That escalated quickly, right. Not what your country can do for you have what you can do for your country, mister garbachaw tear down this wall. It's the Ricget podcast, usually with Peter Robinson and Rob Long, but today we have Stephen Hayward and Charles C. W. Cook sitting in for them. I'm James Lylax, and we talked to Noah Rothman about the world then
where it's at. So let's episode was a podcast. This morning I read Letter to America, which is Osama bin Laden's letter to America explaining why he attacked Americans. It's wild. America is a nation that can be defined in a single word. I was gonna foot him for the excuse me. We never get born. Welcome everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast, number six
hundred and sixty seven. I'm James Lylax. In a crisp fall day here in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sixty one degrees yesterday, sixty to sixty nine or something like this, an absolutely fantastic fall. Takes your mind off everything that's going on in the world. But of course you can only stay in that little bubble of happiness for so long before the real world and drus and here
dragging the real world behind them like Jacob Marley's cash boxes. Are Stephen Hayward and Charles C. W. Cook, sitting in for Peter Robinson and Rob Long, who at this point after two weeks, I see them now just off somewhere, holding hands, skipping merrily through a field of dandelions and daisies or something. I don't know where they are, but I hope they're having fun and enjoying themselves. And I'm glad to have you guys here. Welcome
well, thanks James. Although I think Charles and I are both starting to feel like the replacements in the NFL strike from twenty years ago, whenever that was, we're hanging around way too long, or more like when the quarterback gets knocked out for an injury and somebody else comes along and electrifies the team and the fan base with their brilliant performance. So we expect nothing less than
that from you today, Hi, gentlemen. Before we get to the surprising resurgence Osama bin Laden in the TikTok community, which itself is kind of two stories. You know, last week we were talking about the rise or the revelation of anti Semitism on the left. I think it's fair to talk about the rise in or revelation of anti Semitism on the right as well. We
I mean, in both cases you have the usual suspects. You have stupid people, and you have credulous intellectuals who are whose depth is way over estimated by most people. And this week we had well, I think we had Charlie Cook or Charlie Cook, sorry Charles, we had Charlie Kirk. You
can understand why I would make that mistake. Charlie Kirk talking about Jewish money behind anti white causes, Jewish people, Jewish money, the ADL to black lives matter, Jewish money in Jewish people, in cultural Marxism debates, which
seems to conflate blood and religion with an intellectual stance. It seems to say that there's something intrinsic about Judaism and being Jewish that inclines one to these positions as opposed to them simply being intellectual stances that some people take regardless of their
ethnic makeup. But lurking in the background, you just wonder if these guys are six months away from tweeting out a picture of some you know, black Lives Matter financier with an octopus for a yarmaca and a her block tag coming off him. That's a ritless cosmopolitan. Are you surprised dismayed? I expect so. But what's your take on this? Guys? Oh boy, this, I've been noticing this too, and it's been bothering me even well before
October seven came along. And there's an old problem here that goes back one hundred years or more. You know, it was often said, Gus, why is it so many of the Bolsheviks and the revolutionaries of Europe are Jewish? And you know that some of the kinds of anti Semitic sentiments, well, the Nazis right, and that has persisted. You know, that was part of although McCarthy, Joe McCarthy. I don't think it was anti semi,
but the phenomenon McCarthy is sometimes trafficked in those regions too. And I have noticed in amongst the younger, very online right, it's sometimes called a lot of I'll just put it this way as gently as I can, snarky comments that I find disturbing about Jews and Judaism, even among some very very smart young people I know who otherwise are thoroughly fluent with and students of Jewish
philosophers and Jewish thinkers. So this really bothers me. And now you see the popularizers people like well, Candice Owen's Charlie Kirk, whom I would never confuse with Charlie Cook by the way, Yeah, that would Anyway, This is very disturbing because I mean, I think that anti Semitism is overwhelmingly the property of the left, of these stays, and to the extent that you are people on the right giving it aid and comfort. Ah, that's a
big problem. Yeah. The most charitable reading might be, well, you're not supposed to say that, and so we're the people who say the things you're not supposed to say. So we're going to say snarkily these things and everyone will sort them. Oooh you said it, but it's still not good. Charles. Your take, Well, you know, it's funny you say that, because I've heard that theory as well, and I can't think of anything less conservative than that. I think sometimes it is imperative to say that
conventional wisdom is wrong or that taboos are there for a bad reason. There's nothing wrong with over time noting that a particular intellectual climate is false or yielding bad results, But as a rule, you probably should at least wonder why it is that certain things have become taboo, and this particular one has become taboo because of all of human history, the idea that you would just blow past that really it's not conservative and people on the right should resist it.
I have again been shocked. I'm happy to own my naivety here. I knew that there was antisemitism in the world, and I knew there was some in America, but the scale of it once again has alarmed me. I think the question of whether it's stupidity or evil it's difficult to answer, but
actually does matter a great deal. There are different sorts of bigotry. I asked on my podcast this week why it was that I'd been so alarmed by some of the scenes out of college campuses, which is a left wing version of this, and the answer that I came to was that the nature of
the anti Semitism was different than any big that I've ever encountered myself. The vast majority of the bigotry that I've encountered myself, I don't mean against me, I just mean i've been witnessed too, has been promulgated by people who hadn't thought it through and who didn't want to defend it, whether because they actually realized under closer inspection it didn't make any sense, or they were just
embarrassed by it. You know, people mostly in England where I grew up, who would say things about English people who were non white, maybe soccer players. You'd hear it, you know, go burg to her over and you say, but you like him, you know, you like that player, and they go, well, yeah, well, why do you want him to go back? Well, I guess I don't that I can comprehend that I can deal with, even if the person ends up just being an
unreconstructed bad guy, I can comprehend it. What I find truly alarming is watching interviews on YouTube with people who have PhDs or who have positions within the academy, who will give you a really calm and ostend to be a well reasoned explanation for their anti Semitism, or why they won't condemn her mass or why they think that some international terrorists is actually a good person. That I
find scary because I know what that has led to in the past. And I'm not quite sure which one of these is insinuated itself into the right, because frankly, I think Charlie Kirk is very stupid. But I don't know whether he is echoing something that is more deep seated or whether he's just mouthing off because he thinks that it's edgy and will lead to more clicks on his on his podcast. But I do think it matters what the answer is. Yeah, well the edgy nurse is well, you know, shut, you
know, sly like shy, like he did charge too much interest. You know, I guess we can't say that, can we say that? And I find it hard to believe that he's channeling some ancient reservoir of waspy revulsion. You know. It's in the case of the left too, it is they have an intellectual reason for this that somehow conveniently taps into an ancient hatred.
