Welcome to the commentary magazine pug has today is Tuesday. May twenty eighth. We then teen, I'm John POD, hordes the editor of Commentary magazine with me, as always senior editor, a green. While I aim I jump associate ever know Rossman I now I got and in Washington, Senor writer Christine rose high, Christine Hygiene, so I we pulling back a little bit to examine the foundations and precepts of a story in the New York Times that reports on these suppose

war on climate change being waged by the Trump Administration and but I want to do here- is not take up the question of how severe is climate change or is it happening or something like that? I just want to take up what the climate change the world of climate change science claims is: is it role at its necessary project as relates to federal funding in the federal government's relation to climate change? I am going to read some from the new Times story in question, and then I will ask my colleagues here to examine the logic behind what is being said here. Ok, parts of the federal government will no longer fulfil what sign say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies reporting on the future effects of

rapidly warming planet and presenting a picture of what the earth could look like by the end of the century. If the global economy continues to emit, he trapping carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels, so it says here: James Riley of former astronauts and petroleum geologists has ordered as head of the house as a as head of the United States. Geological survey has ordered that scientific assessments produced by his office use only computer generated climate models that project the impact of climate change through twenty forty, rather through the end of the century, as had been done previously signed just say that would give a misleading picture, because the biggest effects of current emissions will be felt after twenty forty model show. The planet will most likely warm

at the same rate through about twenty. Fifty from that point until the end of the century, however, the rate of warming differ significantly with an increase or decrease in carbon emissions. Ok Abe. Let me just start here with the following, so according to this, the head of the it's, a geological survey wishes to have projections of the future impact of greenhouse gas and the like- oh Lee, for another through twenty years from now, as opposed to projecting what the earth will be like eighty years from now on the grounds that mysteriously, just after the twenty years, things will either get better or worse, depending on how we act during these twenty years. Ok,

what is wrong with this picture? What's wrong with it is that there is absolutely no way to make these projections so far into the future, based on looking around the world today with it, it does not take into account all the various things that will undoubtedly intervene between now and then and change. The Dixon as predictions have always fallen prey to to unforeseen developments pics of Christine. This is two thousand and nineteen right. Okay, let's go back a hundred years to nineteen nineteen and say that you had a panel convened by the White House to describe the conditions of the planet earth in the year two thousand and four.

What is going on in nineteen nineteen? What's wrong with that picture? Well, first of all, much of it would depend on the people who you're asking to make the projection and whether they tend to make worst case scenario, projections and and give you those are whether they're gonna give you more modest speculation and describe it as such, and I think that's Rina, wheat. We, the climate debate, has been if it largely by worst case scenario, projections. It's also, of course, a real science. The study of climate change, the study of what's happening around the earth, s, study of global warming, decreasing there, there's real scientific work being done, but there's a separate political argument that always gone on in his arguably dominated the debate ever since you know, there's been a so called republican war on science. Member that book by Chris Mooney some years ago said the political debate about climate change

relies on a worst case scenario: projections from the the climate change folks and in some sense, total denial on the other extreme, is completely I'm an unproductive. But the idea that that working scientists can tell us anything about. What's the things are really gonna be like on the ground in a hundred years. That's poor science, that's projection! You can make projections, but you make them and with the modest goal of trying to think through what we can do now that might have any effect at all which, as you know, there are certainly a few things but tend to have that be the drive enforced behind policies were making today doesn't really sound like silence, it sounds like politics. Can I just bravely an example sober where the widespread use of automobiles there was a real concern. What on earth? So these especially we're going to do about the increasingly

tolerable levels of horse, manure and cities, because that was the chief mode of transport Asian and it was piling up and it is toxic and to say nothing about being discussing and that was it you had projected be horse, manure right explosion into the future. You know you, but Imagine the waste of resources by the way. So no, I just think about that. So in nineteen nineteen here some of the things that that no one could possibly have predicted the splitting of the ETA, the rise of of the ability to fly to do flying to space, to place satellites into space, the internet, I mean there's ten thousand things that people in ninety mounting couldn't have imagined, go back another hundred years.

As person in eighteen, twenty trying to imagine what life would be like in nineteen hundred. This is before there were railways. Before there was the internal combustion engine before there was I mean it came and think before there was. You know way service in cities before before their what I mean the steam engine travel, which I think happened in eighteen for rhythm fultons fairy right, I mean bridge technology, tunneling technology I mean there. There is no way to emit weak. I'm not really imagine what life is going to be like and twenty,

now there's a perception on the part of people who are hostile towards climate change. Activism. Is that there's some sort of nefarious conspiracy involved here and it's not exactly true. What you're using here is a model and model is only as good as they mounted variables that are contributing to it. In the data that is put into it and if there is garbage enders garbage out, the only advantage to projecting out a hundred years and time which makes it scientific and not just outright future rhythm, is the capacity of those models to demonstrate that there will be a ten percent reduction in GDP growth and thousands of people's lives disrupted or killed as a result of this climate change or substantially less dramatic effects over the course of as much smaller period of time. These projections that these assessments come up with their concern.

