We’re back! After a hiatus for a week while I was overseas, Lucretia and I return to the bar with some new whiskies and a sequel to our last episode that talked about the hysterical attacks on our friends at the Claremont Institute. Little did we know the liberal hysteria was just getting started!
Damon Linker, the columnist at The Week and a previous guest on this podcast, thinks our Claremont friends are going all-in for dictatorship. This seems a bit overwrought, but it provides a good occasion to look back at a genuine example of “Caesarism” in the form of Franklin Roosevelt, and especially his imperious and authoritarian First Inaugural Address. Most people recall only one famous line from the speech—”We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” (Did FDR’s speechwriters actually get this from a newspaper ad? We review the evidence.) Much less recalled are FDR’s multiple references to how the American people needed and wanted “discipline,” and that he was more than ready to be the disciplinarian, especially if Congress didn’t step up and grant him the extraordinary powers he wanted.
Just imagine what the left would say if Trump had said anything like this. Also, is it really correct to call Edmund Burke “the Jane Fonda of the American Revolution”? Curtis Yarvin thinks so, and it briefly throws Lucretia off her game. But not to worry; she recovers quickly and puts Burke back in stir.
You know what to do now: lace up your gloves and punch the play button here, or wander over to our hosts at Ricochet.
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