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John Podhoretz is out today, so the COMMENTARY Podcast hosts are left to navigate the great civility debate in his absence. When is it appropriate to allow politics to determine how you interact with other people? Are activists and service providers justified by allowing political disputes to spill out into the personal realm? And is any of this still about the border?
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I’m pretty sure I’ve heard Noah use the phrase “virtue signalling” many, many times. I think Noah is falling victim to upper middle class conflict aversion. Structurally speaking the U.S. is still in a very dangerous place. You can’t have one party betting its future on an engineered inflow of immigrants. That just completely destroys democracy, because in such a situation persuasion and compromise are no longer necessary.
I think Noah hasn’t accepted yet that all politics is power politics. It’s not necessarily a permanent feature of public life in America; just as our history has periods like today, so too does it have more peaceful, less tribal periods. But it still has periods like today.
The part about how democrats dismiss any Obama era immigration control abuses reminds me of something I heard about Obama and war. In twitter someone posted that Obama had far fewer wars than any other President and when this was rebuffed strenuously, the original tweeter posted “Well at least Obama didn’t WANT to go to war!”. In this case I believe many democrats would defend Obama with “Well at least Obama didn’t WANT to have baby jails!”
And Noah, Abe and Sohrab did a good job with this podcast. Usually podcasts without John Podhoretz tend to be too short. This was just right :)
On the subject of civility, I confess, a major reason I listened to this particular edition of the Commentary podcast was the promise John Podhoretz wouldn’t be there to bully his subordinates!
You have a very strange idea of what constitutes a bully.
He constantly interrupts them and cuts them off, especially if they dare to disagree with him even a little. He refers to this failing himself, sometimes, and at least makes an occasional effort to hold his tongue until they get to the end of a sentence.
@taras Sorry don’t see it that way. I think they all get along pretty well and Podhoretz keeps the podcast moving along and interesting.
On the other hand, when Noah goes off on one of his little ego trips it’s nice to have John there to set him straight. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure if I were on that podcast I’d go off on ego trips too. Keeping snot nosed 30s somethings in check is what people past 50 are for.
Remember, he’s their boss and, at least in his mind, their intellectual superior. This is not one of those podcasts which features a discussion among equals.
Yes their boss but not a bully. It is still a conversation in which Abe, Noah and Sohrab get plenty of opportunity to voice their opinions. I like Podhoretz playing devil’s advocate. Makes it interesting.