Latest / Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger / The Right, the Left, and the Fate of the Nation

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The Right, the Left, and the Fate of the Nation · Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Q&A.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Jay Nordlinger,
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: and my guests today are two leading political writers,
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Bill Kristol and David French.
• 0:13
  Bill Kristol is a director of Defending Democracy Together and
• 0:18
  the editor at large
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: of The Bulwark.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: David French is a columnist for The New York Times.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: They've done a lot more than journalism in their lives.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Bill is an academic, a teacher.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: He served as chief of staff to vice president Dan Quayle.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: David is a lawyer, an army veteran.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: They have lived.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Richard Pipes titled his memoirs Vixie, I Have Lived.
• 0:43
  I said the worst thing about the book is its title because the
• 0:46
  word is so obscure.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Great book, great book.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: I would never restrict either of our guests.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: They can talk about whatever they want.
• 0:55
  But we have a main subject today,
• 0:57
  Republicans,
• 0:59
  and in particular,
• 1:00
  young Republicans.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Our peg, of course, is the article published by Politico on October 14th.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: The headline is, brace yourself, I love Hitler.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Leaked messages expose young Republicans' racist chat.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: The subheading is,
• 1:18
  thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking
• 1:22
  about gas chambers,
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: slavery,
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: and rape.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: David said on social media that he was not surprised by this.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't either.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: I would have been.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I've had testimony from young conservatives on this matter for years.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: From young people who are genuinely conservative, I mean.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Not at all like the Republicans described in that article.
• 1:46
  Before I get to our guests,
• 1:48
  I'm going to read a little from my column today.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: I've never talked so much at the beginning of a Q&A, ever.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: But my intention is to set the stage, so to speak, for Bill and David.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: So here goes.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: When I was in college,
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: I knew some Republicans,
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: and I knew a lot more when I was in my 20s and 30s.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was a Republican and an ardent one.
• 2:11
  I think all of us on this podcast are ex-Republicans,
• 2:14
  one-time Republicans.
• 2:16
  maybe i was naive maybe i was sheltered but i swear i did not
• 2:21
  know a racist or an
• 2:22
  anti-semite much less someone who had a good word for fascism i
• 2:27
  knew extremists on
• 2:28
  the left for sure lots of them but among republicans unless i'm
• 2:32
  completely blanking
• 2:34
  no don't get me wrong i knew that right-wing extremists existed
• 2:40
  they played a
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: considerable role in the 20th century
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Also, they had publications.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: One of them was called The Spotlight.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: But these extremists were on the fringe, certainly in America.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: The Republicans I knew were basically sunny Reaganites,
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: keen to defend liberal values or enlightenment values against their foes,
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: the statist or collectivist foes of those values.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: My guise were for limited government,
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: the rule of law,
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: free enterprise,
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: individual rights,
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: a pluribus unum,
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: The whole bitsy, as we'd say in the Midwest.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I may have been naive or sheltered, but frankly, I don't think so.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: In the last several years, people have asked, was it ever thus?
• 3:24
  Differently worded,
• 3:26
  is there a straight line from the Reagan era to Trumpism?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: I say no, even hell no, but I'm just one person with his own experience.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: We admired leaders such as Reagan, Thatcher, and in Canada, Mulroney.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Thatcher and Mulroney spoke at Reagan's funeral.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: We did not admire the likes of Orban, Bukele, or Putin.
• 3:50
  Our economists were,
• 3:51
  say,
• 3:51
  Friedman and Sowell,
• 3:53
  a far cry from the Trump folk.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: I could go on.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Guys, let's start in college and then go to grad school.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: For grad school, you're both at Harvard,
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: Bill in the government department, David at the law school.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Bill,
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: if you would,
• 4:11
  begin with college and the Republicans you knew and maybe the
• 4:15
  Republican you were
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: at the time.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I actually, yeah, well, I was in college.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'm older than you guys.
• 4:22
  So I was in college 70 to 73,
• 4:25
  grad school,
• 4:25
  the rest to the 70s almost,
• 4:27
  through 78.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_03: So that's my, I'll talk about the 70s.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: There were not many Republicans.
• 4:33
  And I myself was a Scoop Jackson supporter in the primaries in
• 4:36
  72,
• 4:36
  a Democrat.
• 4:38
  And then it was for Nixon over McGovern,
• 4:39
  really on foreign policy grounds.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I wasn't really an official Republican world,
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: which in any case was a very small world at Harvard.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_03: But yes, I didn't know
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: people who made jokes about gas chambers or that sort of thing.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_03: where there could have been some individual people.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_03: I will say this,
• 4:54
  there were always cranks and oddballs and people who liked just
• 5:00
  intellectually and
• 5:01
  psychologically maybe indulging in kind of provocative and
• 5:05
  extreme views on the
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_03: right,
• 5:07
  as there are in every movement and every religion and every
• 5:11
  social gathering
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_03: almost,
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_03: right?
• 5:12
  I mean,
• 5:13
  you know,
• 5:13
  it's just people have that,
• 5:15
  some people have that character.
• 5:17
  I think one thing that makes a huge difference,
• 5:18
  I'll tell one story that might illustrate this.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: So in the summer of 70,
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_03: before I got to college,
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_03: between high school and college,
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_03: I was an intern here in Washington.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_03: And for totally random and uninteresting reasons,
• 5:28
  I had an issue of where I was going to live for one week
• 5:31
  because one place fell
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_03: through and the leases and all this,
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_03: I had a transition.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_03: And I was a friend at the time of Bob Tyrrell,
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_03: who was older than I,
• 5:38
  but I'd gotten to know a bit and he knew more people in the
• 5:42
  conservative movement
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: because Bob was editing the alternative,
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_03: which later became the American Spectator.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: He was plugged into YAF and he knew Buckley and,
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_03: he kind of had courted the older,
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_03: not courted,
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: it's not fair.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: He had,
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_03: become friendly with older people.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: And he knew a big,
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: much bigger network of people who were,
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_03: kind of post-college in their 20s and 30s,
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: and then some true adults,
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_03: you know?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_03: So I remember,
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_03: so I talked to him,
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: I think I was just randomly talking to him on the phone,
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: but anyway,
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: I mentioned this problem.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: He said, I know people in the Washington area.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: Let me see if someone must have an extra room,
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_03: maybe they could put you up for a few days.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: And long story short, I ended up a very nice married young couple.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, when you're 17, everyone looks old.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know how old they were,
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: 25,
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: 30,
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: but they were a generation ahead of me,
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: who put me up for a couple of days,
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_03: very kind.
• 6:28
  They picked me up at the place I had to leave because the lease
• 6:31
  had run out with my
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_03: limited belongings,
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_03: but still it was a bit of a pain to take them all in the metro.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: And we had a very pleasant conversation.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_03: So they turned out to be great admirers of Franco.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: And they had a Viva Cristo Rey,
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: a bumper sticker,
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: which I didn't,
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: I knew enough Latin from high school to know what that meant,
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: long live Christ the King.
• 6:51
  I mean,
• 6:51
  but I didn't realize there was sort of the Francoist slogan and
• 6:54
  so forth at the time.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: Franco was kind of dying.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: It was almost a joke,
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: but he was dictator of Spain and he had been dictator for a long time.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I sort of,
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_03: And they were sort of what we would call theorists.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: They were sort of followers,
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: actually,
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: of Brent Bozell,
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: Bill Buckley's brother-in-law,
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_03: who had gone off to that side of things.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: Had broken the bill, I think, really.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Founded a magazine called Triumph.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_03: Triumph, yes.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: And they were contributors to Triumph.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: That was their world.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: When Triumph is a fringe magazine edited by slight eccentric,
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_03: sometimes lovable,
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_03: sometimes maybe not so lovable figures,
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: sometimes sad figures like Bozell became.
