Good cool. Yeah, well excellent.
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Mister gorbu Shaw, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast number seven hundred and thirty eight. Today it's Stephen Hayward sitting in James Lilac's host chair and joined by some stranger named Rob Long. Yeah, we're gonna kick around the news and some reader questions.
So let's say, waite, was James gonna was James gonna do this and then he found it? I was gonna do what he's done, doumb You know no, he's not gonna show right, Okay, but I think you just traveled on the ending, so I think it.
No, sorry, that's all right.
I think I should probably do that again.
Perry, will you make it sloppy? Sloppy works?
Welcome everybody to Ricochet Podcast seven thirty eight, And sure enough it's me and Rob Long today taking your questions. Fine and finally and the camelon, well that's.
On way putting it.
Look, we've got some great reader questions and as you are our resident theologian in training, we do want to ask you about the papal succession that's currently getting underway, even though Rob, you should know that high trich Episcopalians like yourself I always refer to as non Union Catholics.
So.
Take that for what it's worth.
But before we get into all that, i'd like to get your thoughts on And I know you've been at a monastery for the last several days on retreat, so you may have missed all this. But there's quite a lively debate going on on the sort of right intelligentsia in the last week, started by a news story in the Wall Street Journal called Meet Maga's Favorite Communists, and it's mostly about how people like Chris Rufo have decided we need to emulate Gromsky's famous long March for the
institutions and contest the left for power. And there's been a lot of people, as you may know, who are saying, you know, some of what Trump's doing with the universities, I'm not too sure this is a good idea. It may come back to bite us. Isn't this really an abuse of federal power of the kind that we normally
object to on principle? And all that is yes on the internet, And I think that you know, Genteel friends of ours, like Jonah Goldberg, I think represents the point of view that the right has always been at its strongest when it emphasized ideas. You know the famous phrase Richard Weaver, ideas have consequences. And you know my counter to this is I've always agreed with that. I think it was true in conservative history, going back to you know,
the rise of Reagan and so forth. But you know the other thing that has consequences day to day are votes on hiring in tenure committees in universities, and we ain't got any of those. And so my own view is I've been kind of tilting toward the RUFO direction, saying, you know, if the if the left says it's all about power, then maybe we're gonna have to play their game.
It's got its obvious hazards.
But I don't know if you follow any of this at all, or even if you haven't, you can give me yours first thoughts on that brief summary I just provided you.
Well, I think I I diviy in half. I mean not actually in half. I mean I divide it in terms of the national interest and.
National lack of interest.
In the national interest, I think it's hard to argue that government funding in science, research, technology has not had a force multiplier in the national product and the economy. I mean, it's a hard it hurts to argue that for me because I'm a Milton Friedman guy, and I think no. But it's just hard to argue that that did not happen. Just looking at the past four years, fifty years, even of a massive government.
Investment in research and technology.
And science, hard science, theoretical science, rocket science, all sciences, there is zero national interest in the country support being taxpayer supporting or even the country supporting.
English majors right, which I want, absolutely zero.
And there is there's cascades of money out there that is private that could basically fund that. And so when you find people I think, I mean, you know, everybody seeks the science has been corrupt too. I'm just gonna set that argument aside for a minute.
When you look at.
How much money is just sluiced into higher education for stuff that is absolutely at least the best you can say, it's irrelevant to the national interests. You know, that's got to stop, and that should stop. But I would say two conservatives that the problem isn't to spend federal money the way you want to spend it. The problem is to not spend federal money at all. And right wingers.
Here's the problem with the right wingers. And I know I'm all right, I know I've been you know, I've been raising money from them for a long time.
They are not building a useful alternative.
Like if you go to a conservative billionaire philanthropist and you say I want to publish, say seven books, I want to do a project, or I want to do a podcast or whatever, they will ask you if you, hey, do you think that you could you you would get
on Sean Hannity with this, You think you could do this? Yes, So conservatives in general tend to be obsessed with the stardom within the conservative bubble, which is I understand that it's a great business, but it does not move the needle, whereas you find liberals are much much more uh creative and strategic about the audiences that they're going for. And I just think we just need to do that on
the right. And instead of arguing about where government money should be spent, I mean, I think it should be spent on stem and I don't think it's spent an it's not stem. We should be arguing about, okay, well, if you're all these rich guys.
Build something.
The idea that that Harvard and Yale and Princeton and all the sort of these speak brands are inviolate and eternal and some have some kind of aristocratic privilege is anathema to a conservative viewpoint. We should be saying, no, no, no, no. We criticize, as Michelangelo said, criticized by creating where is the new Harvard?
Where is the new Yale? These are these are institutions.
That are out of gas and out of UH, out of energy, and out of UH innovation. But they're not out of this money. But there's plenty of money. There's so much money build a new Harvard, build build a new high school?
