« Commentary Magazine Podcast

Commentary Podcast: Moral Panics and the Nation That Loves Them

2017-11-20 | 🔗
On the first of this holiday week's COMMENTARY podcasts, we delve into the question of what the sexual harassment scandals of the past seven weeks have in common with previous moments in American history. And we talk tax reform and where you can get a cheap cooked turkey. Give a listen.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Some guy Welcome A commentary magazine podcast today is one NATO member twentieth. Twenty seventeen. I am John ports. The editor commentary magazine these seventy three year old, monthly of police, oh probity, intellectual analysis and cultural criticism. From a conservative perspective join us a commentary magazine dot com. We give you a few free reason and ask you to subscribe one thousand nine hundred and ninety five digital subscription
two thousand nine hundred and ninety five for an all access subscription, including our beautiful monthly magazine in your mailbox eleven times a year. I hope you guys noticed that I did not say, including our beautiful monthly mailbox in our magazine, one thousand two hundred and eleven see here with me as always a green while their senior editor, I Abe High John nor Rossman Associate, are back from vacation. I know John and sore of Mario Senor rather high, so rob I John so I gotta thank you guys. We got a whole mess of overuse after Thursdays podcast when I begged for reviews. Answer the depredations of Jonah Goldberg, evil remnant, podcast, which his is is like racking
The numbers are reviews that could only be delivered by russian Botz. I think it's fair to say Jonah had is guilty until proven innocent on the question of whether or not their untoward forces generating thousands of reviews for Jonas pot, ask them because I know all of you are anti communists and not believe in supporting bloody murder It is therefore incumbent upon you, if you did not over this weekend, oh to Itunes, and leave a review of the commentary magazine, podcast that indicates its superiority not only to Jonah's podcast but to the weekly substandard. Indeed, most podcast out there that this really is a way to achieve victory in this ongoing battle. Against the forces of of darkness- in this case I don't mean Jonah. Slowly, but the kinds of the kinds of moral
degradation that his assault on our fellow good feeling indicates how please go to Itunes and leave a review I think what I did there could be viewed as an effort to Jim a moral panic in the commentary podcast audience that would encourage that audience in its moral panic to act in ways that were congruent with the interests of commentary. Magazine. I bring this up because we have we spent about an hour before the podcast discussing the question of whether what we are seeing now seven weeks from the Harvey wine steam. The Rev revelations of Harvey once deem this behaviour first appeared. The New York Times is a hinge moment in american, cultural and social history, that we have a.
What might be called a moral panic going on and what? What how it relates to moral panic of the past. What a moral panic is, whether the fact you call it a moral panic means that you are downgrading its importance or belittling it's important. So, whether whether it's a panic or it's not a panic, it's a real thing. That is, that is a really a queuing. So I'm Abe, can you give us some sense of the kinds of events previously in american history. That would sort of count in this category of moral panic or we can sort the sandwich else, right, ok, fair and heartening. That sooner right, that's but again just did to restate where we're not saying that dumb, that will witnessing now is is equipped is, it I'm not even sure, no witches. Maybe we shouldn't referring. It then, is that there is some sort of an underlying event right at Ispra.
Attaining a social response and negative social response and at the very real phenomenon in its responded. The response to it becomes except a little baby, takes it so made I use of the word panic here. Is it is an injustice, so we can say a kind of correction of immoral action or an explosion of morally based fear about the direction of our society, which is not a nice girl, concise turn that you get repeat over and over again, but so the sandwich, as would be the first one, obviously an event that didn't occur. That has something to do with anxiety about the actuality of teenage girls in them and the moral depredations of a world in which people genuinely believed in the daily existence of Satan and demons.
Turning to the attempt people, but then we go, you know classically into the nineteenth and twentyth centuries. We have the. We have the temperance movement which, via which saw to control and then and then ultimately, world your master islands right to control ethnic violence through the mortality of limiting the amount of alcohol that people could imbibe, and then it became An abolitionist movement in which the idea was that the american side only be saved by the total abolition of alcohol. You had the you haven't anti, the original cause of the Harrison ACT to ban narcotics with these serve at the original opium panic of the early twentieth century. A lot of it become really in China, where the opium wars will take place in China, but there was, but there was opened
trade and traffic in narcotics in the United States, which are basically unregulated, such that Coca COLA had cocaine in It M p. Were using and then and then after the first World war. You then have this which strengthen that you had this gigantic increase surgeon morphine addiction, which was the first real the epidemic, where people got incredibly easily addicted morphine after the payment. They experience on the battlefields, a world where one and you have the hundreds of thousands of morphine attics whose lives are basically ended by their by their addiction to morphine. There was also a white slavery at a phenomenon. They called white slavery, which was of a real thing of essentially what we would now call trafficking in traffic rights rights, including in sexual contact right. So we have
So we have temperance. We have the opium wars, we have white slavery, we have prohibition, I guess the american native S movement was an way but panic based on some sort of a real fear about than the way in which irish immigration with displacing certain elements of the economy right, but that, of course that that that which date back which dates back to the bathing. Fifty using sixties was also part and parcel of the general moral confusion, swaying with countries the time all we had also also mentioned the blacklist right, so we Rennes vine. You then have the Red Square with your two different reds. Here's enhance its one in nineteen nineteen right after the Russian Revolution, where you had Attorney General Palmer having these staging leaves
really unconscious extra constitutional raids on you, know, liberal organizations and left us organizations and jailing people without Habeas Corpus and all that deportation of Emma Goldman right. And then and then move on to the late forties in were when you had the the red scares and Hollywood's. It was interesting that that and elsewhere, including magazines place like that. So what's what we This comes in is justice well don't really understand the temperance and prohibition were actually these were. Social, cultural responses to a genuine problem, which was you know, insane amounts of domestic violence, and this the fact that there were there were no controls over the ingestion of Paul and Justice and the red scare was a worse ants to them on the market.