• 7:33
  But anyway,
• 7:34
  it's a fringe magazine,
• 7:35
  national reviews in the center or even in the center right.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: Then there's plenty of stuff.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_03: Let's call it a more center or the right.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's a center right, public interest or whatever.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's one thing to have people like that.
• 7:46
  And I would say maybe because they weren't close to power,
• 7:49
  maybe it was just their nature.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_03: they were nice people.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: They knew I was Jewish.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_03: We talked about this.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_03: I said, I mean, I don't know, I'm Jewish.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_03: Should I be like,
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_03: okay with,
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_03: this kind of militant,
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_03: proselytizing Catholicism in Spain,
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_03: which has slightly bad resonance,
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_03: for the Jews.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, we talked about it and laughed sort of about it.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's just, I do think, so I think, A, there were fewer of those people.
• 8:10
  They were probably more intellectual because you had to almost
• 8:13
  have an exotic taste
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_03: for certain kinds of thinkers and
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: to even get into that.
• 8:20
  And it was never remotely approaching the notion that they
• 8:23
  could put anything into practice.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so it became more of an intellectual, almost sport, you might say.
• 8:29
  And I do think now with the proximity to power and many other
• 8:34
  things that have
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: changed over the last 50 years,
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_03: I understand.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_03: has given it all a very different color.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: So I wouldn't be quite as definitive as you were,
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_03: Jay,
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_03: at least in my experience,
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_03: that there weren't people of that kind around.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_03: Fascism is a little strong.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: On the other hand, I mean, Franco literally was a fascist.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's not crazy to say that being pro-Franco.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_03: And to be fair, people were pro-Pinochet after that coup.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: People were pro the Greek junta.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: Democracy wasn't working.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_03: They needed a certain kind of strongman.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_03: And anyway, Pinochet was free market.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: There was a little more of that than
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: maybe the normal conservative accounts,
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_03: say,
• 9:09
  and there was a little more ignoring of the 2,500 people
• 9:12
  Pinochet had thrown off
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_03: helicopters and killed because they were,
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: not all communists,
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: honestly,
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: and sort of pained dissidents.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_03: So I think there was a little more of that than one wants to say,
• 9:21
  but it's still very different when it's a sort of tolerance of
• 9:24
  some third world
• 9:24
  dictators who were pro-American compared to possibly a
• 9:27
  communist regime and
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_03: tolerance of oddball,
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_03: people who had Viva Cristo Rey bumper stickers as opposed to what we saw,
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: which is people who were really in the pretty close to the heart of young
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_03: Republican world.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_03: And a final point, and I want to stop it.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's an excuse that they're kids is ridiculous.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, aren't they...
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_03: Mostly 30, 32, 35 years old.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_03: one of them is now,
• 9:54
  I believe in the Trump administration is the chief of staff to
• 9:57
  the undersecretary,
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_03: whatever he is of state for diplomacy.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_03: So,
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: yes,
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: it's a very,
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_03: it's very,
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_03: very,
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_03: very different,
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_03: but not maybe not 180 degrees,
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_03: but 160 degrees different.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Bill, before I get to David, I want to ask you a couple of things.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: You gave me a memory when you spoke of the right,
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: you might say the real right,
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: the Francoite right,
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: or the far right and intellectuals.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: I did know one family in Michigan.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Of intellectuals,
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: genuine intellectuals,
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: who,
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: for example,
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: might have believed that FDR engineered the attack on Pearl Harbor.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_03: Right, that was popular.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:35
  And that was my introduction to,
• 10:37
  well,
• 10:37
  my introduction in person to that kind of right.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'd read about it.
• 10:43
  So we'll jump from college and grad school to professional life
• 10:47
  a little later.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: David, tell us about what you saw in college.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Did you go to college in Nashville or Memphis?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Excuse me if I'm
• 10:58
  I went to college in Nashville and at a small Christian college
• 11:03
  in Nashville.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: So my experience was, so college, let me put it this way, Jay.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: In 1988, I joined College Republicans.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: We canvassed the dorms.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: First meeting, we said, well, what are we going to do?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to canvas the dorms to get ready to help George H.W.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Bush at Lipscomb University.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think
• 11:23
  the result of our canvassing was about 85% of the student body
• 11:26
  was going to vote
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: for Bush,
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: about 10% of the student body was independent,
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: and about 5% was going to vote for Dukakis.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so we just kind of, we never met again.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we're not going to do better than 85%.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Why are we going to waste our time?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, being lazy college students, we just shut it all down.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then I would say in college, politics was...
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: just not very prominent at all.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, at all.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Too much agreement maybe or?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Too much agreement combined with an enormous amount of apathy.
• 12:00
  So,
• 12:01
  you know,
• 12:01
  if this is 1988,
• 12:03
  America's things are going pretty well in 1988.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is after the 49 state Reagan landslide.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:11
  economy is doing really well obviously the most controversial
• 12:15
  thing was iran contra
• 12:16
  but mainly in red parts of america which we didn't call red
• 12:18
  america yet that mainly
• 12:20
  served as a rallying effect um you know oliver north was sort
• 12:24
  of at the peak of his
• 12:25
  popular powers in that moment and and so it just wasn't i i
• 12:32
  think it's very hard to
• 12:33
  communicate to young younger people that politics wasn't as
• 12:36
  prominent in people's
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: lives
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: in the late 80s as it is right now.
• 12:44
  There were fewer people you would meet who really wanted to
• 12:47
  dive into political
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: conversations as just part and parcel of the day.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying it wasn't prominent.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: It just was not nearly as prominent until, Jay, I went to law school.
• 12:59
  And then I got a incredible I was often in my own context
• 13:04
  growing up the most
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: political person in the room.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was the one most willing to talk about politics.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: I go to law school.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm still pretty political.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, let me just tell our audience, this is Harvard.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that must've been a hell of a contrast.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you just flip all the ratios completely.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 13:22
  like I say between my undergrad and my graduate and my
• 13:26
  professional school
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: experience,
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: I had the complete educational experience.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: I had extremely conservative, extremely liberal.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then a couple of things about Harvard.
• 13:35
  One was,
• 13:36
  this was the first,
• 13:37
  this was one of the previews of what we now call wokeness.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: At the time, we called it political correctness.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was shouted down in class.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've told this story.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Just incredible intolerance from the very far left.
• 13:50
  And it had an effect on the right and at the law school that
• 13:56
  has echoes of the present day.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you can actually read all about this.
• 14:00
  There was an article written about the political climate at law
• 14:03
  school at the time,
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: and I believe it's in GQ or Esquire,
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: but it's a really long article.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Beirut on the Charles.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it was about how torn apart we were about conflicts over race,
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: gender,
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: sexuality,
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: all of that sound familiar.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: And there was this interesting reality that when the left went extremely
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: aggressively at the right,
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: the right,
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: the small right,
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: there weren't many of us,
• 14:29
  the right responded in a way that was often very aggressive and
• 14:32
  trolly in response.
• 14:34
  And so there was this famous incident where a couple of
• 14:39
  conservative kids wrote a
• 14:40
  parody law review article that included as that referred to
• 14:46
  famous feminists in the
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: moment meeting in heaven and talking,
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: sort of meeting in the afterlife.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the people was a professor named Mary Jo Frug,
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: a feminist professor who had just been murdered,
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Jay,
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: in a brutal,
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: brutal murder in Cambridge.
