On the Shoulders of Giants

Or period. Poor poor carrier pigeons. Ask not what.

Your country can do for you, Ask what you can do for your country.

Mister garbashaw, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long, John You and me James Lylyx. Today we talked to you of all eleven about his new book about the Constitution, how it unified America once and could do it again. So let's have herselves a podcast.

I've known her a long time, indirectly, not directly very much, and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black, and now she wants to be known as black.

Welcome everybody.

This is the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and two. I'm James Lylyx in a beautiful summer day in Minneapolis, Rob Long in Gotham, presume, and John You is joining us from California. Of course, the crucible of sanity in the modern world.

I'm sure he's going to tell us all about that, gentlemen.

Welcome, Hello, well, hi, James, Johns is right, that's what you do sometimes sometimes in radio and broadcasting. We like to say the more dead air, the better, But oftentime if we like to just kind of jump in there with something that just gets the ball rolling. The ball now seems to be rolling uphill for Donald Trump, downhill for Kamala Harris as she's vaulted to the front of

Uh uh, Kamala Harris is a knowledge of l A restaurants is large? Will that help her win the presidency? So okay, you guys all need to just just take a deep breath here and relax.

I uh it was. It still made me laugh.

Uh yeah, well, I thought the Times recipe would be camealized onions by now.

Very good, very good.

I thought I would replace I'm sitting in for Steve Hayward. I mean, you know, Peter Robinson gets to sit in for Steve Hayward. But now I'm sitting in for Steve.

That's right, all right.

Well, now that you are sitting in, let's uh, let's let's put it to you. Do you think that? I mean, you were there in California. You saw exactly what she was able to do for that state. Tell us what her what her California record might be, how it might be introduced to the rest of the country, what it was.

I have a piece up this week about her record as district attorney attorney general. First, I think people are going to see the bad campaigner she was in twenty twenty, wants all this you know, happiness, it starts to maybe it won't end, but all this happiness in the media starts to end. Because I think she's the typical of a California politician. We live in a one party state, so she's never had to run a tough race before,

But the broader.

Issue is when people start to look at her record. I think it's a mistake actually for Democrats to be praising her as a prosecutor, because once people see the decisions she'd made back here, they're not going to be happy. There are some very well known cases in California. For example, there was an early in her tenure there was a guy who killed a police officer, severely wounded a partner.

So I think this is and where where might that have been? John, Do you remember?

I think somewhere up there in the north somewhere I know there's like white stuff that's called somewhere where the people comes out of the air. It's like water falls from the air in solid form, things like.

This, God's Dandre amazing. Yeah, that was here.

That was the bailphone with the people who were who were burning down the streets and burning down the buildings, and she was telling that we need, you.

Know, basically more of it.

That the riots shall continue until we have equity spread and evil even laer across the land. So yeah, there's that. But again again, if all we get is happy warrior energy and smiles and no real particular investigation from the media, then I think a lot of you know, the vast middle that needs to be persuaded, may just say, well, she looks like more fun time for a wine on for for for a president.

Why not? And I don't want that crazy old guy.

So I mean yeah, Now, so Rob, where do you think the Trumps, the Trump campaign goes from here?

Well, they better get it together.

It should come as no shock that you're not going to find for a progressive Democrat, really incredibly aggressive need coverage. That should not be surprising to them. They didn't get it for under Biden. They're not going to get it under when Kamala Harris is running, uh, and they need to focus and she's giving them all sorts of openings and they just seem to be focusing on a lot of stupid stuff at this point. Look, he got on a hundred days, less than hundred days, so it's sprint. You

The nasty term is to Willy Horton.

But people forget that Willy Horton story was true, that he did he was fur.

Load from prison, and he did commit crimes, to commit murder.

That the reason that that worked was because there was no response from the Democrats and for the candidate then, and the most governor of messages is Michael Lucaucus.

To actually defend the the the process of furlough. He didn't. He just ran away from it.

It is and crystallized the difference between liberal and conservative voters for liberal conservtive voters on law and order issues. So everyone every time that this sort of like clown car of a Trump campaign starts talking about anything other than her record, they are wasting time and they have very little time left.