Right, well, there is, uh. I mean there are a couple of examples. I mean, one of course, where sort of our buildillionaires so to speak, have funded quite adequately this new startup University of Austin down in Texas, and I think it's it's off to a great start, and
I think it's going to be a great success. And then maybe someone will say we should do five more of those, specifically on the Harvard question, you know, I think people were shocked to learn that Harvard is, you know, getting something like eight billion dollars from the federal government when they have a fifty three billion dollar endowment and a lot of them Dowman is tied up with restrictions because donors like that. But you know, to the extent
that they're losing two or three billion immediately for scientific research. Supposedly, you know, Bill Gates could write a check for that, although he dropped out of Harvard, So I mean, I think it's worth it. But that's another story, right, Yeah, I'll mentioned and then there's also the Schools of Pacific Education popping up in Red States at the public universities, and that's a long story. I'm close to several of those efforts and know a lot about them, and they're
explicitly wanting to hire more conservative faculty. They're doing cluster hires for conservatives for a change, and we'll see there's faculty resistance going on. That's a long story. But the last thing I'll tell you about rob to cheer you up, which you may not have heard the news, is over one hundred faculty at Yale put out a letter a few weeks ago didn't get any press calling on the administration, sorry, calling for an independent audit of administrative bloat at Yale.
And apparently administrators out number faculty is something like five to one at Yale. I mean, I've heard it's bad, but that's way off the chart. And my favorite line in a letter is students don't come to Yale for the administration anyway. It's a very plus truth. It's fabulous and you know, we'll see if this happens. But I've been waiting, wondering for a long time when our faculty
going to revolt against all these administrators and demts. All of them are paid with more than faculty usually who do nothing useful at all. And anyway, so let's keep track of that because I think that is a fun story to watch.
And I totally agree.
I mean, the administrative bloat is an education starts in you know, pre K, and it goes all the way up to graduate school and there's been no stop to it. But this is this is what you This is why right where are things? Where are we getting good stuff? What products are in the marketplace that are good things and innovative and cheap and getting cheaper and they are all all to an industry. They are industries that are
not subsidized in any way. FED higher education is subsidized at the price of a higher A year at a college is absolutely mapped on top of the amount of money you can borrow. If that money went down one hundred dollars, the cost would go down one hundred dollars. If it goes up one hundred dollars, the cost goes up one hundred dollars. It is the same with healthcare. It is everything that is subsidized costs more because you and and we essentially are covering the hard stuff that
places like Harbon Neil used to do. I mean Harvard really really to be fair as a as an entity.
Harv is a.
Healthcare company with a university attached to it. I mean just financially, it's what it is. It's the same thing with you. It's a hospital network with a university attached, so we cover It's a classic government gambit, right, We're going to cover all of the hard things and important things that you do, and the rest of the money you get to hire you know, Marx's French deconstructive faculty.
And that is kind of how the government works with everybody, right, we're gonna you know, if you're a socialist, like I want the government to pay for everything important in my life, and the money I have is going to be like my little allowance and I can go and you know, buy a latte if I want, And it really should be the other way around, but we've allowed it to
sort of. You know, it's much easier to say I want the government to do my healthcare because healthcare is hard and gets my head hurt, so somebody else do it.
Yeah, So all right, let's shift gears, because I think the biggest story in the world right now is not what's going on between Trump and all his enemies and whatnot. It's that we are now facing the succession of the pope, and even for non Union Catholics like you and me, that's an important story. I mean, it has been for decades, right, an important institution. And we have several reader questions from Ricochet.
The first one is from Aaron Hunt Ara Haunt. I'm not sure how he says his name on his handle. Do you have any are you handicapping who might be the next pope or are you leaving that to the you know, are true truly Roman friends.
I am not handicapping it. I'm just I can you could outline the considerations, right, I mean you the fastest growing population, even Christian population in general, but definitely Catholic poplation is in Africa what they call the term the Global South, also South America, and while those people tend to be on the left economically, they tend to have very you know, the liberation theology has really taken roots in a lot of those places. So we call them conservative.
That's not quite. They doesn't really sort of overlap with our sense of politics, but they tend to be very
socially conservative. So if you're a cardinal in you know, in the in the now real life reality TV movie of Conclave, which is happening, this is so great, That's what that's what you're thinking about, Like, like do I you know, a lot of these people were elevated by by Francis, so it's presumably they are sort of more aligned with his you know, modified progressive politics, which are you know, they're not quite He's not quite the wacky red that we think he is. But you can only
go so far, and you can't lose Africa. You lose Africa you lose the church and and and the Catholic sort of thinkers and strategists that I know or I've been reading.
You know, when you read an article by them, you.
Skip the first three paragraphs because the first three paragraphs are just throw clearing about you know this, and the fourth and fifth of the In the media, it's it's a pure marketing play, like if we do this, we lose Africa. If we do this, we can get Asia. It's Asia growing faster and whatever are the growth? Where
are the opportunities of growth? And it reminds me of this sort of ecumenical councils that happened in the early twentieth century, and also the sort of the Catholic councils that happened throughout the fifteen sixteen seventeenth century where they didn't have the the Mba language that we have now. But that's what we're really talking about. It's like, where are the people for us? We're losing this group. How do we know we're losing Catholics in Europe during the
Reformation Where we're going to find some more. We're going to find some more in the New World. And I think that's that's part of.
