Latest / Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger / Live from the Royal Gallery

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Live from the Royal Gallery · Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone and welcome to Q&A.
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I'm Jay Nordlinger and our guest today is a longtime favorite
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of this program and
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SPEAKER_01: an all-time favorite of mine.
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SPEAKER_01: He's a member of the House of Lords.
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He writes books on political and historical themes and he
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writes articles for the
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SPEAKER_01: Telegraph,
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SPEAKER_01: the Daily Mail,
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SPEAKER_01: the Washington Examiner,
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SPEAKER_01: etc.
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SPEAKER_01: His website, which serves as an omnium gatherum, is danielhannon.info.
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SPEAKER_01: Dan, you are looking splendid.
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SPEAKER_01: Your setting is looking splendid.
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SPEAKER_01: I just can't get away from the word splendor.
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SPEAKER_02: Hello.
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SPEAKER_02: It's supposed to be.
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SPEAKER_02: I'd love to be able to tell you and to pretend to your viewers,
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SPEAKER_02: Jay,
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that this is just how all members of the House of Lords live
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and that this is my
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SPEAKER_02: front room.
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But I'm talking to you from the Royal Gallery in Parliament
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because we're between
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SPEAKER_02: votes at the moment.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: Terrific.
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SPEAKER_01: Dan, do you have something on your lapel, sir?
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SPEAKER_01: Yes.
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SPEAKER_02: Yes,
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like almost every Brit and indeed most Commonwealth subjects at
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this time of year,
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SPEAKER_02: I'm wearing a poppy for what we call Remembrance Sunday,
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SPEAKER_02: what I think you call Armistice Day.
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SPEAKER_02: Very, very rare at this time of year to see somebody without one.
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SPEAKER_01: Dan, I introduced you as the British writer and politician.
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SPEAKER_01: So, two issues.
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SPEAKER_01: I was just writing a couple days ago about Pierre Boulez,
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SPEAKER_01: the late musician,
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SPEAKER_01: whose centennial is this year.
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SPEAKER_01: He was born in 1925.
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SPEAKER_01: And I referred to him in this article as a French composer and conductor.
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SPEAKER_01: I think he would have liked the order.
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SPEAKER_01: Composing being the higher art, you might say.
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I called you a British,
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we'll get to British in a second,
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writer and politician.
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SPEAKER_01: Do you have a preferred order?
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SPEAKER_02: I think you've got the order absolutely spot on, starting with British.
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SPEAKER_02: British, not English.
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SPEAKER_02: I mean, you're both, but is British the... Go ahead.
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SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm not English.
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SPEAKER_02: I'm actually not English by birth or ancestry.
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SPEAKER_02: I have a tiny amount of English ancestry, but it's negligible.
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Most of my family was ethnically either Scottish or Irish,
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and I was born in South America.
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So I am one of that minority of Brits who actually only really
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identifies as British.
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SPEAKER_02: Which is why when the referendum was happening on Scottish independence,
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SPEAKER_02: I was one of those people who was going to lose the country.
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Because when I identify,
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it's with the symbols and the map and the flag of the United
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Kingdom.
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I wouldn't have really been left with any of the constituent
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nations to belong to.
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SPEAKER_02: But yes, that obviously first.
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And then definitely I think your ideas matter rather than being
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one vote among
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SPEAKER_02: however many hundred.
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But I suppose – and this is maybe a bit eccentric and certainly
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regarded as such by
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a lot of my colleagues – but I've always seen politics as a
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partly sort of didactic
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SPEAKER_02: process,
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SPEAKER_02: that you're given a platform –
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SPEAKER_02: And you have a responsibility to use it to try and advance ideas.
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And I realize that puts me in a minority,
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but I've never really regretted taking that approach.
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And often I've been hugely unsuccessful,
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but I've never regretted giving it a go.
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SPEAKER_01: Dan,
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SPEAKER_01: there's a television series,
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SPEAKER_01: I believe Netflix called The Crown,
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SPEAKER_01: which a lot of people watched and enjoyed.
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SPEAKER_01: I wonder whether you saw it or have seen it.
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SPEAKER_02: I haven't.
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I'm afraid I'm going to disappoint you and maybe your viewers
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here in that I
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SPEAKER_02: struggle to get very worked up about our royal family.
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SPEAKER_02: I mean, in a typical group of five Brits, you will have...
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SPEAKER_02: four strong monarchists and one strong Republican.
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And both of those are ancient and honorable indigenous
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traditions to these islands.
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SPEAKER_02: Both of them have their virtues.
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SPEAKER_02: I'm that very rare creature.
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SPEAKER_02: I'm a kind of default monarchist.
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SPEAKER_02: I think that if we tried to redo it now, we'd mess it up.
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SPEAKER_02: A little bit like imagine if you were drafting your constitution now.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: rather than at the time.
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SPEAKER_02: Imagine what would be in there.
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SPEAKER_02: And I kind of feel if we were to,
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SPEAKER_02: we may not have started from here,
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SPEAKER_02: but if we start tinkering,
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SPEAKER_02: we are likely to end up with something worse.
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SPEAKER_02: And so for that reason,
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SPEAKER_02: I'm a conservative,
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SPEAKER_02: I'm in favor of the status quo,
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but I don't get excited about it in the way that most of my
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countrymen do,
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SPEAKER_02: I'm afraid.
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SPEAKER_01: Very interesting and well understandable.
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SPEAKER_01: Maybe we could spend just a minute or two on matters royal.
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SPEAKER_01: I sometimes see video clips of King Charles.
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And I saw one,
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I think yesterday,
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of Charles knighting,
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if that's the right word,
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David Beckham.
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SPEAKER_01: And it occurred to me
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It just seems to me that Charles is really enjoying being king
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and he's good at it.
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SPEAKER_01: He just seems to me to be,
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SPEAKER_01: if I may say,
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SPEAKER_01: his business with his brother Andrew was certainly painful,
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SPEAKER_01: but it seems to me that he's having fun by large.
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SPEAKER_02: Yes.
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SPEAKER_02: Well, he's waited for it long enough.
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SPEAKER_02: I mean,
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SPEAKER_02: one of the interesting things to me,
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SPEAKER_02: our mutual late friend Roger Scruton had a lovely phrase once.
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SPEAKER_02: I can't remember if he wrote this or if it was something he said,
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SPEAKER_02: where he said,
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SPEAKER_02: the monarchy is like the enchanting light at the top of a Christmas tree.
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that the British people perfectly well remember having
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clambered up there earlier
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SPEAKER_02: and placed there themselves.
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So we have this odd situation where since 1689,
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we've been effectively a crowned republic.
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SPEAKER_02: If parliament chooses to vary the succession, nobody denies its right.
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SPEAKER_02: When,
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SPEAKER_02: 20 odd years ago,
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it changed the rules so that older daughters would inherit
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before younger sons,
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SPEAKER_02: There was some debate about it,
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SPEAKER_02: but nobody disputed that this was within the competence of parliament.
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SPEAKER_02: So under the pomp and pageantry,
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SPEAKER_02: the stagecoaches and the military parades and all the rest of it,
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SPEAKER_02: fundamentally,
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SPEAKER_02: we are a democratic system.
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SPEAKER_02: And so we have this gorgeous paradox where,
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SPEAKER_02: in theory,
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SPEAKER_02: all sovereignty is vested in the person of the sovereign,
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SPEAKER_02: And yet, that sovereign serves at the whim of the population.
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And I have come to see the virtue of that system much more
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since watching the
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contingent attitude to elections that people have taken in your
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country and
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SPEAKER_02: elsewhere.
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SPEAKER_02: this sense that we only accept the outcome if our guy wins,
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SPEAKER_02: which in a way is a very kind of human emotion.
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SPEAKER_02: All too human, but it is incompatible with maintaining an open society.
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SPEAKER_02: I'm very struck by the difference between
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SPEAKER_02: even between the US and Canada in this regard.
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SPEAKER_02: Canada is culturally very close to the US.
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SPEAKER_02: It's subject to the same cultural currents.
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SPEAKER_02: It had its anti-vax movement and its truckers convoy.
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SPEAKER_02: They're very, very familiar with American politics.
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SPEAKER_02: They take sides on those issues.
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SPEAKER_02: And yet, you almost never hear a Canadian on either side
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saying,
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if the other guys win,
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there's never going to be another free election in this
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country.
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The odd Canadian can be heard saying that,
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but it is regarded as a lunatic thing.
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SPEAKER_02: Whereas,
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SPEAKER_02: as we know,
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an awful lot of people on both sides in the US say that as a
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matter of course.
