Conversation #16: We Call Them "The Aristocrats" (September 24, 2017)

Paul has a nasty summer cold, but he’s brought three articles to discuss: an editorial from The National Review about Civil War Monuments, a take from The Outline on Megan McArdle’s breathtakingly tone-deaf take on the Grenfell Tower Fire, and a report from the Guardian about how Obama is now taking $400,000 speaking fees from the financial and health care sectors. Then Grace leads a conversation about how so-called liberals, including Obama, have aligned themselves with the elites, and why. We do in fact have hereditary dynasties in the United States, but because they aren’t codified in law and the structure of our government, it’s harder to talk about them. Why did the Democratic Party faithful, in the 2016 election, align with right-wing elites? Many liberals saw the ugliness of America for the first time in this election, and so were vulnerable to appeals to fears. The other ways of effecting change — populism and popular revolution — are scary by comparison. And so back to the subject of Antifa: a collective to respond to a threat of racial violence, which has been recently slandered as morally equivalent to armed white ethno-nationalist groups on the attack. Philosophically, if you understand the function of the police, you must understand the need for Antifa, which does for the marginalized what the police won’t. Finally, we talk about how the marginalized often don’t have the privilege of using non-violent resistance in their own defense.

How to Listen

You can find the MP3 file here.

The Podcast feed is here.

The Podcast channel on YouTube is here.

More Information

Here’s Jay Nordlinger’s take on the Confederate Monuments: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451399/seeing-confederacy-clear-terrible-issue-monuments-and-all

Here’s the piece by Alex Nichols on Megan McArdle: https://theoutline.com/post/2303/megan-mcardle-has-a-lot-of-bad-ideas

Here’s the piece on Obama from The Guardian: https://guardian.ng/news/obama-begins-lucrative-turn-as-wall-street-speaker/