But it would. They have much more weight and gravity if this movement was inclined to look at with some scepticism and self introspection criticism about the models that have failed to meet the projections that they were supposed to result in the ninety. Ninety, the intergovernmental panel on climate change, IPCC, produced its first assessment related to rates of warming and temperature changes, and that was flawed in two thousand and one there. The ipcc assessment about the severity of snow storms did not materialise. The predictions that he ordered would be ice free by now have failed to to resume a manifest and avian. Not too long ago, you wrote about how it was a sceptical blogger who took apart the consensus opinion among scientists, not a peer review process, but just a guy with some time on his hands, who found that the rates of ocean

Warming were exaggerated and the scientific community. So you know what you were right. We have an example of this in the form of peak oil really not too long ago. In the two thousand and six, it was general assessment that we would deplete the proven reserves of oil and natural gas on the planet and it in a relatively short of time in a straight line. Projection would result in ever increasing cost lime. Projections are inherently fallacious, but that's what we're doing here right. Why? Because in two thousand and seven dieter analogy to do hydraulic fracturing took place, I am in literally in twelve years the United States has gone from an importer of forty percent of its oil to a net exporter of oil. Forty percent that this is the United States is a third

Billy, Mallory or industry, or something I heard that came up out of nowhere. Obviously, if some of the things that you know the terms that we now think of in science, fictional terms, fusion fit whatever called fusion stuff like that, that you know that once there was, there was a fallacious report that we have discovered culture, cultures. I've been discovered, but I mean God knows I mean. Who knows we discovered the Higgs BO sun? You know we were. He felt. Why asked five six years, the God particle that that insects matter out of nothingness. I mean we don't know what on earth is. Is gonna come from all of this and I think what's what striking, about the story that I read is this sentence? Okay, so we have here is the following where it says, model show that the planet will most likely warm at about the same rate through twenty fifty that's thirty years. Ok from now

point till the end of the century. However, the rate of warming differ significantly with an increase or decrease in carbon emissions, meaning the model is subject to change, depending on what happens over the course of the next thirty years with what happens with greenhouse gases. So, even if you accept the theory of global warming or climate change or whatever the model that they insist, they must be allowed to do. I'm government on the government's dime has no fixed point, because is it all depends on what happens over the next thirty years and whether the rate of emissions changes or again goes to you now? If somehow, the electric car replaced the gas driven car emission, you know, God knows how far emissions would drop. If that's your gravest concern

What an especially with much of it depends on what India and China continue the path they continue to take forward in their development right in how what what they're doing about their own, the the burden on the pollution that they bear globally, so that they are able to find cleaner energy sources earlier on that it could slow if they don T couldn't get worse. That's all that these days are pretty serious factors that have to be taken into consideration, which again speaks to the need for more modest projections rather than doomsaying ones. Right so again, another paragraph from the story, the administrations prime targets, but the national Climate assessment produced interagency tax. Worse, roughly every four years since two thousand government scientist, use computer generated models and their most recent reports rejected a fossil fuel emissions continue unchecked, the arsenal,

your could warm by as much as eight degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, that would lead to drastically house the levels more devastating storms and droughts, crop failures, food losses and severe health consequences. Ok, so here's the thing. This model has been used. It has projected that with nothing changing temperature, this will rise. Me may rise, eight degrees Fahrenheit. Ok, that's all we been done. So is the idea that every four years you issue a report that says the same thing over and over using the same government model or is what you're doing? The answer I think is yes, and the purpose of that is not signed. Figure is political, it is, it is to come. He ate the conditions under which the the unite them. How does the United States and the partners in the United States so that this is the single most important issue in the thing that you have to deal with right, an arms had not science,

that is advocacy and it may again. I think part of the issue here is that the people who believe in this and believe that this is the worst thing that will ever happen on earth, don't really care that it is not. It is not the scientific method as we are as we understand it is, as we have been taught it, because the the ends justify the means here. What is important is frightening, the public into action and not using the best information that you have and making clear that there are a range of possible changes. You cannot as as no one said, you cannot make a direct line, guess about where the future is from the present part away. This smacks of a catastrophe is in part because of what pristine said regarding

They are the true emitters here, which is the industrialized nations China, India, most particularly, and that the activists class really doesn't have a prescription for their process there industrialism process or seem to care a whole what about it when they do in their pressed. But beyond that, it's really just a well. Maybe the Paris courts which anybody who is familiar with them NOS were entirely toothless, entirely voluntary and almost nobody adhered to their own standards.