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SPEAKER_02: And I think
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SPEAKER_02: that one of the reasons,
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SPEAKER_02: maybe not the whole reason,
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SPEAKER_02: but one of the reasons for that is that in Canada,
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SPEAKER_02: there is a referee.
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SPEAKER_02: There is somebody above politics.
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SPEAKER_02: The head of state is not a politician.
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SPEAKER_02: The commander of the armed forces is not a general.
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SPEAKER_02: You've got somebody as a backdrop whose only real purpose is
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is to ensure that the democratic process works and that there
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is an impartial referee.
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SPEAKER_02: And so I never used to think that that mattered, but I do now.
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And I've thought very much recently since watching particularly
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the responses to
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the 2020 election in the US of something that George Orwell
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wrote during the war
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SPEAKER_02: when he said the monarchy saved England from fascism.
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SPEAKER_02: He was quoting a left-wing French journalist who told him this.
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SPEAKER_02: And he said,
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SPEAKER_02: what I mean by that is modern people,
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SPEAKER_02: or modern men,
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SPEAKER_02: he said being all,
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SPEAKER_02: modern men seem to need a certain amount of parades and uniforms and mass
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SPEAKER_02: choreographed...
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SPEAKER_01: Pomp and circumstance.
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SPEAKER_02: Pomp and circumstance.
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SPEAKER_02: He said the beauty of a constitutional monarchy...
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SPEAKER_02: is that all of that is directed at somebody who has no power.
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So you don't have this dangerous situation and a potentially
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dictatorial situation
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SPEAKER_02: where,
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SPEAKER_02: as he put it,
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SPEAKER_02: the power and the glory combine.
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SPEAKER_02: Now,
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SPEAKER_02: that is not to say that a constitutional monarchy is an absolute kind of
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SPEAKER_02: prophylactic against any autocratic system.
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SPEAKER_02: There was a monarchy in Italy when Mussolini took over.
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SPEAKER_02: But
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SPEAKER_02: It at least provides you with some defense.
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SPEAKER_02: I can remember,
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SPEAKER_02: as you can,
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SPEAKER_02: that after the fall of the Berlin Wall,
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there was a revival of various monarchist movements in Romania
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and Bulgaria and so
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SPEAKER_02: on,
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SPEAKER_02: and indeed in Russia.
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SPEAKER_02: And I just wonder whether if...
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SPEAKER_02: the current claimant to the Russian throne,
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I think she's called Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna Romanova
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or something.
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SPEAKER_02: She lives in Paris.
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SPEAKER_02: She was a Cambridge graduate.
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SPEAKER_02: I wonder whether if she had been restored as a constitutional monarch,
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SPEAKER_02: would Putinism have happened?
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SPEAKER_02: I can't swear that it wouldn't have done,
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but there would have been that Orwellian defense that somebody
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other than the
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SPEAKER_02: strongman
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would have been the head of state and the recipient of all of
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that,
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if you like,
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respect.
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SPEAKER_02: Obviously,
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SPEAKER_02: in your system,
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SPEAKER_02: as in much of the world,
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SPEAKER_02: most of Africa,
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SPEAKER_02: most of South America,
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SPEAKER_02: and indeed Russia,
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SPEAKER_02: you have a presidential system.
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SPEAKER_02: And up until now, I thought, well, it doesn't really matter.
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SPEAKER_02: The Americans are so sensible.
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SPEAKER_02: They're so level-headed.
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SPEAKER_02: We're not talking about Guatemala here.
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SPEAKER_02: It's unthinkable that anybody would really abuse power in that way.
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SPEAKER_02: The population would never stand for it.
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SPEAKER_02: I wonder whether after the experience of the last five or six years,
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whether we can say that with the same certainty that we would
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once have done.
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SPEAKER_01: Yes.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: I wonder just the same.
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SPEAKER_01: Dan, do a little bit of poli-sci 101 with me, please.
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SPEAKER_01: A constitutional monarchy is a kind of democracy, correct?
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SPEAKER_01: Yes.
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SPEAKER_01: You're a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, both.
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SPEAKER_01: We have people here who like to squawk,
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SPEAKER_01: that's a little bit mean,
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SPEAKER_01: who like to insist,
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SPEAKER_01: we're not a democracy,
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SPEAKER_01: we're a republic.
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SPEAKER_01: But a republic,
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SPEAKER_01: our kind of republic,
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SPEAKER_01: the American republic,
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SPEAKER_01: is a type of liberal democracy,
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SPEAKER_01: is it not?
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SPEAKER_02: Yes.
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SPEAKER_02: I mean,
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SPEAKER_02: I think what they mean by that,
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SPEAKER_02: and I sympathize,
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SPEAKER_02: is this is not 50% plus one gets- Right.
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SPEAKER_01: Majoritarianism.
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SPEAKER_01: That's mob rule as far as I'm concerned.
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SPEAKER_02: Correct.
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SPEAKER_02: Correct.
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So there are rules,
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and some of them may seem anomalous from a purely democratic
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point of view.
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SPEAKER_02: For example,
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the over-representation of some states and under-representation
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of others,
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SPEAKER_02: but them's the rules.
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And I think that's what they mean when they say this is a
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constitutional republic,
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that
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SPEAKER_02: Although, ultimately,
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SPEAKER_02: We can change the constitution.
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SPEAKER_02: Sovereignty is vested in the constitution, not in a snapshot vote.
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And that is,
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if you like,
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the exact equivalent of having a constitutional monarchy.
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SPEAKER_02: It's a guarantee against a potentially transient popular mood.
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SPEAKER_02: In Burkean terms,
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it's the guarantee of the dead and the unborn that they also
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have a stake in the
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SPEAKER_02: nation.
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SPEAKER_02: Again, these things depend only in part on the rules.
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SPEAKER_02: They also depend on attitudes.
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SPEAKER_02: I mean,
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SPEAKER_02: if you had read,
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SPEAKER_02: if we now went through the constitutions of the old GDR or the old USSR.
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SPEAKER_02: They're beautiful.
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SPEAKER_02: Freedom of religion and freedom of movement, freedom of speech.
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But without mechanisms to hold your leaders to account,
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those things are worthless.
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SPEAKER_02: So you need to have both values.
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SPEAKER_02: a functioning constitution and a democratic culture to uphold it.
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SPEAKER_02: And I worry,
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SPEAKER_02: I'm not just talking about the US now,
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I worry globally about how the tide is going out on the culture
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of democracy,
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the readiness that people have in country after country to
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treat elections purely
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SPEAKER_02: as a contingent event that should be disregarded if they don't win.
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Dan,
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I was gonna save this for the end or near the end,
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but let's talk about it now.
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SPEAKER_01: It's a big subject,
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SPEAKER_01: there are lots of books on it,
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SPEAKER_01: but that is,
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SPEAKER_01: is liberalism unnatural,
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SPEAKER_01: contra naturam,
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SPEAKER_01: and therefore fragile and vulnerable?
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SPEAKER_01: Is that natural inclination of man toward the authoritarian?
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SPEAKER_02: Well,
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SPEAKER_02: I remember you,
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SPEAKER_02: Jay,
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beautifully quoting that line from the Roman historian Sallust
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that very few people
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SPEAKER_02: desire liberty,
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SPEAKER_02: most desire only a just master.
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And I think that that's true because we are a species evolved
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in kin groups.
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SPEAKER_02: We have...
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SPEAKER_02: communal and indeed hierarchical and authoritarian instincts.
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SPEAKER_02: And we've had to overcome those instincts in order to build this freedom,
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SPEAKER_02: this open society that you and I have enjoyed,
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SPEAKER_02: but I increasingly worry we may live to see the end of it.
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SPEAKER_02: Our mutual friend Jonah Goldberg has a lovely metaphor in his book,
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SPEAKER_02: the luridly titled Suicide of the West,
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SPEAKER_02: which...
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SPEAKER_02: Which title,
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SPEAKER_02: I think,
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disguises a much more subtle and serious thesis than you would
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think from the
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SPEAKER_02: headline.
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SPEAKER_01: Where he talks about- The title, I believe, borrowed from James Burnham.
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SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
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SPEAKER_02: That was why he did it.
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SPEAKER_02: But if you don't know that, you're exactly right.
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SPEAKER_02: But he talks about the modern liberal capitalist model as the oasis,
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that we stumbled around in the desert for the 10,000 years
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between the discovery of
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SPEAKER_02: agriculture and agriculture.
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SPEAKER_02: the birth of liberal capitalism.
