As expected, the timing from Ron and Ed could not be better for this post-election episode. Thank you to Jay for being a wonderful guest!
A Bit More About Jay Nordlinger:
Jay Nordlinger is a senior editor of National Review and a book fellow of the National Review Institute. He writes about a variety of subjects, including politics, foreign affairs, and the arts. He is music critic for The New Criterion. Since 2002, he has hosted a series of public interviews at the Salzburg Festival. For the National Review website, he writes a column called “Impromptus.” With Mona Charen, he hosts the Need to Know podcast, and he also hosts a podcast called “Q&A.” In 2011, he filmed The Human Parade, with Jay Nordlinger, a TV series bringing hour-long interviews with various personalities. His latest book is Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators. He is also the author of Peace, They Say, a history of the Nobel Peace Prize. Some 100 pieces are gathered in Here, There & Everywhere: Collected Writings of Jay Nordlinger. A native Michigander, Nordlinger lives in New York.
Ed’s Questions: Segment One
Ron, I remember sending you an email and saying who would you like to have on the Friday after Election day and you said Jay Nordlinger. And I said, well go after him. And you got it. And here he is. Welcome, Jay.
Jay Nordlinger : I'm so easy, guys. If only you’d have known. I'm delighted and flattered to be here with you. And I love that Reagan quote. It reminds me, I believe, Warren Brookes, the great Warren Brookes, wrote a book called The Economy in Mind, right? It was wonderful to hear Reagan's voice.
Ed Kless: Believe it or not, in order to make that quote work in the segment with the music, I actually had to edit out his name because Reagan actually does mention it in the speech. Let's do the quick bio, so we can dispense with that and get right to it. Jay Nordlinger is a senior editor and a fellow at the National Review Institute. He writes about a variety of subjects including politics, foreign affairs, and the arts. He is the music critic for the New Criterion, and for National Review’s he writes a column called impromptus, and hosts a podcast called Need to Know with Mona Charan, and he also hosts a podcast called Q&A. His latest book, which Ron is going to talk to him about, is Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators. Officially welcome to The Soul of Enterprise Jay Nordlinger. What the hell happened this week? What's going on?
They will probably write opera about this at some point in the future, won't they?
Well, I'm thinking of yet another retelling of Romeo and Juliet with the Dems and the Repubs or whatever. Not many people know this, but the reason for Romeo not making the rendezvous with the person passing the message on to Juliet was because he got stuck in a quarantine. So it's perfect.
I was listening to John McWhorter’s podcast, Lexicon Valley. I don't know if you get a chance to listen to that? And he did a whole show on the word “why.” And one of the examples that he brings up is the “wherefore art thou, Romeo?” She he was not asking where he was. He was right there. It meant, Why are you a Montague? That was really the rationale behind it. Anyway, let's get back to this crazy election story. Is it best to describe you as an anti-Trumper? I know you're not a never-Trumper but sort of anti-Trump, but you really felt the office was far above him, he really should not have ever even been ascended to the presidency?
Yeah, it been interesting. I've been unfriended on Facebook from a number of people already this week because I'm a Libertarian; I should say staunch, dyed-in-the-wool. I was at the Joe Jorgensen campaign event here in Dallas to celebrate the end of this nonsense, which we never got to, and what people are saying is, “Well, you Libertarians, you stole this election from us.” I'm like, “Oh, no, it couldn't have been that Donald Trump couldn't have done like maybe one thing that was like a regular human being that would have probably turned the election completely over to him.” If he had just came out and said, “You know what, let's put some masks on. Let's just protect ourselves.”
I have heard it said that if Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer had decided to just bend down and kiss the ring, maybe in the first year, he would have given them anything they wanted because he's not really ideological.
In a recent column you brought up the fact that one of the things that really set you off about Trump was his calling of Joe Biden in a tweet with the dictator from North Korea, Kim Jong-Un, and Trump piled on, on the side of Kim Jong-Un [Kim Jong-Un had called Joe Biden a fool of low IQ].
