Re-Platformed | The Roundtable Ep. 227 by The American Mind

coming up on this episode of the Roundtable it is an interesting contrast with for example the disantis candidacy which moved in exactly the opposite direction which appeared on the national stage fully confident that it had a winning message and platform for the new conservative movement in 2024 and suddenly discovered that what those people were like five Twitter users with big accounts that that's kind of what happened and people like me were surprised to find this because I am immersed in exactly that world and it it you control two of those accounts in fact exactly yeah precisely so like I won't say which ones but there you go yeah like that kind of came reality came hard and fast at the disantis candidacy in in way Trump's errors if there are any are on the other end of that Spectrum he's if anything much much too willing just to say and do what he knows is gonna hit home [Music] welcome everyone once again to the Roundtable the editors and Publishers podcast at the American mind at the Claremont Institute I am your host some sometimes host Ryan Williams president of the Claremont Institute and publisher of the American mind and the Claremont Review of Books I'm joined by Seth Baron managing editor of the American mind James pulus editor of the American mind and Spencer CL super special editor of the American L I forget are you just special editor now AV what I'm the Avengers X-Man Eder I think is the okay this is now gonna be a running gag good H spenc are still working on the American mind but devoting more of his time to crb these days which is good because we love crb and uh I would say we're making it great again but it was never not great um Ma maer makes a still great yeah I apologize if I sound like I have a bit of a cold I was uh just a quick Intro by way of uh what's going on in the world this week I was at natcon this week and it's still going on today here we're recording Wednesday on the 10th when I was in DC and got up at 3:00 a.m. this morning to fly back to Texas take the in time to take the kids for school those of you contemplating a move to DFW the great perk of it is you can fly everywhere quickly uh so for those of us that fly a lot it's a it's a nice perk although sleep deprivation is often the uh result pretty interesting natcon I introduced Vic ramaswami last night who gave a speech uh trying to distinguish uh National libertarian National libertarianism for National conservatism I think he's got a new book coming out in September about the future of America first uh lots of other interesting speakers there including balas Orban and and then the normal uh Litany of folks including a couple of panels that I helped put together one on law fair with John Eastman Mike Howell will Chamberlin and um John Yu on it and then one on uh China decoupling from China with David gold our own David Goldman uh my former boss and former head of the cler Institute Brian Kennedy and others so anyway check out natcon there's lots of it's a bounty of riches and the best attended one yet I think I heard from our friend sarab Sharma with 1100 people there so interesting anyway um we wanted to start with the topic that uh just keeps the topic that keeps on giving the gift that keeps on giving Which is the presidential debate and the continuing Fallout I will just uh ring my own Bell for a minute here and say I think I don't know if I predicted on the round table but I've certainly been saying when when asked for since the debate and for a while now um for months and months and months that the the Nomine is going to be Joe Biden uh I still hold by stand by that there's just not a great mechanism to remove him and he's an obstinate old codger uh and grown more obstinate by mental decline so I I think he's he's digging in like an Alabama tick one of the Fox News guest guests said a couple days ago and it looks like the rest of the party is you know split on the issue uh lots of congressional Democrats both publicly and even more of them privately think that Biden's going to bring them down along with the presidency uh so they've been um arguing for him to step aside you know various grandes in the party from David Axel Rod to uh James Carville have been either waffling like Axel Rod or or sticking to sticking with it like Carville Carville carville's latest is some elaborate scheme to have two of the former democratic presidents uh that is Biden and Obama sort of pick of slate of candidates that people choose from and consult Governors it's all too cute by half it's not going to happen I don't think I'll be surprised if they uh swap him out and then the added the final thing is let alone the the just the logistical difficulties and the mechanics of removing Joe they can't really do it unless he agrees uh somehow there's the question of who it will be if it's not him and I just think there's really no way it can be anyone other than KLA Harris just practically she she will have all of his money Steve Hayward pointed out a couple weeks ago on the power line podcast that you know if they switch to Comm it would be a real coup in a sense because they have 200x million doll they'll probably raise another two or 300 right away as the media fawns over the prospect of our first female black president and uh they'll be in good shape going into the election even with all of Comm comma faults so uh am I missing anything probably but what do you guys think I think you're probably um you're probably right and the prediction markets seem to be backing you up um there was like a 24 or 48 hour period where it seemed like her her star was Rising um and then I suspect that some internal polling probably um probably told the like the mandarins in the Democratic party that uh kamla would not really be much of an improvement on um Biden electorally uh because she's so she's so weird I mean don't forget she was the fir she dropped out of the democratic 2020 campaign in 2019 I mean she dropped out in nove December November um like she was a terrible candidate uh despite all of her efforts to you know have these winning debate