And now what I'm asking for is a piece of ice, cold and poorly located that can play a vital role in world peace and world protection.
It's a very small ask compared to what we have given them for many, many decades.
It's the Rigorshete Podcast. I'm James Lillix. We have Charles see Could Cook and Steven Hayward and we're going to talk about Trump term two year one. So let's so that's a podcast.
So again, I'm not popular with you now because I'm defending Donald Trump, but I really believe you can be happy that he is there because he has forced us in Europe to step up to face the consequences that we have to take care more of our own defense. I'm absolutely convinced without Donald Trump, we would not have taken those decisions, and they are crucial.
Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, Episode number seven, one hundred and seventy three. You can join us at ricochet dot com. Everybody can. You can be part of the most stimulating conversation in community on the web. But we'll tell you a little bit more about that later. If you don't already know, I'm James lonnox In Minneapolis, where the temperature has climbed to seven degrees to minus fourteen after a certain point. It's just moot. It was just cold,
That's all there is to it. Some we're up in the northern part of the state. They were getting windshills of fifty below, which is you know, some folks will never lose a toe, But then again, some folks will. If you go outside improperly dressed, you're going to suffer the loss of some digits. But in warmer places, friendlier places, better climbs. We have Charles C. W. Cook in Florida. I presume it Stephen Hayward, who the globetrotter that he is,
is probably ensconced in the utopia of California. Am I correct, a gentleman.
Except for the utopia of California Park.
Yes, I am in California, but it's no utopia anymore.
Well, what a week? What a week? What a week? Okay, Greenland, that's overdone, settled. Now Cuba, let's get rid of the communist government bout twenty twenty six. Wait a minute, what about Venezuela. No, no, comed He's out of Cuba. Cuba by twenty twenty six, it's baffling, but you know, it's
it's it's been a year like that. It's been one year of this administration, and on Ricochet people were banning about the various ways in which it has succeeded or failed, as that falls along the usual lines, as you might think. The people who believe that he's been a rhino disaster, that's he's actually, you know, enforced a whole bunch of leftist ideas about government intervention, that he's contravened Congress, that
he's behaving like a Caesar, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. If you look at the Daily Beast today, the Daily Beast says that Donald Trump last night went on a late night truth social rant following his European humiliation. And what they mean by that, of course, is that he was humiliated in Europe. I took a look at what was said and saw a lot of cold truths that needed to be slapped on the table, and Davis was just a place for it. So it's hard to know where to
start when you look at the last year. I guess the best thing to do is look at yesterday. What do we have yesterday? But let's cast our eyes back three hundred and sixty five. Gentlemen, your assessment, if you will, on the first year of the second term.
Well, as I've been saying for a while, if you're on the left, you measure the Trump administration Trump two in dog years, right, I mean, because every day he does so.
Darn many things.
They talk about energy and executive in Hamilton's famous phrase. And so what I've been taunting my leftist friends is.
Cheer up. You only have twelve more years to.
Go of the second Trump term, right, because it's gonna seem forever.
Yeah, you can go down a scorecard and do a lot of stuff.
I think of it in general terms that the disposition of this administration has been so much more aggressive, even than Trump's first term, which was pretty aggressive itself. And there's a lot of swings and missus of course, and there's you know, he'll claim that he has cured teenage acne and everything else and every other speech, whether the facts back it up or not. And that's just his style. But look the dabosing everyone thinks that.
I say everyone. People keep thinking, oh, this Greenland thing.
I was not sure if there's really a deal or if it's just him wish casting, but it's another art of the deal attempted by Trump, and there's probably something to that. I think people are missing the bigger story, which is he squashed Davos. I mean, what's Doavos supposed
to be about. It's supposed to be about climate change and Gaza and inequality and anything but Trump And so instead, by doing his temper tantrum over Greenland and threatening war and all kinds of other ridiculous stuff and tariffs, he dominated the whole darn thing. So that my favorite little cherry on top of the whole story, James, is that
al Gore was there. I don't know why I talk about it has been, but his has been status is ratified by the fact that he had some little meeting he called to talk about climate change, and I think something like twenty people showed up, So you know, you know, Trump absolutely took over the thing and killed it, which in it so much deserves killing, doesn't it.
Girls Ah, then, Steve, I think we disagree on this. I think if the question is has Trump done a lot of good things in the last year, the answer is obviously yes.
Reneed the tax cuts.
Closed the border, got rid of a lot of racist policies that the federal government had been executing for decades. I don't know to what extent it's attributable to Trump. I'm not saying it's not. I just don't know. But crime is apparently at its lowest rate in the United States since nineteen hundred, especially the murder rate.
So there is a lot to like, there's a lot to dislike.
Tariffs I think are illegal and counterproductive. But I don't think the last week has been good. In fact, I think he has embarrassed himself in the country and got very little for it. I'm open to the idea that we would buy or take more control of not via an invasion Greenland, but he has emboldened.
The left in Europe.
He's upset some of our closest allies with unnecessary comments. He said, for example, that the British didn't fight on the front lines in Afghanistan. When they did. Four hundred and eighty seven of them died in Afghanistan on the front lines. Some of them were my friends, as it happens. So I think the last week has been the bad side of Trump. I think it's been the liability that isn't to say it wipes out all of the good.
