Big day for podcasts. First up, the 3WHH, posted a half-day early.
We raise our glasses high for the first 100 hours of Trump II, which bid to replace FDR’s famous “Hundred Days” for breathtaking executive action. You’d think that this is Trump’s first term, and metaphysically, I argue, it is. In just the way we’ve come to expect of Trump in all things, he may have turned the usual presidential cycle on its head. Even John Yoo, champion of executive power, is impressed. And one more miracle: he actually gets rare praise from Lucretia for his Newsweek article concluding than Biden’s pardons were much worse than Trump’s blanket pardons or all the J6 protesters.
From there we get to the main event, a three-part discussion of a single issue—in this case free speech and how to understand the First Amendment correctly. I argue (to Lucretia’s usual impatience and exasperation) back to first principles, in which the freedom of conscience and thus free expression was grounded in reason, that is, free speech was essential to deliberation about right and wrong, and how we should be governed. By nearly imperceptible degrees, in the 20th century the protection of “free expression” was re-grounded in moral skepticism (if not nihilism), which is why nude dancing and F-bombs on t-shirts became “protected speech.” This is not progress.
From there we move on to wondering if the time has come to revisit the libel standard of New York Times v. Sullivan, which has enabled our mainstream media to behave with increasing recklessness. And we think: Yes! Yes it is.
And along the way, some digressions into Animal House, Spongebob Squarepants, and other cultural totems. And we depart briefly from our new proprietary bumper music from Cosigner to use a very topical old tune (from lefties!), “Immigration Man.”
Listen here, or from your usual podcast portals when it goes live:
The Ricochet podcast was equally a treat, because our special guest is Victor Davis Hanson, and we break some news with Victor. First, we pried out of Victor his next book, and he shares some potentially yuuuuge news from Silicon Valley. But you’ll just have to listen to find out:
