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This week, we’re fortunate to be able to access the deep mind of one of the country’s great thinkers and writers, George Will on the occasion of his new book, The Conservative Sensibility. We conduct a long and wide-ranging conversation with him covering everything from the meaning of conservatism, President powers, progressive regulation, and much more. Take our advice: pour yourself a tall, cool drink, put on the earbuds and take this one in. Also, next week is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Was it a good use of government spending or a boondoggle? We debate. And finally, James talks a bit about the passing of a great American: Ralph J. Lileks.
Music from this week’s show: Keep Me In Your Heart by Warren Zevon
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There is nothing clear about it. Trump said he knew him for 15 years. He also had a reason for throwing him out of Mar o lago. They all knew amongst that set in New York. They all did nothing about it and many participated. And from this set of lecherous creeps we managed to get 2 Presidents.
I’m tired of all the parsing and spinning. I also don’t believe Trump is innocent or any kind of hero. Did he go to that island or any of Epstein’s child rape parties? I don’t know. But I think he probably did. Legally they won’t get him and his supporters will defend him no matter what. But once again I find him disgusting and wish I was not in a position to have to vote for him given the alternative.
Where is my evidence? There is a mountain of evidence that Trump has behaved like a cad his entire life.
James,
I’m so sorry your dad is gone from this earth. May his memory be a blessing to you and all who knew him.
Your tribute was so moving, I’m working in the garden listening to this and had to stop. I’m crying so hard for a man I only knew from your podcasts.
He is everyman, the person we all aspire to be. I’m sad that he no longer graces us. The good news is his legacy of love, patriotism, and influence continues so long as we hold his ideals forward like Liberty’s torch.
Peace and comfort to you all as you adjust to his absence.
An interesting and entertaining podcast as always. Near the end of the program, the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing and was discussed. Let me use this occasion to urge Ricochet members to seek out the excellent documentary “Apollo 11”. This came out in 2019 but did not get widespread distribution; it never was shown at our local cineplex as far as I know. We had the chance to see it at the library in a nearby town last evening and was well worth the 25 mile drive to see it. The film was made entirely with archival footage and some simple animations to illustrate the path of the spacecraft. There was no narration except for voices of people describing events as they happened back in July of 1969. It was poignant for me because it brought back that hot summer night when I was 12 years old and was allowed to stay up late to watch Neil Armstrong step into history. My wife said afterward that it made her proud to be an American. Me too.
IQ is by definition a normal distribution with mean=median=100, so 50% are below 100.000 and 50% are above 100.000;
Having a higher IQ is no guarantee of voting “correctly”. Universities are full of people with high IQs that vote incorrectly. In fact, there is nothing more dangerous that someone who thinks they know more than they really do. The people on the lesser side of the distribution have a better sense of their depth of knowledge and understand they are using their gut to decide. I like their gut instincts over a much of mis-informed intellectuals.
In Trump’s long, long record with women over the last 50 years, there is no indication of a fondness for jailbait. On the other hand, there are a great many people who wish to believe the worst of him, regardless of the evidence.
I speculate, when Epstein was 14 years old himself, he was a pimply loser nerd, and the 14-year-old girls wouldn’t give him the time of day. So he imprinted on them, and continues to chase them; instead of pursuing supermodels, like a sensible billionaire.
You understand, don’t you, that you just described 3/4 of the teenage boys in North America? Maybe 4/5ths of them. One’s teen years, as a rule, are marked by insecurity, confusion and feeling like a loser.
John Hughes movies and movies like Superbad, Mean Girls, and shows like Freaks & Geeks and others have successfully tapped into this near-universal feeling of alienation and “loserdom.”
Maybe you didn’t experience these feelings (not everyone does; 3/4 is not everyone) but I certainly did. And most of my friends and relatives did. But none of us (so far as I know) have turned into sexual predators.
So I’m not sure why your speculation about the root cause of Epstein’s pathology would include this near-universal sense of teen inadequacy.
Max, did you listen to the podcast? Or read my comment–all of it, and not just the part you cherry-picked here? I was defending the president, making just the point you make here. Attempting to make it look as though I was attacking Trump instead is not cool.