I think he has had a relatively successful first year, but I don't like how he behaved in Davos.
Well, let's take a look at that then a little bit more. When it comes to the whole Greenland situation, if I understand this, a ridiculous assertion was made at the beginning, backed up with the threat of extraordinary action, and then at the end of it a deal was struck that made the position struck in the end look moderate. Have we seen this before from this fellow. I think we have, And it's just amazing to me that everybody nobody gets it yet that that's how it always goes.
It starts we're going to have a nine tariff on China, and everybody freaks out in the market's crash, and then you end up with a you know, a four percent tariff on spatulis from the plastic spatula factory. I mean, we've seen this before. So if the end result is actually getting something, is getting more mineral rights, more security, more in this and that out of Greenland. Okay, fine,
we've had interested in Greenland for a long time. You're right, of course about the optics and You're right about the
tone of voice and the rest of it. But I think what a lot of people are liking is the fact that we don't have the same old consensus, technocratic go along cow towing at DeVos that you might have gotten from definitely from a Democrat and probably from you know, a Rhino wants to fit into the the ethos of Davos, if you will, and then hard truths need to be told to them, just simply to lay Doun a marker.
Nobody has said yet to them. Well, maybe Trump has, and others have noted it on Twitter that there are problems facing Europe that are going to lead to its inevitable and total decline. And if that emboldens leftists, that just shows that they have a culture that is unable to save itself and pull itself out of the morass in which it is you want to disagree with.
It, I just don't recognize that as a description of what has happened this week. I have historically been sympathetic to Trump's approach, which is to throw his weight around and do things differently than others. I also am sympathetic, and I've written as much to his lecturing Europe alongside j D. Vance on questions such as freedom of speech, how much they contribute to their own defense, they're hurtling towards socialism and so forth. But this isn't that they
got nothing. They got nothing of any consequence, and they have cost American interests for it. I think this is a bad deal. This is not me saying I don't like mean tweets. It's not some form of Trump derangement syndrome. I think that the cost of Trump's behavior in the
last week massively outweighs the benefits. The temper tantrum that he had a few months ago over Canada, where inexplicably he started saying that Canada had to be absorbed into the United States meant that we now have for the next four or five years a Canadian government that is hostile to American interest rather than one that is friendly toward American interest.
That was not a good deal.
Very often with Trump, it is a good deal, and I don't care about the niceties.
I want the good deal. But there is no good deal. We didn't get anything for this.
We now have a whole bunch of pissed off people and countries that are historically sympathetic toward US, and the parties in countries such as Denmark and Scandinavia more generally have been emboldened not on the right where we can make better deals with him in the future, but on the left. And I don't think we got much for that. So I think this was stupid. I don't think this
was normal chump deal making. I think it was stupid, and I think it's an example of the downside of him rather than of his upside.
Steve, Yeah, you know, I tend to. I mean, I agree with a lot of what Charlie says.
And by the way, James, when you say Europe needs to have some truth told of them here, I am with Charlie.
They do need to be true.
Some of the things he's saying, many of them were, and some of them weren't, as Charlie has mentioned rightly.
Look, here's how I look at it differently.
In part because I'm right now, literally this weekend, watching the spot market for natural gas electricity price, which you're going to be very vuluable because of the weather system, and I think of Trump in the same way. If you think of Trump as the volatility measured in the spot market for Trump's latest eruption.
This set a new high, There's no doubt about that, but I.
Do think it tends to regress to the mean. Now the mean is mean tweets. Okay, I did be to make that pun, But I think this will be forgotten, as so many Trump things are. I mean, is anybody still talking about his really ridiculous true social about Rob Reiner from six eight weeks ago?
No, No, that's sort of forgotten now.
And this is more important than that, of course, But I do think this will blow over. I think that the liberal governments in Europe that get overconferenent from this are they may enjoy a temporary spike in popularity.
And one of the criticisms.
That people make, and I think Charlie hint of this, is that some of the populist parties that like Trump and that Trump likes are being set back by this last week. And I think that's true in the short run, but I think that won't be true in the long run.
So I don't know. Maybe I'm optimistic about it.
I just think that Trump is generally right when he's setting the Europeans. The Canadians have put aside for some reasons Charlie mentions, but I think it's good putting the Europeans on their back foot. And Trump's basic understanding is always be on offense, always be setting the agenda.
Now, the difficulty with that is, to use the.
Great analogy of Churchill about the offensives in World War One, it's like throwing a bucket of water on the floor, and to keep it going you have to throw more and more buckets. And so there's one problem is Trump faces the problem of diminishing returns and we are only one year into it, and where's it going to be a year from now? I do think that does call for more caution and sort of measured approach on his part.
And good luck with that, Charles. When we talk about setting back the right wing elements in Europe, are we talking about the sort of moderate center consensus, there's that word again, technocratic, there's that word again, institution right in Europe? Or are we talking about the AFP, Are we talking about Lapan? Are we talking about the organizations that get shut out because they are outside of the guardrails of proper European thought?
I mean, who.
Exactly in the right is losing influence here? When the institutions around them are seemingly devoted to keep them from having any influence at all in the government.
I think we're talking about both. Also, we need europerson ally and we need to cajole Europe into being a better ally, and I don't think we did that. If you use Canada as the example.
I am much.
More conservative than Pierre Polief, but he was a good antidote to the Canadian government that has run that country for nearly a decade. He is far preferable to Mark Karney, who's a bloodless type. He's obviously far preferable to feed Orchestro's so I mean Trudeau, and the same is true
in Europe. And if that message is going to be heard in Europe, where it will go down very hard, then it's going to have to be delivered in a way that doesn't put up the backs of the public and make them do what the Canadians did and say, despite all of the things we're angry about, including immigration, free speech and so forth, we're just going to pick the bloodless left. I watched this closely in England, where anti Americanism is an interesting phenomenon that ebbs and flows.
Trump made it worse there this week, and if there was something that he had got from that, I think that would be worth it, but there wasn't. Now I will say where I do agree with Steve, I don't want to give off the wrong and prayer.
I don't think this is the end of the world.
I've read some articles in the European newspapers this week that are just profoundly ridiculous. They say, this is the end of NATO, this is the end of the Transatlantic Alliance, this is the end of the special relationship with Britain. The stock market will ever recover, bonds are going to skyrocket forever. The housing market in the United States as a result, will stay unobtainable. The Europeans are going to exit American treasuries. The Americans are going to retaliate by
kicking the Europeans out of the cloud. That's all nonsense. This is already blown over in the most part. I'm just saying that where Trump is at his best is where he does weird and unusual things that other politicians don't and then get stuff for it. The border is a perfect example of this. Trump says some things on the border and immigration that make me feel uncomfortable.
But look at what he's done. He shut that thing down.
Now we have net outflows of migration for the first time in a long time, and illegal immigrants of being deported on math.
That's good, that's great. Good for him.
I don't care about the the ugliness of it.
But here he didn't get anything.
Well, there is one thing, Charles, that you ought to be celebrating that's not connected to this last week except only the coincidence of the calendar, and that is that Trump is now imposing I guess he's pulled the trigger on imposing these five hundred percent tariffs on countries that trade and illicit Russian goods and maybe other right, right, great? That of course, that was a congressionally past statute, which again conforms to the Charlie Cook principle that Congress ought
to be involved in teriffs, which I agree with. And uh, I mean, it's early yet, but I've seen some news reports that the Chinese banks in India and others are saying, yeah, I guess we're going to have to go along with this, and so suddenly they're really finally turning the serious economic screws on Russia. Everyone's thought that you know, Trump is soft on Russia and whatever, but this is a serious
measure and maybe it helps. I don't know if the last week helps or hurts the European cooperation in that, although I note another news item out this morning is the French Navy has intercepted and boarded one of the Russian Black Fleet oil tankers. So it's not just us in the Caribbean, it's some of the Europeans are getting in on the action too.
Yes, I saw a headline this morning that said the attempt to build a united EU front against Trump hampered by Franco German tensions, and I thought that just feels so nineteenth century to see Franco German tensions in the news again. I just it pleased me. No, the tariffs and the Chinese reaction to it, and exactly how much of their wonderful unlimited relationship military wise they're going to
do puts Russia in another spot. Of course, we've been all waiting for three years for the imminent collapse of the Russian economy. It's one of those things that very very strangely refuses to lie down and die. But it might be actually happening now. But I'm not going to say that because nothing ever happens or might it. We can get to Ukraine in a secondary But I want to circle back just for one thing and what Charlie said, And he can, of course again slap me with a
wet mackerel if he's first. When when a population is insulted, as the Canadians or some Europeans were, and I understand that, I get that, and I'm you know, I'm a northa Kotein for Effan's sakes, I'm a Minnesotan. I'm a practically Canadian and temperament when it comes to go to getting along and being nice, I don't like it. I don't
like smash Mault politics. That's just not my thing. But if you, if they do feel insulted, the notion that will all show you I'm going to vote against my own interests and the interests of my country just a just a show where I am about this, Well, then let them live with the consequences. And I'm not prettying.
I mean that fine. If you're going to have a petulant fit about a petulant fit and elect in the worst government you can that won't do anything about your problems, that's on you, that's not on Trump.
Except my interest is not in them, it's in us. My objection here is that it hurts American interest. I don't care if silly countries want to elect silly people who do things that are against their interests. I care about the United States, and my point is that we hurt ourselves in Canada. I have no objection to the Canadians. I like the Canadians. I think they are a good ally and a good and neighbor to have given the alternatives.
But if they want to do silly things in Canada, that's their look at.
But we would have been better.
Off with five years of Pierre Polief than we will be with Mark Carney on the world stage domestically as well, and I think the same is true in Europe.
So I agree with you.
Of course it's ridiculous, but that is what seems to happen, and I don't think it helps America, which is my concern.
I agreed, as it is questionable what Beer could have done. It would have been great if he'd, you know, all of a sudden, showed up like a frozen Argentinian and started doing the things that needed to be done.
I probably wouldn't have started overtures to China, for one thing, And he wouldn't have made anti American speeches in Europe, and he wouldn't have called for a new world order that excludes the United States. So I do think it matters.
Yeah, well, you know, sometimes I just feel like the Canada in your in my head is just already gone, you know, with with with the mounties and the square jaw and the hats and the frozen wilderness and the beautiful European accented architecture built in the middle of nowhere by hardy people. Somehow, I just feel as if that national temperament is as gone as the Australians. The Australians, for Heaven's safety, you'd like to think of, you know, your Paul Hogan type A knife A knife.
See you've played knife before.
Right, pretty I have grilling and the barbie. You Sometimes you listen to their correspondence, ask questions of the American tennis players and say, how do you feel about representing that flag, that horrible flag of oppression, death, Nazism, fascism and the rest of it, and you realize, yes, really has gone too well anyway, So let's go to Ukraine. It's still going on. We were told that he was
going to get a piece seel really quickly. I don't think you should have said that because or whatever he said about it. But here we are, and on go the negotiations, on goes, the war, on goes, the attacks on the oil facilities, and then none of that for a while, and then a barbon billy in Kiev goes. It's incessant, it's interminable, it's horrible, it's deadly, it's massive.
It can't go on forever. But yet it seems that it will if the tariffs do indeed cut off the spigott and if indeed there is a Russian contraction of the economy. And I mean, right now, they just raised their vat, they just raised more attacks in the middle class. You know their feels. At some point, don't they have to correct and come to the table. You'd think all the Russian dead end, all the Russian dead enders right now we're laughing at that.
Well, the dead enders. I mean, I guess there's a lot to rulers and regimes like Putins, which is you have to go on to the bitterer.
End, or you lose everything.
I've never been quite sure if that was true, but it certainly seemed to be true of you know, the Nazis in World War two and so forth. And I guess that logic is right because look the deal. I think the outline of deal is in.
Front of us.
Russia gets to keep most of the territory they've conquered. They want some more concessions, which maybe you're worth doing just to end it along with apparently you know, we're part of tendedly at least a security guarantee, and you know it's we gave them a security guarantee once before, and look how that worked out for them. So you know, if I'm the Ukrainians, I'm like, well, if we have to swallow that bitter medicine, we might be willing to.
But that deal is out there.
I think maybe there's something we don't know, but I think it's the stubbornness of Putin. I think he knows he can't win, but he's afraid of a negotiated deal might.
Be entered in the loss. Call him in Russian politics.
I think the negotiat a deal at this point, if they got to keep what they have, would be trouted. It would be touted as a win, the absorption of the portion of a little Russia back into a mother Russia objective, and who is going to say otherwise. Everybody's going to get back to business. Everybody's going to be happy when all of a sudden they get absorbed back in the West because the war is over and the rest everybody's going to make money. The oligarchs will be happy.
People will stop falling out of windows, you know, or dropping their tea with a sudden stricken look in their face, and you know, and Putin goes on the idea that if he somehow stopped now didn't control the whole country, kept the dambas, and everyone around him is going to say that's that's the regime is weak. Now we strike and and he's deposed. I don't think that would happen. I think he declared victory, go home and continue to roll around until he dies in bed.
More turns his attention to the old Baltic states. I mean, that's what you keep hearing about as a possibility. You know, what's the old Churchill line that Russia is the riddle wrapped in inside a mystery, inside of an enigma.
Right.
Well, you know, my go to.
Person on these matters is Gary Salt Morrison at Northwestern University. He's maybe the finest professor of Russian literature in America.
I know him a little bit. He's written some great.
Articles where he says, look, Russian imperialism is part of their sort of cultural and national DNA going back centuries. It wasn't just a Soviet thing or a Communist thing. And so he thinks what's going on is a regression to the mean there, which is, you know, they do have these ambitions of empire they've always had.
I was always struck when.
I visited the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg that what Catherine the Great and all the others they collected, all this wonderful Western European art, and I went through room after room of that giant place, and where's the Russian art? That there is an inferiority complex I think the Russians have always had. And so if you know, if they're not part they were never part of the great overseas empire game of the Europeans in the nineteenth century and whatnot.
So I don't know if all those things are right, but I'm going to follow Professor Morrison and thinking that this is what they're like, and we have to recognize the enemy of it and not think they can be bought off by just by commerce alone.
So they may have an inferiority complex, because except for certain areas of literature and music, they're absolutely mediocre.
Any which, Aska says a funny meme that I saw, and it says literature in different countries, and in the first pane all as a Frenchman, and underneath it says I will die for love. And then in the second one there's an American, and the American says I will die for liberty, and then the Russian one it just says I will die.
Right exactly, exactly precisely. Well, Charles, do you agree with my assessment about the business as usual getting on to it? If they just take what they've already got and declare victory and go home.
Unfortunately, I.
Resent that that is the most likely and at this stage perhaps the best outcome, given the number of people who are.
Dying every day.
Still somehow it's almost three years since this started. Just reminds you that whenever anyone says it'll be over by Christmas, you should slap them with a wet mackerel, because it never is. This has been a war of attrition in the way.
The First World War was.
But I do agree with you that that's the outcome and that there will be a lot of people on both sides who will.
Be happy with it. But it isn't good.
I think we should be able to be grown ups and say that's what's going to happen without having to convince ourselves that it is good.
We've also learned about the new age of warfare. Drones have made a difference in this war like I can't imagine anywhere else in my lifetime, a new invention, a new rapid development. War is great for teching. You know, war is the health of the state, but it's also pretty marvelous for R and D and a lot of assumptions you would like to think in the Pentagon have been upended by seeing what we have seen there. And I think, who did we have on? Was it McMasters
we had on? We were talking about whether or not the United States it is intellectually adapting to this, because all of a sudden, you think we've got these great, incredible aircraft carriers and these battle groups and the rest of it, and oh, we just lost one because of because two million Chinese drones just appeared over the horizon, you know, and dropped on them, and he just couldn't take them out. Worry about that. I worry about us not getting the right lessons. But yes, so you say
they'll then turn their attention to the Balkans. Have they learned anything? Do you think has the Russian leadership or Putin learned anything from the last three years?
You know, I draw a blank. I can't answer that question. I have no idea what lessons they may be thinking they're learning.
I was going to ask you that Tim was slightly differently phrased, which is, do you think regrets having gone in? Which is a separate question from whether he can back off.
I think he would regret it. If it meant that he is deposed and dies in cold room, then I think he would, as long as he maintains his personal level of comfort and authority. I don't think that he does, really.
I mean, suggests he's not a good person.
I don't think he is. Right. Yeah, well, I looked into his soul and I didn't see him as being particularly good either all right, well that's that, and we would like to think that the presence of Russian activity the Baltics would concentrate the mind wonderfully and all of a sudden the United States will seem like an awful great guy to have around two. So we hope now. Ross Dufatt, I think over at the Times was arguing something that again we were talking about on Ricochet ricochet
dot com. Go there Sina talking about how Reagan's second term has quote ended the conservative era and he's talking about a post Trump GOP. And I was thinking about that the other day when somebody in the comments was talking about that Trump is a rhino and that you know, but unlike other previous rhinos like Mett Romney and John McCain and the rest of it. And I thought, those turn that term doesn't mean anything anymore. We It pains me as a an old Reagan eighties kind of guy.
But that's that's gone, that's that's that's dead. I remember before the Trump election. I think it was an American It was one of those interest American interests. It was where the flight ninety three piece ran that somebody was saying, basically, well, we're going to have a Caesar. We're going to have a Caesar, so it might as well be our Caesar.
And there's a lot of that thought here. We're going to use the instruments of the state to accomplish the good things because they need to be done and they're not being done by other means, and if we don't do them, then the country and the Republic is gone.
I'm not sure I agree with that, but I understand the appeal, and I understand argument, or am I wrong think wrote The new Nationalist era and again I'm a nationalist is still defined primarily negatively in terms of the things that probably won't return to Republican politics anytime soon. The nation building efforts of George W. Bush. Yeah, Okay, done with that. The immigration amnesty of the Reagan era, Yeah, done with that. The sweeping changes to entitlements pushed by
Paul Ryan, the button up moralism Pence. In terms of a positive agenda, douthor rights, there are a lot of very different ways that the Republican Party of twenty twenty eight or twenty thirty two could be nationalist, and many the fiercest battles inside the Trump Coalition, especially the Great influencer war that broke out after Charlie Kirk's assassination recommend fundamental divisions over what exactly a nationalist right should want.
So I'll ask you, guys, Charles, what should a nationalist right, which sounds terrifying to some people, what should they want?
This is very hard to answer because I think they should want what I want.
Yes, and I'll start here. I don't think that we have a caesar.
I know others have argued otherwise, I don't think we have a caesar. I stort't think for the record that Trump has done anything in his excesses that comes close to Joe Biden trying to spend half a trillion dollars without Congress.
That's not to tweeting a constitutional amendment.
Yes, now, that's not to defend Trump. I've been critical when I think he's wrong, and I think he is wrong quite often, and I think in general the balance between the executive and Congress is off, and that Trump exemplifies that as much as anyone else. But I don't think we have a caesar, and if we do, then we had one last time around as well. I don't agree with doubtat entirely. I think a couple things. One
is that trump Ism is hard to imagine. Absent Trump, he can change opinion on the right with one tweet, But then if he changes his mind back, so do the people who had their minds changed. So I need to see evidence of a profound shift in thinking that is divorced from Trump before I believe that conservatism, which I think is a natural instinct in.
Polities, is dead.
The second thing I would say is that there has always been a balance on the right between the ideas that were perhaps crystallized by Ronald Reagan and the ideas that doubt that thinks have taken over. Pap Buchanan challenged George H. W. Bush for the presidency, probably cost him a second term. The conservatism of many in the twenties and the fifties at Taft, for example, Senator Taft debt
is were different on tariffs and foreign pope. There has always been this debate on the right, and I don't think that it is currently a sign that one side has lost forever that another side is ascendant.
So I think sometimes there is this.
Binary conception of conservatism where there's Reaganism and I'm a reaganide and then there is everything else, and if everything else gets to take the floor for a while, then the Reaganism must be debt. One caveat before I shut up. There obviously have been a couple of genuine shifts. One, as you say, an end to foreign adventurism that incidentally was a Bush era approach, not a Reagan era approach.
Reagan was not a foreign adventurist. And there's been a shift on immigration, which I think is salutary because the Bush era Republican Party was way out of kilter with the base. It was the biggest problem that George W. Bush had he over and over again, and then the Republicans in Congress in twenty ten, twelve fourteen echoed this, tried to push an immigration policy that Republican voters absolutely hated. But I'm not convinced outside of that that we have
yet seen this big shift. And I'd recommend Rome Entrepreneur's piece in the Washington Post that responds to Rostathat on this point.
Yeah.
So I'm I'm I was actually almost done with a long article for our friends at the Civitas Institute on what I'm calling the different phases of the New Right. I'm so old James like you that I can remember several iterations of the New Right being announced by the media and by various leaders in the world, and by my calculation, we are today living in the era of
New Right four point five. I won't go through all the different ones why I gave him those numbers or started sounding like a Ricochet rebranding's that's Charles's department, but Ricche. But New Right four point five is Trump's nationalism with all the changes that have already been mentioned, and hostility to trade and certain other u turns of what was
traditionally conservative consensus. I think, except for Charles's right to point back to the whole Taft era, which is when all the new rights started showing up after World War Two.
And the point.
Five is is whether the so called young disaffected gropers as they're called, or groperism, if it's actually a thing, is really something to be reckoned with endurable or is it just a generational revolt like the new left against established liberalism in the nineteen sixties that remains to be seen.
Leave that aside for now.
So Ross's peace, I thought started off strong saying, you know, trump Ism is really trump and he's holding together with the force of his personality a lot of discordant elements and they won't be sorted out until he's gone. I think that's absolutely right. But then you can almost hear the air going out of the balloon of the piece the further along you got, because then he starts saying, well, it could be this, it could be that.
I'd kind of like something. How did he put it?
He said, I'd like, uh, you know, national solidarity and technological dynamism and economics, you know, a multi racial, religiously informed idea of what it means to be an American and so forth.
Uh.
And that's all fine. I guess it's too general for my taste.
There are two things missing right now, I think from the people speculating about what New Right five point zero will be. They'll sound familiar to you and me, James, but missing in Rossi's peaks. One is individual liberty. You know, the old idea of your freedom, and it's dropped out of the trumpest vocabulary, in the nationalist vocabulary. And in fact, you see some people like Pat Denine, who he had on the show here a couple of years ago, is
actually hostile to the classical liberal tradition. I'm still an unreconstructed follower of Hayek and the classical liberal tradition and think we're gonna need it again, perhaps soon. And then the other thing that's related to that is free markets.
Pause right there, Pause right there, because it is possible that in an era of identity politics, the idea of focusing on the individual seems like a waste of time and a wasted effort, because what matters is group solidarity. That's what I hate about this era. It's what I really hate about this era. And it's a natural outgrowth of everything that came out of the sixties and seventies.
But if we're going to group together people by if people say, well, okay, if I'm going to be as an individual seen as being deficient morally, philosophically, spiritually, historically, and all these things because of some of the attributes that I cannot change, then I can either, you know, accept your definition, or I can get with the rest of the prison gang that's on my side and form a block to oppose you. And so that's why it's
going to be difficult I too. I mean, one of my favorite books is clockworkornge because it's about the individual versus the state. That is the fundamental building block of a free society as individual liberty. So I agree, but unfortunately we've been moved into blocks for the spoils. Anyway.
Yeah, well, I'll just add a code of to what you just said, which is it's entirely understandable, and I think there's some extent legitimate for white males who have been on the brunt of you know, cultural and legal discrimination for quite a while now to say we as a block want to stand up for I mean, the phrase I don't like is you know, ethno nationalism. Now, as I say, I totally understand it. It's a predictable and in some ways just reaction to what has been
going on. But it's also a mistake for the long term, and I hope that a New Right five point zero does not make that a front and center principle of what should come next.
By the point was, you know, free markets, right, it goes along with individual liberty.
You know, an awful lot of the nat cons some of them anyway, they're all for well some of them say they like the new Deal.
And here's here's a shout out for National Review.
From this beginning, you know, new Right one point zero was some names now forgotten like Peter Vierek and Clinton Rossiter and even Walter Littman is some extent. And what were they saying in nineteen fifty They said conservatism should support the New Deal and we should accept coexistence with communism.
And then you go to National reviews of founding statements, and by the way, National Review, I think you can say starts new Right two point zero and it was called the New Right by the media in nineteen fifty five. And you know, Buckley says in that famous Mission statement that you know, no, we're not making peace with the New Deal, and anybody who does is not a conservative.
He was directly attacking Rossiter and Viereck and people like that and so and then of course, you know, coexistence with communism is unacceptable philosophically, he would say, as a practical matter of course, they have nuclear weapons, but we cannot accept ideologically that they're legitimate.
Okay, that history is well known.
But now the nat coons are bringing back some of the old neo statist ideas of you know, Peter Vierek and all those SOEU de Son Conservatives of nineteen fifty and you know, I tend to resist these cycles of history theory, but it does seem sometimes like we're cotton one.
Charlie.
I agree.
I think that despite the preference of many nap cons for throwing tomatoes at National Review, if you read National Reviews statement from nineteen fifty five, which is brilliant piece of writing by William F. Buckley Junior and others, you find that we essentially believe the same things as we did then, and individual liberty is core and free markets are core. And even if you don't like those two things, I think as a practical matter, they are the cause
of everything else that is good about America. That doesn't mean that there are no trade offs, please don't misunderstand me. It also doesn't mean there are no downsides to those things.
There are.
But the reason that America is militarily pre eminent, the reason that America outlived the Soviet Union, the reason that America is technologically advanced, is because of individual liberty and free markets.
I think there is a tendency.