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SPEAKER_02: And what he means by the desert is slavery,
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SPEAKER_02: oppression,
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SPEAKER_02: feudalism,
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SPEAKER_02: organized looting of every state by a handful of families at the top.
15:32
SPEAKER_02: And then he says,
15:32
we find this extraordinary oasis that we develop mechanisms to
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hold the rulers to
15:37
SPEAKER_02: account.
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SPEAKER_02: We have a government of laws, not of men.
15:41
SPEAKER_02: We have freedom of contract.
15:43
SPEAKER_02: Relations are no longer mediated by birth and tradition and caste,
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SPEAKER_02: but are instead done on a voluntary basis.
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But because the oasis feels unnatural,
15:55
we keep looking for ways out of it.
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SPEAKER_02: And the point is, it's an oasis.
16:00
Whatever direction you go in,
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up,
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down,
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north,
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south,
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back,
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forward,
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you're back in the desert.
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SPEAKER_01: But every generation-
16:10
SPEAKER_01: There'd be dragons, right?
16:11
SPEAKER_01: Political and social dragons, yeah.
16:13
SPEAKER_02: Exactly right.
16:14
SPEAKER_02: And I think,
16:14
SPEAKER_02: you know,
16:15
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
16:15
SPEAKER_02: obviously,
16:16
the extreme examples of this rejection of liberal capitalism
16:20
would be the great
16:22
SPEAKER_02: autocratic ideologies of the 20th century fascism and communism.
16:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: But I'd say the same is equally true of romanticism or existentialism.
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SPEAKER_02: They're all the cry of our inner caveman,
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not understanding that what they see as soulless and
16:36
materialistic and all the rest
16:37
of it is just that we have evolved beyond the tribe and created
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this space for
16:42
SPEAKER_02: freedom.
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SPEAKER_02: And I think we are.
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SPEAKER_02: Wandering out of the desert.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: I've said before,
16:49
SPEAKER_01: perhaps to you,
16:50
SPEAKER_01: Dan,
16:50
SPEAKER_01: that Mario Vargas Llosa wrote this magnificent book,
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SPEAKER_01: an intellectual autobiography,
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SPEAKER_01: which he called The Call of the Tribe.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: And I think the worst thing about the book is its title,
17:00
SPEAKER_01: because he's not talking about his own tribe.
17:02
SPEAKER_01: It should be something like To Resist the Call of the Tribe.
17:08
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
17:08
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
17:09
SPEAKER_02: I mean, he's a very good example of...
17:14
SPEAKER_02: I always felt his books were fundamentally humane.
17:18
Like every self-respecting Latin American writer in the 60s,
17:23
he was on the left.
17:24
And all of the world's problems were caused by Yankee
17:27
imperialism and so on.
17:28
And then he saw what the reality of Castro's Cuba was and he
17:32
began to drift and he
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SPEAKER_02: became a conservative.
17:34
But I would say that the one theme in all of his novels is a
17:40
dislike of bullying.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
17:42
SPEAKER_02: His first breakthrough... The basis of my politics, as we've discussed.
17:50
SPEAKER_02: This is why I mention it.
17:51
SPEAKER_01: I remember you saying that.
17:53
SPEAKER_02: I remember you saying that,
17:54
that your dislike of authoritarianism was based on your dislike
17:57
of bullying.
17:59
SPEAKER_02: And that,
18:01
SPEAKER_02: I think,
18:01
SPEAKER_02: is why his...
18:03
SPEAKER_02: That's why he deserved the Nobel Prize,
18:05
SPEAKER_02: because there was this humane decency to him based on...
18:10
SPEAKER_02: a resentment of the abuse of power.
18:12
And I just think that to me is an entry level requirement for
18:19
any self-respecting
18:20
SPEAKER_02: liberal or conservative.
18:22
SPEAKER_02: You can call yourself a conservative if you are not anti-mobs, right?
18:27
And I'm horrified to see people who march alongside us and who
18:31
call themselves
18:32
SPEAKER_02: conservatives who are very,
18:34
SPEAKER_02: very happy
18:35
SPEAKER_02: To turn mob rule,
18:38
SPEAKER_02: abuse,
18:38
or indeed the full force of state coercive power when they
18:42
happen to control it
18:43
SPEAKER_02: against people that they disagree with.
18:44
And I just don't see how you can maintain an open society if
18:48
that's your attitude.
18:50
SPEAKER_01: Dan, you may like this.
18:51
I was just writing it or quoting it,
18:53
something that Harvey Mansfield said to me on this podcast.
18:57
SPEAKER_01: He said, I'm not primarily a conservative.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: He said two things.
19:00
SPEAKER_01: He said, my gods live higher in the sky than conservatism.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: And he also said, my conservatism is within liberalism.
19:07
SPEAKER_01: I thought that was beautiful.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: And he said in the extended sense, Locke and so on.
19:12
And if for 20 seconds,
19:15
our audience will indulge me,
19:16
I'll put on my Nobel historian's hat.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: Alfred Nobel intended his literature prize to go for work,
19:23
SPEAKER_01: a literature in his words,
19:25
SPEAKER_01: in an ideal direction.
19:28
SPEAKER_01: So some could write magnificent nihilistic novels,
19:31
but they shouldn't win the Nobel Prize literature because of
19:35
Alfred Nobel's
19:36
SPEAKER_01: criterion.
19:37
Yeah.
19:38
SPEAKER_02: You should be uplifted.
19:39
SPEAKER_02: Do you enjoy Philip Larkin's poetry?
19:43
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
19:43
SPEAKER_02: for my money,
19:43
SPEAKER_02: Jay,
19:44
SPEAKER_02: he was the technically most gifted writer of the 20th century,
19:47
SPEAKER_02: but I always feel worse by the time I get to the end of any of his poems.
19:51
SPEAKER_02: And you just wonder, what's the purpose?
19:53
SPEAKER_02: I...
19:55
SPEAKER_01: I'm tempted to use the word, a touchy word, realist.
20:02
His poetry makes you look at some unpleasant,
20:04
he's blunt about the human condition.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: But yes, I wouldn't go to him for sucker.
20:13
SPEAKER_01: Think of his poem about one's parents.
20:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
20:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
20:17
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, there is not one word out of place.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: Technically perfect.
20:25
SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
20:25
SPEAKER_02: And yet you're going to feel he's somehow using that talent.
20:30
SPEAKER_02: Think of how uplifting he could be with that.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: One of his best friends, Bob Conquest, was so humane.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:37
SPEAKER_01: Was just a gent of gents.
20:40
SPEAKER_02: And by the way, a great poet himself.
20:43
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
20:43
I always think this is – do you remember that wonderful – he
20:46
was challenged to
20:48
SPEAKER_02: summarize the history of the Soviet Union in the form of a limerick.
20:52
SPEAKER_02: Do you remember that?
20:53
SPEAKER_01: Lenin, Stalin, Dunin.
20:55
SPEAKER_01: How many millions?
20:56
SPEAKER_02: There was an old bastard named Lenin who did two or three million Menin.
21:00
SPEAKER_02: That's a lot to have done in.
21:01
SPEAKER_02: The way he did one in, that old bastard Stalin did ten in.
21:06
SPEAKER_02: What a genius.
21:07
SPEAKER_02: What a genius.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
21:09
SPEAKER_01: Yes, indeed.
21:10
And like Churchill,
21:12
like Boris,
21:12
that might please Boris,
21:14
half American,
21:15
half British.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:17
SPEAKER_01: And parentage, I think.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: Indeed.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:20
SPEAKER_01: Dan,
21:21
I was rather moved by video clips and photos of King Charles at
21:25
that synagogue in
21:26
SPEAKER_01: Manchester where there'd been a
21:31
SPEAKER_01: a mass shooting, I think.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: And put in mind the subject of antisemitism here in the United States,
21:38
SPEAKER_01: in Britain,
21:38
SPEAKER_01: and elsewhere.
21:41
And I'd like to know your view of the degree of seriousness of
21:47
antisemitism in the UK.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: And I want to recall something,
21:51
SPEAKER_01: something a British journalist said to me,
21:53
SPEAKER_01: now deceased,
21:54
SPEAKER_01: wonderful journalist.
21:56
SPEAKER_01: He was Jewish.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: And I asked him 20 years ago,
21:59
SPEAKER_01: maybe,
22:00
SPEAKER_01: was he worried about antisemitism,
22:03
SPEAKER_01: especially from unassimilated Muslim immigrants and so on.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: And he said, don't ever tell anyone, but I'll put it this way.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: They'll come for them before they'll come for us.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: I think he said.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: And by the way,
22:17
SPEAKER_01: he said,
22:17
SPEAKER_01: I believe he said that his own grandmother,
22:19
he was worried about just that question and thought that maybe
22:22
her grandchildren
22:24
SPEAKER_01: should emigrate from Britain.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: Some things had happened.