There are infinite gradations of pimply loser nerddom.
I miss my father who passed in 2016 at the age of 90, and who served in the Navy in the Second World War.
I take every chance I can to visit my 88 year old sainted mom.
I’m going to defend Trump on this one. For those that don’t know, I find him a sub-par President, but I think this Epstein story has been common knowledge amongst the MSM for many years. Fortunately for these abused girls the story eventually had a Trump/Acosta hook and burst out after it had been deliberately buried to protect Slick Willie and creeps like Sen. Menendez of NJ. I know Mickey Kaus has been writing about this off and on for many years. Trump did the right thing and protected one of his employees that was hit on at Mar-a-Lago, which is more than the average person in Epstein’s circles did. It also turns out Epstein was a big Democrat donor – who would have guessed?
So you’re speculating that Epstein did not merely experience the usual insecurities and “feeling like a loser” moments that beset most teens (both male and female), your theory is that he was a de facto Elephant Man?
James,
A beautifully written and spoken tribute to your father. To Ralph James Lileks – Memory Eternal!
It’s my belief that George Will has been very successful in helping many centrists and non-leftists to realize that they are also not conservatives. I include myself in that group. To quote the man himself, “you can’t despise the government and love your country.” This is small-minded and incomplete. He also describes politics as a, “a noble profession.” I felt my eyes roll to the back of my head. Sheesh. Politics and government are necessary but certainly not noble. Count me out of the soon to be extinguished, “conservative movement.”
James, I always appreciate your journalistic story telling. Your words immediately paint a picture and get my attention. So as you began your description of your Dad’s athletic shoes and the flag controversy I could hear the office banter and see the “N” (I simultaneously thought of “New Balance” and the Nebraska football helmet with the old joke that it stands for “Nowledge”). I then saw an old guy on a Harley with a flag waving behind him. I wondered if it was a miniature or a “regular” sized flag.
And then you mentioned the flag draped coffin and suddenly a simple, funny vignette was sad and painful. As I was on the elliptical at the time of the listening, I felt sadness mixed with wetness, sweat and tears. Your voice didn’t waver but I heard loudly a deep love and respect. I thank you for letting us hear of your loss and to let us know a little of this quietly (maybe not so quiet if he’s on a Harley) honorable man. I appreciate Rob and Peter’s silence.
I can still hear that final slight break in your voice.
There’s a scene in the “Right Stuff” where Chuck Yeager’s NF-104 has spun out of control and he has ejected from a high altitude. Fellow Airmen rush out in a jeep searching for Yeager and (I assume) thinking “there’s no way”. And out of the smoke a figure slowly appears.
One asks “Is that a man?”
The other exclaims “You bet it is!”.
Your Dad was such a man. And most important, clearly a loved man. I pray God’s peace and comfort for you and your family.
I looked up “you can’t despise the government and love your country” online, and it came back as by … Bill Clinton!
Did George Will really say something so stupid?
And did he really say politics is a “noble profession”? That’s as foolish as saying soldiering is a noble profession, lumping together Navy Seals and German Einsatzgruppen.
That something can be a noble profession— in the right hands — doesn’t make it noble by definition.
I am so glad other people that are likely so much smarter than me are questioning Will’s statements. Maybe it makes sense, but I’m not sure.
His Reason Magazine interview from a a few years ago is just epic, but I’m not sure it dovetails with how he talks right now. It’s a really good explanation of how government got so centralized.
I think Ann Coulter and Michael Caputo have really good analysis of Epstein. YouTube’s and podcasts.
@peterrobinson :
FWIW: My impression of your comments was similar to that of Max’, so I went back and listened to your comments:
After a re-listen, I agree that you were defending Present Trump. The bolded comment, however, had left me with a different impression on the first listen.
