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Today is May Day, but also the Victims of Communism Memorial Day, and as such today is the prefect days for this classic-hybrid format podcast, featuring Steve Hayward in a conversation with Elizabeth Spalding https://victimsofcommunism.org/leader/elizabeth-spalding-phd/, chair of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. (Elizabeth is also Senior Fellow at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy and Visiting Fellow at the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College.) The Foundation has opened the Victims of Communism Museum in downtown Washington DC, and you should put it on your itinerary for your next visit to the nation's capital. We call this a "hybrid" format because it comes in two parts. Following the conversation with Elizabeth, this episode offers Steve's recent speech at the Victims of Communism Museum about Reagan and Churchill on the Cold War, a major part of Steve's book https://www.amazon.com/Greatness-Reagan-Churchill-Extraordinary-Leaders/dp/0307237192/ref=sr_1_1?crid=RRZAT4RHVZDI&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.sQBrunUd4h0v9ZacG8Uw0R5AHpJhbu3xn4BSzR_A_KpmIFWUaDlLgFR-2Qm-8FEylDQg0w03uGmzrLztMs4k4-L_8FIZ8W7G52DNVhST1gw.9zmDilDsvJQcvoA1utsHLqpCJhMNxVZzsPf_K5nt7bQ&dib_tag=se&keywords=Steven+F.+Hayward+Greatness&qid=1714590853&sprefix=steven+f.+hayward+greatness%2Caps%2C174&sr=8-1 about the two great statesmen.
We're going up a day earlier than usual this week, partly because our constantly irregular travel schedules complicated things again, but more importantly to be timely, as John, Steve, and Lucretia have LOTS of thoughts on the Supreme Court argument Thursday about whether ex-presidents should enjoy broad immunity for any or all acts they took while in office. Steve and Lucretia think the president does, while John thinks textual support for the proposition is lacking. Steve and Lucretia respond with an appeal to first principles, and enlist as an expert witness Harvey Mansfield, because of his unique book on the inherent ambivalence of executive power even in a constitutional republic, . As usual, we fought to a draw. Our second subject is the ongoing Kristalnacht on campus. There's not much new to say except to calibrate how cowardly university administrators continue to be, and note that even some liberals, like George Packer in (who provides our article of the week, "The Campus-Left Occupation That Broke Higher Education https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/campus-left-university-columbia-1968/678176/") are starting to figure out what conservatives have known about higher education for two generations now. It's as if no one ever bothered to notice .
This week's episode is probably better thought of as a Two Whisky Happy Hour, because John Yoo is away on a lecture- and Philly-cheesesteak-procurement tour back east, and Lucretia is out of action right now, too, though she appears in this episode by proxy, so to speak. So two whiskies it is. Last weekend, Lucretia and I offered a keynote session for Ammo Grrrll's annual CommenterCon conference in Phoenix, which is an annual gathering of Ammo Grrrll's best friends and devoted fans from around the country. My theme was "Will it get worse before it gets worse?", and Lucretia offered some thoughts on the future of free speech. We had some technical difficulties with our sound recording devices, so the recording has a sudden and noticeable quality shift right in the middle, and you can't always make out the audience questions perfectly, but we think listeners will still enjoy most of it.
Steve hosts this crisp episode despite his creaky voice from a springtime bug (and Lucretia is partly hobbled, too) covering a lot of ground, starting with a brief recap of the latest (unanimous!) property rights victory at the Supreme Court, but then moving quickly on to initial reactions to the outbreak of World War III yesterday. What to make of Iran's attack on Israel? Many things are not clear about this impetuous scene. Closely related, while the Biden Administration seems determined to tamp down the prospect of a wider war in the Middle East, it seems to be inviting one with Antony (Blank) Blinken saying a week ago that Ukraine should or would become a member of NATO. Are they trying to make Russia dig in, or draw the U.S. more directly into the war (which NATO membership would require)? We also ponder J.D. Vance's very clear-headed op-ed https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/opinion/jd-vance-ukraine.htmlthat reviews the grim math of the Ukranian battle scene, making us wonder whether the Biden Administration has any strategy at all beyond "fight to the last Ukranian." Then we ponder briefly the astounding scene of the anti-Semitic protests in the back yard of Berkeley Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, with Steve arging that to see this incident as a matter of the limits of free speech is woefully inadequate. But the bulk of the episode is devoted to analyzing the latest abortion controversies, starting with the Arizona Supreme Court decision upholding the validity of Arizona's pre-Roe statutes, and observing as usual the way this narrow and largely technical ruling is being mis-reported in the media and misrepresented by the left. The main portion of this segment, though, is devoted to Trump's announcement that he does not support federal legislation of abortion and wants to leave the issue iup to the states. Does this make him the modern-day equivalent of Stephen Douglas, as John Davidson argues in our Article of the Week https://thefederalist.com/2024/04/11/on-abortion-donald-trump-goes-the-way-of-stephen-a-douglas/ over at The Federalist? Lucretia will startle many regular listeners with her analysis of the matter, to which John and Steve largely agree. In fact, it is an amazing how much agreement we had this week, but perhaps because we recorded in the morning whisky, and with Steve and Lucretia ailing.