22:28
He said,
22:28
you know,
22:29
frankly,
22:30
I think they might come for them before they come for us.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: Dan, what do you make of it all?
22:38
Is it a serious problem or just a problem like 100 others to be
22:42
dealt with in national life?
22:46
SPEAKER_02: I think that's a really key question.
22:50
The shocking thing about that synagogue attack in Manchester is
22:54
that it was
22:54
SPEAKER_02: unprecedented in this country.
22:58
Such things,
23:00
I'm sorry to say,
23:00
have become routine in most of Western Europe.
23:04
SPEAKER_02: If we think of the news from France in the last 10 years,
23:07
SPEAKER_02: the attacks on Jewish schools and synagogues,
23:10
SPEAKER_02: the kosher supermarket hostage siege,
23:14
SPEAKER_02: the defacing of graves in Paris,
23:16
SPEAKER_02: in Toulouse,
23:17
SPEAKER_02: in Marseilles –
23:19
Similarly in Germany,
23:20
similarly in Holland,
23:21
in Belgium,
23:22
it had never happened here.
23:24
SPEAKER_02: Only one person had ever been attacked because he was Jewish.
23:28
SPEAKER_02: So our mutual friend,
23:32
SPEAKER_02: Paul Johnson,
23:33
SPEAKER_02: in his history of the Jews,
23:36
SPEAKER_02: argued very plausibly that prior to the settlement of North America,
23:42
SPEAKER_02: England was the best place in the world to be Jewish.
23:45
SPEAKER_02: And actually, this had happened for a rather grisly reason.
23:48
SPEAKER_02: Because there had been this expulsion,
23:51
SPEAKER_02: unlike in most of Europe in the 13th century,
23:54
SPEAKER_02: when Jews returned to England under Cromwell in the 1650s,
24:01
SPEAKER_02: they were not in a separate legal category.
24:03
SPEAKER_02: And this was pretty much unique in Europe.
24:05
Almost everywhere else,
24:06
the law had evolved out of canon law,
24:08
out of ecclesiastical law.
24:10
SPEAKER_02: But because the ecclesiastical courts couldn't claim jurisdiction over
24:14
SPEAKER_02: non-Christians,
24:16
SPEAKER_02: Jews had been placed in a separate legal category.
24:18
SPEAKER_02: And this,
24:18
SPEAKER_02: of course,
24:19
SPEAKER_02: opened the door to extraordinary discrimination and in the end,
24:24
SPEAKER_02: in some places,
24:24
SPEAKER_02: to genocide.
24:26
SPEAKER_02: But if you were a Jewish Brit in England or Scotland,
24:32
you were in the same legal category as a Baptist or Methodist
24:38
or any other
24:39
SPEAKER_02: non-Anglican,
24:41
SPEAKER_02: subject to some very mild penalties.
24:44
You couldn't serve in Parliament because you didn't take the
24:46
Anglican oath.
24:48
SPEAKER_02: I think you couldn't be an army officer.
24:50
all of which remaining penalties were lifted at the beginning
24:55
of the 1830s.
24:56
Now,
24:57
to put that in context,
24:59
the Spanish Inquisition was still in force until 1834.
25:04
SPEAKER_01: We sell out slavery, thank you very much.
25:07
SPEAKER_02: Indeed.
25:07
And this is why I think in this country there was a
25:14
philo-Semitic and Zionist tradition
25:18
SPEAKER_02: that you didn't really find anywhere else.
25:22
SPEAKER_02: You found it in our literature,
25:23
SPEAKER_02: in George Eliot's novels,
25:25
SPEAKER_02: in Disraeli's novels,
25:28
SPEAKER_02: in Walter Scott's novels.
25:30
SPEAKER_02: You found it in our politics,
25:32
the Old Testament puritanism of Cromwell that led to him
25:37
wanting to have more Jews
25:39
SPEAKER_02: in England.
25:41
disraeli's famous put down of the irish nationalist leader and
25:45
indeed distant
25:47
relative of mine daniel o'connell when he said my ancestors
25:51
were priests in the
25:52
temple of solomon while the right honorable gentlemen were
25:56
savages in an unknown
25:57
island that could not have been said it couldn't have happened
26:00
in any other country
26:01
in europe at the time so this is why one attack is nowhere near
26:07
what is taken for
26:08
SPEAKER_02: granted
26:10
SPEAKER_02: in Europe.
26:11
But it is so shocking because I think until now,
26:15
if you like,
26:15
we had the same enemies.
26:17
The Anglosphere peoples and Jews were generally resented by the
26:22
same kinds of
26:23
SPEAKER_02: people,
26:23
SPEAKER_02: the continental authoritarians of left and right.
26:29
SPEAKER_02: Show me someone who decries degenerate Anglo-Saxon capitalism,
26:34
SPEAKER_02: and I will show you an anti-Semite 99 times out of 100.
26:40
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
26:41
SPEAKER_02: And that's, I think, what we're losing, right?
26:44
SPEAKER_02: We have forgotten that this was a big part of who we were as a nation.
26:48
And we've forgotten that partly because there have been
26:51
demographic changes,
26:52
SPEAKER_02: but partly because we just no longer communicate it.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
26:57
SPEAKER_01: Speaking of communicating,
26:58
SPEAKER_01: Dan,
26:58
SPEAKER_01: do you recall what Gertrude Himmelfarb did at the end of her life,
27:02
SPEAKER_01: at the end of her working life?
27:03
SPEAKER_00: Go on.
27:03
She wrote,
27:05
I believe,
27:05
a final book,
27:06
a slim book on British philo-semitism.
27:10
SPEAKER_01: It's called The People, it's a beautiful book.
27:12
And I think her reasoning was,
27:14
at this stage of my career,
27:16
this stage of my life,
27:18
SPEAKER_01: I want to deal with something nice.
27:20
SPEAKER_01: She didn't use the word nice.
27:21
SPEAKER_01: I did.
27:23
SPEAKER_01: But it's about philo-Semitism in Britain and,
27:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
27:26
SPEAKER_01: right from the start and down from up to Arthur Balfour and the rest.
27:30
And it's really,
27:31
it's a lovely and not just lovely,
27:35
but true and sound and interesting volume.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
27:39
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for the recommendation.
27:40
SPEAKER_02: I haven't read that.
27:41
SPEAKER_02: But, I mean, it rings true, right?
27:43
SPEAKER_02: The Balfour Declaration didn't just happen in a vacuum.
27:46
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no, no.
27:47
It wasn't just as dreamed up because there was a war on and we
27:50
needed to come up
27:51
SPEAKER_02: with something quickly.
27:52
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
27:53
SPEAKER_02: it drew on a long tradition on both sides of the aisle,
27:57
SPEAKER_02: as it were,
27:58
going back to at least Israeli on the Tory side and Palmerston
28:01
on the liberal side,
28:03
SPEAKER_02: which again,
28:03
SPEAKER_02: as I say,
28:04
had no real equivalent anywhere else in the world at that time
28:07
other than in the
28:08
SPEAKER_02: rest of the Anglosphere.
28:09
SPEAKER_02: I mean, one rather grisly measure of this is that
28:14
SPEAKER_02: I think the global Jewish population only recovered
28:20
SPEAKER_02: to where it had been in 1940 in 2014, I think.
28:25
SPEAKER_02: But if you break down what had happened country by country,
28:30
SPEAKER_02: basically,
28:33
SPEAKER_02: it was bigger than it had been in 1940 in the Anglosphere and Israel.
28:38
SPEAKER_02: And it was smaller, I think, everywhere else except possibly Argentina.
28:43
SPEAKER_02: And that's telling you something.
28:43
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
28:46
SPEAKER_01: Dan, we need not spend more than a minute or maybe half minute on this.
28:50
But my sense is that the British royal family handled the
28:54
matter of Andrew very well.
28:57
SPEAKER_01: And I,
28:57
SPEAKER_01: as an American,
28:57
SPEAKER_01: was so pleased to see accountability somewhere for someone,
29:02
SPEAKER_01: since there seems to be precious little here.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: And I wonder...
29:06
whether you agree with me that the royal family has done well,
29:12
all things considered.
29:14
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
29:14
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
29:14
SPEAKER_02: of course,
29:15
SPEAKER_02: there's due process,
29:16
SPEAKER_02: there's a presumption of innocence and so on,
29:18
SPEAKER_02: but there is equally something incredibly seedy
29:21
SPEAKER_02: about hanging around with Epstein after his exposure.
