Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Goldberg v. Klavan
I’d like to say that I’ve been dying for a Goldberg/Klavan (of the Andrew variety) long-form podcast for almost three years, all about Trump. I don’t want a “debate,” despite the intentionally incendiary (or at least flammable . . . or at the very least dyspeptic) title. I’d like to hear two sides of a divide discuss their differences because I firmly believe most conservatives aren’t Trump purists or Trump haters.
Perhaps I am an anomaly. Nonetheless, for almost four years now I’ve scratched my head trying to understand one side of the conservative movement that I have always respected (and still respect). I imagine the feeling is mutual.
I admit to being unread and unlearned in the so-called “conservative movement.” I haven’t read much that could rightly be called conservative intellectual work like Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America (or the underrated Tyranny of Cliches). I do listen. I listen to this great network of podcasts (obviously, not all). I listen to National Review’s podcasts (obviously, not all). I listen to the Daily Wire’s podcasts (obviously, not all . . . can you tell I’m a lawyer yet?).
Before all that, I listened to my father and with my father to talk radio. Early, I thought “conservatism” was primarily about preserving the good of the founding, insofar as possible. This always meant things like maintaining a small government, maintaining federalism or maintaining legislative supremacy in the name of maintaining individual liberty. Or restoring these things as far as practical, because conservatives are nothing if not practical.
This, of course, leaves a big intellectual tent. And there is a long intellectual history, allowing for other things most conservatives tend to like. Some for obvious reasons, such as free markets, low taxes, and minimal regulation. Some for less obvious reasons (but, I think, still related to liberty) such as institutional stability, strong national security, and being pro-life. Of course, this is an extremely poor discussion of the issues that have motivated what we might call “conservatism” over the past thirty to forty years, yet it’ll do for my purposes.
I raise these issues merely to note that I think what I’ll call “Trump critical” conservative voices are, on balance, letting their distaste of Trump, the man, get in the way of supporting the conservative successes of the current administration. Let me define “Trump critical.” Here, I do not mean “Trump derangement.” There are former conservatives who, for my money, have decided they’d be happy and willing to abandon every principle they supposedly held because of their distaste for Trump. I also do not mean conservatives who are obsessed with Trump, such that they cannot get through a day without discussing the man. I mean conservatives like Jonah Goldberg, David French, Kevin Williamson and many others (please don’t make me try to compile a full list) who, in good faith and with good arguments, appear to believe that Trump is worse for conservatism (or the country) than he is good for conservatism (or the country).
The names I have listed are thinkers I respect and whose apparent hostility to the Trump administration, I can’t quite understand. Andrew Klavan of the Daily Wire has a different take. Of course, so do others but I think Klavan is among the most interesting and nuanced. He argues, among other things, that Trump is a man of necessity, not wholesome but needed to fight the media; that Trump should be praised for his apparent dedication to federalism and a reduction of executive power. On a different note, Klavan appears to argue that free markets (at least in terms of trade between nations) is more than it’s cracked up to be. Most of all, Trump, for all his faults, has been right where the “elite” was the wrong time and time again. Nonetheless, Klavan has not been unwilling to criticize Trump for some of his many faults. Since I’ve already labeled the other guys (likely unfairly), let us call Klavan “Trump positive.”
The point of this way too long note is as follows: I think the “Trump critical” and the “Trump positive” sides of the argument as outlined above are the conservative mainstream. I am sick and tired of hearing arguments between alleged conservatives who would vote for a resurrected Stalin over Trump and alleged conservatives who would personally abort a baby to ensure Trump remained in office. Furthermore, I am supremely tired of hearing what I have just labeled mainstream conservatives argue against the hypothetical straw-man version of their opponent. What I would like to hear is an hour-plus discussion between two of the most interesting and reliable people on either side of the “Trump divide,” as it were. Namely, Andrew Klavan and Jonah Goldberg. Make it happen.
If you agree, tweet this dumb little article to @realdailywire, @thedispatch, @jonahdispatch, and @andrewklavan to annoy them into a special episode of The Remnant or The Andrew Klavan Show or whatever forum they would like.
Published in Podcasts
Go back to about the 55 minute mark in the last GLoP Culture podcast, and it was interesting to hear JPod lay out the case for Michael Flynn being railroaded by the FBI and the Mueller prosecutors, and then hear Jonah’s reaction, which wasn’t quite “I’m not eating my spinach!” but was the quieter, sulking version of that (followed by spitting the spinach out into a napkin when JPod and Rob left the room).
