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The Ricochet Podcast

The Huddled Masses

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This week, our good pal Larry Kudlow sits in for the making-tv-great-again Rob Long. We've also got Henry Olsen, author of The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism who tell us what why Reagan's greatest influence may have been Franklin Roosevelt, how The Great Communicator would've come down on the health care debate, and supposes who would have won in a Trump-Reagan electoral contest. Later, Mr. Immigration Mickey Kaus stops by to school us on why the Emma Lazarus poem isn't policy and what the media gets wrong over and over about this contentious issue. We also talk about the good economic news, and the tight ship John Kelly is running at the White House.

Music from this week’s podcast: The Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin

The all new opening sequence for the Ricochet Podcast was composed and produced by James Lileks.

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Hosted by James Lileks, Larry Kudlow, and Peter Robinson, with guests Henry Olsen and MKMickey Kaus

Discussion (28)

  • Goldwaterwoman@goldwaterwoman
    I beg to differ that all those millions of people who came to American in the 17th-19th centuries did so to help America. Give me a break. They came here in droves because of poverty at home, civil and religious unrest in their countries, a famine in Ireland and/or the promise of free or cheap farmland in the US, particularly after the Homestead Act promised 160 acres for any citizen or intended citizen who had never raised arms against the US. In short: they came for a better life. We needed those immigrants as the US quest for more territory marched toward the Pacific Ocean and required new people to colonize and fight for the land from Indians and other countries laying claim to it. The Lazarus poem wasn't written until 1883, two years before the Statue of Liberty came to the US, wasn't even mentioned in her obit and was only inscribed on a bronze plaque on the pedestal of the statue in 1903.
  • dicentra@dicentra

    Goldwaterwoman (View Comment):

    I beg to differ that all those millions of people who came to American in the 17th-19th centuries did so to help America.

    The immigrants' motives may not have been to help America, but America's immigration policy was definitely predicated on the idea that the immigrants would work all that unused land, thus bringing tax revenue and all the other attendant benefits.

    But lately you get the idea that immigration is seen as a type of welfare—as a way to remedy the problems of the third world by permitting the poor to come here, not to mention allowing them to send remittances back home, which boosts their home lands' economies.

    Not that remittances are a bad thing—it's better that the incoming cash go directly into the hands of regular people instead of passing through the hands of corrupt governments. It's just that any attempt to control immigration is met with the same indignation as cuts to "entitlements": YOU JUST HATE THE POOR.

  • BD1

    Rick Wilson: “Sitcom pitch: Martin Shkreli and Stephen Miller in a prison cell together.”

    Elite NeverTrump is about open borders. They want anyone who attempts to control immigration destroyed.

  • Kim K.@KimK

    I like Larry Kudlow, really, I do. But please have him on as a guest instead of a host. Henry Olsen had some interesting points, which he should have been interviewed on - not argued with. Ask questions. Heck, ask uncomfortable questions. But let us hear the guest's point of view more than the host's. Larry did the same with Rod Dreher.

    Ok, going to tell those kids to get off my lawn now.

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