Power Line #177

FDR—Conservative Hero?, and Other Reader Questions

1 COMMENTS
Hosted by Steve Hayward
With guest Lucretia

Conrad Black argued this week that Franklin Roosevelt deserves to be regarded as a conservative champion, or at least that conservatives should steal him away from Democrats. FDR himself argued that Democrats should steal Lincoln from Republicans, so why not return the favor? Steve takes up this exotic perspective with Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery, “Lucretia,” along with reader questions in this largely corornavirus-free episode, because aren’t we getting tired of COVID-19 24/7?

Steve and Lucretia also take a stab at answering several reader questions about presidential power, the virtues and virtues of Trump, Joe Biden’s odds of making it to election day in November (in two words—not good), how the “right to privacy” should be understood constitutionally, why Steve took up his peculiar new hobby of trainspotting, and what are some of our favorite things to cook on the grill. All in all, a nice respite from martial law.

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Power Line #171

Wot Happened? Who Knows the Thing?

6 COMMENTS
Hosted by John Hinderaker, Steve Hayward
With guest Lucretia

How in the heck did Joe Biden’s mummified campaign come back to life? Or is it just back to zombie status—still dead, but up and moving and menacing the living? That’s the main subject of this week’s fast-paced, high energy episode featuring Power Line’s own John Hinderaker and listener favorite “Lucretia.” (Our conclusion is that Democrats decided they are more the party of creeping socialism than Bernie socialism, in which case it is better to have an actual creep as the nominee.) We also break down Sen. Chuck Schumer’s startling threat to the Supreme Court, which is even worse than it sounded when put in a larger context, and we also kick around the coronavirus and its potential political effects. We manage to sneak in some of our favorite Joe Bidenisms along the way, and a few “lyin’ dog-faced pony soldier” insults.

Exit bumper music this week is a longer excerpt of our opening bumper music that people occasional ask me about, which is “Buster,” by moe.

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Power Line #169

Berniemania: The Coronavirus of the Democratic Party

2 COMMENTS
Hosted by Steve Hayward
With guest Lucretia

This week’s episode, featuring listener favorite Lucretia, Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery, was taped while the Nevada caucuses were in process, but now we know that Bernie Sanders has crushed it. He’s the Coronavirus of the Democratic Party—a long latency period that has now broken out into an unstoppable epidemic. It’s over: the only question now is who Sanders will pick as his running mate. Watch the next debate, to see who attacks Sanders and who goes easy on him hoping to be his Veep pick.

Steve and Lucretia set aside their shameless flirting long enough to ponder the prospects that Bernie Sanders might be within two stents length of the White House, which Steve astoundingly finds un-troubling for some strange and recondite reasons. He’s not even that worried if Bernie wins! You’ll have to listen to see how Lucretia checks him on this madness.

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Power Line #163

Martin Luther King Jr., Yesterday and Today

3 COMMENTS
Hosted by Steve Hayward
With guest Lucretia
Peter Myers

The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is always a good occasion to ponder his legacy, which shifts with the lengthening of history and the dramatic changes in the racial politics of our moment. And who better to comment than “Lucretia,” Power Line’s international woman of mystery, along with special guest Peter C. Myers, who is professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire.

We do our best to cheer Peter up over the Packers loss to the 49ers yesterday, chiefly by drawing on his deep knowledge of civil rights and race relations. He is the author of Frederick Douglass: Race and the Rebirth of American Liberalism—simply one of the finest books around on Douglass’s thought—as well as some terrific essays on Martin Luther King Jr, including one we talk about in our conversation here, “The Limits and Dangers of Civil Disobedience: The Case of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” and a related essay, “From Natural Rights to Human Rights—and Beyond.” (Also, for listeners interested in political philosophy, don’t miss Peter’s earlier book, Our Only Star and Compass: Locke and the Struggle for Political Rationality.)

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Power Line #159

Come Again? The “1619 Project” Divides the Left?!

4 COMMENTS
Hosted by Steve Hayward
With guest Lucretia

There are several new wrinkles in the saga of the New York Times‘s egregious and ideological “1619 Project,” which can only mean one thing: time for another episode with “Lucretia,” Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery, and scourge of all things politically correct.