Yeah, pretty easy one. I think there's certainly starting to be some cracks in the veneer. I read an article earlier today that Marco Rubio said something to the effect of counting votes is not fraud.
Yeah, I had I posted exactly that on Facebook about a week before the election. Countdown to Republicans gaining fiscal responsibility once again, it begins. This has been fantastic.
Ron’s Questions: Segment Two
Welcome back, everybody. We're here with Jay Nordlinger, the senior editor at National Review. Jay, it's not every day you get to talk to one of your favorite writers, but I have to ask you: in your book, Here, There & Everywhere: Collected Writings of Jay Nordlinger, which was published in 2007, you cite Natan Sharansky. And he talks about totalitarian, or what he calls “fear societies.” And he thinks there's three groups in those societies: 1) true believers; 2) dissidents who are in open opposition; and then 3) the double thinkers that talk one way and act another, which he thinks is a large and vital group. We were just talking about North Korea. Do you think there are enough of the third type, the double thinkers, in North Korea to cause change?
Do you think it will peaceful?
I know you've had the opportunity to meet some of the defectors [from North Korea], and actually interview them. I've read a lot of the books by the defectors and have watched their TED Talks.
Yeah, he's the one that met with George W. Bush in the White House.
You also cited in your book, Andrei Sakharov, who said he didn't want to talk about human rights. He wanted to talk about specific cases. And, Jay, I’ve got to ask you, what's your take on Hong Kong, because we keep an eye on Jimmy Lai, and I think he's another one of these incredible men that just amazes me. How do you see Hong Kong unfolding?
I know you probably know Peter Robinson. He constantly interviews Jimmy Lai on his show, and he keeps asking him, “Why don't you just leave? You’ve got billions of dollars.” Do you see people leaving Hong Kong because the UK is granting them citizenship, per Boris Johnson, and Australia, too?
I know you admire Ronald Reagan, as do I. In fact, I shouldn't say this, Jay, but I was named after him. My mom actually loved him as an actor, if you can believe that. All I can think of is the scene in Airplane when the woman who eats the bad fish or whatever, and says, “I haven't felt this awful since I saw that Ronald Reagan movie.”
He had this simple way, but not simplistic. Like I love his idea on the Cold War: We win, they lose. You know, he didn't like Détente and said, “Isn't that what the farmer has with his turkey until Thanksgiving?” Did you ever get a chance to meet Reagan?
Well, I never got the chance to meet William F. Buckley. I was at an NRI conference, it was after Clinton won. And so they were trying to calm everybody down. I don't think he made it to that one because he had some type of conflict. Got any good Buckley stories?
That one line he had about Oprah, the woman who's alternatively skinny and fat.
So I have to ask you this for my dad, Jay, because he's big golfer, and you write about golf a lot. And you quoted a columnist from the Washington Post that wrote this terrible article about Augusta. And she called it the most famous tree house in America—it’s Spanky and Our Gang for millionaires. Have you ever played Augusta?
Have you gone to a Masters there?
No, but my dad's gone to a few masters [actually, just one]. That's his big dream in life. What did you think of Jack Nicklaus coming out for Trump in the last 30 seconds that we have?
Like you say, calling balls and strikes. You know, how do you Ump Trump? It's really interesting.
Ed’s Questions: Segment Three
And we are back with Jay Nordlinger from National Review. Jay, you quite publicly left the republican party when Donald Trump got the nomination in 2016. And I guess we're thinking it's a 95% chance that Biden is going to win. Donald Trump would really have to pull not only an inside straight but an inside royal flush, in order to pull this out. I’m wondering what you think the future of the Republican Party looks like sans Trump? And is that something that you envision you might be a part of?
And now we measure stuff in the trillions, we've moved on from the billions to the trillions. And there's a great cartoonist, and he talks about how for most people $900 billion is more than a trillion, in their head. I honestly do think that now that we're in this trillions. We spent $2 trillion, what's the big deal?