• 15:05
  And they called her,
• 15:06
  Mary Jo Frug,
• 15:06
  the rigor mortis professor of law,
• 15:09
  as I recall.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, just super trolly.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: The campus explodes just instantly.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: explodes,
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: demonstrations,
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: sit-ins,
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: fury,
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: anger,
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: attempting to get the people,
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: canceled,
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: et cetera,
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: losing their jobs,
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: their clerkships,
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: everything,
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: which then led to,
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: and then some people,
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: of course,
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: when we have one of these outrage campaigns,
• 15:29
  they go too far in their rhetoric and they started to compare
• 15:31
  it to the Holocaust,
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then,
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: so then the right wing,
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of the right wing students would respond,
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: like whenever they were criticized,
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: they would say,
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: oh no,
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: is it the Holocaust?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and so you just started getting this cycle of,
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: But here's one of the differences.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: I would call it, I've been looking for the right term.
• 15:51
  I would say major chord,
• 15:52
  minor chord,
• 15:53
  but I don't even know what that means.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Jay, you know what that means.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that means.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Text, subtext.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Let me go in the language I understand.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Majority opinion and dissent.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so I would say,
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: put it like this,
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: that among the conservative community I was a part of,
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: the majority opinion was you behave with decency and respect,
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: You reach with your ideas first.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: You're not engaging in personal attacks.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: You are,
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: we had,
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: for example,
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Jack Kemp came and spoke to a group I was a part of,
• 16:22
  and he sat there and talked to us for two to three hours about
• 16:25
  creative ideas to
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: reach black voters and to revitalize America's inner cities.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: I bet you heard something about enterprise zones.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, I heard a lot.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the majority opinion.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then the dissent was sort of this trolly stuff.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that continued throughout my early Republican days.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: You would go to a Republican event.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the way I...
• 16:50
  envisioned it at the time,
• 16:51
  we should have the people at the center of the room.
• 16:53
  Those are like your lawyers and your accountants and your
• 16:56
  bankers and your
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: insurance agents and all of these people,
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: like the salt of the earth,
• 17:00
  sort of middle-class professional people who are a part of that
• 17:04
  sort of Reagan
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: coalition.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then along the edges of the room,
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: you would have your fair taxer or your no Sharia law or,
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 17:13
  like your sort of the more crankish elements were sort of
• 17:16
  around the corner.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: And
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: When you'd finish speaking,
• 17:18
  they'd come up and hand you their bespoke business card with
• 17:21
  their claws on it and
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: all of this stuff.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing that I noticed around 2015, 2016, the room started to flip.
• 17:28
  The majority opinion and the dissenting opinion just switched
• 17:32
  to the point where it
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: was all of the people who'd previously be on the edge were on the center.
• 17:36
  And all of the people who'd been in the center were pushed to
• 17:39
  the edge and
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: sometimes entirely out the door.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it just began to switch.
• 17:44
  So at all times,
• 17:46
  everything you see now in the right,
• 17:49
  I saw at some point from some people.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: I never did.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's so interesting.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: Can I ask one question, David?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: That's so interesting.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: But my sense would be,
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_03: and I was teaching at Harvard 83 and 85,
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: so we didn't quite overlap,
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_03: but I was still in touch when I was in government.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: And then the...
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_03: Would it be fair to say there's a small five,
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: 10%,
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: whatever,
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: let's just call them conservatives at the law school.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm making this up with the student body.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know, 25, 35% really left, but there still was a kind of middle.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: It was a liberal.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, for sure.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_03: It was a liberal middle, which had blinders on.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: It was a little bit,
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: not as kind of,
• 18:22
  didn't understand the conservatives quite as well as they did
• 18:24
  their cousins to the
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: left.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_03: But I also,
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_03: I think that helped, don't you think?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it would be true of the faculty, too, probably.
• 18:31
  And they sort of still believed in kind of a certain
• 18:33
  old-fashioned liberal,
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_03: look,
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_03: we have to have free speech and discourse.
• 18:36
  And I think that kind of ballast helped,
• 18:39
  I don't know,
• 18:40
  that we don't have either,
• 18:40
  right?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so it's interesting.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe I'm overstating that.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: You tell me.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: It really switched.
• 18:47
  So for the first year and a half to two years,
• 18:48
  the sort of center-left movement
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: was really cowed and intimidated by the far left.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And again,
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: sort of imagine the way the far right,
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: especially early on in the Trump years,
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: really cowed and intimidated the center right.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you just had a lot of people who didn't like all the shout downs.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't like what was happening.
• 19:06
  They just weren't going to expose themselves to sort of any
• 19:09
  kind of incoming fire.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so they kind of stepped back.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Then what happened is when the Beirut on the Charles article came out,
• 19:18
  I could sense a real change because a lot of the people began
• 19:22
  to feel embarrassed
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: that this is the reputation the law school was developing.
• 19:26
  And so you could sense a culture change right around that time
• 19:29
  where that sort of
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: bigger middle began to assert itself.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, that's the key question.
• 19:37
  At what point do you reach that tipping point where that bigger
• 19:42
  American middle
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: starts to really assert itself?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And to say, no, no.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And one of my concerns,
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: though,
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: actually,
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: and I'd love to bounce this off of you,
• 19:51
  is that my concerns in the Republican Party is that it has
• 19:54
  become its model for
• 19:57
  growth has been to essentially take every disaffected community
• 20:01
  you can imagine in
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: the U.S.
• 20:03
  and pull them into one tent so that it isn't actually that
• 20:08
  there's sort of a big
• 20:09
  moderate middle of the GOP that is being cowed into silence so
• 20:13
  much as it's a new
• 20:14
  coalition of the GOP that's sort of a grab bag of an enormous
• 20:19
  number of different
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: kinds of dissenting groups.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Everything from the Maha homeschool moms to your isolationists to your
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: your racial essentialist to your Christian,
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of these groups are,
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: so you're sort of collecting information
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's gone from,
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 20:38
  a mainstream meeting with some fringe characters to the whole
• 20:41
  thing looks more like
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: the Mos Eisley Cantina scene in Star Wars,
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: where there was no moderate middle.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was just a bunch of different flavors of crazy.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's one of my concerns with the GOP.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't think it's lost.
• 20:55
  I don't think this is inevitable that this is the way this is
• 20:58
  all going to turn out.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: But this is the direction that it's going.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: It is becoming the Mos Eisley Cantina of radicalism.
• 21:04
  And one way to just illustrate that point was I liked your
• 21:07
  Beirut on the Charles.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: I sort of forgot.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: I figured I remember seeing that at the time, but I'd forgotten about it.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_03: We had Beirut on the Charles moments when that could have,
• 21:14
  what you're describing could have happened on the right in the
• 21:17
  Trump years.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_03: Charlottesville was the first one.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: I think actually people forget how big a deal that was.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_03: But certainly stuff that happened later on,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_03: the reaction to the pandemic and God knows January 6th.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: One might think,
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_03: and I believe in the last eight months,
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: there've been moments where one could have also found this.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: And basically, it has not, there's not been the reaction.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: What it could have happened,
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: a few individuals to their credit,
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_03: the Liz Cheney's of the world and broke sharply after,
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: well,
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: really after November 3rd,
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_03: but especially what you saw was happening behind the scenes,
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_03: but certainly on January 6th,
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_03: others did as well.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: But at the end of the day, the collection of grievances outweighed the
• 21:55
  reversion to the center and uh that would be a big you know be
• 21:58
  as if harvard had
• 21:58
  got more and more radical had embraced the beirut on the
• 22:01
  charles and it just
• 22:03
  launched a new purge of the right right and that didn't really
• 22:05
  happen at that time
• 22:06
  yeah right right i mean after january 6th i think a lot of
• 22:09
  professional republicans
• 22:11
  thought right this is the moment but then what happened is the
• 22:15
  gop coalition had
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: changed so much even by 2020
• 22:19
  that that expected accountability never came thanks to the gop
• 22:24
  base which rejected
• 22:26
  mike pence and mitch mcconnell not donald trump and so that's
• 22:31
  why i say okay wait a
• 22:32
  minute that sort of big middle on the republican side where is
• 22:36
  it i i don't see it
• 22:38
  and the other thing we don't let jay talk at all we'll just do
• 22:41
  thank you for
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: hosting this conversation between bill i'm delighted i'm
• 22:46
  but i mean the people we're talking you know we're now 10 years
• 22:48
  into the trump
• 22:49
  thing really so you know the the memory of the of a different
• 22:53
  kind of conservatism
• 22:54
  for us it's so alive of course and we're fighting all the time
• 22:57
  for it or trying to
• 22:58
  and and keep it alive or rejuvenate it or think of a new
• 23:02
  version of it or whatever
• 23:03
  in all these different areas social foreign policy i mean
• 23:06
  really you could go
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: through the whole thing but um
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_03: these people don't, they don't have that.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_03: The world they've grown up in,
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_03: this is,
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_03: I think,
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_03: one of the things that also makes me very concerned.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's easier if you remember something before, you know?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, totally.