It's not really. An answer is much more a bout of focus, inward, a domestic focus, and that takes on a hint of original sin as though it is some sort of penance fur industrialize and for being an industrial nation in the twentieth century, in the late nineteenth century and the associated large ass and conduct a foreign policy that we associate with the colonial powers, that's really where it gets too. If you press the activist on the issue for longer than a five minute conversation, while in any attempt to even discuss what discussing right now in terms of the validity of some of these projections and models, your call to denier for simply asking the question. I mean that's how polarizing the debate has become an why so much of this I mean eighty to ninety percent of this discussion about climate change. These days ends up as a political debate, not not a scientific one. He's a Campi scientific debate, because we're not all scientists and we're not acquisition to debate this.

I answer nor are a lot of people who claim to be scientists to can debate at the person who has made the most one of in this peace, as you know, is a famous scientists from from Princeton James Happar, who does say an absolutely home in this thing here where he compares. You know the attack on you see. I do I'm seo too to work. You know Jews under Hitler which, as you know, a terrible and just like the democratization of the porters under Hitler which is an astonishing thing to stand you now. I hope that he is, you know basically slapping himself with a fish. For having set it. I mean it's horrible and he should be disciplined for having set it, but it doesn't mean that he's not a creditable, I ain't IST, who believes with some merit that there is a kind of yet there is a kind of religion.

There is that there is an idea that that that Co2 is evil. That somehow, the extirpation of it or the worthy lessening amateur whenever you might call it It is necessary to purify our system to make sure that it continues and then about not with existing technology with some sort of secret super awesome, future technology that or were maybe now you know natural sources, renewables that will appeal to batteries that don't get exist. What may exist in the future, because the kid the top technology that could mitigate co2 emissions is nuclear and when its introduced into the debate, the advocates for a catastrophic climb change, rejected out of hand outright and without any sort of debate around, which is that which is Joe Biden. Did it and it's called a half measure by eighty eight Beale breaker. She called right because basically, this is these.

Everything is an echo of something older. I mean, I think one thing about you know approaching my sixtieth years that I, like literally, have now lived long enough to do to have lived through the idea that the earth was overpopulated and then it was really important for there to be zero population growth, and we now live idea is over. We now live in the west in the West, that is depopulating because not of zero population growth, but a population growth below the replacement rate of two, including in the United AIDS, which is now understood to be a potential and so on holy disaster on the grounds that there are now without generate behind to p for the social services that an aging population is to be seeking, we are gonna, be in a budgetary horror, show and that it

something you can sort of projected into the future actually cause those. Those numbers are knowable based on population trends in age, all that so there's your population growth. There was nuclear winter. That was a big thing nuclear. When do you guys era? A mate? You guys are an old enough to know how they were cut stories in news magazines about the horrors of nuclear winter. We were gonna have a nuclear winter day after another that member the day after that horrible tv right against us, there was get acid rain was another thing that we were. We were destroying the earth with us rain was turned out not to exist, really hole in the ozone hole in the ozone population. The destruction of right: the lungs of the planet, the rain forests destroyed. Like em, every time you turned around, there was an ecological or environs disaster that sort of faded, because it wasn't really happening

our war or the ozone hole in that one. I'm actually was addressed through public incentives arising equilibria, core chlorofluorocarbons, but it also had a seasonal component that, if that one more fully understood, made much less pressing issue, and then you remember the Lee Volcano that exploded in Iceland Right and twenty ten that it turned out then cool the earth for five years as volcanoes will was apparently was the story with a volcano Krakatoa eighteen sixties, which cool the earth. For thirty years I mean maybe there's a cycle in which stuff happens. You know that's what I'm saying. This is a vastly complex thing that nobody understands accept politically. It turns out that this is a. This has now become a kind of

says to non religious people. I would say not that there is no religious, that you can't be religious person and believe in the horrors of global warming or climate change, but it has within is as no assent and ask the logical or religious aspect to it that the that we are be foul. We we are doing to the earth. What say people of Babel were doing, or you know, or what what it was necessary for God to do to people when he called upon when he made the flood right that we are pursuing the humans are pursuing the earth and need to be made all to be destroyed, if only it was just limited to you now,