John Yoo takes command of host duties this week, as Steve was on the road at an academic conference at City University of New York, where a knowledgeable faculty member remarked that he was surprised Steve didn't need an armed guard. The conference was largely devoted to the intellectual history of the liberal tradition, and was designed perfectly to induce a scornful snort from Lucretia who disdains all such flim-flummery. The bonus was that Steve apparenlty brought an earthquake with him, and we're not referring to his conference paper! Aside from these unexpected things, there were fresh tremors for Trump's legal problems, Biden's long-expected turn against Israel that was designed to appear to a constituency of one (hint: the person insists on being called DOKTOR), fresh encomiums for Mitch McConnell (okay—it was not unanimous), and finally into some tremors for the income tax. As Stan Evans liked to say, "Any country that can land a man on the moon can abolish the income tax," and now a member of the House has proposed repealing the 16th Amendment. Especially salient in light of the pending Supreme Court case that might allow the government to tax unrealized asset gains (a back-door wealth tax), which will guarantee that the government will adopt a policy of 10 percent inflation forever.
This week's episode has it all, starting with the lamentable fact that when you hear "porn is everywhere these days," it included even the Powerline website this week, and then proceeding to the obscenity of the John Eastman disbarment, the disappointment with the 5th Circuit's decision preventing Texas from securing its territorial integrity, on how best to squash squatters, and a vigorous argument about the legacy of the recently deceased Joe Lieberman. (Steve and John give Lieberman a thumbs-up, while Lucretia. . .) All three of us independently chose the same article for our picks for Article of the Week—Walter Russell Mead's magazine piece entitled "Twilight of the Wonks https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/twilight-wonks-walter-russell-mead." It has some magnificently harsh language about the leaders of our elite educational institutions, such as "moral jellyfish," and leaders who are "careerist mediocrities who specialize in uttering the approved platitudes of the moment." We're less sure about Mead's diagnosis about the role of narrow specialization in the decay of our universities. At least we have Krispy Kreme donuts coming soon to McDonald's to look forward to.
This episode could be mistaken for the Three Martini Happy Hour, because this week's episode comes with a tangy twist. John Yoo is away this week, so we brought in a ringer to take his place: Prof. Hadley Arkes https://jameswilsoninstitute.org/about/about-page-3! Thus this episode become a Positivism-Free Zone, in which we review the deepest ground of the natural law unencumbered by John's usual alarums, excursions, and errors. The episode comes in three parts: Hadley made some news yesterday, celebrating the retirement of the noted Notre Dame Law professor Gerard V. Bradley https://law.nd.edu/directory/gerard-bradley/, who will be joining Hadley at the James Wilson Institute on Natural Law and the American Foundin https://jameswilsoninstitute.orgg. From there Hadley proceeds to answering the question that we've been kicking around ever since the decision, namely, just how should pro-life politicians break out of their self-imposed muteness about abortion. Hadley has the strategy. Finally, we spend some time toward the end getting down some of Hadley's "origin story" that brought him to Leo Strauss's classroom at the University of Chicago back in the 1960s, and key friendships made along the way—especially our late friend and unsung hero Michael Uhlmann. Note: We had some internet glitches while recording this episode that weren't easily edited or smoothed over, so we ask listeners' indulgence with these hiccups, in return for which we'll present this installment ad-free.