New developments in the story include a stinging letter to the editor of the New York Times magazine from five eminent American historians who are chiefly of a liberal bent themselves, such as Sean Wilentz, James Oakes, and Gordon Wood. For the record, I’m not a huge fan of Gordon Wood (explaining why in this long essay from a while ago) or Wilentz, but it is significant that these historians have decided to take such a public stand. I can only imagine that many historians and political scientists of a liberal bent likely agree with them, but like dissenters from the climate “consensus,” they are afraid to say so publicly for fear of being branded as a privileged white racist. The response of the Times editor is pretty weak, but provides occasion for us to correct the slanders directed at Lincoln from this woeful enterprise.

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Power Line #156

Breaking Down the 1619 Project, Part 5

3 COMMENTS
Hosted by Steve Hayward
With guest Lucretia

A few days late because of the holiday week, “Lucretia,” Power Line’s international woman of mystery, joins Steve Hayward once again to resume their series critiquing the “1619 Project,” this time taking up the examples of Alexander Stephens, Booker T. Washington, and W.E. B DuBois, among other thinkers, as well as noting the peculiar objections to the 1619 Project coming from . . . the World Socialists?!? This is going to take a while to unravel. We also have a few topical rants at the beginning about the truly important subjects—chicken sandwiches, cheeseburgers, milkshakes, and french fries.

Exit bumper music this week is Louis Armstrong’s rendition of “Go Down, Moses,” which rather fits the theme of this series.

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Power Line #150

Impeach This! With John Yoo and “Lucretia”

4 COMMENTS
Hosted by Steve Hayward
With guests John Yoo & Lucretia

What do you get when you combine “Lucretia,” Power Line’s ever popular international woman of mystery, with John Yoo, whose only mystery is his fondness for McDonalds? You get an episode that talks about fake burgers, the evils of soy, the importance of cooking with fat, fast cars, and even Starsky & Hutch.

Oh, we also go into the impeachment circus currently unfolding in Washington, about which John has written recently to the jeers of lightweights everywhere. We didn’t touch much on the series Lucretia and I have been rolling out about the “1619 Project,” but I want to give one quick update: our guest from the show in Episode 146, Lucas Morel of Washington and Lee University, has published over at the American Mind his fine article on the subject, “America Was Not Founded on White Supremacy.” Give it a look. (And go back and listen in to that episode if you missed it.) Meanwhile, listen in now to find out whether the Impossible Burger should be ranked higher or lower than a Nothing Burger.

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Power Line #146

Breaking Down the 1619 Project, Pt. 4, with Lucas Morel

3 COMMENTS
Hosted by Steve Hayward
With guest Lucretia
Lucas Morel

This week “Lucretia,” Power Line’s international woman of mystery, gets promoted to co-host as she and Steve Hayward welcome Lucas Morel to our special series on the 1619 Project. Morel is professor of politics and head of the politics department at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, where he teaches and writes on racial issues in American politics and history. Among other things, Prof. Morel is one of the nation’s leading scholars of Ralph Ellison.

He has a long article on the 1619 Project forthcoming at the Claremont Institute’s American Mind, and we decided to scoop our friends at Claremont by talking through some of the key issues with Lucas ahead of time. Finally, we get around to taking up the important thought of Frederick Douglass, who so far has been conspicuously missing from the 1619 Project. It is also a nice break for Steve to have Lucretia beating up on someone else for a change!

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Power Line #144

“Guilt Is The Greatest Form of Self-Indulgence”—Breaking Down the 1619 Project, Part 3

3 COMMENTS
Hosted by Steve Hayward
With guest Lucretia

“Lucretia,” Power Line’s international woman of mystery, is back with Steve again this week with the third installment in our special series confronting the pernicious New York Times “1619 Project,” this time taking on the argument that slavery is the central factor in the rise of modern industrial capitalism—a proposal so laughable that we actually spend a lot of our time talking about entirely tangential subjects. (For listeners interested in a serious compilation of the defects of the “slavery=capitalism” line, see Bradley Hansen’s copious blog entry on the issue.)

In addition to the continuing vivisection of the 1619 Project, Steve and Lucretia spend time discussing Steve’s recent LawLiberty essay, “How to Get Through the ‘Nationalism’ Minefield,” which Steve feared the exacting Lucretia might find suspect for its oblique flirtation with historicism. But no! All was sweetness and light, which means Lucretia is mellowing about Steve’s longstanding sentimental weaknesses. But as usual Lucretia gets in the best line of the episode: “Guilt is the greatest form of self-indulgence.” It ought to be the motto of the New York Times editorial page.