I want to turn your attention to journalism. I saw a speech that you made where you were talking about one of your books. And in it, you talked about yourself as a journalist. And one of the things I want to ask you about journalism is what do you think the state of journalism is today? True journalism?
We had author Warren Berger on the show [Episode #302], not the Supreme Court Justice, different guy, with an E. He’s written a wonderful book that Ron and I both love called A More Beautiful Question, referencing the E. Cummings poem. He thinks that journalists just have gotten lousy at asking questions. They just don't know how to ask questions anymore. As silly as that sounds, they just like to talk about themselves.
Well, it’s totally okay for you to be the hero of that story. I asked you the question.
I love that. That's fantastic. I heard you use that in the speech that I was watching to prep for this. It's a great, great quote. The example that I was thinking as you were talking is the Bob Woodward situation with his book coming out, where he revealed that Trump thought that the virus was worse than he led on. Didn't Woodward have a responsibility, if thousands of people were dying, to come forth with it instead of waiting for your dang book to come out?
It's all just a blur. The whole Trump administration is. Ron and I were joking, what's the Presidential Library going to look like? His twitter feed?
Well, thanks. We're honored by that comment. But we are unfortunately already against our last break.
Ron’s Questions: Fourth Segment
Welcome back, everybody. We're here with Jay Nordlinger from from National Review, and Jay there's so many things I want to say about your segment with Ed, but I want to jump to your book, Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators that was published in 2015. You focused on 20 dictators, most of whom ruled in the 20th century, except I guess Fidel Castro did make it into the 21st. What motivated you to write that book? Because when I saw it come out I said, “Do I want to read this?” And then something in me said “Yes, I do. This is interesting.”
You say something in there that I just think is so profound, you say, “We sometimes grade on a curve.” Franco, and maybe Pinochet, I rather live under them than Stalin, or Mao, or Pol Pot.
For sure. Because isn't this the point that Jean Kirkpatrick made in Dictatorships and Double Standards?
And Jay, I’ve got to ask about this, even though I know it's probably not true, but it just blew my mind when I read it in your book, that Hitler, we think had no children. But some guy's mother said, “Oh, no. This is my son [by Hitler]. And you have a picture of him in the book.
You go through 20 dictators, and you lay out their kids and tell their stories, and the one that's fascinating is Stalin's daughter, because she defected. Thanks to you, I went out and read one of her books. And it was just fascinating.
Didn't she say also that she wished her mother had married a carpenter?
You write in there, and I found it interesting, too. She said she was a registered Republican and a National Review was her favorite magazine.
Did she get hooked up with like Frank Lloyd Wright, and his wife, and live somewhere in Phoenix?
It's true, the sins of the Father, right?
I have to ask you, Jay, because we've been talking about this, too. What's going on with China and the NBA over there, and even Disney, giving credits, and even changing their movies, self-censoring. I think back 20 or 30 or maybe 40 years and ask, Would the NBA or Disney had done business with South Africa during apartheid?
You know, those of us who believe in free markets really got this wrong. We thought that if we traded with them and opened up, let them into the WTO, they would become more like us.
What are they supposed to do in the meantime? It's just an intractable problem, like Hong Kong, in some ways, isn't it?
Jay Nordlinger: Ron, do you think that do they have proper markets? Or is it more kind of mercantilism?
Ron Baker: You know, George Gilder, who I love and has been a mentor for years, came on the show [Episode #257] and said they're [China] more capitalist than the United States. This was during the Huawei kerfuffle. And that line from George killed me because he's been anti-communist his whole life. His conservative credentials are as good as yours or anybody else’s.
Very true. Well, Jay, unfortunately, we're at the end of our time. And I just want to say thank you so much for coming on. This has been a great honor to be able to chat with you.
Thank you very much. We'd love to have you back. Thank you so much.
Bonus Content is Available As Well
Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.
Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits.
This week was Bonus episode 316 - “Rank Punditry”. Here are some of the links we discussed: