. I'm about and Crow yelled at the Prime Minister Maloney of Italy said, you have no right to speak about this. U. Pierraman I recently said, look, if you talk about conservatives, they're all in human and totalitarian people. Are Are you going to be surprised that they're killed? Yeah? No, macall
is very unpopular. He represents this technocratic ethos you heard me say, the extreme. Soult and On calls it the fanaticism of the center. These are the people from the old mainstream parties, even the Christian Democrats in Germany who are determined, determined to bury democrities to save it. And also McCall has that goalist hauteur without the greatness of soul that the goal had. You know, you if you're an honor of mediocrity. It log and technocrat. You can't
pretend you're Winston Churchill or Trills to goal. The Olympian haughtiness looks ridiculous. By the way, Mertz is down in at about twenty percent of the polls in Germany because wow, he you know, do Germans keep unvoting him and the social Democrats out and they form these coalitions to keep the populace out And now they're following the Greens are
part of their alliance. They're following these suicideal ecological policies and electricity bills like the northeast where I lived, my electricity bill is twice what it was last January and literally becoming a place that's unlivable. And the Germans are mad as hell that, you know, green ideology is literally undermining their way of life, their economic prosperity. Yes, Trump
is infinitely more popular. You may have seen inside or advantage in another recent poll that came out, the ones who were most accurate about the twenty twenty four election have Trump closer to fifty forty two percent. So I'm not sure Trump is in so much trouble. I think reports of his death are much exaggerated to resurrect that old saying.
But but.
He's got so much against him, has so many you know, the media class, in intellectual class, no doubt some Republicans who will come out of the woodwork when it's advantageous that he he doesn't have as much room for maneuver. So I'm sure there people call me a rhino. I'm not a rhino. I'm not an You know, there's nobody who considers Bill Crystal to be more of a lunatic than me. Right now, he's now referring to Trump as executing people at Minnesota.
Yeah, no, he's lost his mind.
I don't He's supported I'mdani.
I know, well, Daniel, your latest book is the persistence of the ideological lie that totalitair in impulse. Then and now. Last question, what's the difference, well.
Between then and now? Yes, Well, what's not a difference is the structure of the position. I argue that the root of the evil goes back a century and a half or two century, displacement of the age old distinction between truthful so good evil, with this pernicious distinction between progress and reaction. The guys who are on the side of history and the people or are holding it back, and
that that's what wokeness is now. In the case of the French Revolution, in the case of twentieth century totalitarianism, that orientation justified full scale totalitarianism, you know, assaulting the bodies and souls of whole groups of human beings. The woe haven't gotten there yet, because we still notice I called my the book that sometimes I say the impulse.
We don't live in a totalitarian state, although we came closer to it in the summer of twenty twenty, but the totalitarian impulse is alive and well, it's been institutionalized in many institutions like the universities, et cetera. And look, Steve mentioned, I've spent a lot of my adult life, my scholarship writing about totalitarianism, about communism, And I said, right from the get go in eighty nine, unless we pass on real lessons about the totalitarian episode, it will
reassert itself and reassert itself very quickly. You can't just say we won, or it was a victory of the market over planned economy. All that's some of it's true, but it's superficial. You really have to know the lie. You have to know what it was. This was not just a poor economic model. This was a war against human nature and a war against the human spirit, and
a war against the roots of free government. And it's alive and well, I say in my piece, I don't think there as many eighty twenty issues as people say there are. There's a lot of people out there who have bought into lunacy, and so we shouldn't. I mean, I was asked to contribute to a symposium a week after trump Onet is wokeness finished? How going to be because of an election? You know, wokeness is deeply extantiated in well, in the you know, the bmpulse on the
chattering classes. They're they're default position as woke. They're they're they've stepped back a bit under pressure. But this is a battle royale and and it's not just going to be won by winning elections. We have to recover or do our best to recover the institutions of civil society, the churches, the universities, you know, the corporations which you know became agents of a wokery and certainly in the last generation.
What this country needs is another good, long march with comfortable Chinese shoes, Daniel, thank you, Thank.
You so much, guys. I really enjoyed it.
The persistence of the ideological lie that to tell Journey Impulse Then and Now is his latest book. We thank him so much for coming on board, and we'll talk to you again down the road. By Daniel. So before we go, a couple of things, I've got to mention to you that Ricochet meetups happen. People actually get together in real life IRL, as they say, and as I've found out that many of these things talk about anything except politics. I'm only going to talk about politics at ricoghet, right.
That's what you do, that's why you go there, That's why you pay for it. What's that you haven't paid for it? He says, with a stern and knitted brow. Well, you know, yeah, I know what it's like to get people to pay for things on the internet, believe me. But it's worth it because it's cheap and what it gives you access to a community on the member side that you won't find anywhere else on the web. And that's where you find conversations all over the map, from
old radio to new movies, to sports to politics. He has to culture to it's just it's a fantastic place, and if you pay that a little bit, you get to comment, and that's what keeps the comment sections interesting instead of being just absolute sispool. You know, free for alls like you find elsewhere. So that is something you want to do. And you'll find mentions of meetups, perhaps in your area, and hey, if there isn't one in your area, start one. That's a great thing about Ricochet.
People tell them to come and they'll show up and they'll probably bring hot dish or something like that. Not at least in Minnesota had a couple of high profile deaths we're having. You know, a whole generation is expiring, it seems when you're of the age of Stephen and myself. It's not unexpected, but it always hits you right there, because wasn't this guy just thirty five forty years old just a little while ago. No, that was in the eighties.