• 23:20
  And I think the trap of remembering something before is sort
• 23:22
  of- It's a very
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: conservative point,
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: by the way,
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Bill.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I guess.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 23:25
  the trap of remembering something before is you think you could
• 23:27
  just go back,
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: which I think we would all agree you probably can't.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_03: But it still gives you something to hang on to, so to speak.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I do think if you're 27 years old, what do you remember?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, maybe if you're 27, you remember a tiny bit.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_03: But I spoke on two college campuses in the last week.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, they're 22.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: They don't remember.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: They literally don't know anything before Trump.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: Now, that doesn't mean they're all Trumpy.
• 23:49
  To their credit,
• 23:50
  many of the kids,
• 23:51
  and Jay and I were talking about this last week on the phone.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, to my pleasant surprise, were sensible, I thought.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: Slightly conservative-ish,
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: some of them center left,
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_03: but not seduced really by either excessive wokeness or by Trumpism.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: So they sort of have found their way to that,
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: which is encouraging that somehow there is a natural,
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: it's not impossible to rethink and discover these things.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, but I do think that's another problem.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: There was never that kind of,
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: even with the new left's height in the late 60s,
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_03: which,
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_03: or political correctness height,
• 24:22
  there was never a moment where other people didn't remember a
• 24:25
  different tradition
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_03: that they could appeal to.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great point.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: Jay, talk.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Jay.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Take control, Jay.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Don't let us get out of control.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: No, not at all.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: I have a story to tell,
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: and you guys may like to laugh at me,
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: and our audience may like to laugh at me,
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: and I invite you to laugh at me.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: David, you mentioned the Star Wars bar.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: You gave me a memory of the mid-1990s.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was working at the Weekly Standard, edited by Bill.
• 24:57
  And a senior person of ours came back from CPAC,
• 25:02
  came back to the offices.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, man, it's like the Star Wars bar over there.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I must say I burned at that remark.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: I resented that remark.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, well, what a snobby, elitist thing to say.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: These people, they're maybe not real polished.
• 25:18
  They haven't read as many books as we have,
• 25:20
  but their heart's in the right place.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: They're good people.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: They're working for American democracy.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that fellow was right.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe prematurely right.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe avant la lettre.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: But in later years...
• 25:35
  I thought of that,
• 25:36
  especially when I myself went to CPAC and saw all of those
• 25:39
  booths.
• 25:41
  And I wondered really how many were with what I conceive of as
• 25:44
  the American project.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: I wanna put this to you.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's a question I've asked in recent years, guys,
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: Is the real right, so to speak, back?
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Did we belong to a kind of false right?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: Wasn't really a right?
• 26:03
  Did we belong to a liberal right that was sort of a parenthesis
• 26:07
  of history?
• 26:08
  And is the real right anti-democratic,
• 26:11
  illiberal,
• 26:12
  anti-capitalistic,
• 26:13
  and so on?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: Nativist, maybe, so on and so forth.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: Is that the genuine right, or is there no one real right?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Bill?
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: there's always been different strains,
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_03: obviously,
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_03: and everyone can look back and find their favor.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: But yes,
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_03: I think a nice,
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_03: a slightly less dramatic way of putting your point,
• 26:33
  which I think would have some truth is to say- I'm here for the
• 26:35
  drama queenness.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: From, there you go.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: From 19,
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: you could,
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: a historian,
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: who knows,
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: 50 years from now,
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_03: could write something where there was a period of American conservatism
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: let's just call it whatever you want to call it,
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: liberal,
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: not liberal,
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_03: conservatism,
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_03: American style,
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: distinctively American from,
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know,
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: 1955,
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: the founding of National Review,
• 26:56
  or maybe a little bit after that to 2015 when Trump comes down
• 26:59
  the escalator.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_03: So that would be,
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_03: My man's no good, was that 70 years?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not a bad stretch.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: when we read histories,
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: of intellectual histories or histories of politics in America or Europe,
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: 70 years is kind of a typical,
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: right?
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: Progressivism or, you know, revolutionary sentiments in the 1970s.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: That's sort of a normal, you might say,
• 27:19
  lifetime for a movement,
• 27:20
  perhaps,
• 27:21
  you know,
• 27:21
  what the Soviet Union was just about that.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: And maybe that's what we saw.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: And it was,
• 27:26
  I don't think it was totally different from everything that
• 27:28
  went before it or
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_03: everything that came after.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_03: There were obviously links and complexities,
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_03: but yes,
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_03: I do think that kind of explicitly pro-American,
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_03: well,
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: pro-American,
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: pro-market,
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: pro-religious freedom,
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_03: as opposed to a kind of
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_03: temptation to impose or at least uh...
• 27:48
  you know what to have an orthodoxy we're talking about
• 27:50
  pluralism and the upper
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: uh...
• 27:52
  some of us yeah so pluralism little more talk about
• 27:55
  washington's letter to the
• 27:56
  hebrew congregation a little less talk about you know the
• 27:59
  puritans as a model i
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_03: mean you know there are a million
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: To say nothing of Carl Schmitt.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_03: Well, good.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's right.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: But I think,
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: so I do think there's some true,
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_03: I think that might be 55 to 2015,
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_03: 1955 to 2015 could be a,
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: historians might think of that as a somewhat distinctive moment.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: Major French.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I,
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great question.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: One I've been asking myself a lot was I, did I grow up in a blip?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: And, and I said, parenthesis blip is right.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's a long blip.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was a pretty long blip.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was born in 69.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it's four, five years after Goldwater.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: I come of age at like 1980 was the first presidential election.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: I even somewhat followed.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was 10 years old when it was unfolding.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so yeah,
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, 11 years old when it was unfolding.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: And and so,
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: yeah,
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't following it that closely,
• 28:53
  probably not till 84 that I was a big enough nerd to really be
• 28:57
  following things
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: closely.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: 88, you know, I'm a young adult.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is when I'm coming of age politically is Reagan and H.W.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Bush.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, that was what conservatism was.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: We had the Clinton interlude and then you have George W.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Bush,
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: again,
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: compassionate,
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: conservative,
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: PEPFAR,
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: No Child Left Behind,
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Medicare Part D.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: this is a person who for all of the hatred that he received,
• 29:21
  he was quite obviously governing according to his vision of the
• 29:24
  common good and
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: what would elevate all people in the United States of America.