That's the thing I mean. Amongst the left, the anti Semitism nominally springs from a new cultural Marxist prism of oppression and oppressor and seeing it all through the you know, the lens of colonialism and the rest of it. But they seem very comfortable to settle into it. It's like I have a very good, intellectually satisfying reason for lowering my bottom into this warm broth of ancient fecal stew. I don't know what it is, and frankly, I
don't care. What I do like is that it unmasks people who are intellectually facile and have have been elevated to positions way beyond their intellectual capabilities simply because they say that they say things that, well, you know, you can't. Nobody else is saying what Candice O want to saying. Nobody else is
saying what Charlie Cook is saying. Yeah, but are they saying it particularly well do they have Have they come to this through some long drawn out, complicated intellectual process or are they just saying the things that they know are going to get them the clicks and their their grift. You know, grifter's got a grift. And I think in the case of a lot of these people on the right inlet it's it's it's that it's just they say, they say
those things, and nobody else is saying them. It's the stuff that comes from email, from you know, from people that I can't wait for Thanksgiving to come around and we all have these conversations around the table, and one of those conversations, I'm sure if you have young people, I'm just tempted if there are any young folks coming to the Thanksgiving table to say, so, oh, b L, what do you think? Because there have been
and this is a two prong story. One, there are a bunch of tiktoks that are going around about people who read over Sama bin Laden's letter to America and are saying, guy makes some good points. It really does. Scales filled from my eyes with a clang like manhole covers all on the road
to Tarsus. See at all now, kids who lived no idea what two thousand and one was, what was nine to eleven was like all of a sudden saying, you know what, he sounds pretty damned progressive, probably as I read in the tweet today that his work was ghost written by a socialist American who joined the Islamist faction and may have been the guiding force people between I mean, do you really think that was down? Have been a lot
most particularly interested in the Kioto records. I don't. And if you explain to these kids, you know you're talking about a NEPO baby. Here, you're talking about one of those guys you supposedly ate. His dad was in construction, which was horribly carbon intensive, and he inherited a bunch of money and you know, basically lived office folks in capitalism and you like and oil and you like that guy. So that was but hold On said, that
was worrisome. But how widespread was it? Was it more widespread that somebody capitalized this? And because from what I understand it was a Yashir Ali retweet of all this that just went absolutely massively viral, that may have heeded the actual quantity of Osama bin Laden admiration that is out there, is all I'm saying. Well, I don't know. I think there's some chance that you could see Osama bin Laden t shirts rivaling the old schak but t shirts,
right, And this is not I mean, it is outrageous. It's not new. You know. Several months ago, I think we talked on this program about how when Ted Kaczynski, the unibomber died, you had all these articles saying, gosh, you know, he really had some good points about
technology, and maybe we've read wrong an awful lot. What's going on right now reminds me of the campuses during the Vietnam War, when, of course the chant of the lot of the student radical anti war movement was not that there was a foolish war, that we shouldn't be there, or even that this was colonialism, but they were actively on the other side. Right Remember the chant James Ho ho Ho Ho Chi Minh. The NLF is bound to win. So I think some of that is going on now. This is
what the late Roger Scrutin liked to call the culture of repreation. Whatever it is about our civilization, he us whatever club comes to and that club is this twenty year old letter from Osama bin Ladden. Well, the club that was in my hand the other day was a long silver pipe, and I had a dog in one hand and the pipe in the other, and I was going to deliver the pipe. And I was very, very angry that
somebody would stop me. But I knew that if I could, I could brain them on the nogin with the pipe that I had, or sick the dog upon them. Now, that was a dream. And I have great dreams. And one of the reasons that I have great dreams and great sleep, frankly, is Beam. Yes, sleep is important, and you probably
know poor sleep can cause unhappiness, but what kind of unhappiness? Well, weight gain, mood issues, poor mental health, lower productivity too, and if you sleep less than six to seven hours per night, it's linked to reduced white blood cell count. White blood cells protect our body against illness and disease, They fight viruses and bacteria and more. Sleep it's the foundation of our mental and physical health and performance in all of our days. Having a
consistent nighttime routine that's non negotiable. So that's why we'd like to tell you about Beam Dream. Dream contains a very very powerful, all natural blended things you've heard of like magnesium and melowtonin and all the good stuff. You might not have things that are hard to pronounce and easy to mispronounce, but they work. Ray shechi elfinine along with nanocbd you've heard that combined they'll help you
fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake refreshed. Our recent clinical study revealed the dream helped ninety three percent of users wake up feeling more refreshed, and those ninety three percent reported the dream helped them get an even more RESTful night's sleep. Just mix the Beam Dream into hot water or milk, stir or froth and enjoy before bedtime. Now today, our listeners, that's you get
a special discount on Beams Dream Powder. They're best selling a healthy hot chocolate hot coco for sleep with no added sugar and I like that part of it. It's now available in many flavors and they're all great. There's sea salt, caramel, cinnamon, cocoa, chocolate, peanut butter, which is my
favorite. Better sleep has never tasted better. If you want to try Beams best selling dream Powder, take advantage of the biggest sale of the year and get up the fifty percent offer of a lit limited time when you go to the Shopbeam dot com slash Ricochet. The discount is auto apply to check out, so no code is necessary. Cool. That's Shopbeam dot com slash Ricochet shop Bam dot com slash Ricochet for up to fifty percent off. And we
thank Beam for sponsoring this the Ricochet Podcast. And now welcome back to the Podcast with Pleasure. Noah Rothman, senior writer for National Review, where he provides essential commentary on the wars. Now we got plural now in Ukraine and Israel or some people say the Ukraine and the Israel know they don't. He's the author of the Rise of the New Puritans, fighting back against progressives,
War on fun, welcome back. We're going to let Charlie go first, because we've been just yelling our heads off here about this Osama bin Laden TikTok thing that's going on. Yeah. No, So my question is the American support for Israel and Ukraine is just another example of imperial i swomongering lit by Raytheon right. Clearly it goes without saying for those this thing I work with, noahs, he and I chat about this stuff, but that is an argument that you, Hey, why is it wrong? Well, I mean,
it's absurdly foolish. There's a reductionist sort of Marxian habit where quite a lot of events are analyzed from the perspective of the outcome rather than the impetus for the outcome, and very often that leads, in the Marxian perspective, or at least those who are partial to that framework, towards the idea that capital and the pursuit of it or lack thereof, is the motivating factor.