The problem with Trump.

Is it's integral to the Trump campaign. A lot of people don't like him. That is a real problem for him, and they know him well, and what he needs to do is not remind them about all the reasons they have to not like him. They should be reminding them of all the reasons they can't in good conscience vote for this extremely liberal, extremely progressive alternative. And they see me failing at that now, which is surprising to me because you know, just go you go back to the debate.

That debate, everybody focused on Biden.

I said this at the time, and yeah, you're right, it's terrible for Biden, but they forgot that it was absolutely terrific for Trump, not just because Biden was a dottery old man, but because Trump was controlled. I mean, he had a little trumpy near the end, but you know, we take our wins and we can find him. But he basically held the line. He argued passionately for things

Would you say that people don't like Trump, that's true, but they don't like him for his personality, not necessarily his politics, his policy preferences, which can.

Be you know here there in the other place.

So do we have a situation then where people say I don't like him, therefore I'm going to vote for the person who is completely opposed to just about everything I happen to believe in, from energy policy to gun policy to yeah, aliens getting to illegal aliens getting you know, free healthcare, all of these things I.

Just don't like.

I just don't like this guy. So I mean, and I know there is that element. I'm going to feel good about myself because I feel good voting for this person because it is a virtuous thing to do. But you do have a fairly stark policy difference.

Yeah, but I would just say, right, there is the problem, and Drama was going to hear, right, there is the problem. It's the problem for the Trump campaign is that when you start to say that people are going to vote for Kama Harris so they don't like Trump our idiots or fools.

Emotional, I know, but that's what they are.

You start doing that, you stop listening to why people don't like you. And that is that is exactly how the liberals got in a position they're in now because everybody who said I don't really like those Liberals, they instead of listening to that, no Democratic party listening to America, they decided to steamroll over them.

That is not a recipe for success at the ballot box.

I operationalize what Rob is saying. I think it's pretty simple. They could make a quick fix, which is usually in campaigns the vice president is the attack dog and the president is the one who sits back and puts out the positive program for the future. Right, doesn't engage directly in all this identity stuff. You know, I watched that black journalist conference with the interview, and Trump likes paying

Yes, we're always looking at the candidate. We don't have to go ahead run.

No, that's absolutely true. The structural problems are sort of baked in obviously to the Trump campaign. But it's not as if there isn't past performance that you can use to you know, as they say, and they say they won't do in the finance, but they should do in campaigns. When did he lose in twenty twenty, And he did lose in twenty twenty. He lost after the first debate, and the campaign officials knew because they had focus groups and numbers of Republican men and Republican women in Wisconsin

It's not like he can't do it. It's just that he won't. And that is I don't know.

If that was in the Trump campaign, that would worry me more than the JD. Van's stuff, More than anything else. It would worry me that the most disciplined days of the Trump campaign seemed to be over.

Well.

One other thing about oh sorry, just one little small point is he suppose Harris does great, and she is doing great right now. We shouldn't like pretend it's not happening. But all she's doing, if she succeeds, she will just get the race back to what it was before Biden's disastrous debate performance. It's still going to come down to six or seven battleground states, and the country's close, and it's divided, and it's going to be decided by a pointer two. And so that's the other thing is Trump

Is she doing great or is it just being announced that she is great? I mean, we get this flood of relief from the media that they have this wonderful, charismatic, smart, braddy, confident meme, goddess gout you know who can do it? So is she doing great because of anything other than she's a beaming alternative to the doddering old man that

Before the honeymoon fades and people get tired of it.

But I mean, doing great. I don't think right now has anything to do with what she's said or she's.

Raised three hundred million dollars and the parties unified behind her, and she's starting to restore support in the Democrat for the Democrats amongst minorities women. I mean, this is I'm not saying she's doing better than they did in twenty twenty. She's just getting them back to the same start line is twenty twenty. But that's that's an achievement because Biden was going to get trounced.

I mean, look, I mean four weeks ago, I mean, it's probably about eight weeks ago. It was a it was absolutely de facto truth that everybody knew projecting forward that either one of these parties replaced either one of their top candidates with almost anybody, they would get a bounce because the negatives were really high on all of these candidates. And one party did it kind of halfway, not really, but they kind of did it.

And that's what you're seeing.

I mean, we would have predicted this with person X at the top of the side on either side, so none of this is a surprise. All of the problem is it in a compressed timeline, which is what this is. You don't have that much time to define your candidate.

What about that person?

What about those two kids in a store? We're talking about whether her father is Jamaican or whether he's like half Indian. Like this nonsense, waste of time. And if they brought it up, they started it. They need to like get there, They need to get back into control.

And they are not. They do not look to me like they're doing it.

You know, I might have not have been the best way to spend the week, but at some point, since ethnicity and identification and all these things are of absolute critical importance. Right now, it is a fun conversation to be had, but not at the moment because our guest is here. You've all leven the director of Social, cultural and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

That's the AIE. Of course.

He's the founder and editor of National Affairs and the author of seven books, The most recent, published earlier this summer, is American How the Constitution Unified our Nation and could again you've allved, thanks for joining.

Us, Thank you very much for having me.

Well, you know that the title of the book presumes that there is a period of unification behind us, in a period of constitutional unification that could be before us. So that would mean we are in an interregnum of constitutional disunity. How would you describe where we are right now Visa VI, that old piece of bellum.

Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. I mean we are in a moment when we are not unified about or by the Constitution in the ways that we ought to be. And I think a lot of Americans recognize that we're very divided, but tend to think that the Constitution is the reason and are frustrated by the various ways in which it holds them back

Hey, you boy, can I try a little theory on you? You can tell me if I'm bull of it.

I mean, John already's rolling his eyes. I can see.

In the strength of the Constitution, this strange document that we still argue and fight about.

I mean, I don't think there's another document.

Maybe since the Gospels, that people have been reading and rereading and fighting over. In software engineering, right, there's this two big categories of how you put together a giant software project. Right. One is called agile and one's called waterfall. Waterfall is you go step by step, you accomplish one component, and you move the next component, and you move to the next component.

You just kind of chip away in it that way.

An agile is you kind of you start before you've got everything taken care of, and you just get going, and you know that there are weaknesses.

You can have to fix those later.

But the idea is to keep going and you create a document that is both incredibly resilient, or you create a product incredibly resilient but also has problems that need to be fixed over time. But the point is you got it going and everybody kind of agreed on the big vision. It feels to me like in terms of the software, the code for the United States of America, which is the Constitution, that it's an incredibly brilliant piece

I think it's absolutely right. It's a really good metaphor for how the system is meant to work, and it's intentional in a lot of ways. What you see when you look at the records of the Constitutional Convention is that the framers of the Constitution dealt with some very serious problems by containing them as tensions within the system. Right, were they going to empower the large states or the

You've all. What strikes me, why it's John you, I'm sitting in for Steve Hayward. What strikes me is I could see a youngster reading this book and going, You've all you don't know what time it is, right, that's their big frame. It's so you know, the both the left and the right, young people on the left and the right all have you know, reject the constitution. Right, the left is so influenced by the sixteen nineteen project.

You know, the book very much speaks to exactly those younger people. And one thing I would say is, I'm a conservative, so I think it's always the same time. It's time to raise another generation of Americans to be decent human beings and good citizens. That's always our challenge. That was your grandparents' challenge, and it's going to be your grandkid's challenge, and it's your challenge.

And I think a.

Lot of what you don't know what time it is kind of arguments on the right now are a form of escapism from responsibility. They want to say, well, this was how we used to work, but now all the rules have been broken, so we don't need to worry about the rules either. Well, no, they're still here. We still need them. They still answer questions and challenges. They're always with us, and we have to recognize that the burden of sustaining this system is the privilege of being

You just put a practical point on it as abortion. So it sounds to me like you would support the idea of Dobs that abortion should be sent back to the States where we can all fight about it politically. Because both conservatives and liberals want Congress to pass an abortion bill, right, just in different points of the spectrum.

Yeah, and look, I think that that's the venue where we have to argue about questions like that. It's not up to the courts to decide what our laws should be. What our laws should be is the fundamental political question, and that means we have to decide it together in those arenas where we can actually engage with each other, compete with each other, negotiate with each other. And that has to happen in the legislature.

Hey, I have maybe a political cultural question now.

Obviously, the first ten amendments, a first ten amendments Constitution happened all kind of at once, right, and then there's a bunch more kind of in a cluster. And then there was a couple around the Civil War periods, the Civil War era kinds, and then there were there's a bunch of them around turn of the last century that

Two thirds of this two there's never going to happen.

Are we going to Are we entering a phase when that is true, that this is the idea of like galvanizing a giant majority of Americans to do this thing and throughout all these different houses of government state houses and uh and and federal chambers.

Or is it cyclical?

I mean, could we look at another period in the next ten twenty thirty years where we reminds us of those turn of this turn of the twentieth century spate of some of them were really dumb, but we managed to get him through.

I mean nobody.

I don't think anybody's really arguing for prohibitions, certainly not John Hughes.

Not sure to get you up in the morning.

Are you add more stuff just telcohol?

John wants to mandate drinking exactly.

I mean, how it's easier would be for us to agree if we.

All have the I mean, I guess that's what I'm saying, is like, is it I mean, is the idea that I always say to people when they complain of I'm like, hey, listen, constitutions a living document.

You can amend it. You can amend it.

And they'll call, you know, come on, that's not realistic. Is it not realistic? Or is it cyclical? Or is it something that happened in the past and it is possible to happen now.

Well, I think the Constitution allows us for allow us for a lot of room for political decision making, for changing the rules that govern the workings of American government. Without a constitutional amendment, we've, as you say, the amendments of common bunches generally, and the last real bunch of

I have to say.

For one thing, I'm I'm a conservative, and therefore I don't really see a lot of problems to which a constitutional amount would be a solution. I don't think it's obvious now that there are some essential amendments. I think a lot of the problems of our political culture are functions of things we can change without constitutional amendments. The nature of the electoral process and especially the primary system,

But these things do change.

American party politics work in phases, and I can certainly imagine that twenty five years from now we're in a different enough place where there's public pressure for amendments. I shudder to think what those would be, frankly, but it's possible. I don't think that in this moment where we are now, those would be possible, And I think the pressures we do see actually reinforce the wisdom of the original structure

To ask about to ask that that collection of quote reforms unquote Yeah.

I mean, look, I think those ideas are exactly an example of why we have lifetime tenure for judges. When you tell people people as wise they're left time tendre you say, well, you want to protect them from pressure from the political branches that would try to kick out judges that make decisions they don't like. And people say, well,

I think isn't it fair to say that Donald Trump, Yes, he's accused of being a threat to the constitution or democracy, even though we live in a republic not a democracy. But when you read about what the Democrats want to do, aren't they the ones threatening longer term damage to the constitution, right term limits on the justices. Kamala Harris back in twenty twenty said she supported court packing these ideas about it. They also want to get rid of the electoral college.

I think what's always been striking about the progressives is that they go at the Constitution head on. They openly dislike the system and want to change it in fundamental ways. When to undermine it fundamental ways, And I do think a lot of what they're talking about here are direct attacks on all of the countermajoritarian parts of the Constitution. The Constitution exists of balance majority rule and minority rights.

I always have a problem with my friends are like talk about I mean, I get a lot of crap on this podcast from people like John You about being a rhino. But you know, when I talk to my liberal friends, my very liberal Democrat friends, always say to them, your MVP of the Democratic parties, Joe Manchin, the MVP of the Republican Party, are all the rhinos like me?

You need it, That's the way the system works. You don't like it.

I guess we need a prime minister. We're not going to get one. This is the way the system is. And it always stolished to me how quickly we forget that.

Absolutely. Our system does not trust narrow majorities. And the reason for that is very straightforward. Majorities can be dangerous.

It's true.

Majority rule is necessary to legitimate political power, but it's also dangerous, and the Constitution deals with that by standing in the way of narrow majorities so that they are forced to grow.

And some.

Of the institutions built up around it, like the filibuster, which I think is very important to protect and sustain, are also they work that way. All the bipartisan legislation of the twenty first century has basically been a function of the filibuster, and the idea that getting rid of it is what twenty first century American politics requires strikes

We were speaking before about the right not liking the Constitutions parts of it because it was just procedural, and you were right and correct to say that the entire document is suffused with the philosophy at the times like a building, the framework, the structure, the girders, or the spirit of Western civilization, and the procedural stuff is the cladding that goes up on top of that.

We see.

But I wonder if you had a constitutional convention, as so many people seem to want to, are talking about, some way of getting our arms around this thing and

Well, they don't believe that.

If the left may not believe that there is a majority for these things, but more importantly, they are correct, and therefore the things that stand in the way of all of these things being manifested in the country are illegitimate and immoral and possibly evil and the rest of it. And that's why they would shread nearly any single aspect of the Constitution that got in their way, whereas I don't fear that from the right.

So I agree with that.

I think that well, I would be worried about a constitutional convention from all directions. I think that opening up the document in a way that some people suggest, and just having a free for all about what it ought to be would not serve ce well in this moment. But I would certainly fear the left more than the

I think it's great. I mean they say the center to the place where the passions go to be cooled. I mean the Constitutional Amendment brought is it process is the deep freeze in which things are packed in ice and the good luck getting out of that. Which is good because, as you noted, it came out of a very unique time. But at the same time we seem to have been blessed by not only a time that produced this unique document, but the temperaments the people who

They haven't, they.

Haven't changed, and they exist to this day. And there's a lesson in that that an ahistorical generation seems completely delighted to ignore.

Yeah, I think the notion that it's old and out of its time is the most wrong thing about the critiques that people offer about the Constitution. The Constitution is I think more sophisticated than its critics about the most difficult challenge that faces every modern democratic society, which is

That's crazy. I don't ever want to compare anything we do to Denial. Yeah, well look than Denmark.

This is a legit. What's a real question. I really I've always wanted this.

I get that they were really smart guys. You know, I was forced to read the Federalist papers in college, and so I get that they were smart. But the idea that they were the architects of this system that works at this scale, like at the scale that the United I mean, the reason that we are not like Norway's because we have Norway here too.

It's up there somewhere close.

To where James lips and we have a little bit of Mexico down there.

I mean, we have everything.

And the idea that these Do you think these guys had an idea that this country was going to be loud and fractious and noisy, and that we needed a system that was going to be able to contain that and channel that. Or do you think they just thought, hey, listen, you put people in a room together, no matter what their background is, they're going to fight. Sometimes the most bitter, the bitterest arguments are between family members.

So so this works at scale.

It works when we have, you know, thirteen colonies, works when we have a population of one million, we have two big cities, and it works when we have twenty seven big cities.

Is that did they know? Well?

I certainly think they didn't know quite how the United States would grow. I think I think they didn't have a conception of what it could be in the twenty first century. But I do think a number of them had a very strong sense that the United States was destined to be a great world power had a real sense that it was going to grow geographically and demographically. You know, Alexander Hamilton talks about the future of the country in a way that is extraordinarily modern and far seeing.

Thank you all. What comes next. So there's an influential theory out there that says, you know, American history goes in these kind of cycles, and where you're at the end. I feel like we're in one of these, Like at the end of the ancient regime, the way things have run for a while decades comes to an end. They say, you get these years of closely divided elections where nothing happens, people get more and more frustrated. Then some kind of crisis occurs and we kind of break through that, and

Yeah, I think that's right. You know, Samuel Huntington wrote a book in the early eighties called The Promise of Disharmony, which is an amazing book what really underappreciated, and he describes this these kinds of cycles, and he even said that we would be in one in this period in the second deck of the twenty first century. And oftentimes what characterizes these moments, like you say, is that there's

I think it's.

Something like a conservative populist working class party, Isn't that what it feels like is coming in.

Yeah, I think both parties have an opportunity. I think Republicans have a bigger opportunity. It's easier to imagine Republicans being that party, but yeah, it would be the popular party, the party that speaks for the people in a kind of up down politics as much as left right. You know, the traditional divide in democracy is the few and the many, and left right is a kind of modern addition onto that.