What's going on. So Joseph Stanko asks, and I'm going to mend this question, what would Rob do? I hear elected pope, and I want to add what papal name would you choose?
And what state?
What steps would you take us Pope to revive the old Hollywood studio system?
Well, I mean, I all I can say is that I just steal from a famous Bill Buckley joke.
But would Rob you, if you like to, Pope, demand to recount?
Right?
And I wouldn't be the only one. I don't know.
I don't know that Roman Catholic Church is so bananas and bizarre and wonderful to me. I don't I don't know what I would do. I think I think you have to uh yeah, and I think it'll be healthy for them to come. If you're going to maintain I think we'll say, you know, I totally understand why they would do the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church all that stuff. If you're going to maintain those, you refresh
the arguments for them. Instead of doubling down on tradition, you double down on a on a real doctrinal or even you know, theological argument and make them.
I think people make them well, you know, you do hear today there's a lot of press about people going back to traditional churches, both Protestant and Catholic. I think especially young men. I mean, I've seen some data recently that young men are now outnumbering young women going to church. I think it's an aspect of what sometimes called bro culture and all these sort of young not necessarily all right, but people who are into weightlifting and yeah, right, it's just the leobros all that.
I love that theobros.
That's great, and there's a lot of it happening and I never saw this coming, but so I don't know. I mean, you know, it could be an interesting thing where it's the old folks who have turned out to be the post Vatican to you know, left leaning culturally and theologically, and it's the young folks who are going to lead it back to tradition.
Yeah, or at least the young folks are going to lead back to sort of a more solid ground. Clearly, there's a hunger I think I think the story of I mean I'm just speaking purely on a on a Western and European level, right, So American European level, the story of young men returning to the church. Twenty three percent of young men I just read this in the in the UK say they're churchgoers. That's that's a like of eighteen to twenty four or something. That's a giant,
giant number. And now I mean and they and they outnumber and the Catholics outnumbered the Anglicans in the UK, which is kind of astonishing. So there's something, there is a hunger for something. A lot of it, I think is that this lost generation of young men. The question about you know, the sort of absent fatherhood I think, or a different kind of fatherhood. I think we decided the young men were evil and bad and needed to be whipped into shape. And we guess what, we whipped
them into submission. And they every impulse that a young man has, pretty much that it's biological impulse, has been outlawed. Yeah, and we don't know what to do with him. And the great story, I think, and which should make us all happy, is that there are things to do and they and know some of those young men are finding it themselves, and that is kind of yeah, kind of yeah, but dangerous.
Right.
Well, you know the contrast between the two pops back Benedict the sixteenth, very conservative, and then Francis who is much more liberal. I think in many ways, not always. It's very confusing for an outsider, and so who knows this conclave could go on a long time. And really it's too bad that the Vatican doesn't have Bamboo HR available to them to help them with this process.
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Yeah, it is not easy.
Yeah, although I mean it's like as a you know, in the show show business way of looking at things is always said of show business related uh, you know, when there's a I think somebody told me once that they were in a meeting someone, you know, they were talking about a couple of movies and some studio was releasing a movie and so, oh my god, there's a school shooting.
Oh no, uh what about this?
And the argument that the tragedy was this the movie about to re released has that shooting scene. Well, you know, yeah, but there's other tragedies happening in a school shooting. But the first thing that the show business people do is if they think about themselves. There's an old story about, you know, two guys meeting, two agents meeting for lunch and one gets there early the restaurant and he's stead of standing at the bar is having his iced tea.
He's looking at the news and it's been a terrible plane crash. Everybody, you know, some plane went down, three hundred people died. And his colleague arrives a little late and says, what's going on, goes there's a plane plane crash. People died, and this college says, oh my god, is there anybody on it?
Right?
And you know so that so I know the people who conclave.
The minute they woke up on Monday and said to Pop, Francis died, they're like, yes.
I mean terrible tragedy, but yes, right, because it's gonna you know what, the conclave rentals go way up because people want to know what's going on, and the movie's really good for that as a procedural. It's fantastic. I haven't seen it, but it's on my list.
So before we switch gears here to a different subject track, I will mention that I did see a great meme the last couple of days. And it's a split screen, and the first one is Catholics when they've chosen a new pope, and it sees white smoke coming out of the Vatican chimney, and then the bottom panel is baptist when they picked a new pastor and the scuple of guys huddled over steak on the grill in the backyard, which, yeah, that's perfect right, all right, we'll go back to politics
here for a bit. Doctor Bastiat, who, by the way, published his one thousandth.
Ricochet post yesterday.
Congratulations, I know, I mean he gets Does he get a prize for that?
Guys?
I mean he should get some kind.
Of it's the deep appreciation.
Yeah, all right, So he's asking I guess both of us, but I'll give you first crack in twenty twenty five, what is the fundamental difference between a Republican voter and a democratic voter, and we don't want to take the rest of the show for that because.
That could be I don't know. I honestly don't know, and I and again I don't, I don't.
I mean, look, it's it's a volatile and hard to figure out. And we naturally, especially conservatives, naturally well, I mean everybody's a conservative in this perspective, naturally loathe and despised all change and calamity, or at least tumult. But I think that we are we are in the middle of a transition, and I think we're in the middle
of new parties being sort of created. They may keep the same names, but they are morphing and becoming unrecognizable to their you know, whatever came before them twenty years before. And that I think is a part of American history that we have just decided we just didn't pay attention to.
And I think I think this is going to be I don't.
I don't know about twenty twenty five, but I think it twenty these those two parties, I don't think they'll both be around. But if they are around, I don't think they're going to resemble what they used to do. I mean, I really don't I think they're gonna be different.
Well, you know, I think that there's one way in which the parties resemble each other, not on their level of ideas and what their policy objects are. They're quite different there. But I'm starting to pick up a party dynamic that you can trace an arc of over the last twenty years.
So you know, what explains Trump.
And one of the things that explains Trump is that Republicans, a lot of the grassroots, the conservative base, they were tired of conventional Republicans losing to Barack Obama, right, and so people, I mean, I'm sure you've heard all the rhetoric of people dumping on you know, first Mitt Romney and then John McCain for not being tough enough, not fighting hard enough, and so forth, or people who just
like Mitch McConnell, which I think is gravely mistaken. I think he's been a very effective sent maybe the most effective Senate leader since Lyndon Johnson, because that's a job that requires a lot of skill to do what he's done. And I don't you know, Okay, so people take out their frustrations on him, and so you know, Trump came along as a breadth of fresh air and something new and different and breaks all the China and so forth. Now, I think Democrats are about to go through the same process.
You know, they've now lost to Trump twice. I think there's huge buyers regret that they settled on Joe Biden in twenty twenty and then stuck with him in twenty twenty four. And so suddenly I am watching, as I'm sure you may, Bernie Sanders, who is the sentimental favorite of the lot of the party, is handing off the mantle obviously to Alexandria Acossio Cortez. And I mean, right now, I don't like to make these kind of predictions because they're usually wrong, but right now she's my front runner
for twenty twenty eight. I think you're about to see the Democrats lurks to They want their Trump or something like it, and they think they think it's going to be her or somebody like her. I still think they're better off with you know, Andy Basher or maybe even Governor Wes Moore of Maryland or Shapiro Pennsylvani. Yeah, they're more conventional figures, and I think the party base wants a brawler. They want their own Trump and I think
that may lead them into a disaster. I think they could be heading to another McGovern in three years, depending on everything else.
Right, that's what they see people said about Trump in twenty sixteen. I mean, I think variet these groups are wrong. I mean, I think the idea that Republicans were losing and that Trump turned that around is just fundamentally wrong. I mean, when when Barack Obama won a fifty eight percent popular vote majority, I think, or fifty three percent.
It wasn't fifty three, It wasn't that.
It was a giant, giant victory in two thousand and eight, and it was so big that when he that in twenty twelve, when he got a real run for his money in the box office, in the ballot box, the Bridian slip, he put so many votes that he could still lose a lot of votes and still win. But in twenty ten, the Republican took over the House and
Senate and stopped him in his tracks. And I think sometimes these parties believe that if they win the White House, they win everything and they get everything they want, and that is not the way American politics works. Sometimes I'm talking to my friends who are Trump supporters or you know, even Democrats when they're projecting in the future and they Democrats have An important thing for Republicans to remember is that this psychosis about defending and protecting a president even
if he's weak and ineffectual. We saw with Democrats in Obama, you were not allowed to criticize Obama. You must protect Obama at all cases. And you're seeing the Republicans do at the same time, So they had this kind of distorted view of the successes of these presidents. You know, Trump is under it was a forty percent popularity barely at this point. So if you're if you're AOC, you're like, well, I could be forty percent popularity.
I could probably do that, and we may be setting up.
More volatility back and forth, back and forth, back and forth with these parties, which is one of the reason why they're out of gas. I don't I mean, I guess what I would say is, uh, to understand American politics, it's not a show. It's designed to not be a show. It's designed to be a win, slow, complicated process, and that if you win, the best you get, even if you have the House, the White House, and the Senate, you get like a C plus B minus version of
you want what you want, that's considered success. That's built into the DNA of this country and the DNA of this governance. There's no way to change that except to change the government.
Well ah, okay, Well that leads me to my one last point on this, which is thinking as a constitutionalist. One of things I've been saying to liberals lately, and it really upsets them, is says, look what Trump is doing. This is the presidency you have always wanted, and all the precedents going back to flepland Roosevelt and Would Wilson.
So what's your problem? What's your argument?
And keep in mind that what do we hear from Democrats the last few years when something's in their way? Change it pack the Supreme Court, you know, let's abolish the filibuster. That's not in the Constitution, but it's still, you know, an institution they want to get rid of because it's in their way. I do think, to answer doctor Bostia's question, I do think Republicans are more constitutionalists in a serious way.
The Democrats are.
The Democrats are the Constitution as a matter of convenience when it suits them. Rhetorically. And by the way, you know, Trump has made these attacks on judges, you know, and tweets and so forth. I tell people go back and read not Roosevelt's court packing proposal, but read the speeches he gave in nineteen thirty seven, attacking the court with amazing ferocity. And it's way beyond anything Trump is said
about the court. And oh yeah, the idea that everybody was all well behaved and American politics, it's long, long span, resembles Trump more than yep, yep. I've been tron liberal. I did this at the university, caught out a boulder a couple of weeks ago, to gasps in the audience. I just said, take these statements from Roosevelt, put him in the mouth of Trump and see how you like it.
And they wouldn't, right.
So I don't know if there will be a rebalancing, well, if Congress will I mean the terrorists for example, I mean, regulating commerce with foreign nations is a power of Congress an Article one, section eight, and they delegated a wholesale to the president forty fifty years ago. And now, I mean,
maybe that was it. Maybe it fits with some older cases that said Congress can't do that, which held up Roosevelt briefly in the thirties, and it would be nice if we actually got some restoration of proper constitutional balance out of all. For that, I thought, you know, Trump, maybe he's doing the Lord's work inadvertently.
I mean, we'll see, yeah, well definitely invertally, but there is that argument. I mean, any any gloss of the US Constitution is pretty much you know, you can be summed up by saying, don't do anything. Don't you dare government, don't you dare the Constitution. We've distorted it over the past, especially the last fifty years, as a document that enshrines the rights of citizens, which it does, but mostly what it does is that it restricts the powers of government.
And that's what that's what That's what they started by saying, we're not going to get out of hand. And it's like, well, you know, it's so much easier, as we said before, it's so much easier to have government do it all this stuff. I don't even want to do it. I mean, I would rather sit here, you know, on my phone, play on my phone. And I think we're discovering that government not doing things is a very very good, very
good strategy. You know, one of the things that annoys me about this administration, the way it has annoyed me about past administrations.
Is how quickly they act. Like if I with my.
Executive orders or my sort of you know, Council of Economic Advisors, I can bring manufacturing back. I am, I have a time machine and I and it's all just this sort of nonsense to MSNBC slash talk radio boosterism that isn't connected to reality and shouldn't be, because the truth is that I don't want the government to start planning the economy. I want free movement and capital and entrepreneurship and innovation to do it.
Okay, so let's keep going on the issue list. Chris Williamson asks about illegal immigration. So we have this peculiar circumstance, and here I have to say, I'm on Trump's side about the problem here the fine points not to sure about. But you know, the Biden administration simply opened the borders and let millions of people come in without any due process. By the way, if you and I had tried to bring a suit saying our rights are being violated by
having an open border, because it's distorting. You could make the claim it's distorting the municipal finances of where I lived, like in New York City and so forth. Yeah, but that lawsuit would have been tossed out of court immediately for lack of standing. Okay, told that we can't deport anybody without full due process hearings, which would take years. And this seems on the level of common sense to be perverse, and I think I fully agree with all that.
Maybe Congress needs to change the statutes. I don't know, but I don't know if you're following this close to a rob or not, because there's something new about every five hours on the subway it like, But do you have a quick take on it?
You know?
My quick take is that you know, this is the problem with letting a untenable.
Situation get even more intentable, right, I.
Mean, the fundamental problem with open borders is this, you can either have open borders or you can have a welfare state. You cannot have right, right, And if we're not willing to make these decisions, and this this was really kind of a scale problem because it was you know, I'm living in California for thirty years, and when I moved to California nineteen eighty eight. There was legal immigrants everywhere, and nobody thought it was a problem.
That was not a problem.
Nobody crossed the border for in the morning to sleep in the busation. They're all working. Over time. That, like a lot of things, a lot of things you can ignore, gets very bad and starts to a media If you if you're a black man, black American citizen, between the ages of something and something else, probably at this point now almost retired, you can genuinely quantify the harm that illegal immigration or total lack of border enforcement has had on that particular population.
That that's like, you.
Can't even argue that, So that that is that it's just absolute economic truth, right, And so now we have to figure out a way to sort of build out of that without without losing our sense of due process. Right. It's very dangerous because you don't really want to go you don't really want to cut those corners. The smartest thing for us to do is to focus less on deportation and focus more on border enforcement and immediate deportation. So you get those things done. So start like I mean,
obviously it's like low hanging fruit. Start the emergency stuff first and then do the deportation stuff.
Yeah, and that's like, I mean, it's definitely a priority, but it's not number one. It's got to be number five.
Well, now here's an interesting figure that you may have heard. Barack Obama during his two terms deported three million people.
Yeah.
Now, now our immigration friends like Mikero Correan like to point out that those numbers are kind of phony because they were counting as deportations people they apprehended at the border and turned back.
Ah.
But point number one there is at least the Obama administration intercepted people and turned them back, and the Biden administration did none of that. Right, And what Trump has proven is that if you're determined, it's actually pretty easy to secure the border. I mean, the numbers have fallen to an infinitesimly small level, smallest in forty or fifty years, I think. And now, maybe some of that is, and here I don't want to deprecate it is maybe this
is they've actually made people prayed across the border. That's not entirely a bad thing in my mind, even though it sounds kind of ugly. Perhaps I think also some of these deportations because there's so many people who I think would be eligible legitimately to be deported, the numbers are too large to actually do it as a practical matter. So now we're getting back to you know, Mitt Romney's the one who used that phrase that cost him dearly
self deportation. And there are lots of anecdotes of people who are leaving on their own because they don't want to be swept up and sent to a prison in El Salvador or any other place.
