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A few times a year, we forgo the guests and open the floor to you, our faithful members to ask us anything. Also, some thoughts on the firing of Kevin Williamson and announcing our live podcast event in Washington DC on May 10th and 11th!
Music from this week’s episode: Bad Blood by Taylor Swift
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I’m curious. Do you have children? If so, are you currently seeking to instill in them – – or, if they’re grown, did you seek to instill in them – – the idea that “nobody goes to a baseball game to see the umpiring crew, but we expect our team to do everything it can to win, even protesting every umpire’s call they can”?
This is nor a rhetorical question, by the way. I’m genuinely curious to know the answer.
It’s nice to go back to agreement, Julia.
I would disagree with the premise that Mikescapes sets up: I suppose that Donald Trump considers himself a patriot. But, for me, if you are in an office such as the Presidency, part of yourself must be subsumed for the good of the nation. Trump never even considers it. His ego is more important than anything. And it must be constantly fed. A genuine patriot would at try to understand the position he now holds, and think about how he conducts himself.
Hi Peter,
I posted a question to you (which I’d been writing for an hour or so) a couple of minutes after you posted a clarification of your views expressed in the podcast, which I suppose was bad timing on my part. Since then, I notice you’ve re-posted your original clarification, which I flatter myself may have been a response to my post. However, I don’t think you’ve answered the point I raised, so at the risk of being importunate, could I press you for a response?
I think you’re wrong, Max.
https://www.theatlantic.com/press-releases/archive/2018/01/the-atlantic-grows-politics-policy-team-elaina-plott-hired-as-staff-writer-reihan-salam-becomes-contributing-editor/549938/
FYI, my wife runs a pilates studio. So there.
I’m pretty sure the people of the world look at us differently than they did just after World War II. One example where we led to the cheers of most of the world is the Berlin Airlift. But it’s all been downhill from there. As we’ve gone further from that era, I see more resentment of us, and even contempt.
And it’s not because of the presidents we’ve elected, it’s because of who we are or who we became. When you argue that Trump is the problem, you’re actually looking at the symptom. The underlying problem is somewhere else.
Too many people that have come here didn’t come because of American ideals, but because they wanted a job. And since they don’t want to embrace American ideals, and we don’t have the confidence in ourselves to pressure them to, that’s adding to our balkanization.
We no longer know who or what we are, or what it is that’s good about ourselves. How can we lead if we don’t know who we are?
Oh yes and world affairs is where a President must be involved and Trump is so obviously unqualified. He has listened to this point (mostly) to wiser heads, but I fear he is kicking over the traces now and feeling his oats (sorry, but horse related metaphors come easily to me) and ready to believe in and install his half baked ideas. Then, I fear we will see:
This whole post is excellent, but particularly this.
Keynesianism
Cultural Marxism
The Ruling Class more or less loves perpetual war.
That is what I wish the GOP would focus on, more or less.
https://twitter.com/NoahCRothman/status/982239892083064832
Kevin was speaking about a hypothetical future, “150 years from now,” when the culture will, we hope, have come to its senses about the great evil of abortion. And he is “a squish” on capital punishment, as he said in the Mad Dogs podcast. People who summarize his views as “Kevin wants women hanged if they’ve had an abortion” simply have not listened to his own words; they are listening to the (malicious) summary by his ideological opponents. Haven’t we learned that we should go directly to the source and see for ourselves what the person is saying?
Kevin’s comments start around five minutes in.
http://ricochet.com/podcast/mad-dogs-englishmen/throwback-thursday-everyone-still-hates-kevin-williamson/
Two children. A son, whom I coached throughout his Little League career and who is now an executive at a very well-known and competitive tech firm in San Francisco, and a daughter, who is a Dean’s List double-major at Johns Hopkins University. Thanks for the opportunity to brag on them.
Yes, both were raised with the “play to win” ethos. My daughter, a World War II buff, loves the opening scene in “Patton” when the general says, “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser.”
My son has a somewhat different attitude than I. A brief anecdote will illustrate.
I’m a Red Sox fan and I raised him well, so of course he hates the Yankees. In 2001 we watched World Series Game 7, Arizona against the Evil Empire. As the Diamondbacks’ Luis Gonzalez’ bloop single in the ninth inning brought home the winning and series-ending run, my son and I both leaped to our feet.
“We win!” my son yelled.