aren't you evolves, so universally applied that it really is the application of some sort of an end via feel so religious SEC, as it's almost puritanical that there needs to be when you get down to it, that there needs to be a sort of monastic life that we need to return to the kind of consumerism that is fuelling. This is the problem that we live too well and that the rest of the world is suffers as a result of those it's a finite commodity prosperity and we have too much in the rest of the world doesn't, and it needs to be redistributed, and so therefore, a little bit of suffering on the part of westerners and exclusively westerners is. This is not only a economic prescription but some sort of Odin saw karmic Justice one. That's that's a really important point that no is making, because it speaks to the reason why the environmental message is basically suffered a form of ideological capture by the left, and I think that, as we saw in it

these elections in Austria that doesn't always lead to political success for people on the left when they, when their messages. One of fear, wandering in doom and gloom about climate. It doesn't resonate with voters who are looking for more practical, sensible, dispassionate discussion of an important issue. It's not that if you're asking for reasonable rational scientific discussion without hyperbole that doesn't make you a climate denier, if you, if you don't understand the complexity of a model in one when it understood wanted, explained in such a way The doom and gloom projections makes sense or doubt that doesn't make you deny air, and I think that there is this capture of the environmental message by the left and that that's actually is much the fault of the right as well. There is a real opportunity for us, thoughtful conservative to make a stand on the environment that isn't climate denying in and you don't trump like, but

that is sensible and dispassionate, and and much more rational and more of a realist stance on the climate than some other fearmongering were singing from the left there. There have then such things like thirty years ago, there was the policy of carbon trading where you could either essentially sell your carbon rights to somebody else and get a credit for not prudent, not emitting carbon, or something like that. George H, w wash promised to plant a billion trees that availed him like it's not as though some of that kind of concern environmentalism ends up winning winning any votes for the right, though it may mitigate. The damage is being seen as beings or hostile to the environment. Course, I think in twenty sixteen use. Almost the exact opposite happened, which is that the states that are the most at risk of having their economies injured,

by radical environmentalism, went for Trump were Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Michigan and particularly Casino Catholic and of war, and the auto combat none on car emissions is itself as a war on the auto industry Pennsylvania, which has a fracturing industry that the that the Democrats were incredibly hard toward. I mean you have even the example of a state like West Virginia, which was a thoroughly democratic state until the and humanities, and is now the most republican state in the country because of the pack on coal, which its main industry about you may hate call. You may think that Hillary Clinton is right to say we should get rid of the coal industry, it's terrible too awful it does it it's bad for the people work for it. It's bad for you. Environment- all of that, but This is a state in which its meaning industry and

thing has magically come along to replace it so that there is no other form of much employment in West Virginia aside from the cold in its ancillary businesses em. So from selling you know opiates, so you know, Democrats have been injured, I think politically by their by their grace of ragged, radical environmentalism they get. They leave a whole to make this kind of populist case that these Lula's people who all live in cities- and you know dance around in their believed. You know he says, don't have any idea what it is that a real person has to go through to make alive. I mean the rights case for environmental radiation and co2 emissions mitigation pretty easy to make. I mean it's just basically concerns our demand and market forces, the bottom line, is you get the environment that you pay for this country has in twenty seventeen lead the world in sea?

to emissions without any sort of non binding treaty to do so. Unless, just because people want it, the rates of emissions from coal burning had been reduced, as coal burning has become economically inefficient as a result of his we're talking about before all these alternative, fossil fuel technologies that burn cleaner and that are more abundant and it made coal less attractive and then perhaps most recently and most importantly, as the invention of smart thermostats, which have radically reduced the amount of wasted energy that goes into heating and cooling of structures and the green new deal or say we need to mandate this technology in retrofit every building in the country in order You have it, but the only reason wait exists as market forces and consumer demand, and that's because people want to pay less and their utility bills were ok. Now, let's take a pause here, so I can talk to you guys about door dash, which is a pretty great risk. As you know, if you ve had a long day at work or a tough day at school is still stuck at the office, you can treat yourself

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So now that we have solved the earth's problems, I just want to go back for one second and emphasise this point in seventeen: twenty ok who predicted the american and french revolutions. Ok- or you know I don't know the year- I mean I they did it it's insane. Him made him team who the Soviet Union had just been borne by nineteen. Ninety one, it was gone. You know with it. Hitler was a widow was a was a world where one veteran nineteen nineteen, like you know, Joseph Stalin, was one of the three people who might

then surely succeed lemon if the Soviet Union's government had had survived this simulation control is the best argument for this, because it is a purely malthusian argument. It stipulates that conditions that prevail today will prevail in the foreseeable future and the existing technology that we have is insufficient to meet demand that capacity and it's always wrong, because it always underestimate the capacity of mankind to engineer itself out of a challenge. None of the population controllers anticipated Norman Borlaug Borlaug Willa there, the green, the brain,