Right, So, I don't know, I want to let this play out.
I'm you know, I give Trump the benefit of the doubt on this, even though they're going to make mistakes, just as law enforcement does always on everything. And by the way, I mean, you know again I'm a bit of a cynic, but getting the Democrats to defend a guy who pretty much looked like he was an MS thirteen gang member and right, I mean, what a work a political genius that is.
Yeah, I mean, like you're the me too movement, it must be twisting yourself at the pretzels, because that is he is not a He's definitely a me too violator.
Yeah, I would, I'm a I'm a I'm a.
You know, down the line squish, not a squish, but down the line, you know, completely uncreative thinker. I get my immigration advice from Mark Grecrian. He was only here's your on the podcast, right, and his argument seems to me to be right, which is that like, okay, the deportations are crazyly hard and incredibly impossible to scale. That's
a self deportation one. And you you enforce that on the everify sign, like if you can't get a job here and then you go home, and that it's not gonna be everybody, but it's gonna be it's gonna reduce a huge number of people you have to and then you just you and you have border security.
And that said that, that's that way.
The problem is getting worse, and then the organism kind of digests and ejects and then processes the people who are left. And I the DAD is a doable solution, an actual solution. It doesn't sound very good.
Yeah, So now here's an interesting question that's directed to me, Rob, But I'll bet you have some insight and thoughts on this sense you lived in Venice for such a long time. It's from Sandra Blondie Bright in North Carolina, and she says, you know, we're here in North Carolina. We're trying to get back to normal after the hurricane several months ago blew through, and there's lots of great volunteer efforts going on.
I've heard all that.
I think there's a lot of social capital in that part of North Carolina. Uh. The question is is what type of things have you seen or heard about rebuilding out here in the LA area after the fires? And now it's maybe relevant that I am actually coming to you this morning as we're recording from Malibu. It's graduation day for the School of Public Policy, where I'm a faculty member now.
And so I so you're are you? Is that that's Pepperdine, right, Yes, that's Pepperdine correct, Right, So this is your office at Pepperdine we're looking at Yes it is. Yeah, I just I don't have a shelves are not full of books. But it's brand new for me. So, but the point is I'm allowed the office. I gotta say, I I don't want to help you, but I have a nice view of the mountains out my windows.
So you're looking at it, So leave you got a view so, like I'm saying, right, Pepperdine has got to be the most gorgeously situated university in the world.
It's it's ridiculous.
I joke. It's like teaching a club med and I always ask the dean please don't give me a classroom with windows out on the ocean, because then you know, I'll be competing with the ocean as well as all
the kids smartphones right in class. But look, I'm only a mile north of where Highway one Pacific Coast Highway is closed to general traffic because of all the still the excavation work or the you know, the demolition work, which is going to take forever because a lot of those houses when they burned down, you might have some of the oldest bestos, so lead pained or this and that, and plus just the fire creates lots of toxic residue.
And it's going very slowly. Uh. What I've heard is that I think the city of la it may be a little more now, but as of a week or two ago, the only issued four four one two three four four building permits for rebuilding of houses that burned down, which is pathetic. I mean, they keep saying, oh, we're going to you know, fast track the process. Well, it's really not happening. And as for volunteer efforts, good luck. I don't think they will let anybody in who wants
to volunteer to clear out lots. And I know two people who lost their homes at least one in Pacific Palisades and one in Pasadena. And you must know some people rob from your long time, so many people in your industry where they're in Pacific Palisades, And yeah, it's it's amazing.
Yeah, I mean, I actually have not I only know one anecdote, which is a decide you know, don't it's on a data point. But I know, and I don't know this person personally, but I heard the story was on a crew A member of the crew, a usual member crew called below the line there and the budget dudey, I think he gave us some focus puller. He hit a job right on a movie cruise and lived in a part of town called mar Vista, which is you know, it's the most part of town but it's like it's
not fancy, and had a house there. I bought it his family, like in the late seventies, early eighties, and he was going to lose the house because there's don't work in LA and there's been no work in that in what he does, and so he was thinking that I'm gonna have lose his house. We're probably gonna lose the house and leave. And then the fires happened and somebody offered to rent his house. Somebody from the Pacific Pali state. It's offered to rent his house in mar Vista.
So there's always you know, and apparently he's filled with guilt about this because you know, it's like, well, I cants it.
Now, I've saved my house. I get to rent it out at a very high price, and I get.
To you know, he and his wife, I think are moving just out of town somewhere for now, anywhere.
They're almost retired, and.
I should I feel guilty, but I I'm it saved my life. So I don't know make of that way you will. Yeah, it doesn't really answer the question.