lines like that little girl was me that whole thing it just didn't take um people don't don't coton to her uh and she she's a little weird um I kind of have this this dark view of the whole thing that um that the Democrats are kind of willing to take a loss this time around that that they don't really care because okay here's the thing uh the next four years are going to be really bad like every body's basically predicting a recession we're in this mess internationally there's like three Global hot hot spots that are could wind up like devastating the world um and as far as Trump being a Nazi well okay they've already they've already dealt with Trump for one term and they dealt with him pretty well they know how to limit him uh they just call out the the mob to you know pretend to be to do you know um handmaid Tail cosplay and put on dig out theirs and you know just scream about the resistance and blame like anytime some crook like breaks his leg uh while running from the police they can blame him uh and he's term limited he'll only have one term in which during which time they can build up their bench try to develop some some plausible leadership and um and storm back yes there may be um you know I guess if they're unlucky he'll get another Supreme Court justice but you know their long-term plan is to expand the Supreme Court anyway um and so I don't know that's kind of like my my little Theory it's sort of like when uh the Republicans ran Bob Dole in um in 96 like sometimes I feel like they're willing to like the the one of the parties is willing to take a l or look at like' 08 you know with with McCain I mean it just wasn't like a contest uh and it seemed like after eight years of bush they were willing to okay well let's let's let the other guys go so that's sort of my perspective it definitely feels like four more years of trump is at least the worst of they're the best of several bad options at this stage for the Democrats I'm not sure they're really jumping up and down with eager excitement about it but a lot of them might be reconciling themselves to the sort of inevitability of it and as you say Seth batting down the hatches and preparing to run the the playbook for when Trump is in office which yeah made a lot of wins last time especially during the covid era but throughout and also was successful after Trump left office at reversing and undoing a lot of his signal achievements I suspect Trump will also be prepared for that in some way his performance at the debate which actually was kind of overshadowed by Biden's in some ways in that Biden was such a train wreck that nobody really paid that much attention to what Trump did but it was meaningfully different from a lot of Trump's most high-profile performances in in other situations he had clearly been working on what for him passes as restraint he landed perhaps in my book his most perfect Zinger that I've ever seen him deliver which is I really don't understand what what Joe Biden just said it was so ma it was a master class in understatement which is not the word you typically associate with trumpi and rhetoric but he managed to get away through that performance kind of miraculously when you consider what uh liquidated disaster train wreck Biden was it's amazing that Trump managed to get out of that without people just feeling sorry for him which they would probably have done if he had done what he did back in 2020 and come out like a bull in a china shop just really Landing every punch he possibly could so there's the second part of that Zinger too which sort of digs in the knife but in a way that I think everyone which is and I don't think he does either right that was great you're right and exactly like it was So Graceful in this funny way not gracious necessarily but like very delicately done that it actually made me come away thinking hm perhaps Trump has learned some things and will adapt for this you know new presidency if indeed he he gets one and then when you review yeah the suite of options on the Democrat side you know the last thing I want to say about this is just that there is kind of a running conspiracy theory on some Corner in some Corners about how well they planned this all along and you're an idiot if you don't think they kind of knew he was going to be this bad because this is this is their exit strategy that they understood he was going to belly flop and that is how they're going to gradually pretend to realize that he is this bad because it has given I think a lot of Democrats psychological license to admit what they otherwise were trying desperately not to admit but if you look at the Panic the abject Terror in the eyes of these Dam operatives and then you consider like logistically what it would mean to switch it out the fact that Biden actually has a lot of control over the situation terrifyingly it just seems impossible that this is what they wanted to have happen I'm sort of I'm sticking to my old interpretation that they long ago committed to riding this train out and just didn't realize the wheels would come off so quickly and unfortunately kamla Harris for all her signature lines really is quite burdened by what has been she's not able to move forward into the sunlet Uplands including if you get a Biden second term somehow miraculously this problem doesn't go away Biden just somehow expires in the second term clearly becomes incapable literally unable either through his eventual inevitable demise or just through his ongoing decomposition and then you're stuck with kamla who is no better as a president than as a candidate so yeah maybe Seth the the the least bad situation here would be Trump yeah it's it's all fairly weird I you know I'm feeling pretty good about my characterization of of Biden as kind of the black hole at the center of the political Universe on the left right now uh feeling pretty good about uh my characterization of like every faction in Washington as being pretty weak uh Trump seems to be the only person or group whose stock has like noticeably risen who seems like stronger more vigorous than than last time around um at least the top tier uh it does seem to me like like cela's best chance of making it in is to just ride this thing out it seems that uh at least as of now uh the uh the Obamas are content to kind of toy with the situation until there's some kind of clarity whoever's making the drug cocktails for the president president is a very powerful person uh it's interesting that we don't know who this person is or kind of what the oversight is there like this person or these people have uh what seems to be almost complete control over which Joe Biden we see at any given time and uh it would appear if Court Intrigue is as bad as we might imagine in Washington uh that whoever really wanted to get rid of Joe would do so by just like bribing whoever mixing the drug cocktails uh probably the biggest incentive toward uh keeping Joe Biden I think is that this is a guy who is intended to be like the last white male cisgendered heterosexual Christian president of the United States and um and so he's the guy who should lose like you don't want to replace him with the Next Generation intersectional box Checker and watch that person go down in flames and as large of a constituency as the Box Checker might have larger than what was four years ago uh even AOC is out there at least for now saying you know I'm riding with Biden end of conversation so uh it's tough it's tough to uh to push Joe aside and find someone else who you know who all the pieces seem to fit together I mean camel and mayor Pete and gretan Whitmer doesn't want like nobody's really ready not even Michelle Obama apparently uh so keep the guy um let uh you know let America's last white male president uh lose at the the The Ballot Box and uh America's uh orange male president will have one more go yeah it's uh it's certainly been an interesting summer so far uh we've got the con two conventions coming up so it'll it'll certainly be something to watch speaking of the conventions we also wanted to talk about the GOP platform which has been causing a bit of a stir because for the first time since 1984 I believe uh and you know don't believe the headlines on all of this when you get into the details I'll get into this it's a little less crazy than you'd think but it um abandon the longtime call for a National Abortion ban or at least the implicit call citing the 14th amendments protection of life as the vehicle for that so some uh some pro-life groups are or a lot actually quite a few pro-life groups and a faction of the GOP are up in arms about this the new language so the the sort of top line of the GOP platform is new in the sense that it's very streamlined and almost a bullet list um I just want to for our edification if you look at the 1984 GOP platform the whole thing Preamble and all the rest it is when I paste it into word it is 58 pages and 27,000 words and change the new one if you take all of it including the Preamble is a crisp 5300 words and the Topline takeaway is a list of bullet points that's you know if basically the table of contents for the longer platform which by historical standards is much much much shorter as as you heard probably a fifth of the size of its normal girth it's 20 bullet points and I I can just read them mostly because it's worth worth doing some of the delegates some of the delegates who pushed back against the objections from Pro lifers said look this is easy for me to go out and sell it's clear uh it makes the case a very strong case um the the campaign is talking about it as um you know here's how we restore America First seal the border and stop the migrant Invasion carry out the largest deportation operation in American history and inflation make America affordable again make America the dominant energy producer in the world by far a nice trumpy and flourish uh first exclamation point in this document stop Outsourcing and turning the United States into a manufacturing superpower large tax cuts for workers and no tax on tips second exclamation point defend our constitution our Bill of Rights and our fundamental freedoms including freedom of speech freedom of religion and the right to keep and bear arms prevent World War III I think we can all be in favor of that restore peace in Europe and in the Middle East and build a great Iron Dome missile defense Shield over our entire country all made in America end the weaponization of government against the American people stop the migrant crime epidemic demolish the foreign drug cartels Crush gang violence and lock up violent offenders rebuild our cities including Washington DC making them safe clean and beautiful again strengthen and modernize our military making it without question the strongest and most powerful in the world keep the US dollar as the world's Reserve currency fight for and protect Social Security and Medicare with no Cuts including no changes to the retirement age cancel the electric vehicle mandate and cut costly and burdensome regulations cut Federal funding for any school pushing critical race Theory radical gender ideology and other inappropriate racial sexual or political content on our children keep men out of women's sports Deport pramas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again secure our elections including same day voting voter identification paper ballots and proof of citizenship unite our country by bringing it to New and record levels of success oddly this this so the top line on the actual American presidency project page does not have that abortion language the longer version of um of the life section of the of the um the sort of readout below all the bullet points so interestingly the abortion thing is not in the Topline bullet points but it is number four in the longer document and it reads the full uh in full the following way we proudly stand for families and life we believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied life or Liberty without due process and that the states are therefore free to pass laws protecting those rights after 51 years because of us that power has been given to the states and to a vote of the people that's of course a reference to row we will oppose late term abortion while supporting mothers and