I just want to say, I want to be with the elites because they all have the best stuff. But when the revolution comes, I'm switching. I'm going with Rob. Wherever Rob goes, I'm going with them.

Yeah, I'm a I'm a survivor, John. And to push you off my bandwagon. Oh yeah, not that everybody. I can get this guy.

Well, we could get the entire country, forty nine states at least if we agreed with John Yu that the Mick rib should be available all year round in addition to the Shamrock Shake or some of the popular menu items, that being John's thing.

Right.

Barring that, It's hard to see what issue it'll be, but we may find out. In the meantime, we recommend that everybody, since we are in this period a TwixT constitutional adherents at a national and social personal level.

Read his book.

The book is called American Covenant, How the Constitution Unified our Nation? And good again, I've all even thanks so much for joining us today. Fascinating conversation. We can go on and on and on about it, and you know, we'll talk to you maybe before the next book.

What is the next book? By the way, thank you very much.

I appreciate it, though I have to said I don't appreciate that question because it's always a very hard question to answer right after writing this book. But time will tell.

Well, you know, I'll be in the newspaper business. Here. We're all about the list.

So i'd say that, you know, the Bill of Rights, pick five and five favorite five hottest rights in the turnat Bill Rights.

There you go, no quartering, no quartering.

Good for collects.

Thanks you, thanks you all, thank you so much, thank you all.

You know, yes, top down pleabs versus the patricians, all the rest of it, you know. But thanks to Marks, we have a we have elites work collectivists. That that's the strange thing, right right, prefer the old days when the elites would just simply leave the peasants to be in their fields and do what they want die as long as they pay their access and give.

Their farthings and leaves to the king.

But no, we got to have this collective identity thanks to our betters and oh you know Dave os w EF all those places, all those crazy words.

That we throw out there to say.

And I don't believe that the WEF is actually anything more than just a sort of amusing collection of supervillains who just plot, who just tell you their stories out and the the thing is that they always tell their their plans about owning nothing in the fifteen minute city and you know, eating the bugs living in the pods. They always say these plans before they actually have James Bond strapped into the laser castration machine.

Yeah, right now.

The thing about it, Yeah, you're supposed to reveal all that stuff when you got the guy where you want them and then you tell But no, they're out there in the in the open telling us everything. In rickchhet At the other day we were having a conversation about fifteen minut cities. I know Rob lives in one, I practically do. And the reason that I wanted to push back against people throwing fifteen minute cities out there.

Maybe we talked about this before, I can't remember. It has to do with that. It's not a bad idea.

It really isn't to design places where you can get around and you can walk, and you can get your groceries and you can go to a cafe in a bar drug store within fifteen minutes not having to get in your car. And the problem is a twofold one. They use it as a means to bash the paradigm that a lot of people have happily adapted to, which is the suburbs. People are completely content to live in

Yeah, it bothers me.

How so many things that we that in your heart and in your head you agree with stewardship of the environment. Uh, you know a end of the you know, the blight, visual blight of billboards, etc.

All of these things.

They've got an aspect to it that, yeah, it's good for all of us if we do this, But it becomes a dogmatic it becomes be a stocking horse for another ideology. See, it inevitably leads to the diminution of your freedom. And that's one of those crazy words that when you start throwing around, the younger generation starts to roll the Riyes, do you know what word is now making the rounds as being sort of suss to the young You guys, you have any idea? I mean, free

Abundance?

Abundance? Yeah, that's right. I believe that. You know, there's no abundance. It's just shortages of everything.

We shouldn't have. No, well, we shouldn't have it.

But first of all, we don't have abundance because we're in a post capitalist hell.

But we shouldn't have abundance.

Yeah, I mean that's a philosophical question that they have. It's a philosophical argument, but that's it is.

I mean, it is absolutely the end product of everything that we've been teaching them, which is that there's shortages so and that there's less and that the future is going to be filled with challenges like the ocean's on fire.