But right, well, now I do have a show business question for you from Gary McVeigh. Yeah, and he says, so he points out that you know, you started out the TV and film business, and in those days film was art and TV was furniture. Is that one of your phrases. It's okay, well it says it all changed radically and today it's prestige. TV is on the top of the heap artistically over theatrical films. Or is his phrase I guess is TV is hot. Movies are old. Now.
I've heard you talk about this a little bit on the The Glop podcast and a couple of your three martini lunches. I'll give you a sort of my theory. I'll add on to what Gary s is a long form TV allows you to tell stories at glater leisure, developed the characters more. I don't always like that. By the way, I think I'm with you when someone I'm exactly with you. When someone tells me, oh, it gets good at episode five, I'm out say. I might even
get through episode one, right, this is ridiculous. But I do think there's something to that. And I don't know. Maybe I'm not sure if the pace of production is actually longer because you have more time to set up shots. And I don't know, but movies these days is uh, gosh, it must be. I'm just guessing here because I've never
done it. But for directors and producers, you've got the budget you've got a schedule, expensive actors, You're you want to get it done expeditiously, and you may do fifteen takes of a scene.
Probably do. But the TV shows, I.
Don't know, I they do seem very lavishly produced. Whatever I see a rerun from a show from even the eighties, I'm just kind of amazing, so cheap, right, I mean, you know an old magnum p I rerun, I just laugh and giggle.
In the seventies, you know, the seventies cop shows, if you watch them, pretty much every episode this boom shadow and somebody goes, I got some boom shadow, and that meaning when the boom might come right in between the lights and you can kind of see it the shadow, And then the answer is like that's fine. Yeah, everything has gotten easier, so everything to shoot, all movies or everything's easier.
You know they used to be. You know, you used to have to like.
Cable pullers and people like and even in TV if you watch live TV, especially shows like you know, Today's Show or elaborate of those things in New York City, you know the number of people they had to employ just to carry cable around. And then there's like twenty
years where they didn't carry those people. There was no cable to carry, but you still had to hire those people because the union rules for such so that you know, you every one of these sets, you'd find there was a room with a table and the doughnuts and just guys sitting around because you couldn't fire them, but they had nothing to do. A lot of that is I mean, so it's gotten simpler. But the thing is, I would say that, and I would say this. You know, Gary
is a film historian, a film buff. He's like ran the American Cinema Foundation. That's how I've known it for years. And I you know, here's the bad news for Gary. It's that everything is TV.
It isn't that one is one has moved up from prestige.
The others dropped. There isn't the other one. There are movies that have a theatrical release for weirdos the way they still press vinyl. But it's all TV. And that is because inexorably, for some reason, the screen wants to get closer to the customer. And you know, so the screen was first it was downtown and you know, the big downtown movie theater, and then the screen and then the screen moved to the suburbs, and then the screen
moved your pocket. And I don't think that's necessarily an improvement, but I think it's a movement.
Well all right now, it does strike me that there are still a few movies or directors who managed to produce movies that you really want to see in the theater. So you think of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, you really wanted to see that in a big theater. The top gun to a movie, I think, same thing, you know, totally. And then, of course the big hit right now is the Minecraft movie, which has just torn up the box office. Right that seemed kind of obvious to me that that
might be a hit. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know, but it looks like it's still possible. And is that replicable or those one offs you think?
I think that the well, the irony is that they are one offs, I think. But show business has always been about one offs. It's only recently that we believe that, oh no, everything should be a franchise and it should be the Marvel Cinematic universe. That's that's completely bananas for most people in show business. For almost one hundred years, you had to come up with a story and make
a movie. So I think I think that that could return because it's still kind of fun to go to the movies, but you got to give me a reason to go. That isn't Yeah that I but I would just also say that that, you know, the the TV shows that are serialized that seem to be working are the ones that are kind of remind you of old fashioned TV or old fashion movies. Reacher. I don't know anybody watch Reacher. Yeah, you know, it's a huge hit for Amazon. You watch that show and it's like it
is super super low rent. That show is cheap. I mean, I'm watching that show and I'm thinking I have seen that car before that set before you guys rented a house and you're shooting you're shooting out the house, like all the scenes of the house, and like there's no there are no extras. The town square is always empty.
Empty for no reason.
It shouldn't be, you know, like and they just they have no they just don't spend any money.
But it's it's it works. It's fine. You don't need that much money, all right.
So I have a general question for the Ricochet podcast, and then I've got a couple of exit questions for you, Rob so Stad asks have you thought about putting together an activity book titled Where's Peter?
Where are You?
Peter?
Peter is taking a break and I think he's going to return in Triumph, but he might also be doing I think he's doing some writing too, So I mean, and also I feel like, you know, look, we love doing this and I love doing when I can. As you know, I'm a humble cleric now, so I don't have much time between my devotionals. But you know, refreshing, the rushing, the voices in the formats always a good thing. It's always a good thing.
Yeah, it's been fun to do, I have to say. So it's uh so all right, aturally, well I will. It's nice of you to say I've been but look, I'm similar do you. I'm a professional talker. I've been doing this for a long time. Right, it's it comes from professor itis and so forth. Yeah, all right, so
let's do this there. I'm gonna sort of combine a few different questions into this one, which is you have just finished or in the process of finishing right now, your first year they're at seminary, how long is the whole process.
