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As more (Moore?) sexual harassment revelations (the Al Franken story was breaking as we were recording this show) appear, we thought it might be good to take a breather and visit (by phone) our old friend and ardent Ricochet fan, Purdue University President Mitch Daniels. We talk about the state of higher education, what he’s doing at Purdue to combat student debt, and the place of academic institutions in society as a whole. But it’s not all academic, as we’re then joined by Washington Post political correspondent and host of PBS’s Washington Week In Review‘s Bob Costa. he gives us the skinny on everything happening in Alabama and DC.
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Lileks only? Lets rename this the Ramble :)
Lileks and Peter. Rob will be back next week.
The latest from the Babylon Bee
As far as I can tell, National Review did not object to the candidacy of Roy Moore during his primary with Luther Strange and Mo Brooks. I think they were happy to have him in the race at that time, because they thought it would split the “staunch conservative” vote between Moore and Brooks, which would result in a Luther Strange victory. This hardly seems like principled opposition.
If anyone has another explanation for why NR suddenly found him unacceptable after the runoff (and before the recent allegations), I’d like to hear it.
Ironically, I am traveling to West Lafayette, IN to see my girlfriend (a boilermaker and also a NDSU bison). And, thanks to Mitch Daniels tuition freeze, my Richocet membership didn’t have me eating ramen all the time.
As a recent alum of Purdue University, I am excited to help identify the accepted meaning of the “boilermaker” mascot. Simply put, a reporter covering sports for a rival school called Purdue a bunch of “…burly Boiler Makers”. Rumors also spread that Purdue recruited local boilermakers to play football. From a bout of fake news, the boilermaker name stuck (which is better than other potential names “a great big burly gang of corn-huskers,” “rail-splitters,” “foundry molders,” and “log-haulers”).
Love the ending of the podcast! Boiler Up!
Can you cite a piece that carried the weight of the magazine’s official stance, i.e., bylined by “The Editors”? There are many pieces on the site that range from reporting to commentary. NR is not monolithic, and does not dictate what its writers should believe.
I can’t cite any NR piece during the Alabama primary, signed or unsigned, that considered Roy Moore to be the existential threat to the GOP that he suddenly became in articles after the runoff. Why is that? Now we have:
– “The Enduring Appeal of Creepy Christianity”, by David French.
– “Roy Moore, the Religious Right, and the Stigma of Gantryism”, by Jay Nordlinger.
– “Roy Moore Endorsements vs. William F Buckley Disavowing the Birchers”, by Jonah Goldberg.
Why weren’t these articles written in August? Why didn’t NR write an unsigned editorial in August endorsing either Mo Brooks or Luther Strange? They wrote one for John McCain in the 2010 GOP Senate race in Arizona.
The interview with Mitch Daniels was disappointing, to say the least. Two conservatives interview a former Republican governor and current university president, but neither ask him a single question about the real crisis in American education – that the humanities and many of the social sciences at our colleges function primarily as left-wing seminaries and re-education camps for our future bureaucrats and state workers.
Instead we get a fine advertisement that Republicans make much better administrators of the progressive state than progressives do. Look how thrifty we are! It now costs less to study Foucault and major in anti-racism studies. Aren’t we wonderful?
Was it too much to ask old Mitch if he’s fired any “diversity counselors,” terminated any LGBT advisors or reformed the curriculum in any way to reflect the conservative values he claims to believe in? I would have liked to hear whether the ratio of administrators to faculty has been adjusted through reduction of useless advocacy staff, which has been the main growth area of college personnel costs over the last 20 years. Is President Daniels phasing out the abomination known as Affirmative Action? How are they handling Title IX? What is Purdue doing to attract more male students?
I’m not really interested in Purdue’s budget forecasts and debt loads; but as someone who is deeply concerned about the state and future of American higher education I wish that Peter Robinson and James Lileks had taken a conservative, values-laden approach in their conversation with Daniels. That’s why I listen to conservative podcasts, not to get an accountant’s lowdown on the travails of US colleges.
What a wasted opportunity! I give both interviewers an “F.”
Maybe they thought that the people of Alabama wouldn’t be stupid enough to vote for him based on his own, crazy comments. You’d think they would know better after Trump.
Perhaps the editors or the various columnists didn’t think he would win, or it wasn’t on their radar. Back in August there were other issues that occupied French and Goldberg. I’m certainly guilty of not paying attention to it, beyond listening to Mark Levin push for Brooks (I think.) At the end of the month I had a few bar-room talks with David, and neither of us brought it up.
Point is, there’s no grand overriding strategy to determine who writes what about what, and how it should go.