29:31
SPEAKER_02: And so although I'm not saying that any laws were broken,
29:36
SPEAKER_02: I'm suggesting that for a second,
29:37
SPEAKER_02: but we don't know that.
29:39
But there should be,
29:40
if you like,
29:41
a social penalty for that kind of misjudgment.
29:44
SPEAKER_02: And in this country, it has been exacted.
29:46
SPEAKER_02: So,
29:47
SPEAKER_02: you know,
29:47
SPEAKER_02: our ambassador to the US was recalled because he had an unwise...
29:50
SPEAKER_00: Oh,
29:50
SPEAKER_00: yes,
29:50
SPEAKER_02: I forgot.
29:51
SPEAKER_02: ...that went on for too long.
29:52
Obviously,
29:52
as you say,
29:55
the former Duke of York has now been degraded,
29:58
reduced in rank.
30:00
I find it bewildering that there is no equivalent sort of
30:07
épuration on your side of
30:09
SPEAKER_02: the Atlantic.
30:11
SPEAKER_02: It's obviously a cultural difference.
30:14
SPEAKER_01: I think of the word coverup, but hope we'll see.
30:20
SPEAKER_01: Dan,
30:20
SPEAKER_01: I want to speak for a second about the,
30:24
SPEAKER_01: I regard him as the leader of right populism in the United Kingdom,
30:27
SPEAKER_01: Nigel Farage.
30:29
SPEAKER_01: And it's not often I quote him with approval,
30:31
but he said something maybe a month and a half ago that sounded
30:35
right to me.
30:36
SPEAKER_01: He said it,
30:36
SPEAKER_01: I believe in an interview with the Times here in the US,
30:40
SPEAKER_01: we call it the Times of London.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to paraphrase him, but this is the true gist of what he said.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: He said,
30:48
SPEAKER_01: you may not like me,
30:50
SPEAKER_01: and in fact you don't,
30:51
SPEAKER_01: but you better deal with me because what comes after me,
30:54
SPEAKER_01: you're not going to like at all.
30:57
SPEAKER_01: I am on the right fringe of our parliamentary democracy.
31:00
SPEAKER_01: He didn't say this is me interpreting now,
31:02
SPEAKER_01: but I am still kind of within it,
31:05
SPEAKER_01: a respecter of our parliamentary democracy.
31:08
SPEAKER_01: After me, it's all BNP and skinheads.
31:12
SPEAKER_01: So make your peace with me.
31:14
SPEAKER_01: Now, those are my words, paraphrasing him.
31:16
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, damn, it might be true.
31:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're paraphrasing him very accurately.
31:22
SPEAKER_02: And I think this is a real risk all over the world, right?
31:25
SPEAKER_02: If you look at opinion polls in Europe,
31:28
SPEAKER_02: the Le Pen-type party is leading in pretty much all of them.
31:32
SPEAKER_02: You know, the AFD in Germany, et cetera, et cetera.
31:35
SPEAKER_02: And...
31:38
SPEAKER_02: You know, permanence is the illusion of every age.
31:41
SPEAKER_02: You and I have grown up under this liberal democratic paradigm,
31:44
SPEAKER_02: and I think we took it for granted,
31:45
even though it's been slipping away from us for at least 10 or
31:48
15 years globally.
31:50
I wonder whether the future may not be a lot more like sort of
31:54
Mandani on one side
31:57
SPEAKER_02: and these so-called Groypers on the other side.
32:00
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm absolutely shocked by how many intelligent people
32:08
young American rightists who call themselves conservatives are
32:12
fascist adjacent in
32:14
SPEAKER_02: what they say,
32:15
SPEAKER_02: their obsession with Carl Schmitt,
32:17
SPEAKER_02: their obsession with- Fascist adjacent at best.
32:20
SPEAKER_01: Well,
32:21
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
32:22
I don't want to put- They have these Greco-Roman avatars and
32:26
there's this cult of,
32:29
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't even call it masculinity.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: It's just creepy.
32:32
SPEAKER_02: It is creepy.
32:33
SPEAKER_02: And yeah,
32:34
SPEAKER_02: the obsession with the strongman,
32:36
SPEAKER_02: the frank admiration for dictatorships,
32:41
all of these kind of integralist papers about how wonderful
32:43
Salazar's Portugal was.
32:45
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't.
32:45
SPEAKER_02: It was a miserable, poor, backward, isolated, corrupt dictatorship.
32:50
Now they've got Putin's Russia and Bukele's El Salvador and
32:54
Orbán's Hungary and
32:55
SPEAKER_01: even the Saudi monarchy.
32:58
SPEAKER_01: It's really a dictatorship.
33:00
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
33:01
SPEAKER_02: I can't quite believe this,
33:02
SPEAKER_02: and it may be that there was some sort of dodgy methodology,
33:05
SPEAKER_02: but I saw it being reported somewhere today.
33:08
I just saw the headline that 35% of Republican congressional
33:13
staffers admire Nick
33:14
SPEAKER_02: Fuentes or something like that.
33:16
SPEAKER_02: I said, yeah, that just can't be true.
33:17
SPEAKER_01: Well,
33:17
SPEAKER_01: I can tell you this,
33:19
SPEAKER_01: something,
33:19
a prominent journalist who travels the length and breadth of
33:23
our country and
33:24
SPEAKER_01: reports,
33:25
SPEAKER_01: something he told me about two months ago,
33:29
SPEAKER_01: well before Nick Fuentes' current prominence, if you will.
33:33
He said approximately,
33:35
no one knows how popular he is,
33:37
how influential he is.
33:39
He's smart,
33:40
he's clever,
33:41
he's funny,
33:42
he's a good performer,
33:43
and he's very influential as well.
33:46
SPEAKER_01: On the young.
33:48
SPEAKER_01: And I read a statistic.
33:49
SPEAKER_01: I'll have to check this.
33:50
SPEAKER_01: So I ask everyone, please don't quote me without checking.
33:55
SPEAKER_01: I think that Father Coughlin had 42 million listeners.
34:00
SPEAKER_01: And we were a much smaller country than now.
34:04
SPEAKER_01: Much smaller.
34:05
SPEAKER_01: But my gosh, I mean, this stuff comes and goes.
34:09
SPEAKER_01: There was,
34:10
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that Huey Long was a Nazi,
34:12
SPEAKER_01: but some historians say that there was one pop
34:15
SPEAKER_01: one politician in all of America whom FDR,
34:19
SPEAKER_01: probably the greatest US politician,
34:21
SPEAKER_01: the most skillful US politician in the 20th century feared.
34:24
And that was long because FDR knew the power of populism and he
34:29
had a good portion
34:31
SPEAKER_01: of it himself within him.
34:34
SPEAKER_01: I forgot what I was saying, sir.
34:39
SPEAKER_01: Thanks to my conversation with my journalist friend,
34:42
SPEAKER_01: my reporter friend,
34:44
SPEAKER_01: I'm not surprised at recent developments.
34:48
SPEAKER_01: So-called mainstreamers need to keep up.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: They need to catch up.
34:52
Dan,
34:52
forgive this,
34:53
but I've been saying it,
34:54
but apparently one problem with
34:56
SPEAKER_01: both pornography and drugs, is that people need ever harder stuff.
35:00
SPEAKER_01: The current stuff gets to be too tame, and there has to be harder stuff.
35:05
SPEAKER_01: And this is apparently true in politics in a way.
35:11
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:11
SPEAKER_02: Well, except it hasn't been.
35:13
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we both grew up in a time when it wasn't.
35:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:16
SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, the question is... The difference between Ford and Carter?
35:21
SPEAKER_01: What was the difference between Ford and Carter, really?
35:23
SPEAKER_02: Accents?
35:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:26
SPEAKER_02: So what's changed?
35:27
SPEAKER_02: Is it simply... I mean, here are my candidates.
35:32
SPEAKER_02: Social media.
35:33
SPEAKER_02: That's an obvious one, right?
35:34
SPEAKER_02: The lifting of all the filters.
35:35
So a university research paper or a Senate research document or
35:43
a presidential
35:44
address now has exactly the same validity as some guy in his
35:47
basement on X.
35:49
SPEAKER_02: It's all just out there.
35:50
SPEAKER_02: That's a possibility.
35:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: I wonder whether the... Quote, doing my own research, unquote.
35:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
35:56
SPEAKER_02: I wonder whether the global financial crisis,
35:59
SPEAKER_02: that seems to have played a part in delegitimizing the old order.