the green revolution that created the famine resistant and is an actual evaluation that goes into the amount of yield that we have to generate increased yield from new technology in put into seeds and development of corn and we'd strange because they have to generate x, amount more yield every year and there's a vast industry dedicated to engineering, better, stronger, faster growing seeds, most of which are under attack by the same people who es over climate change because its Gmos. Gmos are bad for some role, its not just that. It's also this idea that, because because food is now plentiful and because therefore starve, if we do not live in a planet in which half the people are very close to start nation, we are encouraging the creation of human life as people. No longer are, you know, subsisting entire

a billion people have been raised from the most penurious and horrible. Where are those additional mean born right? But you know in the equator, when you bring up Gmos, though it something interesting happened there, which is. I think that the argument became pure religion and then it really kind of lost. I mean but not before it reached right area. Absolutely right. Right of worst, you genesis policies perpetrated by this government since World WAR, two in the name of population control and much of it dedicated to the sub Saharan world and the equatorial world. People with Yahoo puerto rican women were forced to sterilised themselves, I mean like really horrible, but there's there is now no serious mainstream anti GMO force really right. There isn't

think so I mean maybe I'm overstating dusty, and you would not enough you go through it, but it's not resident technology it. It could have been b b, the sort of them you know anti seo too, pain and it's not a bit of you. Don't see it on the front pages of papers, will not not in the U S, but in Europe. Certainly, the entire GMO feeling is very strong right, I mean that's. This is this remains a pretty big difference between our culture in there. It is. It is a little crazy since, of course, all Gmos are doing his appointment Monday lie and you know when they lie in the efforts to how is this is how plants have been changed and altered over. You know for millennia and so and they really couldn't find any doubts. The video

you think I've I've used to follow the debate very closely in the living there. That Anti GMO advocates woods would say was that while we just don't know yet, we don't know what what problems that could become had come deadline. Just a guess. Factually true, you know another story. The New York Times this weekend that that I found fascinating on the grounds of where, where science and politics are our commingling in in a way that is interesting, if not scandal, so terrible, but you can just rule as you wish was the story about how jewel the vague pen company is desperately looking for scientists to do studies of the uses of jewel, and when I say studies I dont mean they, they don't care right now. What the study say, they need studies to be done because in three years time they need to submit some huge packet

of evidence to federal authorities that their claim that they are a harm reduction device that gets people to smoke less or beer do smoke less tobacco is that was proved, and so they are wandering around America going to conferences, offering scientists huge sums of money just to do studies. That may say, like we don't care with the stuff you, if you prove that you know its, it were terrible. That's fine! We just the studies done and they cannot get people to do, studies on no one wants to textual, because that is the real question everyone is concerned about is its use by children and you can ethically perform a study on children right. I mean this that there is a kind of conundrum here, even risers. You might be curious, but its children, Emmy the issue of whether it

could be harm reducing for adults, but it could also be gateway inducing for children, but it could be both run, but there's no way that ethically stuff that right rejects it, One, came if Europe at Genoa, health. When we recall server, you know a macro health person right and in the you'll come students as look where I'll give you a million dollars. Do a study just do a study if you prove that you know where the worst thing on earth so be it just do. Take my money and do a study had not give it asked to look at it. I don't want you know just do the study. Well, I'm not touch a man. That's what's interesting caused what what they're saying something you could obviously be in the contract and everything like that, but that it is now. It is so axiomatic that no one should ever inhale anything that isn't cannabis, apparently, which seems to be fine,

although you have let you have allowed to you're my lead to question the intake of cannabis anymore, but you are too the intake of something else that you know this is like, as I said, to a before. It's like, if you said, look I'm from the had a file industry just do a study of pet. If I don't care, if you find it's bad, who could that's that's the way people are treating this right? Is it's like that that the even asking the question a is a surrender to evil which is striking. I mean it's, it's also just a new technology in every new technology. Has it right? Well, that's when we have, or, as Christine says leg in fact, you know their mouths was to be marketing two kids and they claim their marketing.

Kids me. I have like bubble gum flavors. Of course their market kids are using. What is a young up? You dont have level gum well aware, where you it's a huge thing and middle schools in high school, I'm out here in d c I mean it's, it's a problem. Kids are using this stuff all the time. I will say that the last time I was in London, every a human being in London seem to have some kind of a vague the entire country, entire, you know, city was like one giant they pen, so Obviously there are adults goes anywhere smuggled cigarettes when you were there last, why not many, because they were all smoking babes goods before smoke and say ass before so when they were more like in Paris bore. I didn't see many weapons in Paris. I just saw like thousands upon thousands of people standing outside bars with. It doesn't seem to be like that here and I still