You could tell he wasn’t happy to have to sit there and listen to that, or to Podhoretz then defending Bill Barr’s actions basically as “Honey Badger don’t care” as far as having his reputation ruined in Washington. Which also might explain the tag team against Kayleigh McEnany on “Fox News Sunday”, where the outrage seemed to be that she would tell the press what questions to ask the Obama people about the Flynn/Russian collusion scandal, and not that the press hadn’t asked the Obama people in 3 1/2 years about the Flynn/Russian collusion story line, and took their word at face value.
it wasn’t sulking…it wasn’t “eat my spinach”….it was “I don’t give a damn”. So, you’re seeing things. Probably imagining that Jonah was leading the Russiagate posse again, no matter how many times Jonah denies it. A year later, the Trumpers are still trying to make Jonah care about Russiagate. Its all they have.
As for his Kayleigh hate, not sure whats up with that. I’m just glad we actually have a Trump press secretary that fields questions, unlike the last joke he had in the job.
No. Jonah made the case on his own podcast for the difference between himself and the people at The Bulwark on a podcast episode at the same time he did the GLoP podcast, in noting the article there that luxuriated in the idea that Republicans and conservatives were the anti-science party (in this particular case, Jonah noted that anti-vaxxers are on the left and the right, and if the left really believed climate change was an extension-level event, they’d be all-in on the use of nuclear power).
That’s why I can still listen to him, while listening to someone like Bill Kristol is impossible. Both may want Trump to fail, but Jonah wants him to fail more because he thinks he’s corrupt and is corrupting conservatism, because he has no ideological basis for supporting it other than he thinks he can get 50.1 percent of the electoral votes that way. Kristol and others at The Bulwalk have gotten to the point they think conservatism is corrupt as an ideology, and are perfectly fine adopting progressive augments if they think that will defeat Trump.
Boy if JPod is on board, you think JG would be too. Sad.
THat is actually worse.
To not care the Flynn was railroaded is to not care about justice.
I totally agree with him. I like Bulwark when its anti-Trump, not anti-conservative.The article Bulwark posted from some clown from Common Cause (a basically lefty group) went way beyond Trump bashing and well into conservative bashing. Jonah was right to call Bulwark out for it. Jonah calls out people he agrees with so they don’t go overboard. Take notice, Trumpers!
However….what that has to do with whether or not Jonah was big on Russiagate and whether he was sulking about being asked about it, I don’t know.
There’s a big difference between The Bulwark and The Morning Dispatch, the same big difference between Boot/Kristol/Charen and Goldberg/French/Williamson.
The world is chock full of injustices, Bryan. Every one of us has things we’re fired up about and other things we agree are wrong, but are not outraged over. I don’t believe it’s possible for human beings to maintain our sanity if we are upset over everything. I think Andrew Klavan has talked about how this is a fallen world and you can’t be angry over everything that is wrong.
Let’s see. I liked Mona, usually. I read a book by Boot. It was okay.
I really liked Jonah, and I enjoyed Williamson when he wasn’t going all Our Town on flyover country. Sinclair Lewis wore that gig out, already.
Kristol and French had already built up such quantities of self-regard that I saw no point in adding anything to the piles.
And this is why I can’t listen to him. He’s in the business of assessing Trump’s motives, instead of his actions (while in office). It’s arrogance to think you know why people do what they do.
Heck, most people aren’t self-aware enough to identify their own motives!! Am I doing this good thing for someone else out of the purity of my heart or because it increases my status in my social circle? I say it doesn’t matter to me what your motives are if you’re doing good things for others. Donald Trump has maintained federalism in the worst national crisis of my lifetime, I don’t care why he did it.
JPod and even Rob were playful about the question, riffing off the previous mention of the ‘Diplomatic Immunity!” line from ‘Lethal Weapon II’. But that pause between the end of the question and Jonah’s answer was a dead air gap long enough to run an Emergency Broadcast System test into, in part because you have to be … diplomatic … in explaining your opposition to Trump without ending up in the same territory as the people at The Bulwark (i.e., Flynn lied, but Flynn was also railroaded, where the black/white argument contrasts are Flynn didn’t lie or it doesn’t matter if Flynn lied on the pro-Trump side, or on the hardcore #NeverTrump side it’s the FBI and the Mueller people did nothing wrong, or it doesn’t matter if the FBI and the Mueller people did anything wrong, because Trump is so awful he needs to be removed from office by any means necessary).