36:04
I think part of it is also speed of demographic change because
36:09
of the speed with
36:10
SPEAKER_02: which people now move around the world,
36:11
SPEAKER_02: and that has unsettled a lot of things.
36:13
SPEAKER_02: But it may be.
36:15
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
36:15
SPEAKER_02: if it's social media,
36:17
the point you were just making about Huey Long and Father
36:19
Coughlin and so on,
36:20
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
36:22
SPEAKER_02: maybe it was always there,
36:23
SPEAKER_02: but there were guardrails before.
36:26
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe something has changed.
36:32
Maybe the liberal democratic experiment has just run its course
36:37
and we're leaving
36:38
SPEAKER_02: the oasis and heading back to the desert.
36:41
SPEAKER_02: But one interesting thing to me is look at where it hasn't happened.
36:48
SPEAKER_02: Where is the Le Pen party not ahead?
36:51
Which countries have retained something that you would
36:54
recognize as the political system?
36:57
SPEAKER_02: Canada, I would say, is one.
36:58
SPEAKER_02: Australia and New Zealand are two more.
37:01
SPEAKER_02: Now, they all have smartphones.
37:04
But one thing which is interesting to me about all of them is
37:06
for geographical
37:07
SPEAKER_02: reasons,
37:08
SPEAKER_02: they have almost no illegal immigration.
37:11
SPEAKER_02: They've until now sustained quite a consensus behind legal immigration,
37:14
SPEAKER_02: although that is changing.
37:17
But there wasn't this sense of useless politicians powerless to
37:22
police our borders,
37:22
which I think is a big part of explaining what is driving the
37:28
political change in
37:29
SPEAKER_02: continental Europe and here and in the US.
37:32
SPEAKER_01: I wonder,
37:32
SPEAKER_01: Dan,
37:32
SPEAKER_01: certainly in the American context,
37:35
SPEAKER_01: illegal immigrants are both the problem and a bogeyman.
37:40
SPEAKER_01: I wonder if they are more problem or more bogeyman.
37:44
SPEAKER_01: For example, some of our politicians say, Trump says this, we're full.
37:49
SPEAKER_01: We're full.
37:50
SPEAKER_01: Dan, have you ever flown across America or driven across?
37:53
SPEAKER_02: Nobody's there.
37:54
SPEAKER_02: Or indeed, Australia or Canada.
37:56
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
37:58
Milton Friedman used to argue that immigration was great as
38:02
long as it was illegal,
38:03
SPEAKER_02: right?
38:04
SPEAKER_02: Because if you were an illegal, you could only pay into the system.
38:07
SPEAKER_02: You could only work.
38:08
SPEAKER_02: You couldn't claim benefits.
38:09
SPEAKER_02: Now, of course, that's become less true, particularly in California.
38:14
SPEAKER_02: But that is an argument that you just could not make now.
38:17
SPEAKER_02: It is so far from the consensus that it's a laughable fringe position.
38:26
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
38:26
SPEAKER_02: if you want to call this bogeyman,
38:29
SPEAKER_02: I think,
38:29
SPEAKER_02: again,
38:30
SPEAKER_02: we're dealing with the reactions of a tribal people.
38:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
38:35
I remember helping a friend of mine unsuccessfully,
38:38
as it turned out,
38:39
in a Canadian election.
38:40
SPEAKER_02: I was knocking on doors with him.
38:41
SPEAKER_02: I think it was the 2019 election.
38:44
And this was at a time when legal migration was running at
38:49
about 350,000 a year in Canada.
38:52
SPEAKER_02: And there was a remarkable consensus behind that.
38:55
SPEAKER_02: None of the parties,
38:56
SPEAKER_02: even the far-right party,
38:57
SPEAKER_02: the so-called far-right party,
38:58
SPEAKER_02: the People's Party,
38:59
SPEAKER_02: only wanted to cut it to 250,000 a year.
39:00
SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
39:02
SPEAKER_02: There was a sense that there was space.
39:04
SPEAKER_01: We could have that kind of party.
39:06
SPEAKER_02: Right.
39:07
But there was then a particular problem with some Central
39:12
American illegals
39:14
SPEAKER_02: crossing from New York State into Quebec.
39:17
SPEAKER_02: Fewer than 30,000.
39:18
SPEAKER_01: Better name.
39:20
SPEAKER_01: The something five, I think.
39:21
SPEAKER_01: I can't remember.
39:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:22
SPEAKER_02: And that became the dominant issue in the whole campaign.
39:25
And I just think we underestimate the impact on a tribal
39:29
species of people moving
39:31
SPEAKER_02: uninvited into our territory,
39:32
SPEAKER_02: as it were.
39:33
And that has an impact on destabilizing politics that is
39:37
utterly out of proportion,
39:39
SPEAKER_02: either to the numbers or to any kind of fiscal impact.
39:42
SPEAKER_01: Did you see this recent news, Dan, U.S.
39:45
SPEAKER_01: news?
39:46
SPEAKER_01: There are immigrants, of course, and then there are refugees.
39:50
And the United States will admit the lowest number of refugees
39:53
I think ever.
39:54
I think it's 7,500 with priority given to white South Africans
39:58
of all the refugees
39:59
SPEAKER_01: or would-be refugees in the world.
40:02
SPEAKER_01: That's definitely a changed America.
40:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:06
SPEAKER_02: No, I think that's right.
40:07
SPEAKER_02: And I think this is part of the same mental shift that
40:13
SPEAKER_02: that is behind the disdain for liberal democracy.
40:17
SPEAKER_02: It's a more introverted, more pinched, meaner mindset that has
40:24
SPEAKER_02: more of a demand for the smack of firm government.
40:28
SPEAKER_02: I think it's been in the ascendant for a while,
40:30
SPEAKER_02: but whatever it was,
40:31
SPEAKER_02: whether it was the phones or the microphone,
40:33
SPEAKER_02: whatever the ultimate cause,
40:34
SPEAKER_02: it was turbocharged by lockdown.
40:37
And I think that those years were pretty calamitous for
40:42
believers in a liberal open society.
40:45
I think they altered the relationship between state and citizen
40:48
and they created a
40:49
SPEAKER_02: whole different expectation of what governments should do.
40:53
SPEAKER_01: Dan, some foreign affairs, Ukraine in particular.
40:58
SPEAKER_01: From my perspective, and I am guilty of, not guilty of, innocent.
41:03
SPEAKER_01: I'm an Anglophile.
41:06
And I've been impressed by Britain,
41:11
by Britons,
41:13
and their stance on Ukraine.
41:15
SPEAKER_01: Now, I know there are Farage and Farajniks.
41:20
But it seems to be very few in Britain in the political realm
41:24
are pro-Putin,
41:25
anti-Ukraine.
41:26
SPEAKER_01: There is that string of conservative prime ministers.
41:30
SPEAKER_01: Now there's a labor one.
41:32
SPEAKER_01: two monarchs in this period since February, 2022.
41:35
SPEAKER_01: And they all seem to be four square behind Ukraine and its cause and very
41:43
SPEAKER_01: clear-eyed about Putin and what Putin's Russia represents.
41:48
SPEAKER_01: Very unlike our own situation here in the United States.
41:51
SPEAKER_01: Am I correct, do you think?
41:52
Yeah,
41:54
it's an extraordinary gap between the public discourse here and
42:00
there.
42:01
SPEAKER_01: Can I use the word consensus where Britain is concerned?
42:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'd say so.
42:04
SPEAKER_02: I mean, of course, there is a minority that is isolationist, if you like.
42:10
And these are very often MAGA-influenced Brits who are obsessed
42:14
with what Trump is doing.
42:16
SPEAKER_02: But even they...
42:17
SPEAKER_02: tend to say,
42:20
SPEAKER_02: this is none of our business,
42:21
SPEAKER_02: rather than,
42:22
SPEAKER_02: oh,
42:22
SPEAKER_02: actually,
42:23
SPEAKER_02: Blensky's a crook and Putin's not such a bad guy,
42:25
SPEAKER_02: which is a bizarre thing.
42:26
So they're genuine isolationists,
42:28
of whom I've met very few in my life,
42:30
by the way.
42:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there is that sense.
42:32
SPEAKER_02: Why is this our problem?
42:34
SPEAKER_02: We've got problems at home.
42:36
SPEAKER_01: That I have time for.
42:36
SPEAKER_02: That I have some time for, though I don't care.
42:41
SPEAKER_02: You're right.
42:41
SPEAKER_02: There is this extraordinary rift,
42:44
and it's a huge retreat from what would have been the consensus
42:47
in every Western
42:48
SPEAKER_02: country until an eye blink ago.
42:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:52
I've never really been able to explain what caused this change
42:58
in the US.
42:59
I'd love to say that it was just effective Russian propaganda
43:02
and armies of online bots in St.
43:06
SPEAKER_02: Petersburg,
43:07
but I've met too many flesh and blood American conservatives
43:10
who take this line to
43:13
SPEAKER_02: stick to that idea.
43:16
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I guess a lot of it is just the cult of the leader, isn't it?
43:21
SPEAKER_02: That Trump,
43:22
SPEAKER_02: for whatever reason,
43:27
SPEAKER_02: will never really criticize Putin,
43:30
whether it's because he is resentful of the little cameo role
43:34
that Zelensky had in
43:35
SPEAKER_02: the first impeachment attempt or
43:37
or whether it's because he has this...
43:40
Trump's admiration of Putin predates that.
43:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
43:45
SPEAKER_01: Or whether he... Right.
43:46
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I just don't know.
43:48
SPEAKER_02: I find myself asking the guy...
43:50
I don't believe the conspiracy theories about Putin having
43:53
compromise on him,
43:54
SPEAKER_02: but I do find the question...
43:56
If he actually were a Russian asset,
43:58
what would he have done differently?
43:59
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
44:01
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's – That's a line of Max Eastman's, by the way.
44:06
SPEAKER_01: Do you recall who Max Eastman was in the United States?
44:08
SPEAKER_01: No.
44:08
He was a communist intellectual who was an anti-communist
44:11
intellectual and joined by Buckley.
44:13
And he said at a question,
44:14
sure,
44:15
they're not working for the Kremlin directly.
44:17
SPEAKER_01: But if there were, how would they act differently?
44:19
SPEAKER_01: Would they be more discreet?
44:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
44:22
SPEAKER_02: Well,
44:22
SPEAKER_02: and by the way,
44:23
SPEAKER_02: I think that applies not only in terms of his attitude to Ukraine,
44:27
SPEAKER_02: but the annexation threats against Canada and Denmark,
44:32
SPEAKER_02: calling into question the nuclear deal with Australia,
44:35
SPEAKER_02: and of course,
44:36
SPEAKER_02: the trade policy.
44:36
I mean,
44:38
if his goal were to wreck the Western alliance,
44:40
he'd be doing exactly what he's doing.
44:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
44:42
SPEAKER_01: By the way,
44:43
SPEAKER_01: Dan,
44:43
SPEAKER_01: this Nathan Gill in the UK who pleaded,
44:46
SPEAKER_01: pled,
44:47
SPEAKER_01: pleaded,
44:47
SPEAKER_01: I always have to think about that,
44:48
SPEAKER_01: guilty in this matter,
44:49
SPEAKER_01: being paid by the Kremlin.
44:51
SPEAKER_01: Why does a Kremlin ever have to pay?
44:53
SPEAKER_01: There's so many who do that kind of thing for free.
44:55
SPEAKER_01: I can name 20 of them without, how would I have to pay anybody?
44:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:00
SPEAKER_02: And an extraordinarily neglected story, that.
45:03
SPEAKER_02: Because if the Kremlin was in the business of buying British politicians,
45:10
SPEAKER_02: what are the odds that it was only Gill and one other guy,
45:12
SPEAKER_02: right?
45:13
SPEAKER_02: Who else might be on their payroll?
45:15
It seems to me that this is an urgent question that we ought to
45:18
be investigating
45:19
SPEAKER_02: much more vigorously than we are.
45:21
SPEAKER_02: But you know how these media narratives form.
45:23
SPEAKER_02: At the moment, the narrative is that reform is on the roll.
45:26
SPEAKER_02: And so people just are not as interested as they should be.
45:31
Dan,
45:33
we're nearing the end of our discussion today,
45:35
and I want to do a little Shakespeare.
45:37
SPEAKER_01: Always a good one.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: You're one of the great Shakespeareans I've ever known.
45:43
SPEAKER_01: Scruton was another one.
45:44
SPEAKER_01: Norman Podhoretz is another one.
45:47
SPEAKER_01: I never met Harold Bloom, although I've known his students.
45:53
SPEAKER_01: It's a cliche,
45:54
SPEAKER_01: not a cliche,
45:55
it's a truism that people tend to like different plays at
45:59
different times of their
46:00
SPEAKER_01: life.
46:01
SPEAKER_01: Young people like Julius Caesar,
46:03
SPEAKER_01: people in love like Antony and Cleopatra,
46:06
SPEAKER_01: older people like Lear,
46:07
SPEAKER_01: so on and so forth.
46:10
SPEAKER_01: I know you know all the plays.
46:12
SPEAKER_01: and the poems.
46:15
SPEAKER_01: Do your tastes change?
46:17
SPEAKER_01: Not that you begin to dislike something,
46:20
SPEAKER_01: but do you draw nearer to this or that play in different times of life?
46:28
SPEAKER_02: I think we all do.
46:31
SPEAKER_02: But often it can be prompted by just seeing a particular production,
46:34
SPEAKER_02: which opens your eyes to something.
46:36
SPEAKER_02: Where has that been all my life?
46:38
SPEAKER_01: How could I have missed that?
46:40
SPEAKER_01: Exact same in music, by the way.
46:42
SPEAKER_02: That's interesting, isn't it?
46:43
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think that's right.
46:44
I think that the interpretation of a symphony or the
46:47
interpretation of a symphony,
46:48
SPEAKER_02: however often you've heard it,
46:50
SPEAKER_02: it makes you realize that this is...
46:54
SPEAKER_02: There was a lovely...
46:56
A lovely word that one of the great Shakespearean scholars used
47:02
for the deepest
47:04
SPEAKER_02: characters,
47:06
SPEAKER_02: Cleopatra,
47:07
SPEAKER_02: Falstaff,
47:07
SPEAKER_02: Hamlet,
47:08
SPEAKER_02: and so on.
47:08
He said they are inexhaustible,
47:11
which I think is a great word,
47:12
inexhaustible.
47:14
SPEAKER_01: Unstailing to borrow from Shakespeare.
47:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:18
Yeah.
47:19
But I'm interested in the way in which the same play or the
47:24
same line can speak to
47:26
SPEAKER_02: you in utterly different ways,
47:28
SPEAKER_02: depending on where you are in your life or indeed what mood you're in.
47:33
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
47:33
SPEAKER_02: I remember the first time that this hit me,
47:36
SPEAKER_02: it was over 20 years ago when we'd had our first child,
47:46
SPEAKER_02: our elder daughter.
47:49
SPEAKER_02: The musician?
47:50
SPEAKER_02: No, actually, she is a musician.
47:52
SPEAKER_02: She's an organist, but she's not the one who's studying music at Oxford.
47:57
SPEAKER_02: The one that you know.
47:59
SPEAKER_02: Your friend is the violinist, Allegra.
48:02
SPEAKER_02: But this is my oldest one, Annabelle, who...
48:07
SPEAKER_02: I remember the first time we left the house,
48:10
SPEAKER_02: my wife and I,
48:10
SPEAKER_02: after she was born,
48:12
SPEAKER_02: was to watch The Tempest at the Roundhouse.
48:17
SPEAKER_02: And I think it was the seventh time that I'd watched The Tempest,
48:23
SPEAKER_02: or the eighth,
48:24
SPEAKER_02: if you count Gielgud's Prospero's books.
48:28
SPEAKER_02: And I sat there thinking, this play is entirely about Prospero being...
48:35
SPEAKER_02: unsettled by having a little girl who's growing up.
48:38
SPEAKER_02: And he's bothered by this.
48:41
SPEAKER_02: And why is he setting all these tests for her boyfriend?
48:45
SPEAKER_02: This is the angst of a father.
48:47
SPEAKER_02: How could I have missed that?
48:49
SPEAKER_02: It's been staring me in the face.
48:50
But I'd never,
48:51
of course,
48:51
been the father of a daughter until that moment.
48:53
SPEAKER_02: And of course, we do that all the time.
48:57
SPEAKER_02: One of my favorite examples of this is...
49:00
When Nelson Mandela was in prison on Robben Island with a bunch
49:05
of other ANC
49:06
SPEAKER_02: activists,
49:08
one of their supporters smuggled in a copy of the complete
49:12
works disguised as a
49:14
SPEAKER_02: Hindu devotional text.
49:16
SPEAKER_02: It's a garish pink and yellow cover.
49:19
SPEAKER_02: And the prisoners used to read it and underline their favorite passages.
49:27
It was on display at a special display at the British Museum
49:32
some years ago.
49:33
SPEAKER_02: It's where I saw it.