people staying outside a bar smoking cigarettes, see people like smoking, rapes outside a bar but when I see someone smoking here walking have assured, I do think, oh, how retro yeah you're nice, they expect them to be vapourings. Then I look I it looks very sad to be. You know like, like you feel sorry, it's like a person. They always look grieved and you know like they're, like their blue there you know their pariahs? They think they're pariahs there either they either defiant in their pereda more. They look ashamed or something like that. It's here that really better than tat, about a successful active moral suasion that look nominally light. It was about health, but I think was about ten thousand different other things, the target, another change you could never have you could never. When I was in high in college fifty five per the people United States Mark announced twenty percent. Ok,

so do a straight line. Rejection that nothing it's twenty percent straight line projection from nineteen. Seventy nine to you now, if you were, if you were the Philip Morris company or whoever was who made you think you were gonna have a their experiences. Seventy two percent decline in your product. There are still valid lying with ashtrays name lavatories. It's true. That's true! I remember when you could smoke gonna play, but you could only smoke in the back as that ray, I was gonna really mitigate the same out from going up front. As interesting okay, so now I've already forgotten what where next time? Oh right, Europe, Everybody is raping and either voting green or Nazi. There is something that's why they're so anxious and have to be able to open the UK told not Nazi, but so the

What's interesting as these elections for the European Parliament, a body of absolutely no meaning whatsoever, enormous turn out. Fifty percent turnout across the European Union. I mean we can barely get fifty percent, and now we get about fifty five percent, but I mean you know how many elections there were the United States or even get our congressional action. Certainly never get. People are turning out to vote for this meaningless parliament. I mean it's by the way why high voter turnout is a good thing. Collective appalled to exercise those having European Parliament pull taxes. We made little literacy tacitly earlier. Reflection of your trepidation, with the state of affairs and non vote is a vote of confidence. Ok, so just to take in Britain as it as an inch. The examples are the big story. There is the utter wipe out of the main parties right of the torrent, for particular

the Tories right, who have apparently not performed this badly in any elections in eighteen. Thirty, two right. So the Tories are you now the governing party of of ink and they are of great Britain. They they will likely with two rate recent maize resignation. Former government probably with Bore Johnson, is the prime minister and go ahead. We ve spent now three years hearing from every sophisticated person that the votes to leave the European Union then and do do brags it was it was a sham, was a fraud. It was based on lies at this and there should be a second referendum. Ok, if you or a person who believes that there should be a second referendum. Do you look at the election that happened over the weekend and say: let's have a second referendum? Here's again an idea: Britain just me

the bricks of party headed headed by ferrars, the largest british party in the in the in the European Parliament, when a great idea to have a second, you think it's gonna do worse than the first brands. Hard to say that, even if you normally add the votes up and see that maybe the remainders did pretty well like This is a serious shot across the bows of the tourism. Boris Johnson wrote a peace this morning in which he said we gotta get out of here, but we have to do with the voters, told us to do we gotta get out and the guy. It is good to have our own sovereignty or that or bypass

or this party, is going to go the way of the Dodo bird, which is pretty staggering. So the lesson their fur conservatives is that. Why would the public support something half measure here when, if you're gonna get a leaf party, you can get it whole from these less savory, more less reputable types, apparently Melanie live, I think it's it's like this is a real vote. This is a real and not just in in Britain, but across Europe. This is a real voting tendency. This you can dismiss it as far right, Nazi, whatever, which is often it this now nationalist parties that are anti liberal anti globalists anti collectivist

are now occupying twenty five to thirty percent of the seats in the european parliament. Brett Stevens had a good formulation of this tendency it at the end of his calm, his recent com, where he he described among economic paraphrase, but he described it as serve people voting against the them before us idea and the I intend to vote for the through tangible over the intangible and the immediate over the long term. You know I was this: is it's a sort of a series of impulses where they were people? Don't trust the status quo time? It's not just nationalist, but it's an interesting status quo, because at the status quo that is based on a conception of a better of of a of an intangible future right, it's not stick with was because of what you have you keep what you have it is.

We are making all these changes to the way we do things because it some indiscreet undetermined point in the future. All of these yearnings. You have for sovereignty and give our borders, and all this failed they'll just kind of you stop worry about it and everything will be a lot better. Just trust us right am, I think, that's the that's where its different, narrowly staff will party says, don't vote for change, because gonna be too much chains, they're saying where the stairs Your party vote for change you can't even imagine you you kid. It's creating a picture of a post nation world that you can't even imagine where what you're places in it right- and so my my thinking about this-