Certainly this is true on the left, and it does exist to a smaller extent on the right to believe that this is the natural order of things, that there's something intrinsic to America in the soil or the sky that has led to it being wealthy and powerful.
And I don't think that's true. I think that the.
Power and the wealth are the product of assumptions that are baked in right back to the Declaration, and that if we lose those or substitute them and become sort of mediocre, fluffy European social democracy type country.
Will lose the rest of it.
So I don't just think that it is a good in and of itself, although I am an individualist, free marketer, I think that it undergods everything else that we like on the right about the United States.
Yes, Charles, Well, that's just you down there in your nice house living in America's wang for the rest of the country suffer. You're absolutely right. I agree with everything you said. But the counter argument is, why should we believe in these things because they have brought this country to the state in which it is. You have an overall optimistic impression of the country. You like it, you
see good in it, you see strengths. There are people who do not see good in it, who do not see strength and the rise of anti Americanism on the right is that mirrors the anti America of the left is one of those curious things and one of those bothersome things. And it has to do with people who say, well,
look where we are. All the factories are gone, pointless, wars in other countries, sold everything to China, the white men can't get jobs, miserable, awful wine box when in a running h R. Why should we have any investment in this? And we've come to this because of what you've described of individual liberty, instead of thinking of deep consciousness and of free markets, instead of saying the government is going to control and make things right for the
right people. I don't agree with any of that, but I think that's what they're thinking, and that's the problem that we have to address.
Well.
I think all three of us have said we're all Reaganites, and you know, someone who has written so much about Reagan, I get. I take it personally when I hear the young and up and rising people talk about how we don't want any zombie Reaganism or the more general form of that is what is conservatism inc As they like to say, ever done for us? What is that Conserve. It really does remind me of Monty pythons. What are the Romans ever done for us? We go through roles
in schools of water. I can take off a lot of things. And some of this is just simple ignorance. I mean a lot of people who trash Reagan, just to take that central example, truly haven't boughted to study them at all. They really literally don't know what they're
talking about. They don't stand as I wrote an article about this also recently for Civitas, about how the Trump administration, especially in its comprehensive attack on what we call the administrative state, learn from the experience and some of the failures of the Reagan years and the Reagan people. I think they learned by the end of two terms that the problem of our administrative state was much more serious and fundamental than they thought. They thought some simple reforms
would make great progress. They made only limited progress. But without that experience and that perception, I think we wouldn't be seeing the fight going.
On today, especially in the courts and elsewhere. And for that they.
Owe a debt of gratitude to the Reagan years and that conservative movement that really National Review has such a large part of the story.
And so I don't know.
I'll just add this, James, because some of the things you ticked off is a discussion I often bring up with students, is is the American Constitution pro capitalists? Because remember Wadam Smith's Wilson Nations was also published in seventeen seventy six. Maybe not entirely a coincidence, I don't know, And I can point to a number of clauses I won't do it now that differ significantly from Oh, I don't know any European constitution, and they're implicitly pro open markets,
pro competition. Implicit in our constitution is an embrace of competition between states. That's part of federalism, but it also means economic competition, and we seem to be losing sight of that. And so what I hear last point, sorry, what I hear from a lot of the younger disaffected people is well, our founding was really defective. Why because it proved insufficiently robust to stop the century long progressive assault.
Now that's a decent criticism, But is the answer then to say the founding was defective or we need to fight our way back through? What's been going wrong for one hundred years, and you know, that's a serious fight going on these days, and I think they ought to join the right side of that.
Yeah, there's a lot of people who want to return with a v It's not just they're not content with going back to basic American foundational ideas and strengthening those. What they want is this sort of efflorescence of a lost European culture that they romanticize to the cathedrals and the whole disposing with modernity in its various ugly forms. And I understand that, and I'm slightly sympathetic to it.
But the other day in one of these forums on Twitter, somebody was somebody posted one of those return videos that has this is the vision vouchsafe to you of what we could be if only we did these, you know, these sort of ethno nationalism things. And I slowed it down and I noted with interest a frame from a Jack Benny movie that had some celestial stairs, which I
thought it was curious. And then I noticed something else that thought was weird, And these shots appeared, but a duration of a quarter to half a second in this montage, this millange of all the wonderful things that were build built by the White race. And it was a very large domed building that I recognized as having never been built in Berlin. It was spears, big monumental, ugly piece
of garbage, over scaled nightmare, you know whatever. The house of the German people were supposed to be various approving angles of it. And I say, oh, okay, I got you. I know where you're coming from. Charles. I want to ask you this before we begin to wrap it up here. When Steve was talking about the administrative state, the stranglehold that it may have on the it does have on the economy, we have learned now of the extraordinary level of fraud that we have in this country, in the state.
Might I add in this country we've been hearing for years about fraudened abuse. I always see that as one German word. I'm going to cut the budget by tackling frauden abuse. And now we have it. And now some people are saying that ten percent of the government, ten percent of the economy is fraud. I think that maybe
understating the issue. We have a bunch of people who are today leaving work in order to go to the protests about ice and the local the Democratic Socialist Party is telling them, hey, use that new Minnesota time off family lead law. It just never ends. It never ends. Did we see? Do you think to us enough to
extend to penetrate the general American consciousness? Between DOGE being or between USAID being a massive money washing scheme that sloshed it from the government to a Soros institution to someplace else in Peru, and the combination of fraud that we have. Do you think that we have enough rage to tackle an attempt to do something about the administrative state, the reparation's retribution redistribution state, or is the swamp just too deep and de fetted?
