Speaker 1: We're always excited to have another opportunity to speak with
Speaker 1: the great George Willie has a new book out. It's
Speaker 1: Armstrong and Getty extra Large because four hours simply usn't enough.
Speaker 1: This is Armstrong and Getty extra Large. The new book
Speaker 1: is American Happiness and Discontents, a collection of reflections on
Speaker 1: American culture during the most mercurial period in recent American history.
Speaker 1: Mr will our User, I'm very well, do you just
Speaker 1: finding dandy. We're not big fans of hyperbole, and some
Speaker 1: might think, well, the most mercurial period in recent American history,
Speaker 1: but it does seem like if if a culture is
Speaker 1: a plate spinning act, and that is a lost art
Speaker 1: by the way, plate spinning, but if if a culture
Speaker 1: is a plate spinning act, it feels like every single
Speaker 1: plate is wobbling. It does. And we now have three
Speaker 1: foreign policy crises coming to a boil over Taiwan, Ukraine,
Speaker 1: and the Iranian nuclear program. And domestically we're spending money
Speaker 1: as though we had it, which we don't, and we're
Speaker 1: at daggers drawn over the most ridiculous I guess, sanitizing
Speaker 1: of opinion on college campuses and all the rest. So yes,
Speaker 1: at the time. That does not make for cheerfulness of
Speaker 1: this holiday. So it's not just our imagination because my
Speaker 1: whole adult life, they've always said each election is the
Speaker 1: most important election in our nation's history, you know that
Speaker 1: whole thing. But um, it definitely does seem whether the
Speaker 1: universities or China on the scene, or you know how
Speaker 1: many different defund the police, all the different things. We're
Speaker 1: in some weird territory we are. You just express probably
Speaker 1: the most destructive political slogan of modern times, defund the police.
Speaker 1: Almost reelected Donald Trump clearly has cost uh number of
Speaker 1: House seats and gubernatorial races and all the rest. And
Speaker 1: you do wonder about the death urge of political parties
Speaker 1: that adopt foolish slogans like that. Well, and it's gone
Speaker 1: beyond that as long as we're talking about the Justice Department.
Speaker 1: On the Today's Radio show, by coincidence, we we talked
Speaker 1: about several of the radical left d a's whether in
Speaker 1: l A, San Francisco, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago. The list
Speaker 1: goes on and on who are instituting this very very
Speaker 1: strange experiment decriminalizing crime and the results have been just awful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean shoplifting in San Francisco is essentially a misdemeanor
Speaker 1: if that as long as you shoplift only up to
Speaker 1: n fifty dollars worths of merchandise from the very the
Speaker 1: declining number of all Greens drug stores that are still
Speaker 1: open because they keep closing them there because they can't
Speaker 1: keep products on the shelves well, and it goes even
Speaker 1: beyond that. Michael, I'm talking to our technical director here.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to find the clip of George Gascone. There
Speaker 1: it is clip number thirty four. Georgia. I think you're
Speaker 1: going to be able to hear this. This is the
Speaker 1: d A of l A County. I am proud of
Speaker 1: our entire team in the l A County District Attorney's Office.
Speaker 1: We cannot prosecute our weight out of social inequalities, income
Speaker 1: in equalities, the Young House, the desperation that we have
Speaker 1: since when is that what a d A is supposed
Speaker 1: to do. That's amazing, isn't All kinds of institutions now
Speaker 1: are branching out to do things they're just not supposed
Speaker 1: to do. Universities don't educate the dcor nate newspapers like
Speaker 1: The New York Times decided it's their job to reframe
Speaker 1: our understanding of American history. So they come up with
Speaker 1: the sixteen nineteen project and the preposterous idea that the
Speaker 1: American Revolution was fought simply to preserve slavery. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's lunacy. Now, you really don't expect a newspaper to
Speaker 1: be good at American history, and you don't expect universities
Speaker 1: to be good at uh indoctor nation, although they're doing
Speaker 1: their best to acquire enough experience with that. But you
Speaker 1: do what does wish people would stay in their lanes,
Speaker 1: as it were, do what they're paid to do. Or
Speaker 1: the c d C deciding how long a person can
Speaker 1: go without paying their rents for instance, exactly housing policy
Speaker 1: from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's amazing, Um,
Speaker 1: what we got you on the line hit me with
Speaker 1: a definition of conservatism or conservative. A conservative as someone
Speaker 1: who wants to conserve the American founding, which has three
Speaker 1: principal tenants. One, there is such a thing as human nature.
Speaker 1: We're not just creatures that acquire the culture we're situated in.
Speaker 1: Be Therefore, there are some natural rights. Thats rights essential
Speaker 1: for the flourishing of creatures with our natures. See therefore,
Speaker 1: right first come rights, and then comes government. So we
Speaker 1: do not get what we rights from government. What we
Speaker 1: get from government is the protection of our rights. And
Speaker 1: so therefore we want a balanced government, separation of powers,
Speaker 1: not too strong, a presidency, and a judiciary alert to
Speaker 1: the government slipping its leash so that government will secure
Speaker 1: our rights. What percentage of the electric do you guess
Speaker 1: currently would accept that definition and when want to promote it? Well,
Speaker 1: I it's an excellent question because the American people often
Speaker 1: are ideological conservatives but operational liberals. They talk like Jeffersonians
Speaker 1: that government is best, that governs least and all that,
Speaker 1: but they want to be governed by Hamiltonians that will
Speaker 1: give them all the possible benefits. It turns out, surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: that free stuff polls well. Right now, you have the
Speaker 1: Biden administration saying we're gonna give everybody free stuff, and
Speaker 1: nint two percent of the American people aren't gonna have
Speaker 1: to pay for it. That is, everyone under earning under
Speaker 1: four hundred thousand dollars a year. The Biden administration says
Speaker 1: we're gonna pay for all this by burdening too unpopular,
Speaker 1: minorities too wealthy, and corporations. The Biden administration clings to
Speaker 1: the fiction that corporations pay taxes. Everyone knows they don't.
Speaker 1: Corporations collect taxes. They passed their tax burden onto a
Speaker 1: customers and the cost of the goods or services be
Speaker 1: they take it away from resources that otherwise would be
Speaker 1: available to their employees as compensation, and see from shareholders dividends,
Speaker 1: which include, by the way, vast numbers of Americans through
Speaker 1: their pension plans, that have invested in American corporations. We
Speaker 1: would love to see, and I have a feeling you
Speaker 1: might agree, we would love to see the basics of business,
Speaker 1: the basics of economics, and the basics of civics taught
Speaker 1: in every middle school and high school in America. I
Speaker 1: think it's it's utterly unwise that we don't do that,
Speaker 1: And for seeing some of the effects of that absence,
Speaker 1: I wish every school child in America primary secondary school
Speaker 1: would be sit down and read a short essay called
Speaker 1: I Pencil, written by Lawrence Read many years ago, the
Speaker 1: theme of which is no one can make a pencil.
Speaker 1: No one can make a pencil. Millions of people are
Speaker 1: involved in producing that yellow pencil with the little rubber
Speaker 1: eraser on top and the graphite in the middle, the
Speaker 1: people who mind the graphite, and lumbermen who grow the
Speaker 1: trees and and saw send them to the sawmills, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: The sheer complexity of a modern economy is up against
Speaker 1: the government's fatal conceit, the government's vanity and pride in
Speaker 1: assuming that it knows enough that it can dispense with markets.
Speaker 1: What markets are are information gathering devices. They send signals
Speaker 1: of information to us as to what things cost and
Speaker 1: what things ought to costs, supply demand, and all that
Speaker 1: other stuff. Government steps in and says, no, no, we
Speaker 1: don't know that we need that. We can handle all
Speaker 1: this with all the clever people we have in our bureaucracies. No,
Speaker 1: they can't, and they make a dreadful mess of it.
Speaker 1: We have been talking a lot about the the various
Speaker 1: trillion dollar spending packages that have come out of Congress
Speaker 1: in the last year year and a half, and UH
Speaker 1: compared it to like when you're on vacation. When you're
Speaker 1: on vacation, you buy stuff that you would never normally buy.
Speaker 1: You spend money in a way you never normally would.