is that what we are seeing here is a is. The real collapse of war was never fully a post cold war consensus in which you can call the Fukuyama consensus. Not that Frank forget himself believed this was good or bad, just that he was projecting it, which is so there's no at the end of the cold war. The end of communism, there's no narrative for the future or effort to explain our but sort of liberal democracy. In some fashion or other, and so all the nations of the world liberalized to some extent in the ninety nineties and then by the end of the nineties, they start would be thinking themselves a little bit. Putin comes in Russia, the

various other things happen and then nine eleven happens and that kind of shatters suddenly were where there is a kind of you know. No ideological war in the world that, and we that were stopped seeming, is important, tour winnable or wasn't as big a problem as we thought and so that we come back to it, which there's this huge financial meltdown, and there still no under narrative to the liberal democracy. Narrative is no would say like there's a well. Is there the right of the code? Criticism I have of the return of history narrative? Is that its

it's very sentimental and we are talking about which is does isn't to say it is unimportant, but it is nevertheless, in my view, a little bit cosmetic because we are not talking about any sort of alternative to no marketplace. That's over. No one is saying you know the vastly superior system. Societal organization here is the state ownership of the community no, no one saying that that's done even the sort of regulatory models and a models that prevailed throughout the twentieth century are as debt is the dodo we'd. The regulatory structures were talking about now are piddling compared to the kind of thing that was the dominant way in which economies structure is structured themselves in order to maximize growth and limit the personal sacrifice and suffer

on the outside the consensus there has really been shattered. So what really talking about is our relationship to the nation state and sort of conceptual idea of nationalism in society in communitarianism, but not grand societal organization, ok, but that makes it worse if you think that this is what I mean, that so there is no alternative to liberty, China is an actually creating a model than anybody else can follow. That is a counter model to America. China is very specific to itself. It has its own goals and and things at once do. But it's not exporting an ideology, doesn't have an ideology. It does not want anything, you know. No, no one is creating a counter model too liberal democracy, which means that when liberal democracy fails to satisfy people there,

we even have anywhere else to look to say. Ok. Well, I don't believe in this. I believe that so all they can do is stop liberal democracy in some fashion or grew out of it, not even the far right populous. You were now mean that there is now established populism in what France, ITALY, Poland, the UK I mean it establishing raises another night friendly to the market either. Some are, some are whereby model is to be more socialist and the socialists to out socialized them there, but not much like so in India, where nor innermost, just one of your overwhelming landslide, which is all being attributed to hindu nationalism. Modi on a second term, because India had evidence has it has had an insanely over regulated economy and centralized economy and motor actually sought to decentralize it end and direct later, to some extent with apparently astonishing success, so he's

complicated cause he's like a hindu nationalist and that's terrible, and on the other hand he has actually addressed his nations failure to become a jet. You know economic powerhouse on the on the order of China by to what we might consider west policies of no denationalization and deregulation and open up things to the animal spirits of capitalism. So that's an interesting you sort of domestic dismissed it, but then on the EU should have in so far as the alternative to liberal democracy. In the marketplace exists only in the form of the vision for society advanced by groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS, and the caliphate mean that was a real competing vision of human social organisation that represents a complete break

Allah soviet style communism. But you know you know it so interesting method, so the war on terror really serve began as a way to bolster the liberal consensus. This is this is the the liberal order, fighting again its worst enemies and when we will prevail in part as we are right and because our system has made us the most powerful, most drunk and somehow, frustration with that war ended up reverting countries to this nationalist framework. Instead, after a number of years they they. You know these people start saying either health is on one above that's over there. I am worried about mine. Let them do everything one. Why think there was a sense that this was not a sad. This, the war on terror and its at its precepts did not

it's the satisfying conclusion. People wished it to reach you now there were no. There were no victory parades. There was no the kind of stumbled through we defeat. Did ISIS, but then we didn't, but then we did servants lingering Al Qaeda kind of gone, but then came back as ISIS and we didn't win the war in Iraq, although we did, although we didn't you know all that stuff, but This sense that you know the current order of societies occurred. Order of the day a crack size is satisfying to their electorates. Left doesn't like the inequality in the end and the weather, Elsie global dumping, and the right doesn't like the

Eh colorization, and these sensibly and the atomizer of classical understanding of community and the sense that they are. They are being Lord it over from above by this liberal elite that tramples on their sense of what is right and what is wrong right Christine do now. I think that's right and I think that's at the crisis of liberalism, which I think a lot of liberals hoped would be a blip that would be easily resolved, is proving itself certainly in European and in the U S as well, to not be easily resolved, able part of that look. Having conservatives have a challenge to conserve its have to find a way to to deal with populism and to deal with this new breed of nationalism and xenophobia, and I dont so far we haven't seen conservative leadership. Do that very well, but I did the question liberalism is is built last as it were, is still

up in the air. I don't think there is a decisive answer to that. I think the fact that people who feel people who voted in these elections feel like they really are getting heard still by their leaders in this was yet another attempt to be heard, for example, of mine, old Strauss in training. From my undergraduate tales of the universe, you should call your lease studying with Alan Bloom. Ellen bloom, you know, translated and taught Plato's rubble and pleasures are prevalent begins the first book a player republic begins with a debate over what is important is the good, important or one's own and there's a character of Sir Worthwhile Berger named catalysts and countless his argument. Is he s too do what's right for his family, his family, his children? Everything like that and sign Socrates says no. What is important is the good in general right- and this is the conflict that the book seeks to resolve and that sign that Socrates then lays out this image.