Various other competing frameworks like the intersectional framework with substitute raise for capital. But by and large they seek to force events to comport with the framework rather than the other way around. That's part of the reason why frameworks are something that I find increasingly detrimental to at least the discourse, if not the psychology broadly,
or psychology political psychology. But that's I suppose the answer to that is just an effort to force, to force events to make sense to those who use these frameworks to navigate the world. All right, let me put it in another way, why should we give Israel and Ukraine money? So I was just having this conversation. Actually, one of the concerns that seems to be dominating Washington now as they're talking about this dual aid package is why is
Israel getting less money than Ukraine? Why do we need fifty five hundred million dollars or something like that or five hundred billion dollars I'm sorry, fifty billion dollars for Ukraine and fifteen billion dollars for Israel. And the answer is Israel doesn't quite need it. One of the few things that we provide to Israel are the interceptor missiles. They have long range capabilities it's a very capable, competent military. The idef to the contrary, Ukraine needs more support because it's
fighting a broader war against its more significant power. The Russian military is a broader, bigger power. But the answer to both of those questions is that it's in America's interests. On the other side of those conflicts are all of
America's adversaries. We like to fool ourselves in the West with the notion that there are profound distinctions between the Chinese and the Russians and the Iranians and the various terrorist proxies that orbit around them, and they're all hostile to one another because the Says don't like the Shiads don't like the Sunnis, and the Chinese have profound historical grievances with the Russians, and so do the Iranians for that
matter, and blah blah blah, blah blah. And the bottom line is they can subsume all of these distinctions, which are real to the imperative that they're all aligned behind, which is putting an end, hastening an end to the American led order. They don't see these distinctions. They are all aligned behind this goal. It is in the United States interest to forestall or prevent that they're objective for as long as we possibly can, and we just don't
want to do it. In the United States and the West broadly do not like that fact. We don't want to think that there are countries a rated against our interests that want to hasten a very hopsy in reality, which we've seen on the ground in Ukraine, which we saw on the ground in southern
Israel. We don't want to think that that future is in the offing for us, but it most certainly is, and it will be if we decline to see to our own interests and keep the jungle, as Fred Kagan called it, from growing back before Stephen Job's in here, I have to ask, as a follow up to Charles question, So we've given them this money, these aid packages, and I support both of them. Are we going to see any of it back in what form? Well, what's our ROI?
It depends, I mean, the the ROI can be said to be geopolitical, that there's there's something to be said for spending this money and no American blood to bleed Russia drives been made. But the other is, you
know, actually getting some money back from the guys. Is that even discussed, because I think most people kind of think that these packages that are loans or something where eventually Ukraine and Israel has to just done and write a check and hand it back to us and say thanks, and we're not asking for a lot of interest on this, but maybe some of the money back. Well, it strikes me as a profoundly parochial concern. If that is the
concern. The advantage that we get from preserving the American led geopolitical order is most certainly capital, is most certainly material. If you were to hasten the return of inviolable spheres of influence, for example, like what we had between nineteen fourteen and nineteen eighty nine, you would see a profound contraction of the
geopolitical economy. We have a global economy for the first time, beginning in nineteen eighty nine nineteen ninety one, for the better part of a century, and it produced a flourishing of the human condition that like we haven't seen at any point in the existence of of civilization. But it most certainly redounded to Americans benefits in the form of untrammeled, unmolested navigation of the seas maintained by the United States, and the global traffic in commerce and trade expanded our economy
dramatically in that interim, and the rest of the world's economy too. So if we were to see the restoration of global the truncating of global maritime navigation roots, for example, or the cutting off of certain parts of the Middle East or the Europe or the European continent to American commerce, then you would
absolutely feel it in your wallet. You would certainly feel it in your taxes because they would go up required to sustain the forward presences that our allies would demand, because the deterioration of the international security environment ensures that we would have to contribute more to our collective defense, not less. But you would also see a contraction of the global economy, and most certainly you would feel that
in your way. So if Americans are so parochial, and I don't think they are, but if they were so parochial that they concern themselves only with their pocketbooks and not the stability of the world that they're bequeathing to their children, then yeah, that concern is on the table too, right. But seeing things beyond our border, as you describe the meritime the freedom of maritime move in all of these things. The interconnectingness of the world is a fairly
sophisticated argument. Do you think there's a politician out there who can make that case convincingly and the next election? I don't. Oh, I do. I do, I certainly do. But I also think that they're convinced that their interlocutors in the electorate are just not sophisticated enough to understand it just the way that you said it. I think they think so little of the voting populace that they wouldn't that they would dumb down the argument or decline to make
it. And I think that's a profound disrespect to their voters. I do think Americans are capable of comprehending the geostrategic situation and America's obligations to its own security and the security of its allies, and it only takes somebody with the courage to make the argument at the risk of offending a particular class, a very vocal but still nonetheless written not representative portion of the electorate that wants America
to close up shop and retreat to within its borders. There's a McGovernite impulse that is very popular in particularly in online forums, and is catered to by very loud voices in alternative media venues. But we have no indication from any reliable data in the polling that suggests it's representative of a broad array of public opinion. You would be forgiven for thinking that Ukraine is unpopular, right,
It's not. We had a poll last night from I think Quinnipiac that shows that a majority of the American majority of a registered American voters still think that the United States it's in America's interest to contribute to Ukraine's defense and degrade one of its most capable near peer competitors, a near peer competitor that has a demonstrable interest in expanding its territory and subjugating the peoples in its borders. That's
not a sort of thing that's hard to comprehend. Only if you're committed to not comprehending it. Could you miss it? I would substitute victory for defense. But I agree with the principal Stephen. Yeah. No, there's the blunt Noah Rothma that I came to love on the on the commentary podcast.