Ouch! Well, I think – or would like to think – I’d have brought it up if Purdue had been through Evergreen / Mizzou situations. Seeing as it hasn’t, the question would produce boilerplate about Freedom of Expression, etc., and it wouldn’t accomplish anything more than agreeing about agreeing. I was (obviously) more interested the subject of college as a means of bestowing credentials, which strikes at the liberal notion of who’s an authority, and who should be automatically accorded respect. I think that’s a fundamental divide, and perhaps has deeper implications. But I would think that, wouldn’t I. ;)
The extent to which the Democrats are promising to destroy the foundations of this country force Republicans and conservatives to move the threshold of morality that we are willing to consider. The greater the horror of the alternative, the greater the stench against which we have to consider holding our breath in order to prevent that alternative.
If the consequence of Democratic control were nothing more than slightly higher tax rates or a few more regulations, we could afford to hold our candidates to high principles.
But, when Democratic control is likely to mean the elimination of fundamental rights and the destruction of the very concept of liberty, then I have to be prepared to vote for some pretty odious representatives for the sole purpose of preventing the destruction of the republic.
The rhetoric of the Democrats is I think why we might get results such as those reported by @mikerapkoch in comment #3.
Jeff Brohm current Purdue coach is an alumni of my HS, Trinity, in Louisville. Also U of L alum. Making us proud. Yeah, shameless rah-rahing, too bad if you don’t like it.
“Character matters, but …” If that’s the formulation, than you can’t rightly claim that nobody cares more about character than you do. Because the people who choose character over other factors when voting CARE MORE. Of course, “reasonable people” can disagree over what’s most important when choosing how to vote, but at some point you’ve got to be honest about what’s actually most important to you. Especially since it appears our elections are not going to give us a break with an easy choice. Extreme candidates and situations force us to choose what’s really most important to us as individuals and we have to put our values where our mouths are. (Sorry, that was a terrible metaphor.)
Purdue was founded as a science, technology, and agricultural school, and boiling water is the apex of the first two in Indiana.
Or at least that is what I was told in Urbana.
Oksee wow-wow.
The term, “Boiler Up” comes from a combination of two things.
First, the Purdue mascot is a Boilermaker. The Boilermaker mascot came from a time when their football team was called a bunch of Boilermakers as an insult from another team. Instead of being insulted, the team took it as a testament to how rough and tough they were and adopted the name. Being an engineering school, which back then was mostly Mechanical Engineers who designed things like boilers, also added to the fit.
Second, a few decades ago they hired a football coach named Joe Tiller, from Wyoming. At the time a term that was popular with the cowboys out west was, “Cowboy Up”, which implied you should take your knocks, put on you big boy pants and get back to the roundup (or something).
Boiler Up combines the Boilermaker and Cowboy Up terms. Boiler Up is a cheer that means, you can knock us down, but we will pickup our hardhat and hammer and get back into the game. Since Purdue football has it’s face in the mud so often, it is a good term for the team.
Ha! That’s a good one. I always figured they were Boiler Makers because their mascot is a train if I recall. And old fashioned steam powered train. The boiler would be the heart of the beast that generates the steam that runs the contraption.
No James, you are once again wrong. Those dastardly NeverTrumpers at the NRO lulled the noble populist heartland into a false sense of comfort about Roy Moore by not covering the Alabama special election that by all rights would have been a cake walk for a Republican until it all started blowing up and being covered by everyone. You see that was our nefarious plan all along. Because had we just spoken out against Roy Moore then the Trump masses would have said “Hey, did you hear the editors at National Review don’t like Roy Moore because they think he is a crazy SOB?” “Well we best not vote for him then, because that is the journal of conservative punditry we respect and listen to most. Not a NeverTrump rag we have been hating on for the last two years.”
You see the reverse, reverse psychology employed?
It was a fine metaphor, and this is exactly the same thought I had when I heard that segment of the Podcast. It sounds to me like Prager has lost it. As I said during the presidential election Trump has signified the victory of moral relativism on the right. Prager used to care about that. Now it sounds like he doesn’t the fact that he can’t see that is particularly sad.
Wikipedia has a good account of why they are called Boilermakers. Basically, the team members were big, burly dudes (like men who maintain boilers for engines). So a newspaper reporting on one of their games called them Boilermakers in a headline. Name stuck.
Steve Bannon endorsed Mo Brooks in the primary, not Roy Moore. What did NR do to prevent the nomination of Moore? Nada. But now it’s Bannon’s fault and NR is the (11th hour) conscience of the GOP.