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Power Line #142

Special Edition: Breaking Down the “1619 Project,” Part 2

5 COMMENTS
Hosted by Steve Hayward
With guest Lucretia

We have a new theory about the mainstream media: they have decided to work without editors any more. How else to explain how the Washington Post slandered J.D. Vance with the claim that he decried the “falling white birth rate” (he said no such thing, and the Post had to correct the story), or MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell going to air with a completely uncorroborated story about Trump’s supposed Russian financial connections? Or how about MSNBC’s Chris Hayes (perhaps the least bug-eyed anchor in their stable of Unstables), who thought it profound to say that “if the electoral college wasn’t in the Constitution, it would be unconstitutional,” though perhaps MSNBC just goofed and aired his Saturday Night Live audition tape for a new “deep thoughts” sketch.

But the top honor will have to go to the Washington Post for publishing what may be the dumbest article ever written in the English language: Eve Fairbanks’s August 29 article “The Reasonable Rebels.” The thesis of the article can be stated plainly: so-called “reasonable conservatives” like Ben Shapiro are just like the Confederate defenders of slavery, because they use the exact same words and arguments—words like “facts,” “reason,” “logic,” even “truth.” No really, it is actually that dumb. You can feel your brain cells dying just getting through it, and you have to wonder why the Post has decided to abandon adult supervision.

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Power Line #140

Special Edition: Breaking Down the “1619 Project,” Part 1

2 COMMENTS
Hosted by Steve Hayward
With guest Lucretia

As promised in our last episode, we return early this week with the first in a series of bonus episodes devoted to a deep dive into the New York Times‘s agitprop “1619 Project” that seeks to place slavery and racism as the central fact of the American story. In this first installment, Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery, “Lucretia” (who happens to teach political philosophy and American government . . . somewhere), joins Steve Hayward in examining and explaining some of the myths about the Founding, and in particular the common claim that the Declaration of Independence did not mean to include blacks in its famous phrase “All men are created equal.”

From there Steve and Lucretia go on to discuss the significance of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, and debunk a number of myths about the Constitution, such as why the famous “3/5ths Clause” did not mean that blacks were only three-fifths of a human being (quite the opposite in fact), how the Commerce Clause and the importation clause were substantial if complete victories for the anti-slavery clause, the deeper story behind the fugitive slave clause, among other things. Only by a gross or intentional distortion of history can someone claim that the purpose of the Constitution was to secure and promote slavery.

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Power Line #139

A Double-Header: The 1619 Project, and Our Rotten Universities

8 COMMENTS
Hosted by John Hinderaker, Steve Hayward
With guests John Yoo & Lucretia

This special double-header-end-of-summer Power Line Show features Steve Hayward and Power Line co-founder John Hinderaker venting about the “1619 Project” along with “Lucretia,” Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery. The “1619 Project” is so badly flawed that in the coming weeks we’re going to produce a series of special shows going point-by-point through its poisonous defects, and explaining why the color-blind principles of the old civil rights movement, derived from the Declaration of Independence, are the best hope for unifying the American people.

And that’s just the warm-up act. The second half of today’s show features Steve and John Yoo in a recent joint appearance on the topic of the rot in our universities today. If this combo doesn’t help you milk the soft power dividend in these final dog days of summer, then nothing will.

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Power Line #136

From Ukraine to the Border, with Power Line’s Female All-Stars

3 COMMENTS
Hosted by Steve Hayward
With guests Kelly Jane Torrance & Lucretia

By popular demand from listeners, this special edition of the Power Line Show features both Kelly Jane Torrance of the Washington Examiner and “Lucretia,” Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery. Kelly Jane is just back from serving as an official election watcher over in Ukraine, and lays out a delightful political scene that does Donald Trump one better in the TV entertainment division. Plus, as Kelly Jane keeps close tabs on Iranian affairs, we go over what’s going on with Iran’s repeated provocations in the Gulf.

Then we turn the mic over to “Lucretia” for some serial rants about the Supreme Court and its unusual mid-summer ruling last week on Trump’s border wall funding, the Mueller investigation and hearing, raising a new dog, and Steve Hayward’s current drinking and grilling habits (which you can see below). Also, we let down the listener who wrote in thinking he had figured out Lucretia’s identity, but alas no, because our Lucretia would never consent to appear on Conversations with Kristol, which is where our listener thought he had picked up a clue.

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Power Line #132

Five Things to Know About the Declaration This July 4, with “Lucretia”

5 COMMENTS
Hosted by Steve Hayward
With guest Lucretia

By popular demand from listeners, we’re bringing back “Lucretia,” Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery, on this special edition for the July 4 holiday. Many listeners asked us to offer up mini-tutorials on various aspects of the American Founding and political thought in general, so we break down the Declaration of Independence, drawing notice to five key features—including how some of the specific indictments against King George III remain highly relevant to our current moment.

