Keeping Cool

Entering the final week of his sojourn in Maine, Jonah begins today’s Ruminant with an ...

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Entering the final week of his sojourn in Maine, Jonah begins today’s Ruminant with an account of a drive he recently took to Chautauqua, New York and a reflection on the joys of travel. He also offers a few thoughts on free speech and the stabbing of Salman Rushdie, as well as the nature of patriotism and the importance of gratitude for the things we’ve inherited. The episode concludes with some especially ranty punditry on Liz Cheney’s defeat and ludicrous explanations for why Trump took classified documents to Mar-a-Lago. Plus, there’s an appeal for you, our listeners, to suggest future guests for the program, provided they meet certain strange criteria.

Show Notes:

– The Remnant with Russ Roberts

– Yuval Levin: “Conservatism is Gratitude”

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  1. Avatar photo
    RR

    Jonah this article in the Journal paints a very different picture of Chataqua.
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-chautauqua-institution-isnt-what-it-used-to-be-advocates-for-balance-abc-woke-progressive-speakers-salman-rushdie-ideological-diversity-11661285393

    It’s hard to reconcile these two recent experiences.Were you invited by ABC or by the institution itself ?

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  2. Lieseandrew

    Suggestion for a "weird" podcast: H.I. Sutton, knower of modern Submarine-related developments extraordinaire. You could talk through Chinese nuclear sub progress, AUKUS, etc.

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    C C Writer

    Jonah, of course it's the dog tweets/treats that get you ranked so high on the non-polarization thing.

    But not everybody gets why you're doing it. At least on one level, it's about reminding everyone that relationships and kindness are essential, and any activity or endeavor that leaves those things out or downgrades them isn't worth participating in because it might rot your soul instead of nourishing it.

    The great thing about videos and photos and their captions is you don't need to say that part out loud; they leave the viewer to draw that conclusion. The more one lets people do that, the less need to hit them over the head. (And you also know that when it comes time to pick up the 2 x 4, humor can be a help.)

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    C C Writer

    On the Chautauqua thing, I got curious and went to their website and poked around, and managed to find a page recapping the interview of Jonah by Nancy Gibbs. It's worth reading. Most of this stuff isn't new to us, but it's interesting to see what Jonah leads with when the audience tends to be progressive-ish yet open minded. Gibbs drew out a lot of good stuff, and the editor who wrote the summary clearly gets it too.
    https://chqdaily.com/2022/08/with-nancy-gibbs-as-interviewer-jonah-goldberg-talks-gradual-then-sudden-shifts-in-media-politics

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  5. Avatar photo
    Antebellum Whig

    I have a weird podcast idea I'm willing to put out there for the Dispatch/Remnant world: Bring together people who are largely defined by their conflict and make them talk about something they have in common. So you could have people with strongly different political views or religious or policy views but have them talk about their shared love of the theater or fly fishing or West Ham United Football Club or D&D or vegetarianism or psychidelics or whatever.

    We could call it "Bowling Together" or something - the idea being to counterbalance the tendency to politicize everything most vividly illustrated by "intersectionality" by demonstrating that no, the personal is not political and the political need not be personal and we can (and should!) be able to have not just civil discussions but genuine friendships and connections across even ostensibly important divides.

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    Marc Frischhertz

    Excellent point about the BS standing order to declassify. I had not heard anyone else make that point. Everyone with the capacity for rational thought knows it’s a lie, but pointing out that the lie, if true, is worse is analysis that should be stated

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    Tracie

    What you said about how we should be offended by anyone getting attacked for free speech really flies in the face of the current climate.

    Today, an account I follow about Delta Blues (and it's derivatives) posted an early 60s clip of the Animals, one of the early, blatantly R&B influenced rock'n'roll bands.
    https://twitter.com/bluezharp/status/1560645519277375488?t=ErcYTHxFDM2e_wFwJpSbfw&s=19
    My first thought on seeing this clip is how a white kid singing like that now would be twitter-mobbed for cultural appropriation and doing "blackface."

    If we had the kind of cultural checks on free expression in the 1960s we have now, the pop culture of the late 20th century would look very different.

    Janis Joplin. No way. Whatever you think of that music.

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    Mike from Jersey

    Jeez Jonah...you went MBD 11 on Zane. I mostly agree with you, but she'll unleash the hounds of a thousands squirrels until you apologize. And you thought Ben was bad.

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  9. Michael.Mcchesney

    It is very rare that I find myself disagreeing with Jonah, but I think he is wrong about what it means to love your country. Just as we can love a person, but want them to change in certain ways, we can love our country but want it to change. For instance, I loved my father. He was a smoker and I very much wanted him to change that about himself. He didn't but that didn't mean I loved him less. It meant I missed him a lot because the cigarettes made him die at age 59. He never met any of his grandkids. But as for what it means to love the USA, does that mean that Americans in the 1940s through the 1970s who cared about civil rights for everyone including African-Americans in the South could not have loved their country?

    The United States is a large beautiful country, rich with natural resources and a mostly friendly caring population. But in my opinio, what really makes the United States exceptional, is our Constitution, particularly our Bill of Rights. The United States was exceedingly lucky to achieve independence when we did. That's because the drafters of our present Constitution were educated men that were able to use the writings of political philosophers like John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Baron de Montesquieu to create a system of government that in my opinion is the greatest in human history. But even as I say that, I also have to acknowledge that we as a nation for far too long did not fully live up to the promises of that Constitution. We are much better about that today yet still far from perfect.
    If we were perfect, our government might seem less dysfunctional. I believe that we could and should do better, but that doesn't mean I don't love the U.S.A.

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    Ben Connelly

    I’m definitely not a dog person, but Jonah talking on solo podcasts about how “dogs chose us,” really changed my mind about them. I still don’t think I want to own a dog but I definitely look at them in a different way.

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