You know what abundance means. Abundance means we turn the light switch on, there's light. It means, and when you turn the hot water on, there's hot. Well, that's what abundance means. Actually we I mean, the things that we take for granted are symbols of tremendous abundance and we need.

It also means that if.

You do well right, then that isn't zero sum that I could do well too. We believe that the country grows and the economy grows, and rising tidle of salt boats and they roll their eyes at that, but it is in fact, demonstrably, unquestionably quantifiably the truth.

Right.

Well, well, Rob, we agree that is not enough. It is not enough for you and I to do well, John, you must do poorly.

Yeah, that's the libraries.

Where idea, neither one other idea, James, about just trying to draw from you know, what's going on in the academy. Stuff, crazy stuff, I read. But you know, there's one big stream of thought going into conservatives asking why do we have cities at all? You know, now that we're decentralizing, now they have worked from home, now that our economy is based on the production of information, why do we

Sure in a village. The villages are the most interesting places. But I mean they're twin parts of the American experience or just these are human nature.

Right on the one hand, you want space. I want my space. That's one of the things that people said when they.

Left the dirty, stinking city and they went out to the suburbs the first time. I mean after about like the thirties and forties and fifties, right, and like, look at it.

I had a lawn, I got a front yard, I got all this stuff, and that is incredibly powerful. That's a great thing. That's why people live.

In Europe too, right, Yeah, because in Europe, the source of wealth was just having land.

And that's some people didn't want to Some people wanted to be in the city. Actually when they were young, and they want to be with other young people. They wanted to be in It's kind of crazy. They were willing to put up with it. And there's these two characters. There's this you know, there's the urban dweller and then

That's not good. And you know, unfortunately, culturally, I.

Think think we're probably on the hope, we're on the down side of that cycle, and we're coming back up to the what I think the normal American view, which is, go do you do you but as quietly as you possibly can do it, because I'm trying to get you know, some sleeves.

If you're happy if Kamala Harris's president, you just don't want it to be head of the city council of your town.

Well, I actually think that when Americans vote. You know, if you look at the best of the probably the most interesting, and see change. Political changes in my lifetime happened when Bill Clinton was president and the Republicans took the House and they took the Senate. And that's when we got well for reform, and that's when we got

Uh.

I don't think that the conservative movement's dead.

I don't think the conservative reforms are dead. I think they might be even invigorated.

I've never before.

Yeah, we should lose this election because then people will get really good and they'll realize that.

I know, I'm kidding, I'm kidding him.

I'm just saying that that it's possible.

The problem with both sides is they think it's inconceivable that they're going to lose either now or in the future, and they think that once you vote for your once you voted for my guy for president, whether it's Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, if forever you're just all the things are going to be fixed and you're never going to have any trouble at all. And that's the ultimately,

They are going to lose elections in the future. So how do you prepare for that?

I don't know.

I just do know that if we have a massive attack on Israel by Iran in the next week or so, I would really be keen to know.

Who's calling the shots here.

Something tells me I ought to be the guy who is called the president but I'm wondering if this is going to be an opportunity for them to show count Layers is foreign policy six dimensional chest shops and have her in charge.

Of what the American reaction to this is going to be.

Or Biden will just get on the wrong plane again and be whisked off to someplace and we'll never see him again.

I don't know. I don't know.

I'd like a little bit more clarity at the top. Ever, it is the top of the top of the hour, end of the show. Usually we tell you right now where they're going to be meet ups around the country.

You want to stop the presses, it's the same same subject, stop the presses.

Oh that's another whole issue. Maybe I'll get a shit name the streets after dogs.

Why didn't that occur to me? Well, you know what, I'm gonna rip it up. I'm gonna go back. I'm gonna do it the you collar me as we call it, and read the show.

I can totally see you living on Poodle Street.

Come on one.

Yeah, okay, yeah, I'm off.

I'm really really is.

Yeah. Well I think they have to have more here than I actually do, so well it's better than Pug Place.

Uh, John, Rob, It's been a pleasure.

We'll see you both next week perhaps, and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet four point zero next week.

Bye, guys, thanks for having me.

Thanks John excellent as always, absolutely so.

Ricochet Pea join the conversation.