Lots of things to pour whisky shots for this week. Before returning to our short course on Leo Strauss’s perspectives on liberal education, “Lucretia” and Steve reflect on Joe Biden’s long career as a chameleon (if you didn’t know better, you’d almost think Biden had read Richard Weaver’s famous Ideas Have Consequences, since he thinks Antifa is an “idea,” and one that certainly has consequences), and why the 25th Amendment, which leftists have been hoping would be applied to Trump ever since January 20, 2017, is more likely to be applied to a President Biden in 2021 (should such a shudder-inducing possibility come to pass). Did you know that Section 4 of the 25th Amendment essentially gives Congress the power to impeach the President without a trial? We break it all down for you.

Having spent a lot of time on this week’s craziness, we only get about halfway through Strauss’s essay “Liberal Education and Responsibility.” We wrestle with the proposition that the idea of education in American democracy is the attempt to create a universal aristocracy, and understanding the distinction between the civic gentleman and the philosopher. We barely got started on this project before we ran out of whisky in our glasses (and also knowing we needed to take mercy on listeners), so. . . to be continued!

Freshly resupplied with a shipment of Laphraoig, Talisker, and “Murdered Out” dark roast from Black Rifle Coffee, Steve and “Lucretia” drink to the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, smack around Biden a little (but only a little because otherwise it would be elder abuse), and then resume our discussion from two weeks about about liberal education and Leo Strauss’s famous lecture entitled “What Is Liberal Education?”

Among other things, you’ll learn the crucial difference between Socratic skepticism of the classics, and the radical modern skepticism of Descartes, Nietzsche, or Heidegger. And if that doesn’t need a few shots of whisky to choke down, nothing will!

This week’s three whisky happy hour centers around three percentage numbers: 99, 93, and 100. In looking at the latest craziness from higher education, Lucretia and I conclude scientifically that 99 percent of all college professors give the other 1 percent a bad name (sort of like lawyers); the “93 percent of protests are peaceful” sounds about as meaningful as “the Japanese flyover of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 was ‘mostly peaceful’ except for 5 minutes or so;” and that we’re still locking down the country even though 99.9 percent of COVID-19 cases aren’t fatal; and another scientific estimate that 100 percent of Atlantic magazine stories about Trump are literal fake news. (Dan Rather, call your office?)

We also drink to President Trump’s executive order banning “critical race theory” training sessions for federal employees and what should come next; the case for looting In Defense of Looting; and how long before Kamala Harris’s picture ends up on milk cartons since she seemed to disappear from the campaign scene this week, while “Dr.” Jill Biden (don’t you ever forgot the doctor part of her name!) is traveling “virtually” to Wisconsin this week, which sounds rather more like the astral projection popular in Marin County, where, coincidentally, a high proportion of anti-vaxxers will heed Harris’s call not to take any vaccine that Agent Orange recommends.

This especially fast-paced edition of the Three Whisky Happy Hour with “Lucretia,” Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery, gets off track right at the start, when an incidental mention of the famous 1978 Bakke case turned into an extended revisionist “what if?” thought experiment. From there we turn our attention to logging the accelerating BGR (short for “Biden Gaffe Rate”), which reached two-a-day by the end of this week. How high will the rate go if Biden actually emerges from his basement between now and November and actually campaigns?

From there we read some tea leaves around the question of whether the country has reached a turning point in reaction to the rioting and leftist agitation. A number of events this week suggest we have.

The estimable New York Post reports on a clear example of “expert” junk science that purports to prove that “men should limit alcohol to just one drink per day.” This is clearly the first step to full communism, plus an obvious ham-handed attempt to shut down our brand new Three Whisky Happy hour. Lucretia and I counter with the supreme wisdom of Lady Thatcher, who once wrote a friend, “Scotch is one British institution which will never let you down.” (In other words, just like Rick Astley.)

Anyway, “Lucretia” (Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery) and I are not deterred by this fake news and used it as an excuse to run long with this episode and refill our glasses often with a flight of Highland and Japanese malts, pondering whether keeping our public schools locked down this fall might actually backfire on the left; the broader significance of the drive to reverse a previous diversity-promotion tactic—blind auditions for symphony orchestras—because they aren’t producing the “right kind” of diversity; and a lightning round where we beat up on the Lincoln Project, whether violent protestors should be sent to Gitmo, and why the media is ignoring the epidemic of suspicious church fires in Europe.