policies that Advance prenatal care access to birth control and IVF fertility treatments um so that yeah that that was the the section that caused the most controversy um I I think the uh it's obvious what the Trump team is doing uh of course the the uh committee on the platform consisted of I think 13 14 people maybe they met for a few days last week in Milwaukee uh Mike our own Mike Anton was on that committee I'm not breaking any secret news it's all public and um what they're up to of course is the acknowledging I think the the fact that has been evident since the midterms if not longer which is that um the pro life movement the maximalist case for the pro-life movement in party platform and in National policy projects or hopes is just not that popular with the majority of the American people um so Trump has been trying to distance himself from some of the more stringent abortion protections that were passed by some of the states although he acknowledges that look this is what this is part of the virtue of of uh overturning row you're going to have a different policy in Ohio as he said at the debate a little more liberal than you'd think uh and a different policy somewhere like Alabama more conservative uh than many would like but this is democracy so it's good um you know comparisons to uh uh Douglas and the Lincoln Douglas debates and the slavery issue have come out which is this seems to express some indifference or neutrality on on the the life question but without any language about life starting at conception and all the rest but I think it acknowledges a brute political National political fact which is that um you need to do a lot more persuading and winning of hearts and Minds at all levels whether it be the normal pro-life groups going out and making their case to the people in various ways uh at the micro level and at the macro level um and the the national party that has stood for Life uh that is the Republican Party making that case as well across its um diverse uh array of party apparatuses at the state level and it's candidates depending on what their districts are like and all the rest I guess in my case for we we are firmly pro-life at the Claremont Institute um in a maximalist way um the sticky question of what do you do nationally with legislative power uh and then at the state level is a question of prudence do the most good and the least harm should be our Guiding Light on this maybe this doesn't quite strike the right balance um but I think read read charitably it acknowledges this fact that um nationally the issue is drifted away and to the left of of the traditional stance of the Republican party what did you guys think uh lots to dig into here for sure um ifv you know it's um if uh if population Trends continue on their current trajectory uh probably within the next five years we are going to hear uh open calls for just like the government running embryo Farms um we need more people let's clone them uh we need more organs let's Harvest them um it whether it's going to come from here or South Korea or somewhere else first I couldn't possibly comment um but uh I think a lot of people are going to be shocked or caught flat-footed to discover how quickly the tenor of this kind of debate over the embryo uh goes from but you know nice well-meaning people should be able to have kids to uh we need to order up 10 million human beings and uh and they're not going to be delivered the natural way I think that's coming and I think people should start preparing themselves now uh beyond that the thing that jumped out to me in the platform was you know smashing the cartels like I I I would be interested to hear how one might go about smashing the cartels uh seems like a really heavy lift and um and a big mess on the border uh obviously we have a big mess on the border right now um but uh gosh you know I don't know that's uh United States hasn't had a war on its Southern border uh for for a long time and the Border looked a lot different back then so uh if anyone has further thoughts on this topic uh you know I'm uh I'm I'm open to being persuaded I guess but uh uh as of right now um Color Me skeptical yeah James's DMS are open for action plans on smashing the cartels on the abortion thing Ryan and and James do look it's been 50 years since Row the law is a teacher and the tragic fact is we live in a time and in a country where there's a dispute over which entities are covered by the term person and this abortion debate is not the only place where that dispute is Raging although maybe it's the most acute example because it raises extremely tender questions about the most vulnerable possible entities that might be understood as as people and I think that the confusion is evident even in the language that you read from the platform Ryan because although it does in this trumpian way endorse States deciding on their own and sort of understands the do's decision as having had that effect it also Yoles the discussion to a Constitutional Amendment which is in fact by definition a federal Nationwide principle and that the kind of question that this is is a Phil at a philosophical level does I think ultimately have to be resol olved nationally so the position that you hold on it is inevitably going to be maximalist in some sense or another because you're going to have to come up with some definition of what is a person and who gets those protections and I'm a private citizen and an armchair commentator and so I get to State quite plainly that my position is that life begins at conception and whatever complexities and moral difficulties arise from that are have to be sort of dealt with as they arise from that starting point but that's because I'm not a politician in a liberal Democratic order and part of the messy and agonizing fact of politics in the liberal Democratic order is that you live in the country you live in and I don't live in a country where it's popular and where I can vote for a candidate who's meaningfully going to get in and keep the country afloat and also say exactly what I say and believe exactly what I believe right now on this question it's going