I know I used to tune into the commentary podcast, chiefly for you because of the splendidly cranky way you would contest John pod Honz And even when I didn't agree with you, which was actually sometimes quite often, I still enjoyed the back and forth. And so we miss you there and glad you were here. We are all flawed creatures, that part of you. Well, so I want to well, I'll protest you a little bit because it'll bring
out that splendid crankiness. That's a compliment. By the way, of course, first, as you're calling today about that the Israel faces no alternative then to reoccupy Gaza at the end of the fighting. And I see the logic of that. On the other hand, I mean, I just think of our own bitter experience in I Rock and Afghanistan that it looks to me like, you know, a long difficult The occupation would be lots of gorilla fighting, lots of terrorist strikes on Israeli personnel, and the kind of thing that
is. I don't know how that works. Maybe there isn't an alternative, but aren't you worried that it's just going to be a quagmire? Yeah? I mean, who wouldn't be, It would be foolish not to be. The problem is not that this is a difficult mission. The problem is not
that Israel would rather do anything else than occupy Gaza. They've demonstrated over the course of decades, even that long preceding the two thousand and five pull out and this eighteen year failed experiment in autonomy in the Gaza strip, that they have no interest in this part of the world. They don't have a biblical claim to it, they don't have a lot of interest in occupying it militarily. It's a rat's nest. They don't want anything to do with it.
They have been this has been imposed on them. And if there was some sort of alternatives, some peace loving civilian authority that could be incepted into existence, some international organization, or even Cairo or Jordan would be interested in reassuming some authority here, I don't know if Israel would be all that disinterested in it. But that's not in the offing. It's not as though this is something that's that's you know, that's an alternative that's on the table. There
are no alternatives on the table. And I think that you're right that there is an apprehension rooted in the idea that democracy promotion in our post nine to eleven projects was a failed experiment. That's a debatable proposition. In Afghanistan, we summarily abandoned it. In Iraq, we have one of the more stable parliamentarian democracies in the Middle East, with conditions that vastly improved on the status
quo ante under Saddam Hussein, where there was no peace. We were consistently at war with Saddam Hussein's regime, executed three strike three different rounds of strikes on the regime and the regime targets over the course of the no fly zone period, the interim between Gulf War One and the Iraq War, and it culminated in the invasion and dissolution of the regime. The idea that there would be peace in the absence of the Iraq War seems to me fallacious and not
not rooted in any history. But how do you sorry, but how do you respond to people who say that all that being true? And I agree, it's what he widely shared now across the political spectrum that Iraq was our biggest foreign policy mistakes since Vietnam. Well, there are quite a lot of
erroneous assumptions that I don't share that are popular. Nonetheless, just because it's popular, doesn't this is the it was really popular, I'd be here saying nine to eleven was justified, right, And you know some of bin Laden had a point, popular does not make right good good. Let's switch to Ukraine for a minute. I'm with you there. I want Ukraine to win. But three quick points. One is it's clearly now on the back burner
since October seven. Second, the counter offensive this year it didn't seem to unfold the way the optimists thought it would. And then third, it still seems to me like the balance of forces. I'm no fan of John Meerscheimer, but to say the least, but when he describes and others described the superiority the Russians enjoy and manpower materiall never mind their morale problems, which are serious. That it's an uphill fight, and so is it time now for
a negotiated settlement to the into the room, into the chat. And when you answer that, let me add to his second point. Do the people who are looking ahead to the counter offensive and saying what should happen and what they thought would happen. Did they have any idea actually what they were talking about? Oh yeah, I think they did. I you know, there's it's impossible to judge the efficacy of a military campaign before it makes first contact
with the enemy. There's simply no way to do that effectively. You can raise a series of scenarios and outcomes, all of which are possible. I don't think anybody would say I certainly wouldn't say that the counter offense have met its objectives. The counter offensive failed to achieve its objectives. It failed in ways that the twenty twenty two counter offensives did not that were spectacular in their capacity to resist the russiananslaught and beat back the russianan slot in places like Kirsana
Kharkiev. It was always going to be an uphill battle. We're talking about a much smaller country with a much smaller, less capable military against one of
the pre eminent militaries on the planet Earth. There was always going to be a struggle, and the administration I think deserves a fair amount of criticism as they've received from people who know what they're talking about, like US Army lieutenant general retired Lieutenant General Doug Lute, who said, quote, our incremental approach to providing military assistance has assured that there will be no silver bullet to restore mobility to this conflict. But it's a mistake to call it a stalemate.
A stalemate implies that there's no movement along the front lines, and there is movement along the front lines. Just this week we had a regrouping effort among Russian troops to DeCamp to the left bank of the Miopro River, which is on the other side of the Kiirson under pressure. It's not as though there's nothing happening on the front lines. It is just not the dramatic movement that we saw in twenty twenty two, and given expectations, I can understand why
people would say that that's an underwhelming performance from the Ukrainian military. The alternative is as ever, just as it is with Israel re entering the Gaza Strip. Compared to what that is the question with which we are always confronted, and the comparison to a Ukraine that's fighting for its survival, excuse me. On the far eastern edge of Ukrainian territory by the Russian border is something far
worse from the perspective of NATO. It is Ukrainian forces executing retrograde operations falling back closer to Kiev, falling back closer to NATO's borders, increasing the apprehension among NATO's allies, some of whom will see to their own defense in the absence of America's support, which introduces infinitely more complexity to the conflict, infinitely more potential for them to take a step that we don't sanction or support,
and perhaps well, you know, introduce the prospect of a conflagration that includes NATO allies. That's not off the table whatever happens in Ukraine that if we were to get, if we were to pair back, our support in Ukraine were to consequently fall backwards, it would bring the fighting closer to NATO's borders, and it would decrease our security relative to Russia and not increase it. So my question is to advocates of that sort of thing, is how how
would this bring about peace? It wouldn't bring about peace. It would bring about more insecurity and compel us to commit more resources to the NATO frontier, thereby not freeing us up from devoting our attention, for example, to the Indo Pacific, which is precisely what people who advocate for that sort of thing say. They say, Oh, we need to stop our focus on Europe
because we need to devote more attention to the Indo Pacific. Well, how first of all, the reasons, sources that we need in Europe are the precise opposite of what we need in a naval campaign. And second, those resources are not our finites. They would be devoted to European security and the
preservation of the alliance structure that we have now. Only if you want to see that dissolve, if you want to see that project destabilized, would you advocate for that sort of a course, And I think frankly a lot of people who advocate for that sort of course do want to see the alliance structure that the United States maintains in Europe destabilized and reduce variety of psychology difficult,
We're familiar. Fact, it's even harder than that. Finding a wardrobe and getting that thing to fit together and look good, almost as hard as the onton cordiel. Well, I have a problem because I'm short and the way I'm built, it's very difficult for me to go to the store and find pans right off the rack that I like and that fit. It's impossible, So I end up going online. And what happens when you go online?
You find something, you order it, you put it on the eight looks like junk because he didn't get the chance to feel at the store and be it doesn't fit, you got to send it back. It's a pain. Aye, it's such a pain men's closets. They're due for a radical reinvention. Well, guess what Rone has stepped up to the challenge. Rone's Commuter Collection is the most comfortable, breathable, and flexible set of products known to man. We should note here that, of course, a lot of people
are working from home, so you may not necessarily commute. It doesn't matter shoe. You'll actually want to get yourself a metro card or take a job far away, just simply so you can commute in these commuter pants. I'm serious. The Commuter Collection. It offers the world's most comfortable pants and dress
shirts and one quarter zips and polos. Their four way stretch fabric proofs provides breathability and flexibility that leaves you free to enjoy what life throws you away from your commute to work, to your eighteen holes of golf, to just being around the house or being around the neighborhood or walking the dog. It's time to feel confident without the hassle. And with Roane's wrinkle release technology, wrinkles disappear as you stretch and where the products. It's that easy. I've taken
them on trips. You put them in the legget, you take them out, put them on, no wrinkles. It's great. And here's the thing. I've ordered a lot of clothes online, I really have, and I gave my measurements exactly as they were to ron and what came was, without question, the finest fitting pair of pants I have ever owned in my life. It was as if I had gone to London to some bespoke tailor and have myself measured and it was the best fit. And I prize these things
and I can't I can't stop myself from getting more. Frankly, the Commuter Collection. They can get you through any workday and straight into whatever comes next. Had to Orne dot com, slash ricochet and use the promo code ricochet to save twenty percent off your total order. That's twenty percent off your entire order when you had to rho ne dot com, slash ricochet and use the code ricochet. It's time to find your corner office comfort. And we thank
Roan for sponsoring this the Ricochet Podcast. One last question and pivot to domestic politics for a minute. As we see these shocking scenes of anti semitism on college campuses, but also in the streets, I hear lots of anecdotes of often progressive Jews or liberal Jews who were saying, oh gosh, I thought
these people were on our side. And you're hearing these anecdotes that there are some second thoughts occurring to people, and you're wondering if this is the aftermath of October seventh, is going to be an inflection point that makes it's not a perfect comparison, but a whole new generation of neo conservatives, or are po simply people dropping their allegiance to the left. I haven't seen any polling data on this. I'm surprised there isn't some survey organization asking Jews for their
opinions on things. What's your sense of things? Do you do you think that there's a prospect that that's going to happen or what are you hearing and seeing? Well, I think it's a mugs By reality moment for a lot of people, actually, and yeah, that is what I'm seeing. Does
that translate into more Republican votes, more Trump votes? Nope, I don't think so, not in the near term, but it definitely does contribute to precisely what you accurately say was the neo conservative moment, when if we were to apply the word appropriately to its actual historical historical context, we would see left leaning liberals who were astonished by a McGovernite sensibility that had overtaken the party, that was no longer confident in America's capacity to project power to defend its
values, and had given up on the social covenant at home, particularly when it comes to crime prevention and the sort of promotion of American values domestically, the virtue of American liberties, of freedom, religious pluralism, freedom of speech and expression. Those were all the things that contributed to the neo conservative moment. And these were not Republicans necessarily, they were shocked into a shot out
of complacency liberals. They remained liberals, but they were liberals in a classical sense, and they were opposed to a progressive orthodoxy that had abandoned liberalism altogether. Now, eventually that cohort became a reliably republican cohort, but it wasn't until the late nineties early two thousands that that evolution culminated in what we now today considered neo conservatives. And even today a lot of people who are not
neo conservatives are branded neo conservatives. It's become a byword for people who support extroverted foreign policy, but that's not really what it means. So now I have one more question. Is Osama bin Laden actually good? This is a nuanced, nuanced claim that we need to contextualize and really parse that the Humanities Department could. I was always in the bad camp. Well you're such a medic, you're such a menchi. Yeah, that was my instinct. I
went with badon I stayed with bad. But then I'm watching these people on TikTok and they're they're doing those reaction videos like they're watching phol Collins something in the air for the first time, but actually they're reading ben Laden's letter about how we will need to be forcibly converted to Islam if not killed. And
I'm wondering, I mean, is he good, fresh new look? Well, if you, I'm what these young, unlettered or young people who are products of misbegotten educations need to read after they read Osama bin Laden's Letter to America is Michelle Hollenbach's novel Submission, which describes condition in which modern France submits itself to a sort of a Sharia interpretation of Islam and finds new meaning and
new purpose in steeping itself in this radical Islamist milieu. It was kind of absurd, absurd satirical fiction when it was written, but the outlines of that
are perfectly visible today. I mean, these people are inadvertently, perhaps but nonetheless endorsing the most strict version of a conception of an Islamic social covenant, which includes hostility to gays and lesbians, and the absolute elevation of Islamic moral principles and the elimination of separation between church and state, all of these things that progressives you would think would shy away from. But because it is radically
anti American, all of that is erased. Because being radically anti American is hit. I mean, that is just the mark of a sophisticate somebody who sees more to dislike in their country than two like. And I think that's the prime draw, that's the biggest, the biggest draw for these people intellectually, the temptation to be hostile to the place of their birth, and that was really the draw primarily in Hollenbeck's novel. Does France have the same problem
of self castigation among its Uh? It's better thinkers as America does. Maybe it better. Charlie's better at that than I am. But I think they've
gotten better at it recently. I think in the last twenty years they've there's been certainly since the Bouta Cline attacks that there's been something of a recognition that the bifurcated or or really multifaceted sort of siloing of ethnic groups and really you know, definitive moiety between France, French France and French culture and the cultures that were being imported into France. I think that there's something of a recognition
that that was an untenable status question. I think, ticularly in the case of the French, I don't think that any of them who would mouth the ideas of a transnational European identity based on values, et cetera. Oliver Welcome really believed it, especially when you talk to a Frenchman and get his actual true opinion on whether or not somebody who is not French in the sense that we all say can be French in the same way. None of them would
say yes. They would all mouth, and my French friends are very liberal, they would mouth the series of pieties that they're expected to believe is good members of the EU and the human community. But they didn't. You scratched down a quarter of an inch and you'll find national chauvinism that is very French. England is another matter. How are we to view what has been going
on? I mean somebody pointed out a series of photographs of the bridge by Parliament empty when talking about Yemeny atrocities, empty when talking about an atrocity here. But this particular one absolutely packed and full. And we saw people climbing the cenotaph in London, we saw people, We saw the police standing down because they were afraid of the people. They saw them arresting the people who have the gall and the audacity to bring the Union jack to these things.
