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Even a pessimist would have reason experience surprise and consternation by the extent of our institutional crises. It’s revealed that American students know nothing of the history of the Holocaust and the story of the Jewish people in its aftermath. We’ve seen our government progressively possessed by the whims of influencer representatives. Even today’s guest Yuval Levin, who’s painstakingly documented this descent, is a bit bewildered. He joins Rob, James and Peter as they cover everything from Jewish students being forced to hide in a library, to priorities for Israel and of course on to the People’s House and the hopes we may yet hold out for it.
– Audio from today’s opening is new Speaker Mike Johnson’s first address to Congress.
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I love Peter Robinson but is there a more nieve person in America today in regard to what has happened on college campuses and in our culture? He’s at Stanford for crying out loud and he constantly sounds shocked by every insane event that takes place. He really does seem like a guy who sees the best in everyone and fails to notice the insanity
Yeah he doesn’t just SOUND shocked, he SAYS he’s shocked.
Over and over and over.
Aren’t most of those most responsible for the Oct 7 attack, living in Qatar? That could be the main problem with taking them out.
Someone needs to remind Rob and Yuval that none of this happened during the Trump years.
Trump was actually pretty good about the culture.
Yeah, but he was just an influencer who didn’t really do anything.
Levin is right that we lack leadership, but to paraphrase:
He’ll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror…
I do so love how people like Levin and Rob think that they have no responsibility for their lack of competence in shaping public thought. It’s never their fault that the rubes and peasants don’t understand how their policies that hurt people are supposedly good for them. That GOP leaders can just ignore the real problems that voters want resolved because it’s easier to campaign on them than to solve them doesn’t seem to matter to them.
This is a great post! I have yet to see the traditional Republican power base and commentariat offer an analysis of why they lost power in the party….all they want to do is blame the “stupid maga” voter but never want to look in the mirror. Look you can think Donald Trump is a wind bag and is only in it for himself and shouldn’t be the 2024 nominee et al and yet realize and know that he tapped into something that is real and showing a shift in the party….that the traditional “Republican power and commentariat” have ignored that is on them and really is growing quite tiresome. Look in the mirror people…you lost the party…maybe ask the question why instead of continuing shouting we are smart….we know what is best…you others must follow us because we are so smart….
Decades ago, as a visiting professor at a liberal arts college in the United States, I noted with surprise just how ignorant almost all my students were of history and geography. There was no foreign language requirement, and there was next to no understanding of ordinary school grammar. I learned the hard way not to point to the unclothed emperor: I was taken aside and told quite sternly that any expression of skepticism regarding either our students’ knowledge or the pedagogical prowess of the faculty was taboo. One “progressive” was, however, honest enough to tell me that she was glad the kids were so “dumb”: “Our job,” she said, “is to brainwash these spoiled preppies.” She was, not surprisingly, closely allied with the gender-studies prof.
In regard to the State of Israel, I have been all the more dismayed by the ignorance displayed by those of my own supposedly “educated” generation. I know an American physician who, even after two trips to the Middle East, continued to insist, until soundly refuted, that until after 1945 there were no Jews in Palestine. And then there are those who seem to think that because Hebrew and Arabic are languages belonging to the so-called “Semitic” branch of the Afro-Asiatic linguistic family, someone who is pro-Arab cannot possible be “anti-Semitic.” (A Harvard PhD tried that one out on me…Yes, and we and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are “Indo-Europeans,” so why can’t we all be pals?)
I am not ashamed to say that I often avail myself of Wikipedia, but it goes without saying that one must be quite wary in using it. There too the left clearly dominates. If one wishes to know how the poet Guillaume Apollinaire died, it’s reliable, but if the subject is Israel and “apartheid,” look out!
Welcome to MY party. I’ve been screaming this at the top of my lungs for 7 years now.
The political and donor class could have done a very public introspection after the 2016 election but didn’t. They could have done it after the 2020 election but didn’t. They are where they are for a reason.
Really great story about Peter’s mom.
We need more inflation. lol
I regret that I have but one like to give for this comment.
So very true. Wikipedia is a great starting point, but you have to use it with caution. Want to know the Sd.Kfz. number for the Pazer IV Ausf H (it’s 161/2) it is the fastest, easiest, and most comprehensive source. From there you can find links to more resources. But, for many other topics, its like only reading the WaPo or NYT.