I don't know, But let me answer that by noting something that I found interesting in Steve State, California, there are those who is to impose a so called billionaires tax, and I think maybe for the first time in a long time, they've pushed it too far because Californians will put up with a lot to live in California, and quite rightly, because California is incredible, wonderful weather, geography, food, culture.
Atmosphere, and so forth.
One of the things that I keep hearing the billionaires or the startup mavens who aren't billionaires but are nervous that this law will destroy their businesses say that they haven't said before, is you know what you guys don't need more money.
You need to use it properly.
You need to stop the waste, you need to allocate it efficiently.
And then they'll point to other states.
They'll say Texas managers, Florida managers, and they spend a hell of a lot less than you do. I haven't heard those people say this until this year. Often they're incredibly defensive, and they essentially say, take whatever you need.
I need to keep making money.
Or they'll mutter about taxes hurting economic growth, which is true in the more classical sense. But for the first time they've started saying, actually, your problem is not more money. That's not what you need. What you need is different spending choices. And I think that might sit on a shift. Whether that is going to penetrate the general electoral consciousness, I don't know.
Okay, Can I just add a little footnote about that the Billionaire's Tax there's a feature in it that's not widely understood or known yet. There's a feature note that says, maybe you own on paper three percent of a privately held startup or maybe it's gone public.
I think it doesn't actually matter.
But if they are Class A voting shares and you control, say twenty or thirty percent, they're saying your share of the company is actually twenty or thirty percent, and therefore that's the amount of money we're going to ask from you in taxes, not your three percent share of the net worth of company on the market or privately assessed,
but you know, your voting share amount. That is a dagger intended to kill the entire venture capital industry in California and drive every startup out of the state.
And I kind of wonder if that's on purpose. I actually think.
That, you know, they're the people like Robert Reich who's behind this, so hate capitalism and venture capitalists that they don't care that most of them are liberal Democrats.
That's an unstanding feature. I think they just believe that these people will go out to the shed and get another golden goose and cut it and open it up and the coins will tumble out. I've been looking at what the list of proposed bills in Virginia, and the new legislation is just an absolute eye opener. And we actually should probably do a whole show about this because
I mean, again, these things won't be passed. But now that everybody's licking their lips and saying, okay, what can we do to Virginia, it is nothing but taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes, new tourism tax raised at the hotel to tax seven points seven five percent tax and incomes over a million, creates new tax brackets and points a three point eight
investment tax on top of stadium come. Allows every locality to raise the sales tax by one percent, raises rounds up the state and local taxes to the nearest five cent increment, allows localities to outlaw gas powered leaf blowers, and then taxes the electric the versions that they have
to the electronic versions they have to buy. It is exactly what they do because they believe that not enough fair share is being paid, that there's just so much money out there, and if they got their hands on it, then justice would somehow follow. Not enough justice. We got to keep taking it. We got to find out more places to take it from. But justice will finally be done. Hey,
I got to tell you this, folks. If you would like to meet light minded people like you're listening to this podcast and saying, my gosh, these men just they're brilliant. That's not We're not average James. That would just average Ricochet folks. And you know the women are good looking as well, and smart and just as just as mouthy. We have meetups in person, that's right. You don't find that in other sites because we actually trust to show that, to show up and not start getting stabby. Got a
group coming up in Detroit, Michigan. We've got another one in early February to Florida Space Coast. Go to ricochet dot com, look for the meetup page and see what's there. It's ricochet dot com slash events and hey, if you want to meet Ricochet people where you meet and live, announce it on the page and see who shows up. You'll make new friends. And the fun part about it is you'll probably not spend any time talking about politics.
That's what I always found every other direction the conversation goes. That is probably it for us today. And I should tell you maybe to give us that five star review and Apple podcasts, but I think I'm going to let that go this week. I should tell you that if you go to ricochet dot com, it's not all free. I mean, yeah, a lots of fun stuff there is free, but the real communities form on the member site and it's you know, it's a couple of centavos, liray, whatever
you want to say. It does cost a little bit, not much, and what you get is the right to comment, and that's what keeps it sane and civil and center right and moderated and just good place to make friends. Trust me. So, Stephen, it's been great, Charles again, I've enjoyed every single essence jot phoneme of a conversation. I hope the other people have as well. And I trust we will convene here next week.
Only only if you stay warm, James.
I'll stay warm. Even if I don't stay warm, I'll be here. And Charles, we are now at what version of Ricochet four point or do you just want to just wave your hands and say you don't know and it doesn't matter.
I want to wave my hands and point people toward some of the new podcasts that.
We have, Oh tell them about it.
Well I did.
We had Henry Elson's new podcast, Conservative Crossroads, and there is another one in the work, so I can't announce it yet, but I will on a future episode off this show.
And the Nighter is back and every Saturday as well. And yeah, it it's not just the post, not just the member feed, it's all the podcast as well. What a media empire we are and we'll certainly surely soon become. Anyway, it's been fun. We'll see you in the comments at Ricochet. Guys, Bye bye.
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