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Flyover Country, Episode 58 – Dispatches from Manhattan
We are joined by our old friend and everyone’s favorite former Editor-in-Chief of Ricochet, Mr. Troy Senik! Discussion revolves around current events, but does anyone dare to predict the future? Perhaps never again!
Intro includes music from Ronald Jenkees; closing music was from Pete Yorn.
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Thanks!
p.s. Sorry for the extra-long podcast; we’ve had people suggest that it would be better to stick to a more easily manageable format. But when you’re talking with a guy like Troy, it is amazingly difficult to keep it even as short as we did.
Remember that you can subscribe in iTunes, which will enable you to pause the thing and listen at your leisure!
Troy might not be Mollie’s favorite former editor-in-chief.
Who is Mollie?
Apparently marrying Troy is a job Americans won’t do.
Correct. Believe me, I did the market research.
BTW, Cleveland Browns fans are some of the most hard-core and loyal football fans in then country.
I unfairly knock the team, as a Baseball fan myself and virtually ignorant about football. I watch the super bowl if the Broncos are playing, and I’m the guy who mutes the commercials and browses Ricochet during the half-time show.
So the Deep South was looking for an anti-LBJ protest vote, right?
Oh, you can knock the team – they are terrible. But don’t knock the fans – that will upset the Dawg Pound.
We probably could have spent an even longer time than we did in dissecting Avik Roy’s Flagship appearance. That is truly a fascinating topic (and as your own main-feed post makes painfully clear, Titus, I am no expert). I do wonder if we might have given Roy too much credit by interpreting his argument in the most charitable light possible, but it is worth at least discussing the more credible things that he had to say.
Here is another way of framing a similar argument: Liberals do not believe in liberty. They believe in forced solutions, deferring to their own “experts,” stifling opposition… while it is still easy to be duped into support for their side by taking their promises at face value, I don’t think it casts as broad a net as we often suppose.
Conservatives, on the other hand, believe in liberty. If you want to be free, you end up having to support Republicans. [For a moment, here, I’ll distinguish between the “freedom to marry,” at the heart of the SSM debate – what we’ve seen is that supporters of a more libertarian anti-restriction still tend conservative, but the real argument doesn’t hinge on freedom, but coercion. Forcing others to accept your lifestyle, again silencing opposition, etc…. Liberals pretend that their position is in support of liberty – as with Abortion – but reality is exactly the opposite].
(continuing from my comment #10)
What that means is that if a Catholic Nun wants to be free to devote her life to giving and to helping others, she must necessarily embrace conservative principles, while if a klansman wants to be free to – as Troy said – sit on his porch and rant about Jews and ni**ers, he must also embrace (certain) conservative principles. Roy seems to suggest that Republicans must own the fact that our appeal is to racists, at least in part, and that is where I wholly disagree with him. That is like saying that freedom of economics is an argument in support of unemployment and poverty. While we argue that true freedom must allow for failure, it can hardly be said that our stance is one in favor of failure. Quite the opposite.
We are not a racist party, and we do not appeal to racists on principle. We believe in liberty, and all the moral-blindness that goes along with it, on the government level. This is why, with that whole “three legs of the stool” thing, the Social Conservatives are so important. When we toss them aside, we cede to liberals the moral high-ground, which they otherwise have no claim to.
I think the competing definitions of liberty are both serious. Go back to the Sixties: The GOP voted in percentages above 80 against pretty much everything in the Great Society. The Dems pretty much voted the party line. The nation is not looking to repeal the Dem-imposed consensus. The work to get there means that we cannot wait to be told by people desperately trying to defend freedom from Dems, I’ll vote for you. The important thing to notice is how little conservatives get the national electorate; & how little trust for the GOP/conservatives there is in the nation. It’s a generation of work just to get to where people who haven’t been voting for your party start to do it…
So I’m glad to see Mr. Senik say, yeah, it turns out, conservatives don’t rule the GOP! I’m surprised he’s so cool about it… Conservatism is a minority opinion that’s threatened with electoral extinction. There is no need for it in America, so far as Americans are concerned. Maybe this is an exaggeration, but I think it’s needful to keep shocking complacency.
The way I would put the problem of conservatism as politics, which sometimes looks to me like a suicide mission, is that people interminably talk principles. This has only managed to persuade the GOP, which at least has politicians, that conservatives are in cloud-cuckoo-land. You need’em for legitimacy–or you used to…–but they’re useless in politics. America is a democracy, like it or not. People vote practice, not principles, & the task of conservatism is to find the principles in the practice, & work from there.
I agree. And “conceding our racist beginnings,” especially when that is simply an untrue concession, is not helpful when it comes to expanding the party or convincing people that the leftist caricature of us is wrong.