We also have some fun smacking around AOC, Nike, and the liberal freakout over tanks on the Washington Mall, and conclude with some observations on appropriate food and wine for the obligatory July 4 barbecue.

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Power Line #131

A Full-Tilt Rant-Fest with “Lucretia”

8 COMMENTS
Hosted by Steve Hayward
With guest Lucretia

You could be forgiven for thinking this week’s Democratic debates were straight out of an old Monty Python sketch, which prompted Steve Hayward to ring up Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery, “Lucretia,” for a full-tilt boogie rant-fest about what ought to be the two main “Freeport questions” that could unravel the Democratic Party between now and election day next year. Are we really going to bring back busing? And how many genders are there? Maybe we can have a new federal commission to answer that question, alongside the proposed federal commission to study reparations.

But wait! There’s more! Steve shares a little bit of inside info on foreign policy from a key Trump insider, and we get in some licks about traffic, large trucks, California’s ongoing follies, raising a “German” German shepherd, and what’s on the grill for July 4.

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Power Line #113

The Row Over Rao, and CPAC Wrap-Up

4 COMMENTS
Hosted by Steve Hayward
With guest Lucretia

In this special double-episode, Steve Hayward takes the occasion of the last-minute hesitation over the nomination of Neomi Rao for the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to talk once again with “Lucretia,” Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery, about the issue of “substantive due process” that apparently worried a couple of Republican senators, and then we bring on our own John Hinderaker for a few observations about CPAC, and especially President Trump’s blockbuster speech. The show ends with Steve starting the execution of our “Cover of the Rolling Stone” strategy to try to attract the great Black Rifle Coffee company as a show sponsor!

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Power Line #109

Lucretia, Unplugged

2 COMMENTS
Hosted by Steve Hayward
With guest Lucretia

Readers have been asking when we’ll have back Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery, “Lucretia,” and your wish is our command. “Lucretia” joins us again with some choice rants about the whole Ralph Northam affair and the Democrat’s “Calhoun moment” on abortion, the invincible ignorance of the new socialists like AOC, and the Wall. But then we turn to the really important subjects: wine, whisky, handguns, and coffee. (Aren’t those the basic building blocks of the Good Life? Socrates surely would have been an NRA member had the NRA been around back then. But who needs the NRA when you have Sparta?)

In keeping with this week’s wide-ranging and indulgent theme, the first bumper is “Why Not?” by Gentle Giant, and the closeout bumper music fits this show perfectly—”Another Brick in the Wall” from Pink Floyd.

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Power Line #89

#NotMeToo!

11 COMMENTS
Hosted by Steve Hayward
With guests Julie Kelly & Lucretia

With the Kavanaugh-Ford sexual assault controversy reaching a climax in the next few days, Steve Hayward decided to check in with “Lucretia,” Power Line’s “International Woman of Mystery,” and Julie Kelly, frequent contributor to American Greatness and other sites, to see what they make of the situation. To say they are “not impressed” with Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh would be a Cat 5 understatement. Hoo-boy are they unimpressed! Just listen and you’ll see what we mean.

New opening bumper music this week: the studio version of “Mexico” by moe., and ending with Helen Reddy’s most expected song for this particular moment.

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Power Line #87

She’s Ba-aack! “Lucretia” on Cyber-Security

5 COMMENTS
Hosted by Steve Hayward
With guest Lucretia

Between the incessant controversy about Russia hacking our elections, and the recent recommendation of several U.S. science academies that we return to paper ballots, we thought it was high time to devote an episode to cyber-security issues. And we have just the person for the topic: “Lucretia,” Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery. In addition to being an expert on the Constitution, “Lucretia” also runs a cyber-security program at a major university. In addition to talking about the national security angles of cyber-security, Lucretia also walks us through basic risks each of us face as regular uses of the internet. (Hint: You really may want to think about covering up your laptop camera!)

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Power Line #80

The 14th Amendment at 150, Part 2

2 COMMENTS
Hosted by Steve Hayward
With guest Lucretia

Steve Hayward and his pseudonymous mystery guest “Lucretia” return for the second half of their conversation about the meaning and interpretation of the 14th Amendment. Building on last week’s analysis of the “equal protection clause,” this episode goes on to the other three important clauses in Section 1—the “citizenship clause,” the “privileges and immunities clause,” and the “due process clause.” Steve and “Lucretia” devote special attention to the controversy over “birthright citizenship,” which is freshly back in the news right now.

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