The perfect society, the republic, which is an uncomfortably totalitarian world, the purpose of which is to protect the philosopher from being killed right. So what's interesting about this. Is that the that this is precisely the battle? Not that I'm saying that trumpets, a student, Alan Blooms, but so the day Craig Party or the liberal, Liberal America, not leftist amendments are liberal. America believes in the good right. So it's like be nice to everybody. So you're nice, your fellow citizens, but you also have to be nice to immigrants illegal or illegally, treat them with renewed you, you do everything you can for them, just as you would for anybody else, and the other argument is no we're a country we take care of our own. First, we are responsible to our own first to protecting our own first that, after that can do we have to do for others general this. You know the the the

left kind of stumbled into this idea that there was nothing specific or necessary to the defence of the IT states as us over an entity. Let's say you know it, which the citizens of the United States is more important to the future, the United States than somebody who wishes to come to the United States and so that serve like their plum. Their serve Platt play Nazism as opposed to the surface felicity. Some of the right. This is the fight that that goes on. Every single country, in particular in Europe, were literally countries, have surrendered their borders and their sovereignty to to Brussels, which What the entire argument in England is about is: are we our own country? Are we not our own country when Britain or are we? Are we ourselves or are we simply going to be a large

part of something larger, and we don't and now a lot of people. There were happy to be a large part of something larger and a lot of people. There do not want to be part of a large part of something like one of the philosophical arguments in favour of supranational. Creationism was that it was insurance against national decline, but you were essentially setting the rules of the road on your terms, so that when history inevitably may to come back and other powers rose and new decline, that you would essentially be codifying your way of life into something that would represent? You know so system that would continue moving forward. Even if you did not ok levy living. Take a break here and tell talk to you guys about Harry shave, our old friend, whose found There were tired of paying up for razors that we're overpriced over design. They knew a great shaved doesn't come from gimmicks like vibrating heads

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you, gotta, Harry's, dot com, slash commentary to redeem your offer and let them know we sent you to help support the show. Can I join in with one plea as one of the other ideas of the sort of establishment liberalism in Europe was that it was also understood to protect minorities, and, as we saw in the news over the weekend in Germany, there was this statement by government officials telling Jews that they couldn't guarantee their protection and in perhaps they shouldn't where a keeper I should where there had covering, because that mark them in such a way that they might be at risk, and so I think the whole discussion of you know what kind of response there can be too far. I populism, xenophobia, there has to be a

similar discussion going on about what protections the sort of european liberalism will be able to continue to offer to the minutes. Isn't it miss and what open border policy means in that context, because, certainly in Germany, it is meant much greater danger for Jews living in that country and mature, rising nationalism, and Germany is an especially good. Bulwark could give well, that's for sure, but I did but by evaluating this case, it's not nationalism. That is the danger that part of it is that this is the this. An attack by a minority on another minority which is which, which is not what is imagined in these sort of in the kind of romantic idea of the world in which the minorities are all protected, cause the ideas that all minorities have the same requirement, getting some kind of a sense of protection from the government, not that they will turn on each other or that Muslims will

Muslims. Will, in Germany, seek to duplicate. Therefore, now grandeur, religio, ideological fight against jewish people. You know on you now having just come off refugee boats firms Syria, like maybe they should just go, get a job if their heads down and stop attacking people, don't they understand intersection reality? Oh they do less clear. Let me, too, with that we will bring this. Crushingly morose episodes of clothes for what Baxter crushing we're osity, it's been a couple of years. We did it, we did it go oh, this is this is by the way we should never cells LE pen in the bag was that three hundred and first episode, three hundredth wow wow. So when you say hears It means that we need to make that clear to Jonah. Goldberg was always celebrating is like this is a hundred and fifty episode.

This is eighty seven episode you know, maybe when he gets to a point where he's liking around three hundred, maybe he's he can then cite you know the nice ditch podcast. He has there, and I think you should probably have a little modesty about these seven landmark achievement with that for remote, nor Rossman Christine rose and I'm John passports. Keep the candle burning.