“They lose!” I yelled.
That’s the difference.
Judged to be bigoted against whom – blacks? Jews? Women? Gays? Muslims? Mexicans? Trannies? Immigrants? People with gaps between their front teeth?
Whites?
Odysseus, good to hear from you–the more so to hear that you’ve re-upped as a member of Ricochet. I only reposted my comment by accident, hitting the wrong darned button, and the Blue Yeti has now taken down the second copy of the post, but to reply to your question: “Malice aforethought” is the language in English common law. Some states incorporate that language into their criminal statues while some instead employ a different form of words. (We’re talking about 49 states here–every state bases its criminal law on English common law with the exception of Louisiana, which instead derives its statutes from the Napoleonic Code–so there’s a lot of variation.) But the fundamental ideas or concepts run as follows: To constitute murder–that is, to satisfy the legal definition–the taking of a human life must involve both premeditation (that’s where the “aforethought” comes in) and ill-will or evil intent (the “malice’). “Malice,” “ill-will,” “evil intent”–these can be slippery concepts, I grant, and there are reams of statutory and case law that attempt the hard legal work of making them concrete and actionable. But as I understand the legal history, state legislators and courts almost always held that the women involved in abortions were innocent of “malice,” and, hence, of murder itself.
(If there’s a legal historian among the Ricochetti who’d like to weigh in here, please do!)
I think this article by Julie Kelly in American Greatness captures the Current Year very well.
https://amgreatness.com/2018/04/06/anti-trump-appeasers-on-the-right-empower-the-mob/
The “money quote?”
Just remember, we can be offended and keep going; but as Rush Limbaugh brilliantly said yesterday, “The Left isn’t offended by what the Right says; the Left is enraged that the Right has the ability to say anything at all.”
It’s bad strategy to attack continually your 80% allies. You may gain your first ever appearance on “Meet the Press” or a regular spot on an MSNBC panel, but sooner or later appeasement fails and the Leftist wolf is at your throat.
Thanks for your response, Peter, and I have to say that I’m glad to be back — indeed have been drawn back — to conversations on Ricochet after failing to find sufficient intellectual stimulation elsewhere.
OK, so to the point in hand. You accept the “aforethought” part, that’s clear; but as to “malice”, you refer to precedent which you say is against me. Fair enough. I’m making a note to look into this, and maybe at some future point I’ll be able to come back with some argumentation to move you from where you stand.
Glad of the conversation.
Me too. And once again, welcome back.
So we’re not talking about fealty to ideals and principles, because those can belong to one side or the other depending on the era. We’re not even talking about party, because the party on the right can be too GOPe-swampy to be trusted. We’re talking about fealty to a man.
Right? The whole umpire / balls ‘n’ strikes bit is about judging Trump on his individual actions, based on what one believes. This is the position between “I am opposed to Trump and everything he does” and “I support Trump and everything he does.”
But if there’s only two sides, pick one then the intellectual parameters shrink, debate is discouraged, and conservative thought is defined by the latest thing Trump said. No thanks.
And I didn’t mention the Derbyshire point for personal reasons, I guess – my brain just says NEXT whenever the subject of “NR is full of cucks who fired Derb just for saying blacks are stupid and should be avoided whenever possible.” Which, I know, is not what you said. If people want to talk about it, fine; Taki’s always open for business.
Yeah, that one.
I am not going around and around on this. I just had to write this, because of the above statement. I resent it. Reagan was President some thirty years after the Berlin airlift, and that is not going downhill. People loved us when he was President.
If you want a good-natured debate, that is one thing. But I can’t abide when someone tries to read the minds of a whole bunch of people. People who cry at induction ceremonies are not doing it because they just want a job. And, if you say that this is a minority, I say that you have no way of knowing this, and it is a poor excuse for slandering those who risk a great deal by settling here.
And that last part is just a statement of a man who has grown so cynical that he just doesn’t feel like trying to come to grips with what is happening to us, and trying to fix it.
We obviously have social problems due to both legal and illegal immigration, that’s all. There are assimilation problems everywhere. Then throw in the tech worker H1B visa issues.
Part of what is going on is the dollar hegemony makes us the cleanest dirty shirt on the planet. Are we really a benevolent superpower on net? I’m not smart enough to figure that out for real.
God, the Derbyshire article was a tough read.