Of the Soviet Union after the Second World WAR on to Eastern Europe Oh trying to subsume Greece and Turkey and IRAN in the in the nineteen, forty six, nineteen, forty, seven, the development of the bomb and then, of course, the uncovering of thee. You know Alger Hiss, I for the Soviet Union and eventually the rosenbergs in the Green other, the actual theft of and they we'll try to hide the american Labour movement. Nineteen. Forty six, forty seven. Forty eight there was a concerted effort to purge communism from the Labour movement was very out of a very public that some trimming got involved with than they all went down with, whatever, after a second vice, that was the creation of the eighth with Elsie. I was an effort to subsume the sea at the ceo had become, which is one of the two major unions had become Communist dominated
and the idea was that they were a public organizational United States that was serving the interests of other hostile foreign power. I mean literally, was a an offshoot of the of the International communist movement. So there were real things going on in there, but you had this circumstance in which people who had no particular oh authority over policy or anything like that were like screenwriters or actors suddenly found themselves unable to get work for, for many years now that that's very paralleled now, I think, with the You know, Sir Visa Ban first and ask questions later things that are going on in Hollywood. Are people are getting fired merely on the basis of of allegations and apart that's the same impulse that led to the red hair, which was it wasn't that they thought this is way of ending communism, it was that it was gonna, be
at business to be in business with anybody who was called the communists than there were these organizations that we're out out out in communist and communist sympathisers, and so the best thing to do also because want the government to come in and regulate. Hollywood too much was to just wash your hands of everybody. If they were on the list, they were dead and you just didn't want to do business with them, and that was thought to be good. Let's just as saying now. I'm not gonna, be in business with Lucy K. You do that because not because you're so morally, outraged by his behavior, because it's no longer going to be profitable to you- has no one's gonna wanna go see, watch We see K special or go Lucy Haymow, because it's too discomfort right that we move on to the sixties. So what are we have Sixtys and Seventys of that was the than we have the beginnings of the satanic movements, the occultism movements in the news today, because the death Charlie Manson
right and that that those rights are the so the man something rights of this genuine fear of this kind of weird out of control, world of crime that had in which people no longer were functioning according to the normal rules of crime, where you were robbing summit he or killing somebody that you knew now. It was like this weird random. Somebody enters your house kills everybody in the house, including a pregnant woman and then gun smears. We slogans on the wall and then goes away, and then that and morphs over the period of ten or twelve years into the day care sex scandals in which there were dozens of cases brought against day care workers claiming claiming
sexual ramp and sexual molestation of area of children as young as two three four years old and combining that with the idea that they were also participating in basement, satanic rituals, We all went to jail for no, I mean fifty seven people went to jail and every single one of the cases I think was proved to be untrue. I made? This was what was a great moral patent? Yes, that was a tumor panic and I think that's I'm in their lives, the question is so I would add, gangster rap phenomenon goes in retrospect appears to be overly don t you know the ice decent cop killer when happy there was. This was in the late eighteen eighties early. Ninety nine is you have the phenomenon of gangster out which were individuals who were not approved, in performative, were performing as well.
Minced within communities that were terrifying, the public since, in the nineteen sixties and early Seventys, the phenomenon of urban riots, racial riots was with a very significant thing in problem. Italy resulted in the election of Richard Nixon in nineteen. Sixty eight and the phenomenon of of gang land violence was consuming american conscious lying. There was a very largely because of the cracker about which broke out in the mid eighties, and this idea that so from somewhere. So we decided that it was coming from India, leeway and ice tea in public enemy, not try, pull questions, they were adorable everybody else, but you that was also not get too for it with that was also sort of on the tail end of the debate. The proceeded about sort of thumb lyrics, generally right a mean sort of moral content and ends,
redeeming social value to Wroclaw Ericsson, labeling lyrics and then wait on the ongoing fear. That version is due fictions of violence on screen. Tv and movies was contributing to actual violence in America and that these these rap whereas particularly if the police by Anna be way were actually urging you no credit activity against cops and were glorifying, you know drug dealers and criminals, and that he's song lyrics were creating morally depraved, like Darling Mickey by print some others Tipper Gore Al Gore's. Why rise? Then wife was the one of the leaders of this effort to label lyrics that there was a more we were deported. Kids were getting morally to pray because of the songs that they were less There was another moral panic this reflected, I just thought of which was the comic book panic of the early nineteenth fiftys. When there was this idea that violent comic books, there was a shrink named doktor, Frederick, worth
who wrote a book called seduction of the innocent, and there were actually congressional hearings into violence in comic books that led to the creation of the comics code. That meant that you could never show anything penetrating the bullet penetrate into a kid to a villain or you could show anything being stabbed or blood. Spurting was a whole thing. We're The idea was that we were destroying our children with their comic books, which sounds I did. This is now perpetual rikers now it said call of duty destroy kids because of its live video games were an amazing videogame panic actually and that's all, and that sort of another defining element of these moral panic. As we look back on them and say that I was crazy we'd never do that again right and then do it again: we do it again and again again, because everybody has their own personal experience of the timber Gore experience,
which is that she buys a record for her daughter they play at and she hears this lyric of princes Abed Nicky sitting a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine and she's like waiting I wanted to buy a kid. You know this is horrible, but you know that now it's you know whether I'm saying okay, I'm throwing this record out, and you can't have this record anymore. It's like all the cop. Let's, we need to pass a law banning the sort of thing work. You did have this interesting blow back, then you have very little of now right. So when tipper work him and said you know, these lyrics are discussed. Frank, Zapper, went before Congress and delivered this impassioned speech about censorship and government and the evils of government censorship, blah blah blah blah blah end yeah. So what they ended up doing was having this sticker involuntarily. The recording industry put a sticker on. It said explicit lyrics if there was something that had the explicit lyrics on it and that or they
is the clean version and that's the veldt that seemed perfectly fine. The day before she had the v chip UA when we're the v chip. That was one thousand nine hundred and ninety four one thousand nine hundred and ninety five, the regular force television manufacturers to put a chip in that you could programme where dead. If a tv networks said that a show is violent, you could programme so that the kid couldn't watch the show the v chip- and I was it's on a panel with Dick Wulf, the creator of lawn order about the v chip in which he said This was like Nazi Germany, because this would mean the people couldn't watch law and order, and the law and order was a moral show that featured violence. But a dream of this was Nazi. Germany, we're living in Nazi Germany of each up of course, was justs. That was Ed Marcie Rep Representative Turkey's genius idea and it was really fantastic because it really ended. Violence has been
a forthcoming moral panic, whether that is probably hours away is Youtube and all the content on Youtube that is marketed to very young children. That is excessive, disgusting. It is fascinating. What is going on with you too, because it turns out tat people there, I assume, a relatively small number invariably children I mean like to, but I look for genuinely depraved people who take cartoons and stuff. And splicing explicit content into the cartoons. Out of some deal listing kick not they're, not gonna make any money. Ought they like? Do it. Almost a then maximizing the Argo so that it shows up in the side trawler. So when a very young infant smashing, the Ipad was happens more frequently than you would think, people as it Father of a young child too, children. Sometimes it happens.
Yo. You turn your back in two minutes and there on something that is literally stomach. Turning and gives a nightmare. Imagine this granted that somebody would actually like people like again without much in the way of profit motive. They they. They just do this in order to corrupt like a beauty children. This is the panic is happening right now, but it's because it's like a jack, it's like it. It's like a joy ride, crime and has no, you know like one of those things like. Why would the man, the man said family, terrified, everybody that was the end of people had leaving their doors unlocked and America right? Because area was so I'm just gonna your house and kill. You think. You know what you know: de the lunatic hippies are gonna, come into your house and kill. You then only took one crime it was like in New York of one kid gets up debt one kid is abducted off the street and the entire way that urban parents parent there