to take time and it's going to take persuasion and that means in this system maneuvering and putting forward political documents like this platform the other country that I would love to live in that I don't live in is one where serious policy debates meaningfully alter a robust party platform that then I can rely on to be enacted in office but that's not what this is either like gone are the days where that 58 page document represented the meeting of the best Minds in the conservative movement to hammer out what we what we actually believe like people are also kind of reacting to this on both sides as if it were somehow settled law like Trump's going to get in and just do everything on this list but as James indicated there are logistical barriers and obstacles to that and there are also just reality barriers to reading the document that way this is what Trump this is the statement that Trump thinks he can win on I suspect there's truth to that given what we've seen so far about the Public's reaction to this issue and I'm sorry but despite my maximalist position on the question at hand I just can't go with the people who are saying well no concession ever is acceptable politically on this issue and so must you whatever defect from Trump or something over this like okay in that case you will definitely never live in a country where people are more conservative about this than you want them than they are right now just in terms of how this works politically so I don't see what other route forward really there is besides something like this maybe not this exactly maybe it's not perfect but something like this is going to have to happen on the road to a more conservative stance yeah I mean look at look at it this way okay on the other side there's a there's a small group that believes that there's a bright line of um where there's right on one side and Evil on the other right and that issue is Palestine and there are members of the Democrat Party who believe like in their hearts that there's no question that Israel is like a Nazi Genocide State and the US is essentially also a Nazi Genocide State um and they will Brook no compromise on this issue and that's why they're you know not going to vote for Joe Biden of course then there's realists like the squad who claim also to believe that Israel is a genocidal state but of course they're also completely be four square behind behind Joe Biden they're totally riding with Biden um you know look purists make terrible friends um the fact of the matter is the pro-choice the pro-abortion element in America is like really strong and you can you can get a lot of women to like Dawn their hats and their handmaid's tail outfits if they think that they're you know that you're trying to interfere with their uterus um and there's a much smaller number of people who are going to take to the barricades over the issue of birth control pills or preserving like eight like eight cell embryos as full human beings you know it's just not very persuasive and I personally think that dos was like this so liberating for the Republicans because you know maybe this is like counter this might be a counter perspective it it it it took abortion out of of the the the federal and National political discourse to a certain degree certainly outside of the presidential discourse like US presidents no longer have to the candidates have to like stake their careers on this um it just becomes you know well it's with the states now um okay maybe that's concession that's a concession maybe that's uh compromise maybe that's compromis with evil but you know I mean that's kind of our federal system and I think what what Ryan said Is Right like if you really want to fight this it has to be at the level of the heart I mean if you're seriously against IVF then you have to really make a disciplined and serious approach to the conscience of the American people and explain to them why it's a bad idea you're not going to legislate it out of existence um I just don't think that's tenable uh so I actually really like this platform I think it's great I think it like sticks to like kitchen table bread and butter issues about uh the economy and energy and deportation um you know I I don't and you know honestly I think like saying yes uh birth like I mean how can America like it seems like it's how can Americans really tell like a married couple that they shouldn't use condoms I mean it just seems like like what are we talking about it is an interesting contrast with for example the disantis candidacy which moved in exactly the opposite direction which appeared on the national stage fully confident that it had a winning message and platform for the new conservative movement in 2024 and suddenly discovered that what the those people were actually like five Twitter users with big accounts that that's kind of what happened and people like me were surprised to find this because I am immersed in exactly that world and it you control two of those accounts in fact exactly yeah precisely so like I won't say which ones but there you go um yeah like that it kind of came reality came hard and fast at the disantis candidacy in in this way Trump's errors if there are any are on the other end of that Spectrum he's if anything much much too willing just to say and do what he knows is gonna hit home but that's what a party platform is for you know there are other areas where that's not so useful an instinct but I don't think this is one of them and I reiterate that exactly the line items on this platform are not going to defy like Trump's not going to be held to this of all things you know if he's not held to what he said half an hour ago he's not going to be held to what he said on the on the party platform and he's doing with it Seth as you say like kind of exactly what you're supposed to do with a party platform and it demonstrates at the bare minimum an extremely acute awareness of exactly the kind that was lacking in disantis world of what America actually is right now and who are actually the people that he's talking to so that's an advantage yeah I I mentioned that the 84 platform was 25,000 