Move over "Republicans pounce" as the favorite media deflection. We now know that when an old man yells at clouds—or members of Congress—the media fall in line and declare it "fiery." Well the 3WHH is authentically fiery! Four habanero spicy! This week more than ever. After dissecting the Hur testimony and its missed opportunities, we take on the issue of whether Biden is playing senile on purpose, what to make of the Tik-Tok forced sale proposal, what to make of Chuck Schumer's proposal for an putsch in Israel, and finally, another round in the ring on constitutional originalism, prompted by Frank DiVito's article out this week, "Can Constitutional Originalism Overcome Our Crisis? https://tomklingenstein.com/can-originalism-overcome-our-crisis/"
Lucretia hosts this week's episode, which we recorded in the morning over coffee instead of whisky because travel schedules prevented the normal and proper Friday evening happy hour, and guess what? We're even worse without whisky! Among the news and issues treated this week: Why Biden isn't FDR (he's not even Harry Truman); why this was the worst SOTU (Lucretia offers a different acronym) speech ever; whether there are signs of life for the GOP in California after all; how immigration and abortion are playing out in the campaign cycle so far; how to think about the Supreme Court decision in the Colorado case dealing with Trump's eligibility for the ballot (hint—it ain't over till it's over); and finally, can Harvard be serious in asking for a government bailout? The unifying theme here is galloping dishonesty, which is being normalized more and more every day. Our articles of the week are (from Steve): Daniel Patrick Moynihan's classic essay "Defining Deviancy Down https://www.jstor.org/stable/41212064," newly salient in an age of truth-denying euphemisms like "justice-involved youth" and "newcomers" instead of "migrants" (which was a substitute for "illegal alien"); Lucretia ponders the challenges of Alex Berenson's Substack article on new threats to free speech https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/free-speech-under-attack-the-weaponization-095; And John draws our attention to the original 14th Amendment article https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9843&context=penn_law_review from Baude and Paulson that brought us to the Supreme Court steps earlier this week, plus responses https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4568771 (also here https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4591838) that got overlooked at the time, now largely vindicated.
This episode has everything: a how-to guerilla guide to improving your McDonald's hamburger experience; a spirited discussion of the Alabama Supreme Court decision that defines frozen embryos as persons (Steve thinks the media is willfully misreporting the decision—John is not so sure); those crazy new presidential rankings from political scientists—and even some soft-core porn! Say what? Well, it turns out that that Judge Arthur Engoron, who oversaw Trump's alleged fraud trial in New York City, apparently has a case of Anthony Weiner envy, and posted some rather racy locker room pics https://thepostmillennial.com/revealed-manhattan-judge-in-trump-civil-trial-snapped-shirtless-selfies-to-share-with-his-alumni-newsletter of himself some years back. And right in the middle of our discussion Lucretia flashed the pictures up on the Zoom screen, sending John and Steve rushing for some eye-bleach. There must be something in the bottled water Manhattan Democrats drink. (And doesn't Engoron sound like the name of a dwarve or elve who goes bad in ?) Click through the link here if you are brave. In any case, we do finally get around to a new segment of the 3WHH, where we note three articles from the last week for what they can tell us about something. John chose those stupid presidential rankings http://www.brandonrottinghaus.com/uploads/1/0/8/7/108798321/presidential_greatness_white_paper_2024.pdf; Lucretia chose an MSNBC article https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/biden-student-loan-debt-forgiveness-rcna139798 from leftist columnist Paul Waldman that unwittingly admits that everything conservatives say about the administrative state is completely true; and Steve picked Karol Markowitz's column https://nypost.com/2024/02/15/opinion/why-is-noting-married-people-are-happier-and-kids-do-better-with-married-parents-so-controversial/ reflecting on how recent social science that ratifies the conservative view that two-parent families are the best way to raise children is so contoversial with the left, which is no surprise.
We're up a day early with this week's episode because of schedule problems, but mostly to get a drop on the streaming services with our new (un)reality TV show, "The Real Prosecutors of Atlanta," starring Big Fani Willis. OMG, is this not the best television since last week's Super Bowl? Steve show up, however, with a gin martini instead of peaty whisky, which drew a rebuke from You Know Who, who had three proper whiskies on hand for the episode. But this episode isn't all fun and giggles. We also rake up the ongoing immigration saga in Washington, complete now with an impeachment! And also analysis of Trump's supposed attack on NATO and surrender to Putin, though some of us think this is another sign of Trump's peculiar genius. Finally, can we really be so lucky that a week later the Hur report is the gift that keeps on giving?