Children changed one kid and nineteen. Seventy nine cause. That's the other thing that can happen in these cases as it takes. An unrepresentative moment can nonetheless seem like the point at which have to buy a lot of insurance you have to like you, have to over ensure yourself against danger, so for the show so rob and serve the positives, succumbs cyclical thing that that weak with American America goes through this serve every I don't know I mean either from from our listed its thirty years twenty years. I like that, and I'm wondering in thinking about an hour after we were so these examples, if it's, more of a sort of perpetual. Americans are honest, perpetuated, perpetual state of of high alert for moral, infraction big. As we are more religious and other countries. We are we liked it will. Even we were much more puritanical, but even if we're not even day of Europe on the left, you're not pure tap on the classic,
but you still like to think of yourselves as upstanding and moral No, it's not like european statesman having affairs and no one carrying you know. We were so so so we serve. We go through this. We go through this. This. But this concentrated trolling trolling the old sense that in that not not harassing butter of sir chinks, are still see if we can serve gather evidence to cool enough evidence to collect a sort of create a thing to worry about you, and then there is some seems to be some failed attempts along the way to remember like set. So let me up
I led to the current no sexual harassment, sexual assault crisis. If you will, let me be very clear. I think that there are some of these cases that are coming out where clearly, thereby predatory men, possibly criminally predatory men have been taking advantage of their position to to abuse women, and those will come out should continue to come out, but I also think that the element of it that seems to me to kind of beginning to be going in the direction of a moral panic comes from this, is that we have had a unique confluence of cultural forces, one of them being the rise of of the hook up culture, the other being the rise of sex, positive feminism, which says that, basically, that women should
to maximize their opportunities for in sex life. Just like men do, which has, paradoxically or perhaps predictably benefited primarily alpha men alpha men are ones who benefit from it from this and then you add alcohol into the situation. So you ve had people on a daily basis, whether in college or whether in the workplace going out into high in a high alcohol level, situations and and women, essentially gravitating too, but also men chasing them, primarily alpha men. Some degree of sexual interaction occurs and in an both sides, Outsail, though I know unknowns, Harris the question of consent is slightly blurred by the presence of alcohol and now we're seeing an attempt to correct for that and there's a
Again, where I worry is there Predatory men. We need a new sexual ethic perhaps, but there is also an element of of dissatisfaction on the part of women with a culture in which our four men are the primary beneficiaries, because because they want relationship, whereas men can just have the kind of casual encounter, we may not even end up in full on full on sex or even end in the bedroom, but if they get something from men and women get nothing or maybe they, may get less than nothing. That's my theory of how this could be a moral panic. Joy like that, and I would add that we are in the midst of a correction the correction for the correction this began a while back when we had a duplication of sexual assault claims on canvasses outside of a formal courtroom setting because explicitly because the staff
entered for. Evidently, evidentiary burden on the accuser was lower to the point where it could be proven in a way that it couldn't be an courtroom. This is, are to be the right to be believed, accorded Ailer Glenn The notion that a status conferred at birth should have a where'd you some sort of a status that no one else deserves is really offensive to the republican ethic and it's been deservedly trashed by a broader counter reaction. Do that standard which gained purchase on the left primarily and became a standard operating procedure in certain enclaves and was abused. So he's a correction to that. Now we're seeing a correction to the correction in the form of a great purged. Of individuals who have overstepped their bounds of prudence or morality or just not being a decent human being in places that they were formerly protected in
There is an element of panic to that, but is also hard to say that its undeserved anything any of that counts is part of the panic. I think the panic that where we were observed, thinking about is the reaction in the room. After the Harvey Wine seem regulations which are of no sexual depredations dating back twenty five years with dozens, if not hundreds of people. Many of them, you know, obviously non non consensual in some fashion, but in which you know no charges could be brought because nobody knows the statue limitations has run out and nobody took into the cops and because they thought that the cost was gonna be too high for them to do so. And that they would not get the proper satisfaction in their careers will be ruined and all that the panic, I think, comes when someone
yeah, that's Harvey wines. The thing is really awful: it's terrible! It's a monstrous, but you know I had a guy at work. You know who get massaged my shoulders, and that me, too. You know that that that everything become the equivalent of everything else, which has the fact not only of either. You know destroying people who just need a slap on the wrist or you no need to go into the penalty box. Em and and be you know, Shame them humiliated for a little bit, but not their lives ruined, or we the point where it's like what Harvey wines deemed it wasn't so bad because everything, a sort of made the equivalent of everything else. So a guy Oh you know. Does this when he five women or two hundred women over that. You know in the case of Saint James, toe back the writer director in the space of thirty years is no different from somebody
its hands with you would work, were you know something itself that the dangers on January. I may do creek it's a moral equivalence between two meters and felonies, and that we we in in this die in which we live. We try to draw clear distinctions and make levels of criminality righto thereof. Answers that are less all offences that are greater and you don't throw the book equally at all of them. So there is no law principal right now nobody's drawing distinctions, because there's social desirability bias here at work were to draw Distinction is to be in unduly supportive of the rights of accused in search of the acute accusers and survivors anti side with individual to have been accused of something horrendous and that's probably not going to last this eventually reach an equilibrium is what's it's the danger now in the mid