It seems an inversion of what we would always like to think about there always being a Britain, etc. And now London being what it is in its current composition, seems to be facing an evaluation and they probably will do nothing about it, and I'm not sure what they can. I'm not sure what they can either, but I mean the first step would be to recognize what led them to this point. There was a I don't think multiculturalism per se
is a bad thing. It is the idea that multiculturalism should be elevated to a virtue above and beyond patriotism, of fealty to one's country, of fealty to the values that have created the conditions in which you prosper and thrive. That's when it becomes something that's noxious and a detrimental to the social fabric. And that's precisely what we're confronting here to a certain degree, but most certainly in Europe, not just in England, but on the continent as well.
Is this assumption that the culture in which we're born has more sin to it than virtue, that it is festooned with all of these historical woes, that it is guilty of more harm than good, and uniquely and uniquely so more than any and the British would say the Britain that the British have more sins than the Americans. The Americans would say the Americans have more sins in the
British, and so on. And it's really just a sense of insecurity, a crippling insecurity that is unearned but has become cultural cachet and is certainly capital on American college campuses. It is just jingoistic, chauvinistic to believe that your country is is good and virtuous, that the United States has bent over backwards throughout its history to create a better geopolitical environment, and that profound sacrifices were
made to bequeathed to us. The kind of world we live in now, I mean, that's just simplistic, you know, the real, real big deep thinkers. Uh see, a history littered with sins and offenses against you know, just all that was rightious, righteous and decent, and all of it motivated by uh, you know, really parochial and uh uh you know, uh, an individual desire to benefit ourselves in a way that is just
really trite. So yeah, I think that's there's there's a lot to be said for that, and it's it's more shallow than I than I think we give it credit for. It's a sort of thing that doesn't really survive in the scrutiny of the light of day, but it does in these hermetically sealed campuses. And where do these people go. We've been doing this experiment for ten years. Where do these people who are steeping themselves in this meal you,
this self hating milu. Where do they end up? Well, they end up at the State Department, they end up at USAID, they end up at the breaking news desks of every major American media institution. And then
what happens. There's a ten to seven massacre. And the first instinct is to apply these obscuring, obscuring frameworks that reduce and explain away the horrors that we're privy to and make them harder to discern by applying all these these other principles, these other caveats, these other extra efforts to contextualize the stuff away to the point where we can't actually analyze the events that were that we're seeing. We can't analyze the evidence in front of our eyes. And that's the
whole goal. That was the whole the whole point of this project was to make it sure that so that there is no truth, that there is no universal set of values to which we can look to and say, well, this is a violation of it, or this is an example of it. It's all subjective, and that subjectivity has become a source of real concern. So beIN lauden. Yes on a I mean, I'm in no, but
I'm clearly behind the times. All right, you're right that these things are facile and they do not stand up to scrutiny, but they are the most absurd things said by nominally intelligent people. There was a tweet thread the other day where somebody was talking about that Israel, of course, is an illegitimate colonial enterprise and the United States and Israel should be making plans really to relocate
everybody in Israel because it's not going to last histories against it. And when somebody said, so, that means that they all have to leave because they're not from there, and her response to that was, yes, like the United States, Israel is an illegitimate settler country. So in other words, what she was saying, if you thought about it, was that everybody from
Israel who is Jewish should be taken to a mayor. But then they should have about two weeks to relax and not unpacked, because we're going to move everybody from America to some other unspecified place, perhaps back in Europe. And then what do you do with the people from Central and South America who are of mixed blood, who are from indigenous and the Spanish conquerors. We never seem to really hear a lot about the Spanish imperialists doing. Are these people
supposed to go back to Spain? Can they stay? Do they flip a coin? Do they go to a big platform in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The end result of all of this decolonization stuff is bloodshed and or bloodshed more often, but yet serious, thinking, tenured people will cling to these words as though they speak of framework to which we can we can, we can fix these things once they're all gradually assumed to be the case by
everybody or the people in power. And you're very charitable, You're very charitable to thinking and tenured. The latter descriptions. The tenured part was supposed to be a sarcastic rejoinder. I should if I was speaking in a New York accent, it would have been a parent But since I'm from North Dakota, I speak into sort of ameliorating, you know, nice guy kind of tones.