I agree by the way about Social Conservatism–awful name, though–& if I had my druthers, this is what I’d work on–the way it’s been betrayed by the GOP & the business-oligarchy wing of the party, to say nothing of the globalization libertarians–&, more importantly, how the American conservative-Christian principles might find a way to work in the practices of Big Government America, which cannot be repealed tomorrow or in 2020.
The nuns do not vote GOP. Nobody will stand up for them except some lawyers–there are firms that work for the public good, after all. Catholics do not vote GOP & the GOP cannot do it.
Nobody needs to embrace conservatism. It’s nobody’s personal Lord & Savior.
The question is, can we persuaded anybody anymore or are we merely defending the faith awaiting catastrophe!
Any suggestions on how this looks in reality?
Sure, that’s nothing to our point. No soul-searching is going to help the GOP. A new attitude to winning voters over by being attentive & active to their own issues–that’s gonna do it. I always advertise learning from our enemies, because I like to rub conservatives’ nose in their conceits. FDR & LBJ were impressive politicians, though they were rascals. The men had no idea what principle even means, but they were next to unbeatable. That’s who were fighting, or their legacy…
Oh, boy, do I! Of course, not being myself a wonk, I’ll tell you to look up wonks–the reform conservatives seem pretty solid to me. The more people to the kind of work those people want done, the better organizations will get at it. This, of course, requires specific talk, because it’s mostly a matter of exercising judgment. I’m not sure what but the outline can be said: It would not be conservatism as hitherto preached–& not really practiced, because we’re not that good at politics…–because it would be in every case compromising what we think of as right with what can be done in a specific situation. So there is a great change of outlook. Conservatives can learn prudence or lose, so far as I can tell. I’ve not read anybody on the right who has confidence in the future, so I don’t think you need me to add dark prophecies.
I’m just saying that prudence is radically different to principle. At some level, you have to see the point of view of people with whom you disagree & to want to agree with people whose support you need, even when they’re wrong. That seems to me utterly alien to the spirit latter-day speechifying, print magazine, thinktank conservatism.
Perhaps it’s because I’m so removed from the day-to-day of electoral politics these days, but being “cool” (or, conversely, “hot”) about it doesn’t really enter into the equation for me. It’s simply the reality, and how I process it emotionally won’t change it one way or the other.
I’m so fundamentally alienated from American politics at the moment that observing the scene feels primarily like an exercise in ethnography.
No, that is the rational response. Getting emotional about it is precisely what leads us to make poor decisions in response. For me, seeing Romney go down in 2012 led to a lot of confusion. Seeing the rise of Trump this year led to a somewhat comprehensive “ohhhhhhhh.” There is no point getting angry about it. Rather, I think it helps us to understand why many of our strategies have been unsuccessful.
I liked you better when you were on fire, if you permit the familiarity!
I guess I see your point–it’s also very reasonable given how hot things are almost everywhere else these days. Maybe people will come to your porch & take in some of the wisdom & cool off. There’s gotta be some kind of way to get some public good out of, well, ethnography.
I think you’re right about the fact that the anger & demands were a long time coming. Of course, not that it had to turn out this way, but it’s hard not to see things coming in this direction.
To my mind, conservatism is reacting like its earlier incarnations did in its previous ages of exile–such as after the New Deal.
So my fiancee thinks you guys are the best podcast on Ricochet & loves the arguments going back & forth instead of the stuff the famous people do, which isn’t saying much for how much people talk. You’re gonna go far, kids-
Tell her thank you for listening!!
Question. What do American women call their intendeds?
Still Fiancee
I was afraid you might say that. Well, I guess it’s the land of equality, so that’s that. It’s better than mark-
One e for a man, two for a woman.
Isn’t that always the way-
Another superb episode. No apologies for length accepted. Who would have thought Flyover Country would become the go-to for honest, balanced Trump conversation?
As a very reluctant Trump voter, voting for the administration, court picks and agency heads and NOT THE MAN, I was helped by hearing Troy’s trademark cogent brief against a Trump vote. Helped because I found it unpersuasive. It was a good try though. The connection between Trump department heads and court picks and the tyranny of experts seems to be misplaced. Do you want Trump and his advisers (and his personal lack of expertise) making the picks for Justice, Energy, Commerce, Education et al. or Hillary based on her own “expertise.”
Also, I have to compliment Ryan on his progress as a radio host and commentator. He is first-rate. Has developed a great radio voice and conveys his conservative views with complexity, some appealing self-mockery and openness to contradiction from others.
If only AM radio were interested in smart, nuanced and non-schtick conservatism. Great job.
Thanks, Quake! We really appreciate that you’re listening.