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Back In the Arena!

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The show has been on hiatus while John toured Australia and the Caribbean. But he’s back now, and this afternoon John, Scott, and Steve recorded Episode 34 of the Power Line Show. Their guest was Pete Hegseth, an old friend from his days in the military and with Vets For Freedom. Pete’s new book is called In the Arena. He

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talked about his experiences as a soldier in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. Pete assesses Iraq as a tough war that was won, due to the surge, but then thrown away by the Obama administration. Afghanistan, he sees as a hopeless country and in that sense the wrong war. The conversation moved on to citizenship in a republic and the future of conservatism, two principal subjects of Pete’s book.

The remainder of the show was devoted to the current political scene. With Trump a near-inevitability, reactions ran from pessimistic to deeply pessimistic to let’s get out the popcorn. As Steve says, there’s got to be a morning after. And Scott says, yes, the morning after is when Hillary gets inaugurated.

It is a fun, lively show. Don’t miss it!

Hosts:
'Lucretia'John YooSteve Hayward

Discussion (3)

  • goldwaterwoman@goldwaterwoman
    Washington D.C. is determined to make us a one size fits all country, completely ignoring regional cultures and values. What the Republicans need to articulate, going forward, is the importance of local government. They keep talking about a "small government conservative," a phrase which has little meaning with the general electorate unschooled in conservatism. That government closest to you is the one most able to more accurately reflect your values. States rights is an extremely important part of our constitution and no one is loudly heralding the cause. Washington D.C. grows as the states allow the party in power to take over more and more of the powers the states rightfully own such as education, the environment and much more. The states were meant to be distinct test tubes for democracy so that people could vote with their feet. If you don't like the way things are done in one state, then pack it up and move to the state you agree with. If people living in one state see how a particular program is succeeding in a neighboring state, they can institute it in their own. There has been no really effective spokesman for conservatism since Barry Goldwater and, somewhat, Ronald Reagan.
  • Grendel@Grendel

    Pace Mr. Hegseth, it is not possible to put aside TR's Fascist (aka Progressive) tendencies to admire his "Citizenship in a Republic" speech. We can admire it, but must reserve our full assent: the thing is suffused with a Fascist outlook.

    Mr. Hegseth commends Roosevelt for going beyond the usual activities associated with citizenship—voting, jury duty, etc.— to include working to be economically independent, willingness to fight if necessary to defend society and what is right, raising a family, and developing a character informed by faith and civic, martial, and manly virtues.

    But those are the qualities of a full and virtuous man. Citizenship is far narrower. It is one's relationship to and activities within the polity, which is the political aspect of society; the purpose of politics (per Aristotle) is good government; government is the management of the state; and the state is merely society's instrument for managing the use of coercive force.

    Certainly, cultivating a virtuous populace is not unrelated to having good citizens. As John Adams wrote "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." But Roosevelt goes beyond that. His catalogue of citizen virtues draws our approbation, but we cannot ignore that he subsumes the whole of the full man into the citizen, in effect subsuming the whole of society into the state.

    That is Fascistic.