Does this great coming out of, cues accusations that have been sort of quote: unquote, open secrets for the better, but of two decades, while were in the midst of this purge? What so at about not having that limiting principle, while ok, here's my danger, so my mother I think the dangers loudly moral Paraguay I was talking about are the serve the moral equivalency between the not very great offence and genuinely horrible, that's, but also this notion of equalising the perpetrator. The person around the perpetrator, that's the other big thing. So it's not just that Harvey wasting did acts, but who. Did you read em out? Who didn't say you're not allowed to do that. What they too must be punished recreate the moral conditions under which nobody lives in a culture that allows this to happen. So it's not just the lunacy. Hey must suffer but Johns
toward says he had no idea. Lucy K was doing selling us all that can possibly be to everybody knew about it, so you're lying or it's not true, or even if you, Stewart knew that people say that Louis E K did this: it's his responsibility, if he was not witnessed when actual event too somehow joy, Louis see, Kase career without evidence So we have an an alternate case in which the comic actor and forfeited planetary crews, found himself bizarrely manhandled by an agent from his agency and than he who did it twice at apart. And nobody really knows. Why are what the hell is going on there and the time he called Adam, Sandler and said Adam. Then it did this to me and Adam Sandler. Like do you know, cause it's also weird because Terry, whose like six foreign, weighs two hundred and sixty pounds and could beat the crap
of Adam. Then it and then Terry Cruises, driving home like SAM calls him on the phone and says? What do you want me to do? Is there something I can do for you should talk to anybody? Should I did and then the next day, crews comes out and says this happened to me. So there you have it isn't which Sandler being a witness. Essentially or having been told something. Contemporaneously took the allegation seriously asked crews what he wanted him to do. Then it is then it's careers over basically, but you can't then blame. Even if it's the Adam Sandler, would I've been responsible if, if he did it, cruiser told him something, and then he added anything about that invented, but wait. This is between crews, at about you need the you need the witness or the contemporaries this to verify the algae allegation. Sailors also part of what I think is one of the more more robust
pieces of evidence. That of that we were heading, would toward the Bee panic Zone, which was this. This clip start circulating about where he was on a talk show recently and he placed his hand on the knee of his of his co star in the Meyerowitz was called my videos or was it a co star? Was it was the interviewer It was the interviewer on the show that did that truth is I remember, and it was, it was an entirely innocent friendly, nothing places hand there, therein dared and, and suddenly there were, but article started coming across my my social media feeds a bad about how awkward and uncomfortable she wasn't the woman who every vote wet weather and I was CO star or interviewer. She came up said. No. She didn't.
The runway at all. She thought nothing of it and then, of course, than they were served, exculpatory footage of of Sandler putting his hand and on Dustin Hoffman needed entering into her interview in one. That's part of the other thing is that, of course, there's something useful when you dont, like somebody, you know, for whatever reason, not even personally, but just as it real principle. You now idea than circulating you know some saying that you have no idea whether there was something real or not and they caught the effect to you of retweeting. Something is nothing the effect on the person Of whom the inaccurate information, as is about and retweeting at the effect on it, was so grossly disproportionate that We again have this problem of its of the art said of the case where people say well, I'm not gonna report this. You know unwanted sexual encounter rape or someone, because it's too much because because the-
consequences for real. We so severe in this case its well. If there are no consequences for circulating a room, on social media. That will turn out to be unfounded. None and that's also pot How moral panics workers, that is, that the rules that guy you two reticence about doing something are totally suspended right, There are no rules in accusation is fine. The notion that you'll, you will somehow get blow back for being a false accuser, which is one of the threats of being a false accuser, is no longer at moment in the middle of a moral panic is no longer is it's just suspended and the full prove remedy for these kind of haters syrup is: something that nobody really wants. I do want to step on your point, I'm giving you your point to make it about the the standards of conduct. I would add that we really he finally there, as I suggested in our in our
enforce region? Meeting that we're gonna, see Iver people come to take. Take allegations like this not seriously at all, because if a fleeting touch should allow me, as a british MP was recently accused of, is sexual assault and there's no differentiation between offenders. I think you'll see this either going in this direction, which is people nothing seriously, or I suggest that he would be a kind of a closet, Islamic Republic, where more than Torreon or victorian Victorians I really feel that that's too, if that's true extreme, but in which men and women interactions are are scripted, are limited to certain scenarios and beyond which men women make a point of not interacting and ends