is the 1950 novel by the Romanian writer C. Virgil Gheorghiu that weaves a tangled, early post-modern tale of central Europe and the Balkans in World War II. It is justly forgotten today, but the title is back in a manner of speaking because it highlights the great irony of the Left's Ahab-like pursuit of the Great Orange Whale (to mix literary references). Anyone else recall back in 2017 how a concerted mob of concerned citizens suggested the presidential disability clause of the 25th Amendment be invoked to remove President Trump from office? Think of it as a 25th Hour moment. This week ended with the 25th Hour being invoked to remove from office because of his obvious and rapidly advancing senility. Yet one more example of how a strategy to get Trump, like the Me Too movement, has circled around like a rogue torpedo to explode in the face of the Left. The week began with such promise for the anti-Trump crusade. The walls were closing in on the breaking dam that would drown the freshly roosting chickens! Bam: no immunity for you! And the Supreme Court might allow Trump to be banned from the ballot! Except that didn't go according to script. And then the report of the greatest Hur since Ben Hur, declaring that Biden isn't competent to stand trial for the very same "willful" crime for which Trump is being prosecuted, but is somehow competent to remain president? The Left should have taken a lesson from those failed exploding cigars they tried to use on Castro 60 years ago. But about that disability clause in the 25th Amendment: we take a closer look, and note that Section 4 in particular is not as clear cut and simple as it sounds. Meaning we're likely stuck so long as Edith Wilson. . ., er, we mean, DOCTOR Jill Biden has anything to say about it. And finally, we close out this week's epsiode with happy 64th birthday wishes to Lucretia, so the exit bumper music is fairly predictable, isn't it? (Though I chose a rendition from an obscure artist just to annoy this week's host!)
John Yoo is So after all that talk the last couple weeks saying the situation at the southern border did not constitute an "invasion," now he's in Mexico on some undisclosed clandestine mission. Which makes no sense: they don't even have McRibb there. Taking John's place this week is Inez Stepman of the Independent Women's Forum, frequent contributor to the , , , and other premier outlets, and co-host of the High Noon podcast https://ricochet.com/series/high-noon/ on the Ricochet network. She was more than game to join Lucretia in beating up on Steve. We invited Inez to weigh in on the long-running debate we've been having here about the Civil War, how to understand it correctly, and how presidential candidates like Nikki Haley should talk about it. From the we take a look of David Frum's quixotic attempt in to "uncancel Woodrow Wilson," to which were in heated agreement that David is off his rocker. Then John Hinderaker joins us to give us the latest news about the firebombing of his office this past week, plus a few summary impressions of the Michael Mann vs. Mark Steyn cage match playing out in court in Washington DC, where John sat in on the trial several days last week. Does this politically-motivated arson fire presage a return to the bad old days of the Weather Underground of the late 1960s? Thematic exit music this week is "Burning Up My Time" by Pigeons Playing Ping Pong.
This special ad-free edition, posted a day ahead of the usual schedule because of the urgency of events at the southern border, finds the 3WHH hosts engaging in their own civil war over the question of whether states have any remedy when the federal government abdicates is responsibility to protect the border. Steve and Lucretia were in rare accord—well maybe not quite accord*—against John's positivist position of federal supremacy . Our normally genteel whisky-sipping salon became more of a bourbon-swilling barroom brawl, and indeed we were tempted to call this episode "Showdown at the Positive Law Corral." Steve thinks the crisis over Texas's assertion of its right to defend the border, and the demand of the Biden Administration that Texas back down by tomorrow, represents the kind of "right of revolution" moment contemplated in the Declaration of Independence, especially since the governors of 25 other states have signaled their agreement with Texas. But the rare concord between Steve and Lucretia breaks down when the subject turns to the Haley-Trump cage match in New Hampshire primary. (*To paraphrase an old Bill Buckley line, if you think it is hard to argue with Lucretia, just try agreeing with her. It's nearly impossible.)
This week's episode covers more ground more quickly than a Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes passing attack. Which the Philadephia Eagles won't get to experience because they flopped in the first round of the playoffs last weekend, falsifying one of John Yoo's predictions for 2024 that the Eagles would make the Super Bowl. We're hoping his brief to the Supreme Court in the case of Trump's place on the Colorado ballot is more on the mark. We mostly skip over the fine points of John's brief and take in a wider look at the entire pool of briefs filed in this case, wondering, for example, why the world needs an Amicus brief from the Ryan Binkley for President campaign. This prompts us into wider still observations about other current issues involving the administrative state, which somehow managed to bring up the Statute usually banned from mention on this podcast, John Locke, and the weaknesses of modern property rights theory. Which ultimately brings us to the question heldover from the last two weeks: Nikki Haley and the Civil War. It is now apparent that Haley's momentum in the nomination contest halted abruptly with her flub of the Civil War question, and alas some of our friends are still not getting the question right, such as our good friend Dan Oliver https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/08/civil-war-101/. We go over the matter from Square One, and try—not for the first time—to school John on the issue of . Oh, and we also make our prediction for the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries coming up.
