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 40 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Victor Davis Hanson is back! He joins Rob and Steve Hayward to discuss his latest must-read, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation. Aside from the cheery discussion on civilization obliteration, the trio finds their way into digressions spanning the cameos of great men in the Old Testament to the spectacular blunders of the modern era. Is there any hope to be found in this eleventh hour? Tune in to find out.
– Audio from this week’s podcast: White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre says clips of a deteriorating Joe Biden are “cheap fake videos.”
Subscribe to The Ricochet Podcast in Apple Podcasts (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.
Forcing the Republicans to raise taxes.
Then the Republicans are forced to redistribute it.
If we didn’t have inflation, this wouldn’t happen. There is too much of it, and they don’t even measure it, right.
Great episode. I am more in Rob’s camp when it comes to Trump, but I can also see the incalculable damage the left is doing. It’s foolish to deny it. Victor Davis Hanson, like Steve Hayward, is smart AND wise, a rare combination in academia these days. I would also recommend the two-part interview Peter Robinson did with VDH on Uncommon Knowledge a few weeks ago.
It is rare that I miss an episode with Victor Davis Hanson, and I was most pleased to see that he would be the Ricochet guest. The questions were topnotch, as were the responses. Rob Long; Enjoy your well-earned cigar, and blessings for your theological studies!
I am reliably informed that if and when Peter Robinson ever returns from whatever is keeping him away week after week, James will introduce him with “And sitting in this week for Steven Hayward is Peter Robinson. . .”
“All right.”
Thank you, gentlemen, for a particularly entertaining and interesting conversation.
I especially enjoyed VDH’s use of the alternative pronunciation of ‘sycophants’ when he said “Fauci had $50B to disperse to loyal psychophants.” I’m going to say it like that from now on.
VDH is so amazing to listen to. @stevenhayward said it so well that he has six levels deeper of knowledge about seemingly everything. He is a person that I would want to spend an evening with talking about anything because he would make it fascinating. His description of the “redhead” coins was a perfect example of this. I went out and purchased his book for my Dad the same day.
The other thing is that he makes Rob more conservative.
Rob Long is precisely correct, if seven (7)+ years late, in his disquisition on the concept of political candidates and “normal.”
In January of 2017, prior to inauguration, FBI Director James Comey took President-elect Trump aside and explained to him that he had in his possession written allegations of videotaped evidence that Donald Trump had rented the Moscow hotel room where Barack and Michelle Obama had stayed, and that Trump had hired prostitutes to perform “golden showers,” peeing on the bed in which Barack and Michelle Obama had slept.
Donald Trump instantly responded the way every normal person would: “That’s crazy! That never happened. No one would ever believe it.”
At the same time, the entire Washington uniparty/bureaucracy/Democrat-Media-Complex stroked their chins thoughtfully and gravely intoned “these allegations must be taken seriously and investigated. . . . for three years.”
All of you RobLongishly squeamish Trump bashers need to get over yourselves. Trump – the multi-billionaire with the supermodel wife – is the only normal person in all of Washington, DC.
How do we end inflation? At current interest rates, “quantitative easing” is no longer an option.
That last fact imperils what I see as the only possible mechanism to end inflation, which is: open America’s vast natural gas reserves to development, and drastically lower the cost of energy, which will lower the cost of everything. Energy is everything in the economy. Energy is the economy. Steve Hayward has published charts showing that US natural gas could be sold in Europe at triple the North American market price, and it would save the Europeans money.
I need to make clear, my quote in #9 is literally what was said on the podcast about what the Democrats are doing.
I was listening to a financial podcast that I pay for. The point the guy was making was, the printed money in the last, oh say since 1996, has gone into deflationary investment. So the deflation is only in capital that lowers the return on labor. The really wealthy, get the money and do this and this makes a bubble in financial assets. Now you’ve got a problem of which way populism is going to go: Bernie Sanders, or Trump.
The Fed prints too much money. You can’t get anything on savings accounts, which is the same thing as saying, the “investment frontier” is destroyed. We do too much central planning. Then you get either form of populism or everything falls apart.
The guy on the podcast was incredible. Very advanced stuff. In his opinion, because of the things that hold the dollar up (legal system, military, size of the economy etc.), the Fed is just going buy all of the government debt and write it off. It seems preposterous to me, but what do I know?
Central planning is stupid. Printing money is stupid. inflation is stupid. We don’t measure inflation right even close to it. Social Security is nothing but ripping off another generation. Medicare is the same thing. But then we are going to survive because we are the cleanest, dirty shirt, you just rip off some of your citizens. Chinese Communist light, in other words.
Another interesting thing off of that podcast. The guy said that between 1968 and 1982 the stock market literally went down 65% in real terms.
We can’t let that happen again. LOL
Vote for Trump. He doesn’t hate you.
There was discussion about this week’s debate and maybe the DNC giving Biden the hook at the convention. I haven’t been following it closely, but I thought the DNC was going to nominate Biden before the convention over a conference call because I don’t think Ohio is going to waive their ballot deadline. I’m curious how that changes the gentlemen’s assessments. What a mess that could be where people are fighting out a replacement remotely instead of at a convention hall.