we completely different society. I dont know if that will come about, but I dont think I will, I don't think a will because it so unthinkable, which is why This ends up sort of coming out in the wash because Ultimately, win give you start to impose these restrictions on interactions and they become unfeasible in. They create conditions that you don't find from favourable. Do you reach some sort of? the health equilibrium well or healthy the equilibrium or this sort of incoherent That can't be right. Masher. Both though women, which was, which is the other sort of option you taught whether it be because it could be the sort of how victorian It is a society that have a boy mansion, Hadda, Victorian, happily exactly right, right, right web, so where we songs you as long as you demonstrate affirmative consent for being in the grotto with the Playboy Mansion, it's ok, but you have to like sign affidavits and hand over consent, will be the same release as you do. If you like, a rock climbing war,
you know were or do I fly where you you know try to flow. That, where they say, oh, you are, we are held harmless or any dangerous things that happened. Do you here's one situation? I could see you either live by the pence rule, which is you don't dine with with women etc, etc, and when society or work requires you to break the pencil you you have a sort of release form you tape every direction. You say by the way than a record, this interaction for both of our sake. I'm just gonna have at my voice or Gordo. Given here's what s interesting about the pants rule. Seven thing about this love, whereas this is where my pen saying that he and his wife had made an arrangement. He would never sup alone with any woman that was Karen Pants and, of course the the thing about this. Is that, while, while we think about these rules being designed to be protections, two women right as ideal, you right, if you, if you want to protect women in some fashion, you create
social rules that make it harder for men to make untoward sexual advances to them. In some fashion or how we do it with law with social sanction, but that is now what the pencil is about the pencil is about saving MIKE Pence from the past The option that he might or the temptation of a woman. Not it's not about protecting women. It's of effort. Acting my pants. That, I think, is where people get a little comfortable within the areas like so the hold the classic example would people were using was likewise, so my pencil go out to dinner with his chief of staff, who is a man? and but one got there with his legislative director, whose woman, because she's alive So so he'll always have a more a closer relationship with his chief of staff. Then he will with his legislative director and that's not fair, to legislate director. Now I don't know what what's fair, not further was, in my estimation,
actually not entirely common. Think of as a matter of practical fact, for a long time, long term, married men too, a lot of time, socializing out to dinner with women to whom they are not married alone. I mean I've done it. I've been married for fish, the years. I've done it. Maybe three three times that I can govern two of them were with Christine Rosen. Who, like is a writer for our magazine and whom I saw when I was in Washington, you now and then so. It's like it. Doesnt actually happen that often you know my wife who was too italian agent. The goes to allay and has to have meetings with people, but I think there are always more people around. So It is an interesting thing where I dont think the pencil fits pencils on a social order thing to to views azure as your example,
it's more something for public figures. I think I'm I'm not entirely sure. That's true! If we were to progress in this direction as we as we here to be. It would only be proper fur in individual who find themselves in a compromise and position of potentially compromising position as a person in power or with it, with authority having authority over, for example, a younger female colleague to protect both individuals by maintaining some sort of a standard of decorum which would ensure set duration, there's. No, then that's you now for both for every he's good, listen the prince. Full of separation is the principle of all traditional societies on care, where you are particularly Judaism, which the entire religion and people that are based on on establishing points of separation, not only between men and women, which who are separate in various ways. Although a lot of people wanted and those, but obviously
separation of Jews from Gentiles and die in the eating. Habits and that serve examined traditional ISM involves the notion that adulthood and children are separated men and women are separate the sinful and the since the main, an uncritical I'm clean. All of that is is a fundamental religious principle in traditional in principle, but it is certainly not our raining american egalitarian principle, wit of to which a lot of this is a great seems to be a grave offence that, let me stopped for a moment and bring Since we're talking about security and people feeling secure I'd like to talk to you a little about Ring rings mission is to make neighbourhood safer. Today, over a million people use the amazing wing video doorbell to help protect their homes. Ring knows homes, security begins at the front door, but it doesn't end there so now
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move Obamacare believe leave the ending of the individual mandate. That requires everyone either by insurance or repair penalty and this penalty- and this was put in both you know, brilliant side. Stroke of getting killing two birds with one stone tax for men, getting some Obamacare out, and also to raise revenue for the taxpayer, because it raises about three hundred billion about billion dollars, and we have the Things situation of Susan Collins of main right now, there's one no vote among Republicans right that is RON. Johnson was constantly, We will vote for it, so they need to more no votes with a fifty one, we had silent or they amend the bell to fix the paths pass through a problem which is Johnson's objection. So the pass through problem, has to do with a provision.
That basically gives greater tax breaks to big businesses than to small businesses. So, John, It says no as of now Susan Collins said she was very unhappy about the inclusion of the removal of the mandate over the weekend and Trump tweets that he thinks Jeff Flake is going to vote no on the bill. Just to screw him since Jeff like AIDS Trump and is not rang for re election, Bob porkers also isn't like aspects of the bill. So this then raises interesting issues with the guy we haven't mentioned so far Roy more. If boy more winds in November and December twelve, Access to be certify, which would take him to around the twenty second of December. He could go to Washington and be a vote for the bill, but, let's say doesn't win, then it still fifty one, but then it's sell fifty, they still needs. They can deal with three defections