On the eve of the Iowa caucuses Monday, we got to wondering just who or what lives up to the description of "Iowa Stubborn" in Meredith Wilson's "Music Man": Is it Trump, DeSantis, Haley—or the legions of lawyers waging endless lawfare against Trump? It's a trick question. Lucretia—the host for this week's episode—actually hails originally from Mason City, Iowa, which is the inspiration for "River City" in the Broadway play, which explains a lot about our Lucretia when you think about it. Anyway, John and Steve declare their picks if they were caucusgoers, but then the episode turns quickly to the latest frontiers of the lawfare against Trump, from which we have an inside perch of sorts: John is busy spending the weekend workng up an brief for the upcoming Supreme Court hearing on the case involving Colorado's attempt to ban Trump from the ballot on grounds he is an "insurrectionist." (Trump, not John.) And since the brief have to be turned in next Thursday for this fast-track case, it's very fresh in mind. We also consider the latest developments in other Trump cases, too. Did Trump's lawyers really claim that in fact he shoot someone on 5th Avenue if he was back in the White House. (Short answer: No.) And what accounts for Hunter Biden's reversal of his refusal to submit to a House subpoena for a deposition? Has Texas first the first shot of a new rebellion by taking over part of the souther border? Has the Supreme Court signaled that enough is enough with rampant urban homelessness by granting cert in an appeal of lower court rulings that the homeless have 8th Amendment (that's right, 8th Amendment) rights to sleep on the streets wherever they want? (The Court had previously declined to hear this issue.) All that and our usual good cheer and raspberries, including the fact that we recorded on Edmund Burke's birthday. To paraphrase the great lyric from our title tune, "Oh, there's nothin' halfway/About the Whisky way we treat you/If we treat you/Which we may not do at all."
Ronald Reagan used to joke that for Republicans, every day is the 4th of July, while for Democrats every day is April 15. Today we need to update that contrast by noting that the favorite new holiday for Democrats is January 6—"Insurrection Day." We'll get to Joe Biden in due course, but the real insurrection this week took place at Harvard, where, as John Yoo predicted last week (we have receipts!) Claudine Gay was ousted in a right-wing a vertiable academic insurrection against all that is true and good (if you believe the left and Gay's causal explanation). A harbinger of things to come? Our panel weighs the chances, but the key clue to real change will be whether Harvard starts by reforming its governing board, currently dominated by political hacks. And who will be the next president of Harvard? We offer some guesses. . . Then we turn to Biden's demagogic campaign speech warning about the "end of democracy," and are undecided whether it deserves a sneer or a snort, but above all wondering if will backfire on Biden. Clearly Democrats hope to bait Trump into making crazy statements, but Trump's way-outside-the-box comments are fairly well discounted by now. Is this the best they've got? Well, at least they are securing their base of NPR listeners. We also take up the late-breaking news that the Supreme Court will take up on an expedited schedule the Colorado ruling throwing Trump off the ballot, with a few early thoughts, though we'll be all over this story in depth right after the oral argument next month. And finally, a few quick closing thoughts on the latest Jeffrey Epstein non-revelations.
Who needs a rockin new year's party when you have the Three Whisky Happy Hour in peak form, dishing out on the top stories of 2023, and, in the spirit of the late financial analyst Byron Wein, offering a range of potential low-probability surprises (rather than firm predictions) for 2024. What's the difference between a prediction and a surprise? Well think about it this way: who would have predicted, at year end 2022, that right now our favorite Democratic Senator would be . . . John Fetterman? Black swans everywhere are saying, "I did NOT see that coming!" But before getting started with your 2024 Bingo card we take note of the dumbest controversy of the week, which is seeing some conservatives upset at the "Conservative Dad's Real Women of America" 2024 calendar, which features fetching photos of leading conservative heroines such as Riley Gaines in fetching outfits. Along the way we learn that somewhere in a box in her garage, Lucretia has some modeling photos from her time doing the Jane Fonda workout back in the 1980s, and so we're committing ourselves to producing a 3WHH calendar at some point. And speaking of attractive women in unattractive poses, Nikki Haley got her second strike this week (her first being the blunder several weeks ago of proposing to ban anonymous accounts on social media) when she completely flubbed the "planted" question about the cause of the Civil War. We deplore her Kamala-esque answer and attempts a cleaning it up, but are relieved that at least she didn't say "tariffs." And as befits any fast-moving party conversation, we take surprising digressions, such as a detour into the legacy of Edward Tufte, who reminds us that Stalin had the greatest Power Point presentations ("no one has bullet points like Stalin's bullet points!") and also the single greatest chart of all time. Eventually we get down to business with our picks for Story of the Year for 2023 (hint: Steve says "party like it's 1954!"), and our surprises for 2024. Get your Bingo cards ready. And also enjoy our exit bumper music this week from Spike Jones. Happy new year!