49:34
And what Mandela had chosen,
49:35
when you say young people are drawn to Julius Caesar...
49:39
SPEAKER_02: There's that moment when Caesar's wife is telling him not to go.
49:43
SPEAKER_02: And he,
49:45
SPEAKER_02: as Queen Victoria said of Gladstone,
49:47
SPEAKER_02: he starts addressing her as if she were a public meeting.
49:50
And he speaks these incredibly pompous lines about how the
49:56
valiant taste of death
49:56
SPEAKER_02: but once cowards die many times before their death.
50:01
SPEAKER_02: Now, on stage, that just shows him to be a bit of a tit.
50:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
50:05
But this is what Mandela had thought exactly expressed his mood
50:09
at that time.
50:11
SPEAKER_02: That's what he had underlined as what spoke to him.
50:15
SPEAKER_02: And I think that is the magic of the plays.
50:20
Does that not also point to a difference between reading them
50:22
and watching them and seeing them?
50:25
SPEAKER_01: Because when you read, you're maybe not influenced by an actor.
50:30
SPEAKER_01: So you can read with your own emphasis, with your own tone.
50:33
SPEAKER_02: Sure, sure.
50:35
SPEAKER_01: Do you ever read the plays?
50:36
SPEAKER_01: Are you strictly a theatre?
50:37
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yes.
50:38
SPEAKER_02: Oh, no, I read them all.
50:40
SPEAKER_02: Some friends and I just read through Antony and Cleopatra,
50:43
SPEAKER_02: which is something I wish I did more often.
50:46
SPEAKER_02: Great.
50:48
They have a beautiful country house and we sat around their
50:51
children and a couple
50:52
SPEAKER_02: of other friends and we read different parts.
50:54
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the thing about them is they're very short, you know.
51:00
SPEAKER_02: I'm always suggesting to women in book clubs,
51:02
SPEAKER_02: why don't you just do the,
51:03
SPEAKER_02: you know,
51:03
SPEAKER_02: it'd be much,
51:04
SPEAKER_02: much easier and quicker to read these plays.
51:06
SPEAKER_02: And of course,
51:10
male suggestions to book clubs as to what they should be
51:13
reading are rarely
51:13
SPEAKER_02: entertained kindly.
51:15
SPEAKER_02: But I stand by my advice, right?
51:17
SPEAKER_02: You'd get so much out of it.
51:19
SPEAKER_01: Dan,
51:19
you recall we were talking not too long ago about Mark Van
51:22
Doren and what he had to
51:23
SPEAKER_01: say about Ant and Cleopatra.
51:25
SPEAKER_01: almost as good as reading the play itself.
51:28
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to recall a couple of things to you.
51:30
Dan,
51:31
do you remember the great South African,
51:34
British music critic,
51:37
scholar,
51:38
Andrew Porter?
51:40
SPEAKER_01: Spent a lot of time in the United States.
51:42
I said to him once,
51:43
I said,
51:44
you know,
51:45
I know you don't have a favorite opera.
51:46
I'm not going to sort of insult you by asking you whether you
51:49
have a favorite.
51:49
SPEAKER_01: Before I can get the words out of my mouth, he said, the magic flute.
51:53
interesting and i said mr porter i'm certainly not i certainly
51:57
would never ask you
51:58
if you had a favorite singer before i could complete my
52:01
sentence maria callos wow
52:03
um there i was speaking with a shakespeare scholar a couple
52:06
years ago who was also
52:08
a university president he was president of uh saint john's
52:12
college in annapolis and
52:13
i think now in austin he's a greek american his first name is
52:16
pano i'm afraid i
52:18
SPEAKER_01: can't recall his last name he's a shakespeare scholar and i said
52:22
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't insult you.
52:23
SPEAKER_01: I don't have a favorite composer.
52:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to ask you whether you have a favorite.
52:28
SPEAKER_01: I'm certainly not.
52:29
I could not complete my sentence before he said,
52:31
plain as can be,
52:33
Twelfth Night.
52:34
SPEAKER_01: And I've never heard anyone say Twelfth Night.
52:36
SPEAKER_02: No, well, that's the equivalent to the magic flute to me, but yeah.
52:41
SPEAKER_01: Do you, Dan?
52:42
SPEAKER_01: Or does it depend on the week, the month, the hour?
52:45
SPEAKER_01: Of course it does.
52:46
And what you just happened to have seen and what you just
52:48
happened to have read.
52:49
SPEAKER_02: But I mean,
52:51
there's a cult radio program here that has run since the 40s
52:57
called Desert Island
52:58
SPEAKER_02: Discs.
52:59
SPEAKER_02: Oh, my God.
53:00
SPEAKER_01: One of the great things in the history of 20th and 21st century media.
53:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:05
SPEAKER_01: Have you been on it?
53:06
SPEAKER_02: No, I haven't.
53:07
SPEAKER_02: But every Brit has played in his mind.
53:10
SPEAKER_01: You'd be a great guest.
53:11
SPEAKER_02: Every one of us.
53:13
SPEAKER_02: But the theme, just for your viewers who may not know, is you pick...
53:20
The conceit is that you're going to a desert island and you
53:22
pick eight pieces of
53:23
music and then clips of these pieces are played during the
53:27
program while you talk
53:28
SPEAKER_02: about your life.
53:29
SPEAKER_02: And at the end, they say, what book would you like?
53:34
SPEAKER_02: And they qualify it.
53:34
They say,
53:35
we're already giving you the Bible and the complete works of
53:38
Shakespeare.
53:39
And of course,
53:39
if they didn't say that,
53:41
everyone would pick one or the other,
53:43
right?
53:45
SPEAKER_01: You also get an object, I believe.
53:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you get an object as well, exactly.
53:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
53:50
SPEAKER_02: Now,
53:52
SPEAKER_02: if we were playing that version of Shakespeare,
53:56
SPEAKER_02: the Desert Island Disqualifier of Shakespeare,
53:58
SPEAKER_02: to me,
53:59
SPEAKER_02: it would be this.
54:01
SPEAKER_02: We're giving you the great tragedies.
54:04
SPEAKER_02: We're giving you Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear.
54:08
SPEAKER_02: Now what's your favourite?
54:10
SPEAKER_01: Great question.
54:10
SPEAKER_02: I think that's a more interesting way of phrasing it.
54:13
SPEAKER_02: That's how I would... Fabulous.
54:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
54:17
And even there,
54:19
of course,
54:20
it swithers around back and forth and back and forth.
54:23
SPEAKER_02: But I think...
54:26
SPEAKER_02: I would go for the only play written entirely in verse,
54:30
SPEAKER_02: and which I think is incredibly beautiful,
54:32
SPEAKER_02: which is Richard II,
54:35
SPEAKER_02: because the metaphysical poetry in it is so gorgeous,
54:41
SPEAKER_02: and there is not one wasted line.
54:44
SPEAKER_02: The most incidental bits of the plot are written in a way that uplifts.
54:51
SPEAKER_02: Let's see if I can remember one bit.
54:54
This is reporting on the death of a character who's been killed
54:58
overseas.
54:59
SPEAKER_02: It's utterly, utterly incidental to the plot.
55:03
SPEAKER_02: It's nine lines.
55:04
SPEAKER_02: I'll see if I can remember it.
55:06
SPEAKER_02: many a time hath banished Norfolk,
55:09
SPEAKER_02: fought for Jesus Christ in glorious Christian field,
55:13
SPEAKER_02: streaming the ensign of the Christian cross against black pagans,
55:16
SPEAKER_02: Turks,
55:17
SPEAKER_02: and Saracens,
55:19
SPEAKER_02: and toiled with works of war,
55:21
SPEAKER_02: retired himself to Italy,
55:24
SPEAKER_02: and there,
55:25
SPEAKER_02: at Venice,
55:27
SPEAKER_02: gave his body to that pleasant country's earth,
55:30
SPEAKER_02: and his pure soul unto his Captain Christ,
55:32
SPEAKER_02: under whose colors he had fought so long.
55:34
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
55:36
SPEAKER_02: If that's how you're writing almost the stage directions,
55:40
SPEAKER_02: that's on a – so for me,
55:41
SPEAKER_02: that I think is – and I never – it's the opposite of Larkin.
55:44
I never leave a production despite the tragedy of the king
55:49
himself without feeling uplifted.
55:53
SPEAKER_01: Ladies and gentlemen, we've been hearing from Daniel Hannan.
55:57
SPEAKER_01: I'm Jay Nordlinger doing Q&A.
56:00
SPEAKER_01: Thank you one and all.
56:01
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Dan.