is words the 2024 one was or is 5,000 and change the of course launching GOP platform of the party in 1860 is 1100 words I would just ENC encourage everyone to go read that uh and maybe compare it to 2024 I would not saddle anyone with reading the 8458 page GOP platform but look look at the 1860 platform and how it deals with the question of slavery I'll also note that these 2024 platform doesn't mention the Declaration of Independence anywhere a good Claremont theme to bring up uh the 1984 platform did but briefly and it just referenced the decent respect to the opinions of mankind section of the Declaration at the end well actually not at the end but um towards the beginning of the Preamble of it uh in reference to foreign policy and the struggle between totalitarianism and freedom um just two Clauses from the 1861 and it's it's in the resolved that format so that the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Federal Constitution that all men are created equal that they're endowed by their creator Etc everyone knows that phrase is essential to the preservation of our Republican institutions and that the Federal Constitution the rights of the states and the Union of the states must and shall be preserved and then uh the second of the references to slavery a few Clauses down that the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of Freedom that as our Republican fathers when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory ordained that no person should be deprived of life liberty or property without due process of law that would have been the Fifth Amendment it becomes our duty by legislation whenever such legislation is necessary to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it and we deny the authority of Congress of a territorial legislature or of any individuals to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States and that gets it a bit of the rub even over the abortion question which is what is the federal government's authority over the issue uh it's in great dispute of whether or not the 14th Amendment which as originally ratified was a bit of a restriction on the states but it's an open question whether it applied Theo the whole of the the Bill of Rights to all the states etc etc um so the the question in dispute is still what's the federal government's purview and here the reference to congress's authority over the territories which was thought to be plenary as we used to say in in constitutional law that is complete um that's where they wanted to draw the line which is look where we have full clear jurisdiction over this issue we're not going to allow the spread of this odious practice I think we could learn a lot from the 186 GOP platform uh and all of the great rhetoric that Abraham Lincoln deployed against Steven Douglas and then uh in some of his rhetoric as president on the abortion issue I would just recommend to everyone a great constitutional law book uh slim but dense by a former puis fellow who now runs one of the Civic centers at the University of Texas at Austin Justin Dyer uh I forget the exact title but he has a book called slavery abortion and the politics of constitutional meaning and he sort of does a a very interesting work of course prerow this book is now maybe 15 years old uh comparing the slavery and abortion issues and the the real rub is that both are regarded as great evils by a certain portion of the country and not by a certain other portion of the country um and so there there are some par parallels there and he goes through the jurist Prudence on both anyway it's an interesting book and worth worth revisiting I wonder how many people are both pro-choice and pro slavery no uh yeah it's uh all all just 10 Anonymous Twitter accounts maybe so well yeah it'll be an interesting issue to watch and um we can't we have a few better guides I think than the uh the Republican party of old and it's standard bear Abraham Lincoln even though the issue is different uh why don't we talk a little bit about the European elections as we close out this podcast um so there was great hope on the the European right at least for the French elections which the hopes weren't dashed but the result was not what uh Marine leen's National Party hoped for or in a maximalist way um the new popular front which is this leftist Coalition led by Jean Luke moson who will be the new prime minister um won the most seats at 181 mcon centrists with 160 and that so the ruling Coalition will be a coalition between the left and the center against Marine leen's National rally party which picked up 143 seats or has 143 seats I should say um I I would say hopes were not completely dashed by the French right because this is the strongest showing they've had nationally um uh so I I do think the right is a foot on Continental Europe as we've discussed uh whether it be you know German singing about foreigners out there's also a French version of the song something like I think Spencer may have brought it up uh previous podcast but it's something like uh you know you won't have too long to wait we're going to get rid of all of you something like that it's better than the original French I'm sure um but pure poetry in French with some tunes set to some music uh yeah but I Jeremy Carl I think it was at natcon I was sitting in on his on the panel they did on um sort of surviving in a post- liberal age uh Jeremy of course's recent book is on anti-white racism um called the the unprotected class we've discussed it but Jeremy brought up the point he said look you know it's not like it's not like the the left and the center is going to agree on everything but when the rubber hit the road on the one defining issue uh in recent years uh in Europe came up that is the question of the sort of replacement of the historical populations of Europe with succeeding waves of immigration the demographic question uh the left put aside its differences with the capitalist centrists uh and we should note I mean these are these are this is proportional representation land out in in the European left so a bit of that new popular front coalition includes some some you