if more wins and votes for the bill, they can deal with three defections cause. They'll be another vote. Were hooligan vote right now, it's fifty one! That would you fifty two and but one might vote against it. Why wouldn't were vote against? What's more more? Does it get a hand Mitch, Mcconnell and the victory caused by the time. More wins, even though, can in Conway said he got a vote from where to get attacks, cut more, might decide. If his future is better off like hitting trump verb. His disloyalty, the more we don't know what wars like he could be total. The Tec, crazy, no idea what his thoughts are. Any policy position whatsoever that has nothing to do with cultural Signify airs right. So what does this tell us. Oh, what it tells us is the tax reform. Is very much up in the air. I mean it. I don't know they're gonna get as much money at about the report
individual mandate as they seem to think that they want. They want avoid Scipio score, but if they delay it long enough, I think they're gonna get it they're, going to avoid try to avoid have yet if they are ready and we fail those little December right. Twenty fifth taken- they built the ceo and russian escort just to give them a stick in the end, so everybody's reading the tea leaves and saying, ok. Well, these senators are sort of again step and nobody Saint really know I Jeff Lakes and I'm not really knows, isn't columns and not really know. Maybe I haven't come to that position. They want to vote for it and Trump wants a legislative victory, but thing, is very young and we don't really have the full understanding of the political impact it pulls terribly. So what I'm with some polling terribly until two weeks ago. That's what's interesting. It was pulling fine. It was late when the House version of Senate Virgin when no one
what exactly right. So that's why we're home this sort of yeah? No one knows within the bill. So so, but I've been went with some towns with tax bill right so so enable those trumps tax bill. It pulls really badly. So does Donald Trump want trumped tax bill which Paul Really badly to float through, he didn't does how he approached the debate over Obamacare, poor boy really badly reflected poorly on him, so he abandoned the thing. I'm waiting for that to happen still, but this I mean its uncertain, but it's still a lot better than than than all the other. The previous legislative efforts we ve seen the since Trump became present because there's up at least when I talk about warring factions now and other really frustrates me- is I don't hear anybody making the case for the the corporate tax cuts tax rates reform, except the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, which makes a very convincing case. No one
seems to want to sell this thing they on anything other than its effect on individual rate. Well, it's crazy, and even then you had made more training on the weekend saying you know. Well, you know we're just trying to gain the system basically, and if we take this thing out, we'll take it out this kind of stuff. That's. Why would you even say that in public ovens? Yes, you trying to score that thing appropriately, but nobody needs to know that. Ok, let's put it this way. The sole purpose of the bill is to lower the court. Tax rate of twenty to twenty to twenty five percent. That's why bill exist is not to fuck around with visual rates. All of that is gaming. The system to make it a tax reform bill they don't want to do a big business tax cuts solely right, so anything else is a gloss and that's what Trump wants it for its to be its was to be a stimulus to create conditions under which money that is sitting on the sidelines that companies have in banks, but they're not investing they flood into the marketplace, because the tax rates are so low and because of the tax rates are, positively low with other countries? They will stop
in plants in other countries and put them here, because the profits will be taxed at a more favourable rate than they would be if they were home, but try to make that clear a better president, a better rhetorical president could make this case. They look we're doing this for compare business for jobs. This is in order to create massive economic growth. That's what this bill is it's not too. You know, so it turns out that by by forcing around with it digital rates they complicated. This story is opposed to may make it less complicated because their claiming it's a tax reform bill when it is, and it is international competitiveness tax cut for businesses so that they will invest more heavily inside the amount. It's good policy is genuinely good policy, but tell me how trumps gonna sell it I don't, I don't see him selling it. I see him like I said on previously. I see him here
version of selling this bill is the rating and belittling potentially dissident senators, and with some of these folks, like flake, like Corker, there's no reason for them to fear being Bahrain by the President on Twitter is there in the real learn about position too, because it, as you say this is generally good policy yeah I'm having their they're, not as they're, not as bounce their egos, as the president is. But these are female politicians in Washington with the national profile. It would be foolish to say they have no egotist investment in their careers in their futures? Are they just gonna hand from victory and and emit let him frame it is capitulate Tory. It's so hard to game this out. That's part of the story, I think if it continues Appalling settles around
a five percent? I don't think it's gonna pass. I think that I think that the the advantage to the three or four people who would vote against it will be much too great for them and the idea that they need to do it in order case at their mounted do nothing. Congress is very, very strong, but the Senate, as it is set of incentives in the house. This is, would be the big screwing up the house ever because here's what happens the Republican House they passed healthcare. They passed. The tax reform bill they ve done Ex Whimsie, they ve done their part and it's the Senate that is killed will have killed tax reform and the repeal of public here and there. Pay for it, because every one of them is up for reelection in twenty eighteen and most of the senators or not. If Roy more loses its definitely officially bizarre, oh two thousand nine and we ve entered just a month. Fire with entered the the Scott Brown face.