Personally, I find Klavan to be too forgiving of Trump and Goldberg to be too unforgiving. But I like both of them and enjoy both of their podcasts. I think that Jonah is pretty good about holding Democrats and Republicans to the same set of standards. I think Andrew gives President Trump a pass on things that he would have hammered a Democrat over. I would prefer that both podcasts spent less time talking about Trump.
Which is at least a bit ironic, since Jonah’s made a big deal on some of his podcasts about how so many people get *his* motives wrong.
My problem with Jonah is it’s getting so tiresomely repetitive. I get it – he doesn’t like Trump. But if he wants to do four hour-long podcasts a week bashing Trump, I’d be fine with that, as long he came up with new material. Instead he’s just rehashing the same ground he’s already gone over (and over and over and over…)
It’s boring.
Agreed on Kristol – been unreadable for, well, longer than I can remember (I’ve been ignoring him so long I no longer remember when I started ignoring him, it being so effortless to do so).
French at least still has his moments when he’s not busy castigating “Evangelicals” (and whom he means by this lasso tends to vary wildly) for not social distancing from Jerry Falwell Jr.* When he starts banging that drum, however, he’s lost me entirely.
*I can stand fully behind any call to keep away from Jerry Jr., he’s a grifter, with ample rumors and quashed stories going back a long time on this. But what French keeps failing to realize is that a lot of Evangelicals have been avoiding Junior for years already, but given that there are millions of Evangelicals in the US, there will always be some who fawn over Junior – such is the way of the world. But French latches onto this as somehow evidence that the rest are guilty too. It’s painting with too broad a brush, deeply unfair, and French really really needs to just drop it. If he really wants a church network where most move in sync with each other, he ought to consider the Catholics or Orthodox, otherwise he ought to can it.
I don’t follow any of the big-time television evangelists. Their message is for who it is for. I’m fine with that. I generally get along well with Evangelicals. “Do I know Jesus? Why, yes. In fact I was talking to him just this morning.”
French’s theological basis for not voting for Trump is a little wearing. He’s not perfect. Neither are any of the other candidates. I guess we’ll have to muddle through with what we have.
I’ve told this joke before, but it’s so apt.
My grandfather was a heavy smoker all his life. One day he was smoking in a bar after work (as one could once do) having a couple of beers before heading home. This other guy at the bar just starts hollering at my grandfather.
“Don’t you know what’s in those things?”
“What? These?” he asked, then took another drag.
“You’re poisoning yourself!”
“You don’t say…”
“Why…. those have sawdust! And alfalfa! And horse manure! And Gd knows what else!”
“Funny….” grandpa says as he takes anther drag, “you really can’t taste the alfalfa.”
At some point we’ve heard it all, and we’re either changing our minds or we’re not. But nobody is bringing any new shocking revelations here – we all know the score. Let us have our beers in peace.
Yeah, that’s what Jonah says he’s doing, but he really isn’t. When he says this, it is almost always because he want to undermine some “pro-Trump” argument to the effect that it isn’t fair to criticize Trump for something that the other side has been doing for years. For a long time I heard Jonah sneer at such arguments, calling them “whataboutism.” Lately he has constructed a more sophisticated version of this, where he argues that if we stoop to using the other side’s tactics then we are abandoning the very underpinnings of civilization itself. He recently quoted that line from A Man For All Seasons, to the effect that if you cut down the trees of the law in pursuit of the Devil, then where will you hide when the Devil turns on you?
There is a kernel of truth in that, but there is also a lot that is misleading. For example, on a recent Remnant Jonah claimed that the people talking about Tara Reid’s allegations wanted to see Biden crucified on the altar of me-tooism just as Kavanaugh was. That’s just ridiculous. I never heard anyone say they wanted that. I certainly didn’t want Biden to be “cancelled” based on those unproven allegations. What people were actually doing was pointing out the hypocrisy and double-standards applied by the left. It is one thing to say that we shouldn’t adopt the worst tactics of the left without a second thought. It is quite another thing to say that we shouldn’t even combat the left’s nasty tactics by pointing out their hypocrisy and fundamental unfairness.