This special holiday week bonus episode features a conversation between Steve and Will Inboden, author of a fabulous recent book based on the very latest declassified files of the Reagan presidency entitled . (Steve reviewed the book https://freebeacon.com/culture/the-clear-headed-ronald-reagan/ favorably in the .) In his distinguished career Inboden has worked on Captiol Hill and at the National Security Council under President George W. Bush. He was professor and director of the Willian Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin, but is now the brand new director of the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida, which is one of the brand new initiatives several states have set in motion at their public universities to generate some actual intellectual diversity on campus. This two-part conversation covers both topics—Reagan's statesmanship, and the problems of higher education today. And because this episode features The Gipper, it ends with a departure from the usual closing bumper music.
This week's special, ad-free edition of the 3WHH was recorded in live webinar format with about 80 of our most loyal listeners tuning in and heckling us MST3K style (IYKYK) in the chat room, but for a holiday episode it partook more of Judgment Day at times, as we reckoned with some lingering issues from our Cage Match about J6 and the Ukraine War two weeks ago, along with a thoroughly judgmental detour into "Lookism." Steve, in particular, recalls Taki's old case from the 1980s that Jane Fonda was the ugliest woman in America, while we reveal Lucretia's guilty secret that she in fact once owned the Jane Fonda Workout video from that glorious era. But if the judgment of our three bartenders remains divided, we are unanimous in scorn for the Colorado Supreme Court, who somehow think that safeguarding us from "threat to democracy" requires preventing political parties from choosing their nominees, and since when did Orwell don judicial robes?
The cleaning crew is still scrubbing the blood off the floor from last week's cage match about Ukraine and January 6, and already Ali and Frazier (that is, Lucretia and John) want to go for a sequel—maybe "Rumble in the Faculty Club Food Court" or something. (And yes, since we recorded in the morning instead of evening happy hour like we are supposed to, talk turned to McDonald's and breakfast meats. Steve blames John for McDonald's stock slumping this week while the broad market had a monster rally.) While we await Don King's promotion for Cage Match 2 next week, we devote this episode to catching up on the other news of the moment, especially the rot in higher education as fully revealed by last week's ignonimious appearance of the presidents of three Poison Ivy League universities (boy did we call it or what). But then we also note the curious legal cases that popped up this week, especially Jack Smith's Hail Mary pass to the Supreme Court to try Trump as soon as possible, but the equally inside-out coverage of what a novelist might call "The President's Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Biden." Somehow we ended up with a digression into religious liberty, and pondering whether the Hell's Angels might be a bona fide religion that might be useful in some circumstances. Next week, back to the Cage for Round Two!
We finally get around to our promised but delayed cage match about Ukraine and unanswered questions about January 6, and alas, all of Steve's attempts to cheer up Lucretia with the week's great news—the Hunter Biden indictment, the embarrassment of Ivy League presidents, Kevin McCarthy resigning, Trump winning Tom Friedman's vote—proved unavailing. Futile, even. Why Lucretia even trashed McDonald's, which is really fightin' words for John. But then we get down to business, with the bruising cage match. Steve did his best to play a "neutral" Sean Hannity, posing challenges to both John and Lucretia about both topics, but occasionally donning a Hershey's Kiss-sized tin foil hat on a couple of points. Score the jabs about roundhouse blows at home, and send in your point total in the comment threads. John and Lucretia were united on one topic, though: Both attacked Steve for his fondness for classic Genesis, which Steve discussed at length this week on Steve Gosney's Rumble channel here https://rumble.com/v3zmxxy-one-last-livestream-steven-hayward-on-gabriel-era-genesis.html (or YouTube version here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6Vwhg8o1-w&t=13s) if you have the proper tastes in "rock music that went to college," to quote Jody Bottum on prog rock. Natually, Steve takes out revenge with the exit music, with a fragment of a classic Genesis song that includes the fitting lyric, "Even academics, searching printed word. . ." Who can name that song without looking it up? Note: We haad a few technical glitches recording this episode, with some abrupt edits and incomplete thoughts in a couple places, but listeners should be able to make out the main threads.