I just I really have to wrap myself back here. And North Dakota, by the way, was a great multicultural weighted place to grow up because we had the Polls, we had the Lutherans, we had the Catholics, we had the Norwegians, we had the Swedes, we had all and nobody believed me when I say that it was multicultural, that any of these things were different. They were anyway. So Noah, you're going to respond to
uh, to whatever word salad. I just don't know. And the litany of colonizers from in your stock renders all of those opinions rather suspect viking, just call them vikings, I think, right precisely. Yeah, And I find it very hard to take many of those arguments seriously because I find them so fatuous and just simply an an exercise in Onanism. It's it's just a way for them to demonstrate their own, uh, the lingua frank of the
institutions to which they belong, and to navigate. Once you actually scratch at the surface of the idea that of this colonizer paradigm the idea that a population that was not native to a particular Porsche parcel of land, which by the way, doesn't really apply to Israel, as Israelis will fully tell you there's and why the archaeological historical record demonstrates is that the ties to the land are actually five thousand years old or something along those lines. But it's of no
bearing. It's simply irrelevant to the practical matter before us, which is matters of war and diplomacy and geostrategy. It's a way to defer those conversations and to subsume them into something highly abstract and very theoretical in order to get around the problems that we are confronted with today, which are far more practical.
So I don't find them to be especially compelling, right right, and really reflect poorly, frankly on the people who think that they substitute for any actual expertise in the region or in the in the field of military or political affairs. But the fact that you would use a fellow centric term like ononism in the first place, I think it allows me to discredit everything that you've just said, Stephen Old Testament. Yes, right, yeah, well, I
think it's perfectly appropriate. No, you're can't imagine this is what I imagine these people doing the faculty lunders. No, you're no, for sure, you're absolutely You're absolutely correct. I'm just astonished. But we can still use the word without somehow being accused. A's some deep level of transphobia. But and the amount of intellectual atonism that goes on must make the decks as slippery
as those of a ship in a hype. This is going down, which is why I'm giving it back to Charlie, who's going to give you another historical monster and ask you to approve of him or not? Charles who would be next? Oh, I don't know you've thrown that one right at me. I mean I did. I must say, see some pretty amusing jokes on Twitch implying the wait until they discover my in camp of all people, Tommy Theaters, that's how you say it, who was an Obama flack of
the late two thousands. He said that it was a good thing that there was an adderall shortage, because that meant they wouldn't be able to get through mine camps, and perhaps we won't getting new found respect for the third Reich. I'm not going to ask Noah Rothman whether Hitler was a good guy or not. Even though you have teed me up to do that, James, I'm going to decline on this particular occasion to do that. Well, we'll
probably be at that point next year. I mean five years ago. If you'd asked me do you think that do you think that French bus drivers will refuse to take Jews to a ceremony? Five years ago? I would have probably said no. If you'd asked me a year ago about that, I probably would have said, yeah, I think French bus drivers probably would for
a variety of reasons. If you'd ask me in America if we'd ever have bus drivers who would refuse to board Jews to take them to a pro israel A rally from dollars, I would have said, no, this is the United States of America. Now I say, yeah, I absolutely can see it, because it just did. But look, it feels to me this one is just so poignant for me as a thirty nine year old, the idea of Asama bin Laden being a good guy sixteen when nine to eleven happened.
But if you actually look through I'm not sure they're exactly the same. People, but some of the people that various enclaves online like and have reevaluated. You will find obviously the classics, Sheik Rivara being one of them, but you will find Stalin. I mean, there is a subculture on Twitter of Tanky. Tanky absolutely love Stalin and think he did nothing wrong. They
love Lenin, they think he did nothing wrong. They look at the various dictators that have held power in Asia, whether that's in China or Vietnam, Cambodia, and they say, well, you can't make nominal without breaking it. So I mean, I suppose I shouldn't be a shocked by this, as I am, but it's because this one was the one that I suppose it must be a little bit like if you'd be born in nineteen twenty and people suddenly started saying, you know, it was a good guy, Hirahita,
that's who was a good guy. You know, that would really cut you to the quick. So that's why I have been saying now for a month that it is necessary to simply clean house at our universities in the country, and I think the chance of that happening is close to zero. Now you mentioned nine to eleven, you go back to a couple of years afterwards. I remember on article about this recently. You remember that Ward Churchill, guy at the University of called out, yes, we had it coming.
Those people in the Twin Towers are the little likemens of capitalism. He got fired, although they fired him for a technicality. They didn't fire him for being a left wing loon. That was the real reason they fired him. But they found that he'd plagiarized, that he'd lied about stuff. And that's a crazy story. I see nothing of that happen opening now. In other words, I don't think Word Churchill would be fired today for saying the things
that the pro Hamas academics are saying on our college campuses. Well, that shows you how much worse things have gotten. Let me ask Noah this. Noah, you've seen that there's been almost immediate retribution and consequences for people who have been identified, ripping down posters of the kidnapped children and people right there are several accounts, the several Twitter accounts that name and shame and follow up
with their dis grassroots enterprises. Though that's not a top down a response by authority figures true, but the it's an effort to shame authority figures whould otherwise look the other way into doing what would be their custodial jobs as exactly. But it's a start. They're not doubling down in every instance and saying free speech. They are actually saying, oh, this is very bad. We want to disassociate ourselves from this person, if only for pr reasons. I
mean, it'll take whatever reason they want, but it is happening. May have the sequence of events wrong here, but I think quite a lot of that was incepted by the refusal of the professional class to simply accept these people. Quite a bit of this was followed by or rather institutions like colleges beginning to take this seriously. Was preceded by big law firms saying, look, if you're praising the slaughter of you know, Jews, we're not going to
hire you, point blank. And at which point you were menacing the bottom line of these institutions, which really focuses the mind. Yes, it does like a hanging. I know. It's been a pleasure as ever, just an absolute pleasure to talk to you. And we'll talk again soon and maybe one of these days we'll talk about the resurgence of a Pax America and how everything is going absolutely grand at China's and retreat and the West stand strongs again.