That three years, two years, three years, three years?
Right? And do you have one or two takeaways or main takeaways or and or surprises from your first year?
The surprises I find from my classmates and colleagues who come from non denominational traditions, ah, you know more got tocostals some of them, but were even more not not a a shoal.
And how.
How fun and funny they are, and how smart they are and how passionate they are about renewing their faith and their church and learning from other people. And I find that was really really refreshing. And I and and their lack of pretense, which is something that we in the sort of Anglican cohort have to remind ourselves because Episcopalians and Anglicans tend to be super pompous and tweet
and precious about everything. And it's nice to be around young people who are filled with faith but but are not that that's that's been really kind of glorious. The second thing you discover, I mean, you know, it's a funny thing. It's I don't know why I should know this as a conservative, but you know, Santa Augustine, Saint Augustine.
He was really good. Yep, yeah, he was really good. Like that's really good stuff.
And if you read it, you're like, oh man, damn, that's a really good And then something that professor said early on in the in the semester in our New Testament class is a wonderful, wonderful writer, wonderful wonderful guy said, you know, the people who translated the Bible from the Greek,
we're not idiots. So when you go and you do a word study, you know, you don't expect to discover something or don't start everything with like, you know, actually the more accurate translation from the Hebrew of the Greek is this. It's like, the people have been doing this for a thousand years. So I have a little respect for the people. Assume for a minute that the reason it's lasted a thousand years, the reason that word has lasted on a thousand years is because it's the right word.
It may not be, but don't start for the premise of like I'm going to find out where you guys are wrong, because you're just going to waste your time and look like an idiot. And I thought, oh, yeah, that's a very good point. That is not something that you say to people in when they're beginning inquiry, and in something you kind of say, you know, think a new but partly he's like, you think a new but don't, yeah, don't say dumb stuff about Greek, because people who've been this for a long.
Time, those old words have a lot of staying power. Uh, it's something you just said. It tracks the court with me. You actually have some people there from a Pentecostal background.
Oh yeah, well, Princeton has a very very broad appeal. So there's interesting the you know, the Anglicans, and there's some Anglican Anglo Catholics, and then there's some Roman Catholics, and there's some Metecostals and some non Denominationals, and there's some it's lousy of the Presbyterians because the Presbyterian started it. But but yeah, you have you have this kind of cacophonous group of of.
Students. Well in a certain way that doesn't surprise me, especially if I'm gonna run an idea by you and see if it if you detect this and seminary also, but I have long my own experience at graduate school a long time ago now, but also from when I talk to faculty and meet other graduate students. Is conservative
graduate students. Let's put this way. I had liberal professors who said they loved having conservative students in the class, not for a gratuitous argument, but because the conservatives took the material more seriously. They didn't have the mentality do we have to memorize this because it's going to be on the test now. Our v was always like, why
did Madison say that? What's his reasoning? Maybe it's right, And a lot of professors, even if they were new deoliberals in my case, they liked that disposition among students. And I am guessing that something similar happens at seminary. You might have non denominational people, Pentecostals, people from a culturally more conservative background than you think of her Ivy league, who bring to the seminary a seriousness about the subject matter and not a modern historicist condescension.
Is that a reasonable proposition? I think that's true.
I think they probably, like like anybody in the in these kind in these theological institutions in harved Yale, Princeton, Virginia. Let's say that, Duke, they're liberal, but they there is this the purposefulness of the study the idea that it's kind of a weird elevated trade school, right. I mean, you're supposed to be the right, and you're and you're
encouraged to share that in class. You're you're absolutely they were pretty much every every exam I've ever taken or every paper I've written has had a section so please think about these issues and apply them to what you think they would apply to in the ministry future ministry. And so I think that part of that, that purposefulness. You just don't have a time or inclination too to get too weird with it because or to be incendiary or to scream at somebody in as who disagrees with
you politically, because we're here for a higher purpose. And that purpose isn't to tear down. It's to sort of, you know, figure out, yeah, where to go next. And so I suspect it's it's it's one of the reasons why the politics that are very liberal on the campus, which I enjoyed. These are all smart people. I enjoyed talking to them. They don't seem as furious as they seem other places. They don't seem as like divisive.
Yeah, so all right, let's get out with this, Rob, so you you one takeaway here is sant Augustine that he was a really smart guy.
Turns out he was good.
Yeah, so next year we'll want to find out if you proceed on to the other Saint Thomas aquineas but also done Scotus and Selm.
I'll bet that.
Before right. Well, that'll be fun to take up with you next year. But for now, we want to thank all of our readers for sending him questions. We want to think Bamboo h R for sponsoring the Cricochet podcast. Please go to Apple, Spotify, whatever place as you source your podcast and give us a five star review and we'll look forward to seeing you in the comments at Ricochet.
Is it four or five point zero?
Now I've lost track of what we're up to, but anyway, up, see you he in soon, Rob.
Yeah, this is fun. Let's do it in okay, Bye bye everybody,