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The Three Whisky Happy Hour bartenders are finally back in the same time zone, and Lucretia fills in Steve and John about what happened while they were away partying in Europe. We mostly skip over doting on Biden's dotage, and take up Jed Rubenfeld's argument that Trump isn't technically a "convicted felon" yet, and might have strong case for immediate relief from the Supreme Court.
We finally have a long-postponed update on the situation in Ukraine, where there have been a number of developments over the last two weeks that make the war more volatile. The French are sending in troops ('advisers,' but that sounds too familiar), while we have apparently greenlit Ukraine to attack inside Russian with our weapons—so long as we approve the targets. What could go wrong? (And why is Hungary opposing the NATO position on Ukraine? Not for the reasons you read in the American media. . .)
Finally, for our Article of the Week we take up the issue of climate change litigation, which John wrote about a few days ago for National Review, and which Steve is working separately on an article about European lawfare in this domain.
Steve Hayward
Discussion (4)
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Another Lucretia was right again episode!
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Regarding the back and forth between Lucretia and Steve on whether the U.S. has the capability to call on its industrial might to produce what it did during World War II, what has to happen is that the politicians have to believe that we're in the middle of an existential crisis before bypassing all the bureaucratic safeguards (or obstacals) that are in place. Probably the most recent example would be Operation Warpspeed where the Trump Administration, mostly by executive order, bypassed the FDA to get a vaccine out. That wasn't the only thing they bypassed. The legal system was bypassed by ensuring the private firms producing the vaccine were given liability protection against lawsuits from vaccines gone wrong. They were also given protection against risk if their research went down a blind alley.
Obviously the Covid vaccine has its detractors, and I have my own reservations, but it did help us get away from these incessant Covid restrictions we couldn't seem to get out of emotionally.
Steve brought up the moon landings, and in a way those were considered existential because we were in a race with the Soviets.
There are even examples where the crisis wasn't all that existential, but important nevertheless. In 1994, Los Angeles suffered a bridge collapse along a major transportation artery (Santa Monica Freeway) and though it was predicted it would take years to repair, it was done in three months because contracting rules were waived, along with non-standard financial inducements to fix the bridge as soon as possible.
Apparently Winston Churchill did not say this, or at least there's no actual documentation of it, but supposedly this was attributed to him, “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.”
And that's probably what you will see regarding our industrial might if there's a big crisis that comes up.
To address Lucretia's point, I do see an overall decline of the U.S. and Western Civilization in general. But it's not a straight line. We might be seeing another Reagan-like era where the inevitable line towards decline has a bump. I actually thought that Ron DeSantis would provide that. But it's not to be.
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You remember the Knights Who Say Ni, tormenting the poor woman in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. John is the Knight Who Says Clean Air Act at poor Lucretia.
Perhaps Roger the Shrubber will come to her rescue: "Oh, what sad times are these when passing ruffians can say Clean Air Act at will to [not] old ladies. There is a pestilence upon this land, nothing is sacred."
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