Two thousand those idly by the way by the way just in the world. You know where everyone Trump doesn't count, and do you know the trumps, fine and people twenty eighteen is going, go find that that kind of weird republican world, a As being an out lesbians, the legislator, one, in a special election, Oklahoma last week and out we should look at Sweden who ran there's gotta be quixotic. I'm paying for the state legislature, one Oklahoma. So if you think that there is the possibility of a colossal wave that crushes the just the unjust alike, think again and it may not happen, but I'm sorry there are weird data points out there. That are, you know that are like, Todd, aching and share an angle and Christine O Donnell willing. That's that's that's what that's what these things and if it happens, and than trumped ventricles away. The president first MID term is always disaster. I know it, but he can
back in my because back and ninety six and in you know, blob accept you know whose first mid term was a disaster. George W subtle, and George W Bush got twenty two percent more votes in two thousand and four than in two thousand, which is sort of what trump needs to do in order to win into? a twenty and right now. I don't see the path to him, getting one extra vote out of you know at the moment, but this case, if you now, if it loses it'll, be because they tried to do too much with this bill again, it's like two ended. They create these. Clergy, overly ambitious bills. Think back to I said the son, I think other previous, by get things back to like four December of twenty sixteen. What if all it said they were going to do is repeal the individual mandate. One of the first acts of the Republican Congress would have been to repeal the individual mandate but he would have voted for it, including Susan call into now says she doesn't want to vote for his private tax bill every Republican and
in the in the Senate is unrest, is opposing the existence of the individual mandate. That is the unpopular part of Obamacare. They could have just done that. Just that and then dealt with the consequences. Of democratic going in swimming. They could have said we got the worst part of Obamacare out of their right. Little small incremental boobs, not like giant clergy. You know world changing moves once again, the overly ambitious nature of these. We got power now, so we have to enact our agenda as opposed to like hitting single pseudo M M M, hitting duh listen singles and just peppering all over the field and keeping arrivals off balance. I would have been so much better a strategy, but it didn't happen so Guys anybody anything interesting to suggest for anybody's thanksgiving have an interesting dish that you do for
Thanks giving well knows a cook, so I think maybe he doesn't have one I really don't do things giving my wife has volunteered to do the stuffing this year, which I found to be dramatic and ambition, and I love her her sense of proportion of which is capable of doing here tonight. I'm me I love her stuffing. It is It is a big ask for a lady is taken care of too little kids to make them of any holiday meal whatsoever. Amy, painted discovery this weekend, a commercial discovery. This does not he's not for jewish audience really, but Could you please, because I think we have an exciting new discovery for last Minute- Thanksgiving People Popeye's franchise, offers a fully a whole turkey, like, like occasion, spiced of fully cooked turkey, that you have just re heat for short
fairly low price. Thirty nine hours Erika remember there not ever they're, not sponsors the commentary partner, and I fear you discover. That's just Popeye's, but also did both angles. That's right! That already has an alien turns out that these fast, who joins r r r, offering very very good deals on the home, cooked turkey on them on the pre done turkey, and I think that is a noble gesture for some of the less affluent people, the I'd say too, would like to have a big turkey dinner, but maybe diamond, I don't have the time yet, not it's gonna get us a potential, a horrifying idea for like hipsters, who want to throw a throw up a Popeye's thanksgiving out. I rise like ironic running at giving Popeye's things human. That would be great well
Looking for I'm going to my sister in law, my brother lawn sister and laws and my sister in law and is a fantastic cook and I'm sure it will be amazing, and I will do absolutely nothing because you don't want me they're, a kitchen less and less I'm making french toast, which m okay, tat, but otherwise good sort is nodding, serve as a sort of serving his wife above the emigrants DNA. States and its possible that the while immigrants to embrace Thanksgiving, perhaps not entirely, nobody thinks getting. My let me with my inlaws MA. Am my Wes chain he's my in Lhasa Chinese as well, and does so. We do a mix of the traditional thanksgiving dishes, plus some very very often take chinese dishes which those of you who know real Chinese reboot that's a desert, both a pleasing but also sometimes scary, proposition? I look forward to
now we're doing this. We are going to do a wish on Wednesday, so I've just pre doing their job, because I think the telling people but the poppies and Boge angles option. I think you need to tell them on Monday if they want to take advantage of it. I don't know how many people listening to accommodate magazine. Progress would attempted, but you know I there was a time for I kept kosher. My twenties, I certainly would have thought that was a pretty smart game The revival of the view I read was good, so plus they got Corn, bread, you ve, got something corn. They a corn, bread. They got a lotta, delicious stuff on the side. I also by the way and on this, the same fantastic food website, but some somewhat thanks giving Pringle package. That's limited edition. There's like there's a Turkey flavoured Pringle, there's a cranberries us prevent slavers wrangling at this is like a pumpkin spacing Erika November Righteous, creating these things. Well, I think that what we approved here
that we are not only aiming ourselves squarely at the evil, that is, the Jonah Goldberg Remnant podcast than all of his. You know all these insane dog, loving followers, but also at the weekly sub standard, which we flick there. Because they usually spent about half an hour talking about what they aid and what their drinking and what they had for dinner at beginning and then they go into the meat of the progress of the answer. We're doing this are reversed, but I think we ve also out at done them as well as their also in this competition for reviews, and we are way ahead of them, even though away behind Joan. Are they guilty of russian collusion as well. They are not because they're failing that's the whole point they're way behind. I think they're more like guilty of you. No collusion with. I don't know Austria or so you know like
somebody who abstained from reviewing it out or if you now at an guinea beside you know, their collusion is not does not working very well so for a green wild nor Rossman Answerable Mari. I am John ports. Keep the candle burning.
Transcript generated on 2019-12-13.