Just a few points:
Peter – It’s not “incompetence” on the part of journalists or editors (or TV news producers and anchors) not to pursue the Bill Clinton aspect of the Jeffrey Epstein story. It’s a precise political agenda to take down Trump and, if possible, make inroads in the Senate. My prognostication is that Biden will continue to be attacked and watch his lead erode and that Kamala Harris will be the nominee because she’s radical enough for the growing socialist wing of the party but can dodge and weave and tap-dance around (or simply lie through her teeth about) more extreme leftist policy positions much better than the other clowns that still seem to keep emerging from the Democrat Party clown car. And the big money, even many on Wall Street, will see Harris as someone who can be bought and as their chance to finally get a woman in the White House and make up for the missteps and miscalculations and outright regal arrogance of Hillary Clinton.
As much as I admire George Will as an intellectual and an incredibly good writer, he is a creature of Washington, D.C. and has spent entirely too much time in the Beltway, and thus tends to focus his thinking on how to tinker with the massive federal leviathan and the three branches to get it working better and lurching in a more fiscally responsible and more conservative direction. And in his criticism, he tends to focus more on the growth of the Executive Branch and his notion of the imperial presidency and less on a Democrat-run House of Representatives that won’t even support or defend the laws that have already been passed and are actually supporting ways to actually subvert them.
In the meantime, George is very quite about what’s happening in the rest of the country outside his comfortable D.C. bubble, where there is a massive culture war occurring that is causing potentially irreparable damage to cities, communities, families, children, the academy, the entire school system whether public or parochial that charter schools will not fix.
His comments about appealing to young people strike me as starkly naive…as though a simple front-of-the-classroom lecture or a simple PowerPoint presentation will somehow get those 16-to-35 years old off the socialist track and embracing free-market capitalism and limited government. To paraphrase Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, “There are some neighborhoods, Mr. Will, you may want to avoid with that tutorial.” In fact, there are probably only one or two universities on the West Coast that would let George Will speak without substantial riot police presence.
How many Antifa chapters are there in the United States? How many throughout the MSM will continue to quietly support them? There is a growing network of more radical anarchists hell bent on taking down basic government functions. If they can find sympathetic politicians (the mayor of Portland and others) or members of the media or well-placed programmers at Google, Facebook and YouTube they will be grateful for the assistance. And all the tinkering with making Washington, D.C. behave more conservatively won’t mean much when cities across the country start to burn.
It’s of course, disturbing that this anarchist attempted to attack ICE agents. What’s also disturbing is that Twitter gives Antifa anarchists a platform to communicate and propagandize.
Peter, I’m sorry that in my reply to your comment I did not appreciate the broader context of your statement on the matter during the podcast, which I did not listen to because George Will is not someone whose writing or commentary I’ve ever been interested in (going back 15 years). And I don’t even mean that as an insult to Will; I just don’t have any interest in him. Perhaps that’s my loss. My intention was to reply to the specific part of your comment that I quoted. I’m not sure I even thought I was in opposition to the point you made in your comment, which I did read in full. As you said, I was making just about the same point as you.
I was not attempting to make it look like you were attacking Trump. However, plenty of people are attacking Trump using the quote you cited, from a New York Magazine article published in 2002 (which was a glowingly-positive profile of Epstein in which Trump was far from the only person quoted). Some people in this thread have read the quote and then used words like, “embarrassment,” “disgusting,” and “contemptible” to describe Trump. Alright. Everyone has a right to their own opinion. My opinion is that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with what he said when he said it. You wrote that you didn’t think there was anything “commendable” in what he said. I agree about that. I don’t think it’s positive or negative.
By the way, to anyone who’s interested, here’s the 2002 New York Magazine profile:
Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery.
I’m quite familiar with the expression “An idea so ridiculous, only someone with a Ph.D could believe it.” But I’m not convinced that all those people at universities – or in journalism for that matter – actually have the higher IQs. Among other things.
continued…
I suspect there’s also something of a clustering around the average, of people who think they know more than they really do. Partly that’s because of the education system (looking at you, AOC) and because of the media telling people that they’re really smart if they’re leftists/Democrats, etc. So there are people who will take on leftist/Democrat platitudes, voting patterns, etc, because they believe that then makes them smarter.
A lot of people might seem perfectly normal in everyday interactions, but it doesn’t take much scratching-the-surface to discover how whack-a-doodle they really are. Jonah Goldberg sometimes asks guests on The Remnant what their weirdest idea/thought is, and gives as an example some high government official – someone in the Cabinet maybe, I’m not sure now – who seemed to be a normal person but believed there were lizard-people or mole-people or something living inside the Earth.
There are also a depressing number of people, such as one of my retired neighbors, who don’t see any problem with wanting to vote for more goodies for themselves at the expense of others – such as my neighbor’s young niece – who will find it more difficult to find employment that makes it possible for them to pay for my neighbor’s/their uncle’s goodies.
“American politics” and starting at 47:24 of the podcast. Trump was not my guy in 2016 but I will be forever grateful that he gave us Never Trumpers and their TDS. The more time passes, the more they out themselves.
George Will: “The way to reach young people is to REASON with them.”
Uh huh. Sure thing, George. Young people are animated by the power of sweet reason and not fiery “woke” rabble-rousing and the promise of endless entitlements.
All we have to do is sit them down in front of the ol’ white board for a few minutes (half an hour, tops), walk them step by step through the bill of goods they’re being sold by the grifters on the Left, and they’ll be ours for life.
The power of sweet reason.
Very realistic.
In no way whatsoever.
I think I probably know less than I think I do. 🤣
🤔
I completely agree with this attitude! This is in NO WAY incompetence…this was a wonderfully convenient way to avoid involving any Democrats at all! How great was it that there was a teensy little bit of a Trump aspect to blow up all the networks with so that no one need mention Bill Clinton or any of the other Democrat political connections to the Epstein Slime Story? Do you even think for one minute that the Bill Clinton/Democrat fund raising part of the Epstein Episode will EVER be talked about on the networks, or in the WaPost, NYT, or LA Times? Don’t be silly…
Wasn’t it the usual suspects – education, the media – that “reasoned” them into their positions in the first place, and since they’d never known the alternative, they were susceptible to something that sounded True and Noble?
What’s the alternative – write ’em off and outvote them until our cohort dies?
The Right should take over women’s magazines.
Uh, no… not really. Reason hasn’t had much to do with it. Badgering, belittling, teacher/professor-conducted peer pressure, and preying on emotions did. Do you honestly believe that open debate and critical thinking is encouraged in classrooms and universities around the country? Perhaps when you and I went to college, James. Not so much anymore. The academy has changed. Heck, even HR departments have been radicalized and have become woke – especially in the last 10 years.
Forgive me, James, but I reject your premise. It was not “reason” that led them to their current positions. This is a generation that has been immersed — like a brine-fermented pickle — in the marinade of Leftism from the age of 5 onward. Every book they’re assigned, teacher they draw, show they watch, movie they attend, song they listen to — all of it (practically) has within it the DNA of Leftism.
And we cannot reverse a lifetime of such “pickling” with a white board. I wish we could.
Only one thing can undo it. When asked by a journalist what was most likely to shift the cultural direction of a country, British PM Harold MacMillan replied “Events, dear boy, events.”
And I’m with him. A major event (and surely a catastrophic one — whether martial, economic, or both) will ultimately do what an academic appeal to reason cannot. God help us all.
Indeed.
“If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.”
Leftism/liberalism can’t go on forever.
Within the parameters of enjoying life, I think it’s very important to put as much “insulation” as possible between myself/my life security, and the likely fallout of leftism/liberalism when it finally “runs out of other peoples’ money.,” That’s one very good reason I have a paid-for home. People who have been renting their whole lives could rather quickly find themselves in a great deal of hurt. There are already many newspaper stories in my area about “lack of affordable housing” and “the eviction crisis” and THESE are the GOOD times!
(“Affordable housing” always seems a joke anyway. Whenever I see stories about some “affordable housing” project the cost per unit – APARTMENT! – always seems at least triple what a HOUSE costs.)
Among other things, I have two extra bedrooms that I can rent to others to sustain myself.
And even if “The End” doesn’t come in my lifetime, having a paid-for home is still a very good thing.