know hardcore uh maybe not quite stalinist commies but definitely Communists and socialists uh they put aside their differences with capitalists to say no to the new to the rights solution to the demographic question and immigration question in in Europe which is to say no more and let's uh let's save ourselves um the the resounding electoral result in France was no to that solution so I I think the right will continue to grow in power um as this crisis continues to roll through Europe but it was a disappointing night for the French right over in the UK uh the Tories got wiped out in historical fashion after a decade or so of rule uh labor picked up 24 seats the Tories that is conservative party in Britain lost 252 seats the liberal Dem liberal Democrats the lib Dems as their known picked up 64 seats Scottish national nationalist party dropped 38 so they're they're hang on by a thread with nine seats and then other was 36 um seats total with a pickup of 12 that includes four seats for reform UK which is you know if you read the AP is the hard right party in the UK but we should take all those announcements with grains of salt that includes Nigel farage who won a seat in Parliament for the first time from clacton and the question is whether or not farage and reform UK might replace the Tories I think it's entirely possible that that happens and that would be historic they've got a lot of work to do of course just four seats now but um the other natcon thing was Suella bravoman was was speaking at natcon and she's making a bid to take over the conservatives and reform the Tory party in the UK she gave a real barn burner of a speech I suggest everyone go look at it if you're interested in this sort of thing at the national conservatism we website um interesting things of foot in uh in uh the UK what do we think well I wish to conduct a very brief close reading of the French please it's called ja and you might call it in English you might call it good riddens or something and it's a conversation between an immigrant and a native French speaker and I'm doing this on the fly so somebody will have to write and tell me if I'm wrong but I think that is a purposefully ungrammatical quote from an immigrant that doesn't speak French very well maybe a Tunisian or something it's it it means I I won't go but it should be ja and so you're supposed to hear that and think oh here's this Foreigner and then you have a beautiful illustration of one of my favorite features of the French language which is they have a different word for yes when they're insisting on something that somebody else has denied so there's one there's we if you're saying saying yes I did go to the store today but if somebody says you don't really want to vote for the right do you and you want to say oh yes I will you don't say we you say C and so the next line is CC yes yes indeed you will be going um I don't have anything really insightful to say about that at an object level but I think it's deliciously French I mean it seems to me like um I mean this sort of I I I remember in the ' 80s when Marine leen's father would run and everybody would get excited about it it I just feel like i' I've seen this show like four times um and it's it's I mean look Ryan I hope you're right that that wors ISM will ultimately win the day and that like as things as as Europe becomes more and more African the um the real Frenchmen will will will will realize what to do um I don't know I I don't really uh I guess I don't share the um the optimism it kind of feels like uh Europe continues to seal its um Doom but maybe that's just really uh negative thinking um you know what I'm remind what oh sorry we back in the co era or the George Floyd era I guess the year of our Floyd we published a translation of this open letter from the from retired French generals and it was very forceful quite well written about the existential threat that France faced from this wokeism and we ran it because we were basically happy to co-sign it and of course it was portrayed as basically a fascist document state outright and you do feel that there is a sense in which the European left the vandas left like needs this element as a domesticated sort of opposition they need to be able to point to people saying this in order to maintain the quotequote threat of fascism so that they can continue to run the kind of Perma crisis State I will say that I Nigel farage getting a seat in parli is kind of a major deal this is the party that used to be ukip you know they were when I was over there they were the synonymous with fanged horned demonic powers and I think there's kind of a race between these two parties one of which is constantly trying to like incorporate these right-wing impulses into this larger narrative about and that is why we must all become increasingly stateless and leftist and these right- wiers that genuinely are now in panic mode about the sheer extent to which this pan European project has kind of dissolved the nation state I mean it it doesn't seem to me like a totally foregone conclusion I guess what the outcome of that interaction is going to be but it's also not the momentous transformative event that you might think if you read the news which is constantly portraying every occasion as if it were the first instance of this phenomena right I mean I think it's great that Nigel farage is in but remember I mean they England has that like that bizarre um well it's not bizarre but like you know they're first past the post system so if you get you can get a seat in Parliament with like I don't know 6,000 votes or whatever as long as like you have a bunch of other people running and and um they don't do as well um so I mean that's great and look George Galloway lost his seat so that's also good but um you know 14 years of Tory rule which every single one of them promised to stop illegal immigration resulted in like like the the this gigantic explosion they did nothing right and then they they kicked out Suella Braverman right for like criticizing it so is it going to get better under the under Labor uh probably not I don't know I'm probably just sounding