• 29:29
  And his foreign policy was decisively oriented towards freedom
• 29:34
  and human rights.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is a very different world than we are in right now.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I had this really interesting conversation,
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: Jay,
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: to your point with Susan Eisenhower not long ago.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: She's been a guest on this program as well.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:47
  Yeah.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: She's fantastic.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: She's fantastic.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: And she was talking to me.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: She likes Ike, but not in some worshipful way, in a very informed way.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 30:00
  And so she was talking to me about Ike's decision to run for
• 30:03
  president and his
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: decision to run as a Republican for president.
• 30:08
  And how important it was to that decision that he began to see
• 30:11
  the isolationism of
• 30:13
  the post-World War I right emerging again post-World War II to
• 30:18
  the point it was
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: calling into question NATO.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so as soon as he saw this,
• 30:24
  he realized that Western security was not going to be stable if
• 30:29
  one party was
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: committed to it and one party was not.
• 30:32
  That Western security could only exist if both parties were
• 30:36
  committed to it.
• 30:38
  And this was a very strategic decision that he made to move
• 30:43
  into the right to be to
• 30:45
  run as a Republican and to really establish what we now call
• 30:48
  the postwar consensus.
• 30:50
  This is what created the Republican and Democratic commitment
• 30:54
  to NATO in many ways
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: was this decision.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: to fight for the Republican Party along these lines.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now,
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: I know there's fights in the Democratic Party as well,
• 31:03
  but this decision to fight in the Republican Party to create
• 31:07
  this kind of post-war
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: national security consensus was historically critical.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of those lessons are now being lost.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: This post-war consensus is now a curse word.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a dark... It's a...
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's a phrase that sets people's teeth on edge now.
• 31:28
  But the reality is that post-war consensus brought us the peace
• 31:31
  and prosperity that
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: we have enjoyed.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we're casting it aside because of amnesia.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's sad.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's terrifying.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Let me sneak in a book recommendation.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a biography of Eisenhower.
• 31:48
  It's a biography of Vandenberg,
• 31:49
  Arthur Vandenberg,
• 31:51
  by Henrik Meyer,
• 31:52
  M-E-I-J-E-R.
• 31:55
  And it speaks so well on this subject about Vandenberg's
• 32:01
  evolution and his
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: acceptance and deep promotion of NATO,
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: how important he had been an isolationist before that.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: You bring that back, David.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: I have a couple more notes for you guys.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: And here is one.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's a famous phrase, can there be a decent left?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: This was a title of an essay by Michael Walzer published in Dissent.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: And Walzer himself is an example of the decent left.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: Or is he really left?
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: It depends on what you think of his left.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought of a couple of other names.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: One that comes to mind is Paul Berman, for example.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: My beloved professor and friend, Barbara J. Fields.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: These people are decency personified.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: Can there be a decent right?
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I must say that
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I've used this expression, real right and real left.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, that's quite subjective.
• 32:59
  But Bill,
• 33:00
  give me a few words on this idea of a decent left,
• 33:03
  decent right,
• 33:04
  Walzer and all that.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_03: I remember exactly when Walzer wrote that piece.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_03: I remember it as a piece, and I knew Walzer.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_03: I studied with him a little.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_03: He's still going pretty strong.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's a pretty good recent book.
• 33:17
  I was meant to be provocative,
• 33:19
  obviously,
• 33:19
  because he is very much a man of the left.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: He is and was a social Democrat.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_03: He edited dissent, which was dissent against
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: really the liberal mainstream domestically.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: He was anti-communist.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: doesn't mean he agreed with everything,
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: that every anti-communist president did.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: Co-editor with Mitchell Cohen.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: And now we agree on with them on a lot.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_03: So but I mean, I think to his credit, he was willing to.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: So for him to say that to his audience.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_03: I don't exactly know what year it was,
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_03: but in any time you would have said it was pretty courageous,
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: actually.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_03: And look,
• 33:52
  the problem was that so much of the left were apologists for
• 33:56
  acquiescers in fellow
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: travelers with communism.
• 34:00
  i mean that once that's sort of we also people have forgotten
• 34:02
  that part of it you
• 34:03
  know and to their credit the social democrats from orwell on
• 34:07
  fought that very
• 34:08
  strongly and and and and effectively in some of the most
• 34:10
  effective anti-communist
• 34:12
  hell hell sydney hook was one of the best anti-communist we had
• 34:15
  but i mean the fact
• 34:16
  that he had to write that piece or give it that title shows
• 34:19
  that we're not the only
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_03: people who feel like the movement of which
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_03: which we were once apart or that's next to us,
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_03: that's a cousin of ours,
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_03: or that claims some of the same heritage,
• 34:29
  because that was the case with much of the real fellow
• 34:32
  traveling left as opposed to
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_03: the democratic socialist left.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_03: It was murky in some people's minds what the connection was.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_03: They were still pro-French Revolution, pro-progress.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_03: They were not like Bill Buckley in certain historical views.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_03: We're not the first people to have this problem of
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_03: Now,
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: the only thing I would say is that in America,
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_03: and this wasn't true elsewhere,
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_03: of course,
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_03: necessarily in America,
• 34:55
  you know,
• 34:56
  the Henry Wallace left was always marginalized compared to the
• 34:59
  Hubert Humphrey left.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_03: to take an actual 1948,
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_03: like contrast when they both were,
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_03: or the Harry Truman left,
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_03: obviously.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_03: And, but it was never, it wasn't quite as clear.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_03: Now it looks like, well, of course that happened.
• 35:11
  Of course,
• 35:12
  Harry Truman is the president of the United States,
• 35:14
  not Henry Wallace.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_03: Henry Wallace was, I mean, this is mind boggling.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_03: Henry Wallace,
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_03: who was a Soviet apologist and fellow traveler,
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_03: was vice president of the United States.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_03: from 40 to 44.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_03: And if the bosses, he came within months of being present.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 35:26
  And if the bosses hadn't insisted to FDR that they dump him
• 35:29
  from the ticket and if
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_03: FDR hadn't slightly randomly picked Truman,
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_03: I think because he was,
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know,
• 35:33
  it was a swing state and he liked the Missouri machine and he
• 35:36
  respected Truman.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_03: He was a Senator, but, uh,
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_03: things could have turned out very differently.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_03: So I think it's a good reminder,
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_03: as David was saying,
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_03: that these things are not foreordained and that,
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_03: things can change pretty fast.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_03: Having said that, we'd never, I mean, this is where I come back to Trump.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_03: The fact that he was elected president somewhat flukishly,
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_03: after losing the popular vote,
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_03: that he was nominated and David and I were very involved in this 2016,
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_03: involved in trying to fight this.
• 35:59
  In fact,
• 36:00
  he was nominated by a major party,
• 36:02
  which Henry Wallace never was.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_03: He was elected president of the United States,
• 36:05
  which no one like Wallace or anyone on the right was for that
• 36:07
  matter in modern
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_03: times.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_03: then was president for four years.
• 36:12
  And then instead of leaving the scene in semi-disgrace and
• 36:15
  letting Mike Pence and
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_03: Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley fight for the presidency in 24,
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_03: he comes back,
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_03: crushes them all,
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_03: wins the nomination again and wins the presidency again.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_03: That's where we're in totally uncharted waters.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_03: That makes it very hard
• 36:29
  I think daunting to say,
• 36:31
  well,
• 36:31
  it's just going to,
• 36:32
  you know,
• 36:32
  it's going to pass.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_03: Well,
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_03: maybe,
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_03: but the passing people who are present for eight years,
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_03: their effect and,
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 36:38
  and have done so much to control the party and reshape the
• 36:41
  party and reshape the
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_03: movement,
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_03: uh,
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_03: in ways that we don't like,
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_03: of course,
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_03: that's what's,
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_03: that's,
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_03: what's daunting and honestly sort of depressing.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this will pass a couple of notes for you guys.