I can always dream. Thank you for joining us, and everybody by the book. Thank you all. Take care. Yeah, you know you wonder sometimes if these people will over have an intellectual pull shift and realize how wrong that they've been. We all have those moments where we have to realize that we've done something that wasn't particularly wise and upbraide ourselves for it. And
it's a learning lesson sometimes. But then sometimes, really, when you think about it, it's better to avoid the problem in the first place, is it not. Let me turn to the subject of quaffing an adult beverage, which is something that I enjoy doing. A fine is a Scotch whiskey. Oh that'll be frankly, what's on the agenda for tonight? But you know, at my age, and I'm at the age where plan B does not
mean a backup course of action. I don't exactly bounce back the next day like I used to when I was a pop. I have to make a choice. Can I ever have a great night? And believe me, my definitions of great nights extend to some backing alias at the back of the ship and the NR cruises where we'd all get together with Conyax's the cars. Oh great, but I eat the next day. So now I'm a big fan of z Biotics. Z biotics pre alcohol probiotic is the world's first genetically engineered
probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking use. It works when you drink alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's this byproduct, not the hydral that is to blame for your rough next day. Now, z biotics produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. It's designed to work like your liver, but in your gut where
you need it the most. Right, just remember to drink ze biotics before drinking alcohol, drink responsibly, and get a good night sleep to feel your best tomorrow. I'm going to try it out. Yes you do, because you'll like it. Go to zbiotics dot com ricochet to get fifteen percent off your first order, and you use the Ricochet code word at checkout. You can also sign up for a subscription using the code ricochet so you can stay
prepared no matter what the time or the casion is. Holidays are coming up. You know there's gonna be parties in the rest of it. You don't want to get you know you don't. So that's why zbiotics, which is baked by the way, with a backed with one hundred percent money back guarantee, so if you are unsatisfied for any reason, they will refund your money
with no questions asked. So remember to have to z biotics dot com, slash ricochet and use the coupon code Ricochet at checkout for fifteen percent off. Thank you Zbiotics for sponsoring this the Ricochet podcast. Well on the way out, anything else that has been bothering you, gentlemen that you want to get off your chest before we close, well that could take another hour. Good grief, But Charles is so saturnine. I know that nothing really truly bothers
him. He has just got that even tempered or am I wrong? No, I'm fairly even tempered. That doesn't mean nothing bothers me. It just means I've learned to cope with it. I mean, I actually do think that we are in a really bad moment for our political parties to have made the decisions they seem to be making. I understand that history runs in cycles, and I'm not making an overwrought Flight ninety three argument here, but there is such a thing. I said, good year in which to be frivolous
and a bad year in which to be frivolous. And I think we've got a bad year in which to be frivolous. If you look around the world, you haven't just got the crisis in Ukraine, the crisis in the Middle East. You've got a resurgent China that keeps hinting that it's going to invade Taiwan. You've got interest rates higher than they've been for forty years because inflation
is higher than it's been for forty years. You've now got a federal budget that has no chance whatsoever of being balanced at any point in the near future. We're paying nearly a trillion dollars a year and debt repayments. We've got an entitlements crisis that no one wants to talk about anymore. At least fifteen
years ago, the two parties would acknowledge it existed. Now neither one seems to want to do that, and we seem to be headed toward an election that will be held most likely between a guy who is essentially dead and a guy who is likely to be a convicted felon. I don't think that's a good moment to do that. Past. The set of problems that you have laid out there clearly indicate that we need men of experience and perspective who have seen a lot in their lives. And that's why I'm I'm with you.
The idea that I still I don't believe it's happening. I still don't believe
it's happening. I'm going to be in the booth right about to cast my vote, and I'm going to look down and see Biden and Trump, and I'm going to I'm going to go back and say, are you sure this is the one that five minutes ago you just weren't handed one that says Newsome and DeSantis, Because that's that's the one that probably we should be should be should be doing now, not these I mean, the idea for the last election that we will be replaying it with these men four years hence is so
immensely, immensely depressing about the electorate and the parties themselves. Stephen, do you think he's going to make it. I mean, the DNC after he's nominated, from what I understand, can swap him out and they don't have to vote, they don't have to ask anybody to you know, what to
do. They can just do it. And I've been saying of this podcast, probably frivolously but increasingly seriously for the last six or seven months or so, that I think that's what's going to happen, that Biden is going to be raised up, He'll be nominated again, and then he'll just sort of ascend to heaven like Romulus or Claudius and into that slot that they will put Nwsan because they can, and because he's young and vital, and he's got the hair and all the rest of it, and he would thrash Trump for
a variety of reasons. Yeah, I think I agree with all that, you know, as a thought experiment. And actually, you know Conrad Black, who was, you know, a friend of Trump's, a supporter of Trump's, who's now critical of him. He wrote I think before the end of the year in twenty twenty that Trump would be much advised to do the
Andrew Jackson strategy. He can claim the election was stolen, but he would seize his efforts to try and stop it because he's run out of time, and then he would do what Andrew Jackson did in the the eighteen twenties. If you hadn't had January sixth and the intranscendence of Trump, I think he would be ten points head in the polls right now and heading for a landslide triumphal reelection. Leave aside the merits of Trump and all the characteristics and all
the rest of that. And so there's the tragedy of Trump that goes with this personality, right, And so yeah, you know I have actually since twenty sixteen, I've been repairing to two famous statements. One James Madison from Federalist ten that enlightened statesman will not always be at the helm. We've been testing that proposition for quite a while now. And then second, the line attributed to Bismark that what is it God looks after drunk schools in the United
States of America. We're testing that proposition too. You know, I tend to be a congenital optimist because you know, I grew up with Ronald Reagan, and you know, think myself still as a true Uru Reagan. I despite all the people saying Reagan's passe and so forth, and the younger generation, and I keep thinking something's going to happen. Somebody's going to replace somebody on the ticket next year. I don't know if it's but yeah, what
right now? It keeps saying, are we really going to have an election where one candidate campaigns from the basement again and the other candidate campaigns from a jail cell. This is not an implausible or impossible scenario, And it's just
mind boggling. If you've said, you know, as Charlie was saying earlier, if you've said even ten years ago that we'd have a circumstance like this, she would have thought, no, if you pitch step to some Hollywood producer, take it out of here with a crazy story like that, Reagan is no longer relevant. But Karl Marx is incredibly start right to this date. Well, that being said, I would like to remind you, and as soon as I say these things, you're going to think the podcast is
over, but it isn't. We'd like to remind you that we were brought to you by Beam by Roan and bes'szbiotics. All of these things can enhance your life and if you support them, you support us the Circle of Life and capitalism. And if you could take a minute to leave a six star review on Apple Podcasts, your reviews allow other new listeners to find the show, and that gets more listeners. And you should, of course go to ricochet dot com and join if you haven't. But in the meantime, we'll
see you all in the comments at Ricochet four point zero. Thank you, gentlemen, and thank you for listening. See you around, James Ricochet. Join the conversation