Just four days ago a British writer by the name of Mike Sowden recounted this on his Substack (Everything is Amazing):
It had been on the site for five years.
Although, of all of the examples he presents of WikiSilliness, this one remains my favorite:
Heck, they could have done it after the 2008 election when the TEA Party formed and handed them the house in 2010…but they figured they could just accept thr win and sideline the people who got elected because of it and everything would go back to “normal”. Hearing Rob say that the last articulate President was Reagan was just so typical.
Yes, that’s why I voted for him and against Biden in 2020. However, Trump then proceeded to stomp all over his own genitals after the election and since. Now he is drowning in the swamp he failed to destroy.
I love Peter, too, and I got the impression that he is shocked by the extent of it — the depth and breadth of the anti-Jewish hatred — and the way it is expressed so openly and unapologetically. I think he was aware that the left has been destroying the universities. He and I are the same age and both from small towns in NY State (as opposed to the city), and even though we’ve seen it coming over the years, it is so antithetical to the America we grew up in, it does tend to shock. Seeing it, knowing it intellectually, and acknowledging deep in your soul that your country has become 1938 Germany are two different things.
Yes to both these men.
All three of the hosts seemed astonished that pro-Hamas/Palestine protests are taking place in our cities and at universities.
As I commented on the last flagship podcast post, until we realize that Islam is our enemy this will continue. I’m only halfway through the podcast but I don’t think I heard the word Islam uttered. We can talk about Hamas and Syria and Iraq and Iran and Yemen and Qatar and Saudi Arabia as sponsoring terror or attacking the West, we need to admit that the underlying connection is Islam. They want non-muslims to convert, be enslaved, or be killed. But we treat them with kid gloves. Our President warns us about “Islamicphobia” as if that is equivalent to anti-Semitism. No one is trying to kill all the muslims. But Islam wants to kill all the Jews. The boys along with Yuval Levin are looking for a leader – we need a leader to admit that our enemy in this war is Islam.
Yuval Levin recommends that a presidential candidate do a short, frank speech about how frivolous our current politics is and we must be serious about our challenges. This would greatly offend the “frivolous” wing which is so large that a candidate cannot win without the support of that wing. What candidates need to do is somehow unite the two wings. A candidate that is firmly in one wing, and against the other, is unlikely to win the general election.
Personally, I am on the “serious” wing, but the “frivolous” wing does have serious points about how the old establishment has not served the country well.
I wrote an essay about that.
Sikhs, Buddhists and Hindus seem to get along fine in the West no matter what color they are. But Muslims just can’t seem to start fighting.
Very funny! I laughed until my abdomen told me to stop.
Some of these commentators can never admit of past policies/positions were wrong. Most people on the center right believed the great outsourcing of manufacturing to the CCP was a good thing because 1, goods would be cheaper and 2, the CCP will get a taste of free enterprise. Now we are in a new cold war with the CCP.
They are mafia. 50 guys that want to abuse their own people and the whole world. Trading with China was a terrible idea. It could be national suicide.
We should import deflation from the rest of the world, but not from communist mafia. Russia is mafia. North Korea is mafia. Iran is Islamic Nazi mafia.
II have listened to Robert Spencer extensively about the problems with Islam. It doesn’t mix with Western government. It’s 100% political religion. It can’t be separated from government. Plus what everybody else said about it.
I forget why this is, but we can’t, or either don’t, set our immigration standards based on how well a country is working out. We also don’t set them based on how much they don’t integrate into society, i.e. live in groups. It’s insane.
Then you throw in what is going on at the border. The only people eligible for asylum claims have to stop at the next country and they have to be under one way political or religious persecution. None of this is happening, obviously. Some of these people are getting court dates in the 2030’s.
Obviously, nobody from Somalia would be eligible for any thing under this obvious scenario. etc.
National suicide.
I forgot to say the most important thing. 90% of them are lying about asylum claims. Everybody knows this.
Thank goodness for James.
I think it’s just his schtick. If his “Tear down this wall” speech were all he had to offer us we really should be thankful for that and it’s ungrateful to ask for anything more. But that being said, if he were any more obsequious an interviewer I’d have to start calling him Jay Nordlinger.
And for God’s sake, please enough with the breathy, “Thht-ahhhh!” utterances of forced exasperation as you mentally put together your next statement. That goes for you too, Rob!
There are some, but every individual involved was responsible, whether they be on the ground or in the command center.
Peter needs to finish his sentences, too.