• 36:54
  Um,
• 36:54
  excuse me a second,
• 36:55
  David,
• 36:55
  just a couple of remarks on what bill has said,
• 36:57
  uh,
• 36:58
  Donald Trump is the only person in history to be nominated for
• 37:02
  president by the
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: Republican Party three times in a row.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: The only one.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: Nixon had to set out a cycle.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: And on Henry Wallace,
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: it occurred to me,
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote today and written before,
• 37:14
  and today I was responding to this extraordinary Republican
• 37:17
  Congresswoman,
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think from Florida,
• 37:19
  who has solicited documents from the Kremlin concerning the
• 37:22
  Kennedy assassination,
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: the JFK assassination.
• 37:26
  It's occurred to me before that today's GOP is an obnoxious
• 37:29
  combination of George
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: Wallace and Henry Wallace in different respects.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: Jean Kirkpatrick said that a great decisive moment for her,
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: and she was rather proud of this in retrospect.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: She was a student.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to point up north here at Broadway at Barnard.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: And almost everyone around her in 48 was for Wallace,
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: and she was for Truman,
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: and she always remained such a person.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: The last thing I want to say about Humphrey in 1948,
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think Bill mentioned that,
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: was that,
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember the year,
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was 46,
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: but Ronald Reagan campaigned for him for mayor of Minneapolis,
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: traveled to do that.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: David A. French.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I...
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: On the subject of sort of snapping back,
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: of there being light at the end of the tunnel,
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: I believe two things at once.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: One, that this will pass.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: And two, it could do incalculable damage before it does.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so,
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: one of the things about American history,
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: when you were born in the kind of blip I was born in,
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: which I talked about the Republican side of it with Reagan,
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: two terms of Reagan,
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Bush,
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: Bush again,
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: two terms of Bush again.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here's another example.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Here's another reality of my blip.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: My blip was the Reagan economic boom,
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: the fall of the cold,
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union,
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: a world historic victory,
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: a 100 hour land war to defeat Saddam Hussein,
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: even immediate post 9-11.
• 39:00
  We swept aside the Taliban and Saddam Hussein with a fraction
• 39:04
  of the effort that we
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: thought it was going to take.
• 39:06
  And now the insurgencies that set in later were much,
• 39:09
  much more difficult.
• 39:10
  But if you think about the unbroken – so I was too young to
• 39:15
  really remember the
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: Malays of the 1970s.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: I come of age really at a time of American optimism.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was my experience of America.
• 39:24
  And it was learning about things like Jim Crow or learning
• 39:28
  about,
• 39:29
  you know,
• 39:29
  the –
• 39:31
  the full dimensions of everything or the full dimensions of all
• 39:35
  the evils of
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: slavery or how,
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: we treated Native Americans,
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: et cetera.
• 39:40
  You would learn that and then you would think,
• 39:42
  well,
• 39:42
  that's just not who we are anymore.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're just not like that, that we have moved on.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: The arc of the universe has moved on.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: But then now I realize,
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: and I look back at American history,
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: and yeah,
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: we're a lot better off than we were in 1955,
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: 1905,
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: 1855,
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: you keep going back.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not been an unbroken line of improvement.
• 40:03
  It's more like a stock ticker where the market can be down for
• 40:09
  generations.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: So think of between 1877,
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: the compromise that ended Reconstruction,
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: and 1964 and Civil Rights Act.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's 90 years, roughly, of backsliding when it came to race.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: 90 years of backsliding, right?
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so I do think we will snap out of this.
• 40:33
  I just don't know how long it will take and what kind of damage
• 40:37
  will be done.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: Guys, I have essentially two more notes for you.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: One is this.
• 40:44
  I always,
• 40:45
  I really resented Sinclair Lewis and It Can't Happen Here and
• 40:50
  the irony of that title.
• 40:51
  And I just thought,
• 40:51
  you know,
• 40:53
  sort of un-American and anti-American,
• 40:56
  a false accusation.
• 40:57
  And,
• 40:57
  you know,
• 40:58
  fascism is always supposed to be descending here,
• 41:00
  but it lands on Europe somehow.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I resented that.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: Lewis was a considerable figure.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to do a little more reading from my column today.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: Laura Loomer once clinked glasses with Nick Fuentes, another influencer.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: He is a Nazi-friendly Putinist.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: As they clinked their glasses,
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: Loomer offered a toast to the hostile takeover of the Republican Party.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: This is on video.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: A little later,
• 41:33
  I was talking with an experienced reporter who has traveled the
• 41:36
  length and breadth
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: of this country.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: We know him.
• 41:39
  He said that Nick Fuentes has been very,
• 41:42
  very underrated as an influencer.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: He has lots of followers.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: He is very, very popular with the young.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: He is talented, quick, clever.
• 41:52
  He is forcing others in the right wing social media space to
• 41:55
  get more extreme just to keep up.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: Think of drugs or porn.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: People want ever harder stuff.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: There comes a day when pot or Hustler magazine seems tame, too soft.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: Gotta escalate.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: This is something to watch, the influence of young Fuentes.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: And after my column was published,
• 42:13
  I heard from a reader who said that he had a 20-year-old son
• 42:20
  under the spell,
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: those were his words,
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: under the spell of Nick Fuentes.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: And he and his wife were struggling with what to do about it.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, they love this child, this young man, so much.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I never paid any attention to Nick Fuentes.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: Are you too aware that he has juice?
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess my problem is this.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to overstate the case.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to be an alarmist and an hysteric.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: And what's that expression, David?
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: Nut pick.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: Is that the expression when you focus on nothing?
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: I want to do that.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: At the same time, I don't want to be naive and complacent.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what the so-called sweet spot is.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: David, speak to this first, if you don't mind.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: so let me just ease your mind that you're nutpicking,
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: Jay,
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: by giving you a very,
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: very,
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: very grim stat.
• 43:19
  So yesterday,
• 43:22
  the top five podcasts on Spotify,
• 43:26
  number five was Tucker Carlson.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: Number three was Candace Owens.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: And what was number one?
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was not Joe Rogan, Nick Fuentes.
• 43:38
  Nick Fuentes was number one on the podcast charts yesterday and
• 43:42
  recording this on a
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thursday yesterday in the nation.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: OK,
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: this is,
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 43:50
  one thing that I think that a lot of folks who are Gen X older
• 43:56
  may not realize is
• 43:57
  that when you see like a Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens just
• 44:01
  absolutely go off the
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: deep end in conspiracy theories or Nick Fuentes,
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: who is absolutely off the deep end in anti-Semitism.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: When we hear that and when we see the wild things that we say,
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: we have this tendency to write them off.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, they've gone off the reservation.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: They're out of control.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's gonna listen to them.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're going out of control and they're not losing their audience.
• 44:24
  And indeed,
• 44:24
  not only are they not losing their audience,
• 44:26
  they may well be gaining audience.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: And,
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 44:30
  the human weather vane that is Megyn Kelly was a really good
• 44:34
  barometer of this
• 44:35
  because recently she just completely rejected that she is going
• 44:40
  to condemn Candace
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: Owens or Tucker Carlson.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: She just rejected that out of hand, even though
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: both Candace and Tucker consistently say things that are extremely,
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: not marginally anti-Semitic,
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: extremely anti-Semitic,
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: that if they came out of like a women's studies professor at Oberlin,
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: Megyn Kelly would be all over it,
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: just all over it as a proof of how bad the left is,
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 45:04
  But she can sense where the wind is blowing,
• 45:07
  particularly in that young audience on the right.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: And
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is the issue, what used to be just nut picking.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember I,
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: years ago,
• 45:19
  I did not write about Nick Fuentes specifically because I
• 45:22
  thought he was too fringe
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: to write about.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I was wrong about that.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: He was not too French to write about.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: He was on the rise.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is what is very, very concerning to me.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: Movements are shaped by leaders.