very pessimistic I I I've got to stop reading Camp of the Saints before bed well it's a complete mess uh there's there's really no right in Europe there's a far left a left a center left and a far right uh that's how it's portrayed um you know in a with with a bad conscience uh but it sort of reflects the reality which is that uh you know Garden variety conservatism has really kind of um you know been been smothered in its sleep and uh it's been a long time since I thought of Hunter S Thompson but I was was reminded of his um his independent run for uh mayor of um of Aspen Colorado in the early 70s and uh it looked like he was going to win in a three-way cont cont so of course uh the local Republicans and Democrats banded together to throw their support behind you know the the the safe heartwarming old lady uh in the race and uh and sure enough uh you know the the crazy guy calling Aspen Fat City uh Was narrowly Defeated um this is this is the kind of reaction that you get um it used to be that uh you know in in Hunter Thompson's day that the the radical you know anti-statist anti-c corporatist left was seen as uh the great evil that needed to be kept away from from Power uh and now today the attitude is well the far-left it may be wrong but the far right is evil and so we should always choose wrong over evil um and uh and that's what we're seeing play out in Europe um this this really perverse precautionary principle which is you know well in the same way that we wouldn't want to discover that the the global temperature Rose by one degree Celsius because that means you know we're that much closer to burning to a crisp well we wouldn't want you know to really stop immigration or migration or whatever you want to call it we really wouldn't want uh Marine Leen to govern in France because that just you know the the Doomsday Clock on the political Spectrum brings us one minute closer to full-blown Hitler uh it's Preposterous and I understand why these these fears still exist uh but the reality is just so profoundly out of sync uh with um with the Imaginarium that is uh that is driving these ostensible centrists to embrace you know sort of sharia wokeism communism all every uh every insane sort of Fringe left intersectional government uh over heaven forbid um a just a a merely right-wing party taking power yeah I guess my my only last note Seth um about uh your pessimism and maybe the uh sort of dissenting a little bit against it is remember these both I mean these the especially the French election was called quickly I mean things can change quickly in Europe and I think the volatility in parliamentary systems the volatility initiated by this rolling migrant crisis which really you know the floodgates first flew open thanks to Anga Merkel back whenever that was 2010 and this crisis will continue to to roll especially with the brute fact of population explosion in Africa which is not going anywhere in fact will continue to ascend through mid-century uh where you'll have um you know Africa will be the most populous continent uh around and um so the the bottom pressure up north will continue and will increase and uh you know you can call an election quickly and and reshuffle your your party what party balances quite quickly and parliamentary systems and so maybe maybe you'll have uh the the successor Republic to the current French Republic will finally do something about this who knows about the UK and in many ways the UK's uh in bigger trouble um just get given its demographic Trends and its size and all the rest I mean you've got uh you've got some Islamic candidates who won in the latest parliamentary elections and even you know you've got churches being converted to mosques across parts of of England you've got um you know European Heritage you know genetically Europeans you know you see these this interesting new phenomenon of the uh recently converted Islamic you know cop who looks like uh looks like he could be Churchill's great-grandson so it's a it's it'll be something to watch uh we have to wrap up we're going to have to skip read the damn site because we're over an hour I will just substitute we'll make up for it next week I will substitute read the damn Supreme Court of the United States site uh and just talk quickly about this case ler brigh versus ler brigh Enterprises versus rimondo we we were out last week so we didn't comment on the the last day of the Court uh last couple days of the Court where they handed down this opinion overturning Chevron de this is very close to our hearts at The claron Institute we brief the case from our senator for constitutional jurist Prudence a big part of our problems of the administrative State over the last century uh but getting aggressively worse over the last half century has been due to this notion that independent agencies um can sort of interpret the scope of their own authority and act as junior varsity congresses without much check by the Judiciary uh that case is very interesting I just would encourage everyone if you read all of them all of the decisions it's 114 pages but it's 114 pages in kind of scotus format so it's you can read all of them if you want and get a really good sense of the stakes uh I would if you want just the quick and dirty read the syllabus chief justice Roberts's opinion is very interesting and pretty good but I as always uh if you want to go straight to the clear constitutionally principled decision uh read Justice Thomas's Clarence Thomas's concurrence so I would encourage everyone you know remember Supreme Court opinions for most of our history were meant to be fairly straightforward and accessible to all and should be read by concerned citizens and uh some of the writers even on this court do that well especially Clarence Thomas so I would encourage everyone to go go check that out with that we will uh conclude for the week thank you all for listening as always if you want to support our work go to claremont.ca review books.com if you want to see what Arthur and his team are up to in DC go to dc. claremont.ca and uh thank you all very much we will talk to you next week [Music] [Music]