Jesse Jackson perished, died, and it a unique American figure and I read an awful lot of eulogies, and people who were not necessarily on his side in his corner viewed him as something of an opportunist, but nevertheless would attested the man's charisma and his ability to charm and the rest of it. And he did bring an interesting brio to American politics and then seemingly vanished. Stephen your taking.
Yeah right, you put your finger on it at two observations. Yeah, the charisma that you really don't see his successors like Al Sharpton and so forth. I was a reporter at the Democratic Convention in nineteen eighty four, as a cup reporter at a press pass and only convention I've ever been to. I don't like big crowds like that. And his speech, a keynote speech closed out the second night, I guess, was absolutely electric, and I remember thinking wow, and then I read the speech the next morning in
the paper and it was not the same. In other words, the orator was greater than the oratory, right, and that was always his problem. His substance was pretty bad, but boy, he could light up a room. I do think that some of the conservatives, maybe a National Review said nice things about him this week, and I guess, you know, don't speak ill of the dead. I think he looks better. Well put it this way, the cleanest shirt and a
lot of dirty laundry. His successors like Al Sharpton are so much worse human beings than he was, and that you know, Jackson had lots of loss personal and professional, politically and so forth, but it's only gotten worse. And he kind of propelled us. I think he did mainstream helped mainstream anti semitism on the left. The famous Heinee town remark right, right.
So came to my mind within ten seconds of hearing his death.
Frankly, yeah, exactly right. And then yeah, so I'm going to go on about him, but I think that's enough.
Robert Duvall, Robert passing of Robert de Val is hard because we're losing a certain kind of guy. It seems a certain sort of I mean, it's ridiculous for me to judge his acting skills. They were fantastic and it's obvious, and there's I shouldn't get patted on the back or a gold star for saying what a range that man had. It's a great actor. But there's a certain sort of archetype that we seem to be shedding, and Devall was
one of them. A squareness, quietness, as centeredness, a sort of American presence that you know, I was watching anatomy of a Murder the Other Night, which he is not in, and for the time, it was a startlingly modern movie in the words that it used and the things that it discussed quite so frankly, but it's still in the period. In the character of Jimmy Stewart, there's a there's an American quality to there that you recognize instantly when you see it, and you gravitate towards it if you're of
my generation, because it's familiar. And I wonder sometimes if it's hard to get young people involved and interested in old movies, not just because they're black and white, but because the culture, in the archetypes and the values that they seem to effortlessly inhabit seem alien and foreign and probably wrong.
Yeah, yeah, I think there's something to that, although I'll just say that you now actually inspired me to think that maybe ought to show a Robert Duvall movie or something to my students. I like to use movies in class to illustrate the serious content of what I'm teaching, but also to sneak in some old culture, and one that I use with great effect is The Man Who Shot Liberty Balance, which in its political teaching, really is about what are the conditions necessary for the rule of law?
And is Tom Donovan Aristotle's beast or a god? I mean, I go through a bunch of classic political questions with the and they like it. I mean, first is like, this thing's slow, it's black and white, but you know, I make them sit through it in a whole class period. And then we discussed it and it works pretty well. And I think that Lonesome Dove is maybe the greatest mini series ever made. And he's what Augustus McCrae and that I think he said that's his favorite role he
ever did his entire life. And that's kind of an epic of the Old West without apology for stolen land or any of the nonsense that preoccupies Hollywood and other woke folks today. So yeah, they don't make them like him anymore.
One I'll be sad to lose with somebody about who. I'm watching a documentary recent in the last few days. It's on HBO. It's about Melbrooks. The ninety nine year old man is actually delightful, as is he. So to show you a class blazing saddles stee oh yeah, point them to that and say that, well, the movie add its slight controversial aspects to it. Take a look and the spirit from what in which it has made, and try and tell yourself that these aren't the freest people
you've ever seen in your life. Tell my daughter that the seventies were awful. Trust me, the seventies were awful. But you know, you can imagine somebody in a convertible, smoke and a cigarette without a seatbelt, driving down on their way to see Blazing Saddles, and those are the freest people that ever existed on the face of the earth. Now they may have been killed in a crash and they got lung cancer and the rest of it, and the sentiments of Blazing Saddles curdl does Meilbrooks try to
get lightning in a bottled subsequation doesn't matter. I mean there's a brio, there's an openness, and there's there's a cheerfulness to these things that just you know, when you in this tendentiously careful age is refreshing to see.
So that'll be hard, yeah, I mean, if nothing else, I always like to mention the scene where Melbrooks's governor La Pedamain says, quick, we've got to do something to save our phony belonging Jorge Job. No short thing was ever said about our political class.
And at the time, at the time, none of us could go on the internet and look up Petamain and figure out what it meant, what it was a reference to that was the thing. You would have to go to the You'd have to know it meant something. You'd have to go to the library. You'd have to go to the section of the card catalog that talked about French entertainers. You'd have to pull it out, page through the Dewey decimal notations, find it, go, get the book,
hope it wasn't in French. Pull it out, then say, oh, mel Brooks is referencing a man who went on stage and farted in a theatrical fashion. Brilliant. Now, of course we have access to everything, and nothing means anything except, of course this, and except of course the fact that if you give us five stars at the Apple podcast reviews, we will it will be in your debt in the most meaningless fashion for the rest of our lives. We
hope that Charlie is with us again next week. He's at the funeral of our friend that we discussed last week. John acdaw and we thank you for listening. Everybody. I'm James Lenox Stephen. We'll see you all in the comments at Ricochet four point zero. Bye bye.
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