Texas Senator Ted Cruz recently launched a wildly popular podcast called the Verdict with Michael Knowles, host of The Michael Knowles Show on The Daily Wire. Michael joins me on today’s podcast to give some behind-the-scenes perspective on the podcast, which originally started as a conversation about President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial. We also discusses why socialism is antithetical to the American dream. Plus, we share a conversation our colleague Virginia Allen had with James O'Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, on ABC News and media bias.
We also cover these stories:
A federal judge has ruled that Ken Cuccinelli, the acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director appointed by President Trump who was the former Attorney General of Virginia, was not legally appointed to his position.
The United States and the Taliban signed a deal on Saturday that would initiate a reduction in U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Coronavirus has killed 6 people in the United States and over 3,000 people have died from the disease worldwide.
There is a glimmer of hope that the United States may soon be able to exit its longest war. What stands in the way? Chris Preble and John Glaser explain.
There is a glimmer of hope that the United States may soon be able to exit its longest war. What stands in the way? Chris Preble and John Glaser explain.
Today's episode brings you our first look at the efforts by Damien Riehl and Noah Rubin to copyright "every melody ever" as part of a way of reconceptualizing copyright law as it applies to music. SPOILER: We're going to have Riehl and Rubin on the show to discuss their work in more depth. We also discuss Chevron deference and a recent dissent by Clarence Thomas that's No Laughing Matter.
We begin with a deep dive into the Riehl and Rubin "Every Melody Ever" effort, which builds upon the music copyright episodes we've previously discussed in Episode 236 ("Stairway to the Supreme Court") and Episode 288 ("More on Led Zeppelin"). What exactly are Riehl and Rubin doing, and will it put an end to copyright lawsuits against musicians? Listen and find out!
After that, we check out a case (Baldwin v. U.S.) in which the Supreme Court refused to grant certiorari -- and the dissent filed by Clarence Thomas. That prompted a headline that got some chuckles last week -- "Clarence Thomas cites Thomas in overruling Thomas" -- and we learn that (of course) this turns out to be no laughing matter, but part of a concerted effort to roll back not only a 2005 Clarence Thomas opinion, National Cable & Telecommunications Ass'n v. Brand X Internet Svcs., 545 U.S. 967 (2005), but Chevron deference itself. Find out why even the howler monkey contingent wanted to take a pass on this case -- but not Clarence Thomas!
After all that, it's time for the answer to perhaps the easiest #T3BE ever -- or is it? (It is.) And remember, you can always play along with #T3BE by sharing out the show on social media!
Appearances
None! If you’d like to have either of us as a guest on your show, drop us an email at openarguments@gmail.com.
On the Gist, 1946 was a good year for presidential births.
In the interview, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat is here to discuss his new book The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success. He and Mike debate the meaning of decadence, Douthat’s ideas of a way out of decadence, and whether or not we just need to pivot to a different religion.
In the spiel, this Democratic nomination process sucks.
Depending on your views, far-right populism can represent a welcome return to the past , or a worrying one. The former, argues sociolinguist Ruth Wodak in this Social Science Bites podcast, is one of the hallmarks of far-right populism – a yearning for an often mythical past where the “true people” were ascendant and comfortable.
She’s termed this blurred look backward retrotopia, “a nostalgia for a past where everything was much better,” whether it was ever real or not.
Wodak, who to be clear finds herself worrying and not welcoming, offers host David Edmonds a recipe for becoming a far-right populist. In her scholarship, she’s identified four ingredients, or dimensions, to the ideology that often underlie populist far-right parties.
The most apparent from the outside is a strong national chauvinism or even nativism. This nativism is very exclusive to a specific set of insiders, who focus on creating “an anti-pluralist country, a country which is allegedly homogeneous, which has one kind of people who all speak the same language, have the same culture, or look the same. [Having] this imaginary ‘true people’ is very important.” is very, very important. Far-right populists decide who belongs and who does not belong to the ‘true people.’”
And just as important is then having a group of outsiders to cast as scapegoats responsible for major problems – making for “an easy narrative for very complex issues.” It’s probably no surprise, then, that “conspiracy theories are part and parcel of the far-right agenda. They are very supportive in constructing who is to blame, etc., for all the complex problems.”
Another ingredient is an anti-elitism that targets elites or ‘the establishment’, i.e. managers, teachers, journalists, intellectuals, liberals or your political opponents; “all the people who allegedly don’t listen to ‘us’ and who have very different interests from ‘the true people’.”
Next comes a focus on law and order (“an agenda of protecting this true people”) enforced through a hierarchal party structure. This top-down structure frequently focuses on a charismatic leader who encapsulates the spirit of the ‘true people’ – and rejects the ‘other.’ “Along with the scapegoat,” Wodak explains, “comes ‘the topos of the savior’ … the leader who will save the true American or the true Austrian or the true British people from those all dangers, they will ‘solve’ the problems, protect the people, and they promise hope.”
The final standard ingredient is endorsing conservative values and perceived cultural touchstones, such as Christianity in Europe.
This recipe matters, of course, thanks to the rise of far-right populist politics across the Americas, Europe and Asia. Wodak herself is Austrian – she’s professor in linguistics at the University of Vienna and emeritus distinguished professor and chair in Discourse Studies at Lancaster University – has seen plenty of recent natural experiments in populism throughout continental Europe.
She cites several reasons for the popularity of far-right populism, including the end of the Cold War and the resultant increase in migration from Eastern Europe into the West. Those migrants, previously seen as refugees from communism who were welcomed and even feted, morphed into unwelcome and fear-inducing interlopers (and despite being white and from Christian cultures). Around the same time, she continues, neo-liberal policies changed labor policies in the West, creating inequalities that the right could build on – just as they did in the pro-business responses to the global financial crisis of 2008 (“saving the banks instead of the people”) and globalization.
In this podcast, Wodak also discusses how right-wing populism makes use of social media, how exploiting “otherness” helps roll over self-interest, what the role of a social scientist is in exploring fraught ideologies, and how someone might counteract malign politics.
Joe Biden scores a decisive victory in the South Carolina primary, causing Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Tom Steyer to end their campaigns. As the last four candidates look to Super Tuesday, the Trump Administration continues to bungle the response to the growing threat of coronavirus. Then David Plouffe talks to Jon L. about what to watch for on Super Tuesday and his new book, A Citizen’s Guide to Beating Donald Trump.
The Pritzker Traubert Foundation is giving away a $10 million grant that’ll be given to a group or groups working to improve certain neighborhoods in Chicago. Today, we highlight the work of another of the finalists for the Chicago Prize
People who want dynamism in housing markets and urban development ought of find common ground with Republicans, so why do there seem to be so few Republican YIMBYs? Nolan Gray of the Mercatus Center comments.