• 45:37
  And with a leader at the top of the GOP who obviously has
• 45:42
  nothing like you would
• 45:43
  call any kind of conventional moral code or orientation towards
• 45:47
  virtue at all.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: Just none of that, none of that, right?
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so he is shaping the entire culture of the right.
• 45:58
  I wrote this recently,
• 45:59
  and it took me a while to understand and to see this.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: Politically,
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: the most influential faith leader in evangelical America is always,
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: and for the last 40 years,
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: has been the Republican president.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: Not a pastor.
• 46:18
  Not an evangelist,
• 46:19
  not a musician,
• 46:21
  not an author,
• 46:23
  but the Republican president.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: And if you look,
• 46:26
  the religious right of every presidency takes on the character
• 46:31
  of the Republican
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: president.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's a weird, bad thing to say, but I think it's true.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: Talk about rendering unto Caesar, too much to Caesar.
• 46:39
  When George W.
• 46:40
  Bush was president,
• 46:41
  the evangelical community was proud of PEPFAR.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is who we are.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: Look, we are not haters.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: We just enacted a program that's saving lives by the millions.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is who we are.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: Fast forward 20 years.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: Donald Trump starts to dismantle it.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: Evangelicals, are they throwing their bodies in front of it?
• 46:58
  I mean,
• 46:59
  some are,
• 46:59
  a minority are,
• 47:01
  but most are like,
• 47:02
  oh yeah,
• 47:02
  we got to save money.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: Who's setting the tone?
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's the president setting the tone.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's the president leading the church politically.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why,
• 47:13
  that's one of the reasons why even in religious circles and
• 47:15
  sometimes especially in
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: religious circles,
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: you are seeing Trumpian behavior,
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: Trumpian rhetoric in public,
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: especially in private.
• 47:23
  And it's because the president influences the church in the
• 47:29
  evangelical church more
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: than the church influences the president.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_03: Just one footnote, and that's so very well said.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_03: So when the text chain came out,
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_03: it was a little bit of old-fashioned,
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_03: ooh,
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_03: they've got to disavow that.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_03: They should retire or resign from their positions.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_03: A couple of people said that.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_03: I think the head of the college Republicans,
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_03: the young Republicans,
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_03: said that this other guy shouldn't be head of whatever part of the young
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_03: Republicans he's head of.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_03: But that lasted for maybe 12 hours, I'm going to say.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_03: Then J.D.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_03: Vance weighed in.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_03: I think this is very indicative, don't you think, David, that J.D.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_03: Vance...
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_03: He didn't really defend them.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_03: He's not that foolish.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't think he believes that,
• 48:09
  but he attacked those who were attacking him and he calls it
• 48:12
  pearl clutching.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_03: So, so revealing in so many ways.
• 48:15
  People who were offended by jokes about the Holocaust and about
• 48:18
  black people,
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_03: and slavery and so forth and eating,
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_03: they should go back to Africa.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_03: That's pearl clutching.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe people are just offended,
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 48:27
  because it offends their sense of decency and how we speak
• 48:30
  about our fellow
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_03: citizens or about historical events that are pretty horrible.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_03: And Vance just couldn't,
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_03: and I think,
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_03: who knows what he believes in Vance's case,
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_03: how much he's calculating,
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_03: but he's not stupid.
• 48:41
  And his calculation was you had to be on the anti-anti side of
• 48:47
  this controversy,
• 48:48
  right?
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I do think that's very revealing.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it's certainly my sense is,
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_03: Will Summer had a piece for us this morning at the Bulwark on,
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_03: he covers a lot of this stuff,
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_03: that people are falling in line for Vance.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_03: Now,
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_03: Mike Johnson,
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_03: to his credit,
• 49:04
  was a little stronger today and said something about this is
• 49:07
  unacceptable.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_03: Didn't want to dwell on it, but it's unacceptable.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_03: But...
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_03: The other,
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_03: just while I'm on Mike Johnson,
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_03: he's the guy who's been saying all week that there's no Kings protest,
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_03: the first one of which was 3 million people and totally peaceful.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_03: And frankly,
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_03: I was at one in McLean,
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_03: very kind of all American,
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_03: at least here,
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know,
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_03: and sedate almost.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_03: And that this is hate America.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_03: This is an I hate America thing.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_03: And the fact that they can just throw,
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_03: everyone's always,
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_03: of course,
• 49:35
  got over the top a little in political rhetoric and toyed with
• 49:38
  that kind of thing.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_03: But to just say that,
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_03: what,
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_03: millions of our fellow Americans,
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_03: most of whom were,
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_03: honestly kind of middle American types,
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_03: are,
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_03: are,
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_03: are,
• 49:49
  are hate America because they don't approve of Trump's policies
• 49:52
  in certain ways.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: It was, it was no January 6th, that, that love America rally.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: but I find that,
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_03: so I think the combination of Vance being unwilling to be anti,
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_03: this text changed exactly,
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_03: and,
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_03: And then Republican leaders,
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_03: including,
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_03: as I say,
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_03: Johnson,
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_03: Emmer,
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_03: who's a very old school,
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_03: was an old school Republican.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_03: He had no, he wasn't a Trumpy person to start with.
• 50:11
  Trump,
• 50:11
  didn't Trump block him from becoming speaker because he wasn't,
• 50:14
  you know,
• 50:15
  MAGA enough.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_03: And they were just routinely throwing around this,
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_03: Scott Besant,
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_03: he's some New York hedge fund guy.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_03: He can't possibly have done a Trump type, you know, 10 years ago.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, it's a hate America rally there, you know, and kind of pro Antifa.
• 50:27
  I mean,
• 50:27
  the degree to which David sort of made this point earlier,
• 50:29
  I think,
• 50:30
  I mean,
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_03: The radicalism, the extremism is embedded.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's a certain tendency for it to keep going.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's spiraling, I would want to say.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_03: That's very, very discouraging and dangerous, I think.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: You talk about those elites.
• 50:43
  Bill Buckley would say the traison des clercs,
• 50:46
  the betrayal of the intellectuals.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: Guys,
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: speaking of intellectuals,
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: here at the end,
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to lay something from Ortega y Gasset on you.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: You're a man of the people, Jay.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_03: You're a man of the people.
• 51:00
  Now he's going to read it in Spanish and we won't understand it
• 51:02
  with a lot of Latin mixed in.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: This is the revolt of the masses.
• 51:08
  Liberalism,
• 51:09
  it is well to recall this today,
• 51:11
  is the supreme form of generosity.
• 51:14
  I say to the audience,
• 51:15
  he's talking about classical liberalism,
• 51:17
  of course.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: It is the right which the majority concedes to minorities,
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded on this planet.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: It announces the determination to share existence with the enemy,
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: more than that with an enemy that is weak.
• 51:34
  It was so incredible that the human species should have arrived
• 51:38
  at so noble an
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: attitude,
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: so paradoxical,
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: so refined,
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: so acrobatic,
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: get this,
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: so anti-natural.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: Hence,
• 51:49
  it is not to be wondered at that this same humanity should
• 51:52
  appear eager to get rid
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: of it.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: It is a discipline too difficult and complex to take firm root on earth.
• 52:00
  So this is an ancient question,
• 52:03
  probably started with the Greeks,
• 52:04
  if not before.
• 52:05
  You know,
• 52:06
  is liberalism,
• 52:07
  as we understand it classically,
• 52:09
  contra naturam,
• 52:10
  speaking of Latin?
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: Is it against nature?