Bannon jumped on the Moore train during the run off primary when his choice was Moore or Strange, and then when the allegations came to light did Bannon take a thoughtful reflective stance? Or did he start spinning conspiracies? Even now Bannon, Trump, and the whole Talk-a-Sphere (Rush, Hannity, Prager) are bending over backwards to cast chaff and pretend like all of this is just a scam and bad dream. See no evil, hear no evil, I guess.
Strange was the guy endorsed by Trump, wasn’t he? So I guess NR’s silence on Moore could be some sort of back channel favor to get Trump’s guy elected because Establishment! or something.
Either that or a primary for an Alabama special election wasn’t exactly top-of-the-fold stuff for a publication focused on the national picture.
Take your pick.
You have a point that opportunities were missed, but, in all fairness to Peter and James, it was difficult to get a word in edgewise as Daniels barely took a breath in his lengthy monologues. Daniels is a fine man, IMHO, but it’s easy to see he’s a tough interview.
Under Woodrow Wilson we destroyed the Founder’s system where virtue and honest productivity paid. They centralized the government, started what is in effect, never ending Keynesianism and we got the Frankfurt School. This is the freight train to hell. It “worked” until NAFTA, China opening up, robots and computers destroyed this inflationist- statist system. Corruption and dependency is the best option. You are a fool if you don’t live off the government some how, because the GDP is never going back to normal. You better join one of the cartels because you will be paying them anyway. So we have social problems. You swallow opioids and pull the handle for Trump or Bernie and try to get SSI. Virtue and honest productivity is only going to pay again after the bond market collapses.
Trump is a tool to slow down socialism, the media, identity politics, Critical Theory, cultural marxism, Cloward and Piven, Alinsky etc. The GOP is too stupid to get this. No plan for fixing or repealing the ACA once Trump won. This is not Trump’s fault.
So character is not a big deal right now if you ask me. Progressivism and bad character pays, right now. It’s structural. People are behaving badly for reasons. The model of civics that so many anti-Trumpers or whatever have in their head is gone. It’s not coming back until the government runs out of money.
Mises.org is right about everything. Angelo Codevilla is right about everything. Deirdre McCloskey is right about everything. Victor Davis Hanson is right about everything.
If we adopted every single thing that Murray Rothbard wanted, how bad would it be?
I wish you guys would interview John Gilmore. He’s a GOP activist from Minnesota. He is getting on more and more media lately. Similar views to David Horowitz. Another idea is to find a “nice” (LOL) Austrian economist and ask him or her what they think of the character issues in our leaders and all of the social strife we are having.
Democracy, the God That’s Failing
Discuss
Meet my new favorite person
Meet America’s #1 anti-Keynesian
Ten whole minutes
George Will’s Libertarian Evolution
Rules For Rulers
Yaacov ben Moshe: What Progressives Really Want–They Are All Grubers
UNDERTOW OF KEYNESIANISM SUCKS ALL OUT TO SEA
Higher education today just makes you stupid, progressive politically and poor.
This is what happened to higher education: Graft seekers hijacked the job signaling function of college. Crazy ridiculous overhead and graft funded by debt and tax money. As society became more literate, the job signaling function became less valuable. So it’s falling apart. People are pissed.
They have to fracture the actual productivity stuff from the legitimate liberal arts and the stupid Melissa Click garbage and charge separate prices for it. The deflation and political problems will be brutal. Genuine liberal arts degrees are fine as long as you don’t pay too much for them.
IMO, the ideal college would have courses based on the opinions of Mises.org, Camille Paglia, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, the Reason magazine guys, Kevin Williamson, Charles C.W. Cook etc. and just skip the accreditation crap so you can charge a fair price. Then go be a welder or something.
The theme should be anti-Ruling Class, anti-progressivism, pro-knowing the world and yourself, pro-productivity.
I like the cut of your jib.
I wouldn’t say that Mo Brooks has acquitted himself well in the past week. He probably didn’t deserve much support.
My son is a Boilermaker…a junior civil engineering student.
My wife and I have been ecstatic with the stability of tuition and costs at Purdue as well as the even keeled sense of fairness and value of hard work that we feel when we visit.
We are also ecstatic that he made a 100 on a test this past week in Structural Analysis ! (shameless pride).
Here are some points about Purdue, though not elicited during the interview, which might make @Freesmith and @RufusRJones feel better about Mitch Daniels.
The Purdue website http://www.purdue.edu/purdue/about/free-speech.html says reassuringly:
” Although members of the University community are free to criticize and contest the views expressed on campus, and to criticize and contest speakers who are invited to express their views on campus, they may not obstruct or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe.”
Moreover, Pres. Daniels (doesn’t that have a great ring to it) was an early supporter of the University of Chicago Report on Freedom of Expression.
See more here: https://www.thefire.org/purdue-president-and-students-join-forces-for-free-speech-on-campus/