So we had promised last week that this episode would feature a cage match between Lucretia and John about realism versus idealism as applied to the Ukraine War (especially since John baited Lucretia by calling her a , which is fighting words not just in the desert west), as well as the problem of January 6, but the passing of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Henry Kissinger diverted us, along with the DeSantis-Newsom debate. Along the way we were treated to an extraordinary tale—John Yoo, as a young Supreme Court clerk, going one-on-one with the visiting Charles Barkley at the Supreme Court's own basketball court, which is known as the highest court in the land because it is located on the upper story of the Supreme Court building. Can you guess how it went? (Barkley was still playing in the NBA for the Phoenix Suns at the time.) It was the surprise revelation of this episode. We had lots of critical (though respectful) things to say about both Justice O'Connor and Henry the K, and I suspect as usual listeners will find our contentions unique and not widely mentioned in the torrents of encomiums for both historic figures this week. And we promise we'll go the cage match next week, or your money back. (Though we did do a small preview with a brief argument about why the cause of Israel should rank higher than the cause of Ukraine.)
While most other podcasts are taking the Thanksgiving holiday off, your three bartenders behind the Three Whisky Happy Hour remain on the job, because no one wants leftover podcasts for the long weekend. Steve and Lucretia had traditional home-cooked feasts, while John, naturally, dined Thursday at a yacht club, sweater knotted properly around his neck. In the middle of this episode that ranges from the metaphysics of free speech to Nikki Haley's chances to the Argentinian and Dutch election results along with the Israel-Hamas deal, Steve recalls hearing Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu in person in Washington several years back explaining that the reality of the Middle East is that often the choice is between bad and worse, and this becomes the unifying theme for several of our disparate topic today. In some ways, this episode turned into previews of coming attractions, as we set up a clash of the titans (that is, Lucretia against all comers) next week on the ongoing dispute about January 6, and the essence of "neoconservative" foreign policy. Consider these teases as a placeholder, along with our custom exit music, "Am I Very Wrong?" (to which question Lucretia typically answers "YES!"), a 1967 tune by a then-obscure combo whose name will not be uttered here:
Hoo-boy—pour yourself three-fingers of your favorite high-proof single malt for this episode of the Three Whisky Happy Hour, as Steve, John, and Lucretia throw down hard on the limits of free speech in theory and practice. A lot of people—some of them conservatives (and, ahem, John at times!)—think that banning student chapters of the pro-Hamas Students for (In)Justice in Palestine, as Governor DeSantis has done in Florida, represents right-wing "cancel culture" and is therefore hypocritical. Steve and Lucretia argue that two generations of flabby jurisprudence from the Supreme Court about the First Amendment has left us illiterate about the first principles of the matter. Thus, we recur to some older writings of David Lowenthal and Harry Jaffa on this point, and suggest that is it not difficult at all to distinguish between political speech that deserves protection and speech from would-be tyrants who, if successful, would take away everyone else's right to speech (if not right to life in the case of Jews) if they gained power. Whether to do so is a matter of prudence and circumstance, but one of the lessons of history is that if a nation waits too long (cough, cough—Germany in the 1930s—cough, cough) to assert its right of self-preservation against the barbarians in its midst, a free society is lost. The question of barbarism is central to the second part of today's episode, where we sort out some of the basic issues of the laws of war and just war theory. And we use Angelo Codevilla as one of our expert witnesses on this subject, which shouldn't be that hard to sort out, but somehow is if you only read the or some other pre-school level source.
Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal are back in fashion these days, featuring some truly strange bedfellows. Liberal intellectuals told President Biden that he could become the next FDR if he simply spent like a convention of drunken sailors, but some of the "national conservatives" also suddenly like FDR and think we should emulate the New Deal's economic policies, which surely has Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley rolling over in their graves. Meanwhile, historians have neglected FDR's record on civil liberties, with the conspicuous exception of the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II because that is too large a blot to be ignored (though even that story is not understood fully or accurately). Historian David Beito explores this forgotten aspect of FDR and the New Deal in his new book, https://www.amazon.com/New-Deals-Bill-Rights-Concentration/dp/159813356X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1HEY4Z6CPB77H&keywords=david+beito+new+deal&qid=1700073529&sprefix=david+beito%2Caps%2C151&sr=8-1. There's probably a connection between the New Deal's political economy and constitutionalism and these offenses to civil liberties—the point Hayek made in his misunderstood —that modern-day FDR admirers ought to keep in mind
With John Yoo, who accuses Lucretia and Steve of being closet monarchists, back from his jungle adventures in South America (albeit without any archeological relics to satify his Indiana Jones fantasies) and sitting in the host chair this week, the gang offers its two cents on the latest GOP debate (someone—guess who?—is not impressed with Nikki Haley), and the disappointing election results, which, Steve suggests, is like Twain's remark on Wagner's music ("it's better than it sounds"), though with the key takeaway that the GOP is doomed to more election night disappointments as long as it has a deer-in-the-headlines problem when it comes to abortion. After reviewing a few new legal developments in the largehr Trump saga, we get down to exploring the mounting crisis of anti-Semitism, with an analysis of why this current eruption of anti-Semitism we're seeing nwo is not your grandfather's anti-Semitism, but is in fact ax expression of a much deeper problem with the maliganancy of the progressive left. College administrators who think they can weather the storm and wait for the fury to abate on its own are deluded. We're going to retur next week with a sequel, and explain to everyone why a wholesale purge of leftist institutions is not a violation of free speech rightly understood, or merely "right-wing cancel culture," as the left and too many simple-minded libertarians think. Fire away (heh).
With John Yoo still away somewhere in the jungles of South America, Steve and Lucretia are delighted to be joined by a very special guest, Prof. Amy Wax of Penn Law School. Followers of the campus scene may be familiar with Penn Law's crusade to fire Prof. Wax for the sin of offending against campus orthodoxies on race and immigration, at the same time Penn so conspicuously tolerates anti-Semitism. Prof. Wax isn't at liberty to discuss the details of her ongoing ordeal, but we do get into the thick of several pertinent questions, such as: —Does the current crisis of tolerance for anti-Semitism on campus represent a possible inflection point to turn back “wokery” at last, or will this episode prove that higher education has passed the point of no return? —Is there any evidence that the high-profile donor revolt at Penn and elsewhere is having an effect? —On a wider note, many conservative law professors are leaving their posts because of the increasing ideological hostility. This seems another bad omen for academia.
Another bonus classic format edition, this time featuring Steve in extended conversation with Col. Austin Bay https://austinbay.net, one of the proprietors of the indispensable Strategy Page https://strategypage.com/on_point/20231025225450.aspx, columnist for Creators Syndicate, and author of the splendid https://www.amazon.com/Cocktails-Hell-Complex-Shaping-Century/dp/1682616614?SubscriptionId=1TC13VP64SCJ5CB73AR2&tag=thehundredyearsw&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1682616614%20%20target=. His column last week https://strategypage.com/on_point/20231025225450.aspx is a brief and lucid tour through the proxy wars America is currently confronting (against Russia and Iran, by way of Ukraine and Israel), and our conversation goes into much greater depth on both of these conflicts as well as our potential conflict with rapidly-arming China. Can Ukraine defeat Russia? What must Israel do to prevail, and what are the risks of a wider war? Some of what Col. Bay lays out will curl your hair and make you want to buy a lot of canned goods, but he also gets into detail about how combined arms work on the battlefield and especially in the kind of urban warfare U.S. forces faced in Iraq and Israel is facing now in Gaza. The biggest risk of the moment, Bay agrees, is with America's pathetic leadership class, making him more worried for the fate of the country than at any time in the last 20 years.
Way back in 1960, Leo Strauss wrote in the that "Natural law, which was for many centuries the basis of the predominant Western political thought, is rejected in our time by almost all students of society who are not Roman Catholics." In the decades since then, however, natural law has enjoyed a revival of sorts, and is implicated today in the rise of constitutional originalism at the Supreme Court. But it is also a confusing subject, because many so-called " natural law" theories seem to concede too much to modern philosophy, as if the great tradition of natural law begins with Bentham. To be sure, the classical authors such as Aristotle, Cicero, and Aquinas were not simple thinkers on the subject, but their work tends not bog down with specialized jargon or abstruse theory. One person stands out for rescuing the older tradition of natural law: Hadley Arkes, author of https://www.amazon.com/Mere-Natural-Law-Originalism-Constitution/dp/1684513014/ref=sr_1_1?crid=36CCO0P0QFMDM&keywords=mere+natural+law+hadley+arkes&qid=1698689720&sprefix=mere+natura%2Caps%2C156&sr=8-1. In this conversation, Steve Hayward draws out the basics of the argument from Prof. Arkes, and extends the line of reasoning to today's controversies about free speech and "cancel culture," which are more confused than ever with the sudden eruption of anti-Semitism on college campuses.