Speaker 1: We're kind of that way as a country now, where
Speaker 1: it's like nobody remembers what a trillion dollars means or
Speaker 1: anything like that. Do you have any concern that we're
Speaker 1: crossing a point of no return that you just can't
Speaker 1: get out of this kind of debt. Everybody knows that
Speaker 1: there is some point at which the ratio of publicly
Speaker 1: held debt to gross national product becomes suffocating in a
Speaker 1: huge impediment economic growth. Now are publicly old debt is
Speaker 1: now over. It's larger than our economy. So we're going
Speaker 1: to find out where that is, and we're going to
Speaker 1: find out the hard way. The simple axiom of life
Speaker 1: is this, there are only two ways to fund the government,
Speaker 1: current taxes and future taxes. So we are piling up
Speaker 1: future taxes on the unconsenting, because unborn future generations from
Speaker 1: which we're borrowing. Yeah, I know, and that's such a
Speaker 1: moral thing to do. I just don't understand why more
Speaker 1: people don't get that. So amidst all of the uh,
Speaker 1: the gloom and perhaps doom, we're discussing, it's notable the
Speaker 1: title of your new book is American Happiness and discontents.
Speaker 1: Where does your optimism come from when you feel it?
Speaker 1: What's positive on the scene these days? Well, the first
Speaker 1: is that the American people have made wrong turns before,
Speaker 1: but they've corrected. Winston Churchill, who loved our country as
Speaker 1: much as he loved as American mother, once said, the
Speaker 1: American people invariably do the right thing after they have
Speaker 1: exhausted all the alternatives. We have a way of making
Speaker 1: life difficult for ourselves, but no one ever got rich
Speaker 1: betting against the United States. Second, our principles are sound.
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan once said, I don't want to go back
Speaker 1: to the past. I want to go back to the
Speaker 1: past way of facing the future. Uh, the belief in
Speaker 1: an open market driven society rather than a government centered society.
Speaker 1: So I think at the end of the day, the
Speaker 1: Americans have have a national memory of the American founding principles.
Speaker 1: George will the new book is American Happiness and Discontents.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to curl up with it. Any glass
Speaker 1: of fine California wine, George, always a pleasure. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for the time I was delighted to be with you.
Speaker 1: Have a good day, terrific. Thanks. If you don't read
Speaker 1: George Will's columns in the Washington Post. You're you're missing out.
Speaker 1: You know. He often has the best take on whatever
Speaker 1: the big political story is that's going on at the time. Well,
Speaker 1: and if like us, you've felt your attention spanned shrinking
Speaker 1: during the twenty one century, I love the collections of
Speaker 1: columns because you sit down, you do, you read it,
Speaker 1: you enjoy it, you contemplated then you know, I mean
Speaker 1: maybe you put it down for a while. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. You know that whole nobody's ever gotten rich
Speaker 1: betting against the United States. Of course, that's true up
Speaker 1: until the point it's not, which is actually a George
Speaker 1: wilfrase um. It's true until the point it's not. Then
Speaker 1: then then then we're in a different spot. And nobody's
Speaker 1: ever tried this before, nobody has ever tried running this
Speaker 1: kind of debt and uh and seeing how it's gonna
Speaker 1: turn out. Yeah, sports franchises are like countries, except that
Speaker 1: the timetable is is compressed mightily. Obviously you're talking about
Speaker 1: a great sports Uh you know, what do you call it?
Speaker 1: A dynasty? Maybe four years, maybe four or five six
Speaker 1: years at the out at the outside and in the
Speaker 1: midst of it, and it said it's height. You're thinking,
Speaker 1: how could this possibly end? We have all the pieces,
Speaker 1: and then it does. And you know, obviously a country
Speaker 1: can exist over a few centuries. What was that reading
Speaker 1: about the other day? It was um, Oh, gosh, it
Speaker 1: had to do with um, with the ancient world, Oh
Speaker 1: it was. It was the various periods of the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1: And at one point they casually throw out this sentence
Speaker 1: about and I can't remember what region it was, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter. It said, uh, and and there
Speaker 1: followed a piece a period of relative peace and prosperity
Speaker 1: that lasted for two hundred and fifty or so years.
Speaker 1: And I was like, wait a minute, you just YadA, YadA, YadA,
Speaker 1: two hundred fifty years the entire length of our being
Speaker 1: a country. Yeah, damn near so on, you know, in
Speaker 1: the measuring stick of empires, it was a tiny little period. Um.
Speaker 1: And and it just it reminds us and again not
Speaker 1: to be gloomier or like crazy pessimistic and negative, but
Speaker 1: it does remind you that if you screw up, you
Speaker 1: can end your empire. It is not impossible, you know.
Speaker 1: You you trade the Bill of Rights, for instance, from
Speaker 1: the New England Patriots to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden America is losing again to you know,
Speaker 1: I think you follow me. There you go. Extra large