If he had just said: Blacks giving “The Talk” to their kids is counterproductive; all it does, really, is perpetuate and compound the tension between the races. “And after all,” he could have added,”couldn’t Whites, if they so chose, enumerate a similar set of grievances?”
But he had to go and list them.
And some day, when I am older and wiser, I may be able to articulate why, exactly, that made all the difference (when theoretically — empirically — it really shouldn’t have).
Why don’t you invite Dr. Judith Wax of the University of Pennsylvania onto the podcast? She may have some interesting experiences to recount about being judged bigoted against blacks.
Yeah, that one.
And you know what? A lot of people who should have been on Professor Wax’s side, such as deans, fellow law professors and other faculty, decided that their principles mandated that they run her out of the school, even though those folks knew in their hearts that one wayward word or misjudged paper of theirs could result in their own auto-da-fe.
Yes, but I can certainly envision some cases of multiple abortions where malice aforethought is present.
That’s likely the case with many, perhaps most, women. But can you not envision some cases where there aren’t “tragic circumstances” involved, but carelessness and callousness? I can. I seem to remember reading a few years ago about a woman who aborted her baby because pregnancy interfered with her vacation plans.
I agree, and because of that pro-life leaders and politicians should stick to the position you articulate. But I don’t see why it can’t be discussed by writers and others. If Peter Singer can advocate infanticide and is not ostracized by his colleagues, it ought to be an allowable subject to ponder, argue through, and write about.
I was thinking of Lena Dunham and her statement that though she hadn’t had an abortion, she wished she had. I can imagine her deciding to act upon that wish, and get pregnant for the express purpose of having an abortion (especially if she’s fading from public view). I don’t think that’s necessarily a far-fetched scenario — wouldn’t that be malice aforethought? I know it’s a hypothetical, but I’m sad to say that I can see it happening.
You’re probably right, my friend. We have to watch what we say when it comes to race.
Dr. Wax would probably have been wiser as well had she just said that affirmative action is bad not because it violates traditional, time-honored American principles (which it does), but because it hurts blacks. By showing that all she really was concerned about was black success, she would have been on somewhat safer footing.
But no, she had to go and list things, like she’s never “seen a black graduate student in the top quarter of the class and rarely, rarely in the top half” of any of her courses.
Wasn’t very prudent.
Yes, it’s better for true conservatives to stay out of arguments where blacks are concerned. After all, what exactly are we going to accomplish in the boxing ring of racial policy debates when we insist on donning ballet slippers, a tutu and fixing our Waterford crystal jaw in place before we part the ropes and climb in to the squared circle?
[See “Saying the Unsayable” by Mark Bauerlein in the April 2, 2018 edition of The Weekly Standard.]
Peter, just want to slip in here and thank you for answering my question about your experience as a speechwriter and would you do it again. Loved your response.
Did the thought ever occur that one may be false while the other is true?
Why must some people on the right continue to defend bigotry? It makes us all look bad. That does not seem to trouble some, I understand.
It was a great time. But the age of Reagan is over. And it’s questionable that we were loved all that much. What made Reagan effective in foreign policy was that he was feared. Not loved, not respected.
I probably shouldn’t have brought up immigration, simply because it mires my point. So leave out immigration. My statement still stands. This country is divided. We no longer know who or what we are.
We can’t lead under those circumstances.
I am sorry, but, as someone who usually agrees with you and values your input, I totally disagree with this. Peter Singer should be ostracized for advocating such barbaric notions. Such thoughts are not respectable. They are the opposite of what God thinks His children are capable of. When we start letting the likes of Peter Singer be the standard by which we judge what can and cannot be talked about, we are indeed Defining Deviancy Down.
“There you go again”, to quote the great man. You are reading people’s minds. I would counter that we were respected, perhaps not by Leftist regimes – that can’t respect anyone who is not of a certain kind of philosophy – but by people who wish to escape their miserable existence and spend their remaining years in freedom, and with dignity. I choose to believe that Reagan was respected, again not by the Castro types but by good people.
But you did write about immigration. You can’t say leave it aside. And saying the country is divided sounds too much like Prager’s constant silliness about a Civil War. Yes, our votes are divided, but that does not mean we do not know we are. Even if some can’t articulate it, they know, as The Gipper said, that “We Are Americans”.
I am sorry, Al. You are a good guy, but I don’t you’ve proved your point. As I say, agree to disagree.
Have a good night.