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: And is man's natural tendency toward politics?
• 52:18
  rough stuff well i'm going to answer that in a yes a resounding
• 52:24
  yes because as a
• 52:26
  you know as a smaller orthodox reformed christian i don't have
• 52:33
  the highest view of
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: human nature jay um
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's why we put off the old man and put on the new.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is old man stuff, isn't it?
• 52:42
  Was it Chesterton where the doctrine of original sin is the
• 52:45
  only element of
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: Christian theology that can be empirically proven correct?
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's just we're flawed people.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: We have a will to power.
• 52:55
  And I completely believe that classical liberalism is contrary
• 52:59
  to human nature.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: in some important ways.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore,
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: one of the reasons,
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: this is one of the reasons why the founders were also very,
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_00: very focused on the pursuit of virtue as well.
• 53:11
  It's why Adam says,
• 53:13
  you know,
• 53:13
  our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's wholly inadequate for the governance of any other,
• 53:18
  that there has to be classical liberalism has to be accompanied
• 53:22
  by pursuit of
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: virtue or it won't work.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: I love David.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: I love the way Harvey Mansfield, Bill's teacher, put it on this podcast.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: Just three words.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: He said, liberty plus virtue.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: Bill Kristol.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_03: the founders,
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_03: of course,
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_03: also did understand that human nature was,
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_03: I'd say has elements that are contra to liberalism,
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_03: to live to,
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_03: very much what Ortega is saying,
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_03: and elements that liberalism can build on and can maybe strengthen even.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_03: And the early liberals thought a lot about this.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_03: Some of those elements aren't noble,
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_03: but if people spend all their time in lives of commerce,
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_03: if they have freedom of religion,
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_03: as opposed to having something imposed on them,
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_03: maybe they'll end up
• 54:04
  living decent commercial lives and not killing each other over
• 54:07
  religious doctrines.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_03: And maybe if they have religious pluralism,
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_03: they'll enjoy being religious if they wish to be without,
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_03: again,
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_03: feeling they have to battle to the death over who controls the state.
• 54:17
  So they gave a lot of thought to this,
• 54:19
  the complexity of human nature,
• 54:20
  I would say.
• 54:21
  I do think a lot of liberals since,
• 54:23
  some liberals since,
• 54:23
  you know,
• 54:24
  became too sunny about it.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_03: I agree with that.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_03: So I would sort of slightly modify this, you know, the simple notion that
• 54:34
  it's country to turn but it's it is maybe it's more difficult
• 54:37
  to maintain i'm
• 54:37
  certainly historically most people most of the time have not
• 54:41
  lived in liberal
• 54:41
  regimes so we can just have this empirical data that's not
• 54:44
  trivial franklin chose
• 54:46
  that wonderful word experiment yeah i beg your pardon uh yeah
• 54:50
  uh sorry i'm thinking
• 54:51
  republic if you can keep it and then i'm thinking of the
• 54:53
  american experiment the
• 54:54
  founders took a lot and including madison and hamilton of the
• 54:57
  federal papers talk a
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_03: lot about
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_03: about it as an experiment.
• 54:59
  And they're very,
• 55:00
  right at the front of their mind is this has failed in the
• 55:02
  past.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_03: So we need to have a bigger sphere.
• 55:04
  We need to have checks of balance and separation of powers and
• 55:07
  the inculcation of
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_03: virtue,
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_03: but not so much top down from the state,
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_03: but more,
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_03: the kind of war from bottom up.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: Later we call it Tocquevillian.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, let's think about how to do that.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_03: So I think it is somewhat complicated.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_03: But look, incidentally, you began, I'll just, maybe we should close it.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_03: Ortega said, I don't know that much about him.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_03: I read that book ages ago and I very much liked it,
• 55:25
  but then I said I didn't follow up and read more of him or read
• 55:28
  more about him.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_03: But I mean, liberalism was, he was a Spanish liberal.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_03: Liberalism was a strong,
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_03: there were very people like him,
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_03: super well-educated and thoughtful and influential.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_03: And at the end of the day,
• 55:40
  they got crushed famously in the Civil War in the late 30s
• 55:43
  between the communists
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_03: and the fascists,
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_03: the Francoists,
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_03: the Fallonists,
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_03: and went to exile almost literally in some cases,
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_03: or,
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_03: for 40 years,
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_03: basically.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_03: I mean,
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_03: so in a way,
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_03: if you look at the,
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_03: we have a happy history,
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_03: pretty happy history,
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_03: as David said,
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_03: complicated,
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_03: but,
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_03: and we sort of think it's going to work out.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_03: But if you look at the history of a lot of other countries,
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_03: you see ways in which it doesn't work out or works out maybe fairly
• 56:05
  is also so david's decades later right but either the left or
• 56:10
  right you know have a
• 56:11
  40-year run or by left and right i mean you know so communism
• 56:14
  and eastern europe
• 56:15
  and civil union or you know the real right the fascist right
• 56:18
  have a long run before
• 56:20
  they uh before they get replaced so i i think i mean i hope we
• 56:24
  don't have that um
• 56:25
  american exceptionalism was this a social science term really
• 56:28
  before it became a
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_03: kind of cheering term
• 56:30
  about how America had avoided this terrible choice of communism
• 56:34
  and fascism in the 20s and 30s.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_03: And there were a lot of social scientists who did work on,
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_03: we have a bigger middle class,
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_03: we had a frontier,
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_03: so people could kind of find,
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_03: it all cramped together and fighting zero-sum games.
• 56:47
  And we were separated from some of these things by the oceans
• 56:50
  and much interesting work.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_03: But I think now that part,
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_03: that American conceptualism in that,
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_03: in my view,
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_03: correct meaning of it is gone.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_03: As we are now,
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_03: we are living in a similar world to the one Ortega E.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_03: Gasset was confronted with.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so it becomes much more problematic,
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_03: not impossible by any means,
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_03: but we can't just coast along in a happy kind of,
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_03: being liberal conservatives or conservative liberals and occasionally,
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_03: giving power over from,
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_03: from Clinton to Bush or something like that.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's going to take a while to get back to that if we do.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: David, final words?
• 57:30
  You know,
• 57:31
  the way the one thing that I would say,
• 57:33
  what is the path out of this darkness?
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to say it's going to be leadership.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 57:36
  we've just been talking about the immense influence that
• 57:41
  leaders have over the
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: church in America.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's just leaders have immense influence.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and one of the things that,
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: people like pundits can do is we can talk a lot about five point plans,
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: et cetera.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: Here's my three constitutional amendments.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: Here's my agenda.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: Here's this.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: Here's that.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: But really, people respond to leaders.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: People respond to especially visionary leaders.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: And America has been very blessed.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's been very fortunate.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: We had a George Washington and the revolution.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: We have had Lincoln during the Civil War.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_00: We had FDR in World War Two, Reagan at the height of the Cold War.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: Time and time again, we've had leaders step up at the right time.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: And also we've had mediocrities lead us into disaster as well.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about the cast of characters before the Civil War.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: How many of them stand out is even mediocre.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so leadership really matters.
• 58:37
  And I think that one of the things that will get us out of this
• 58:40
  sooner rather than
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: later is leadership because people respond to that.
• 58:45
  A lot of these young men who are tacking to be more like Trump
• 58:49
  because that is the
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: path of glory.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 58:52
  You would be shocked how quickly they'll tack in a different
• 58:54
  direction if the path
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: of glory changes.
• 58:58
  Someone we know referred to appealing to better angels of human
• 59:03
  nature and worse angels.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Jay Nordler for Q&A.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: We've been listening to two of my nearest and dearest,
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: Bill Kristol,
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: William Kristol,
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_01: and David French.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Bill and David.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time.