If we can’t stoop to their level, and we can’t even criticize their level, then what are we all doing here? What does Jonah suggest we do about those double-standards? Just ignore them? I can’t remember who Jonah’s guest was on that episode. (Maybe Charlie Cook? I’m not sure.) But I do remember that the guest tried to correct Jonah on his fundamental mistake here, and Jonah was having none of it. According to Jonah, everyone (and I assume that means everyone who is pro-Trump) really wanted to treat Biden just as Kavanaugh had been treated. Jonah is a very clear thinker, until the subject of Trump or Trump allies comes up. Once that happens, the derangement takes over.
I’d really like to read an essay about what are the values that separate Trump-friendly/tolerating conservatives from the Trump-hating conservatives. I really struggle with why Bill Bennett, Andrew Klavan, Ralph Reed, et al. have reached such different conclusions from Jonah Goldberg, David French, et al.
In any event, it sounds like we may see the Klavan/Goldberg discussion after all. Klavan said on his show today that he invited Jonah on to discuss e latter’s comments on the WH Press Secretary. Let’s hope it happens. Klavan likes and respects Jonah so was respectful of him. Not so much with Chris Wallace. If you haven’t done so yet, listen to his opening monologue on today’s podcast. It is hilarious, as usual.
I don’t give a damn is far worse than saying you are not upset.
Not getting angry does not mean you don’t care. At least not to a healthy person.
…
That was later in the same podcast where he knocked The Bulwark for running the piece saying conservatives are anti-science. As far as the more nuanced argument goes, in the wake of Sunday’s roundtable with Chris Wallace, the question is how many trees did Kayliegh McEnany cut down by asking the White House press corps to ask Obama Administration people the same type of tough questions they’ve asked Trump and his people since Day 1?
The equivalent here, you’d assume, would be the press secretary to a future Democrat president could get just as combative as McEnany down the line if McEnany is allowed to act like that to this White House press corps. But to say that, you have to believe this was started by the Trump people, and that the press corps questioned Obama and Clinton in the same way they questioned Trump and Bush 43 (And Bush 41. And Reagan). If you don’t think there’s been an equivalence, then you’re just asking for decorum’s sake that McEnany just stands there and takes it.
Sure, but is it a matter of degree of anger or does he dispute that there was injustice?
Plus its just weird to be ho hum about Obamagate yet fired up about Kayleigh McEnany
The underlying reality is that the Obama admin spied on the Trump campaign with no real predicate. Then the apparatus persisted as part of “the resistance” into the Trump admin. It’s been clear almost from the beginning, yet the lack of curiosity and adequate questioning has been stunning. A real press wouldn’t have needed to be pulled kicking and screaming as Chris Wallace is apparently doing.
This is what makes it horrifying — or should to any patriotic American. The Obama administration used the unprecedented power of the DoJ and IC to influence the election and then sabotage the opposition candidate/government. It’s the stuff of banana republics, and if Felony had won, they’d have gotten away with it. As it is, they may mostly get away with it, with many thanks to the lapdog media.
It’s another reason to believe in a just God — they may not get their richly deserved comeuppance in this life, but we can take comfort that they’ve got some coming in the next.
I don’t think you are correct at all about JPod. The Commentary podcast calls balls and strikes surprisingly well, and JPod really goes after Trump’s critics on the left when they are nutty as usual. I haven’t listened to Mona in a long time but she definitely seemed to go full “anti-Trump”, much more that Podhoretz.
Respectfully disagree here. I think Goldberg’s positions for the most part are well thought out and defended whether I agree with them or not. I also wouldn’t say his dislike of Trump the man is even close to irrational. Trump personally went after him, tried to get him fired, etc etc..in his typical unhinged, impulsive, childish way and if that had been me I would probably be less charitable towards Trump than Jonah is.
By the same token, then, Trump is not even close to irrational when he responds to people who “personally went after him, tried to get him fired, etc. etc.”
Right?
I think this bolsters my claim. It’s personal to Jonah, making it difficult for him to be objective. He can be forgiven for holding a grudge, but that doesn’t mean his assessments should be credited as neutral (and, really, no one on our side should be neutral about opposing the Left).
My point was it is not as personal to him as it would be to me….. I think he intends to call it down the middle from his viewpoint. You and I may disagree with his viewpoint but I still give him the benefit of the doubt that he is arguing in good faith. After the 2016 election I heard him state, in person, in response to the “Never Trump” label that if he had been the deciding vote between Hillary and Trump he would have voted for Trump every time. His entire premise is that he is going to continue giving his opinion and analysis regardless of party or if it is positive or critical of the president. It’s still his opinion though, that is all.