Big Ideas with Ben Weingarten

Michael Ledeen (@michaelledeen) is a historian, longtime think-tanker currently serving as the Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, former Special Advisor to the Secretary of State and consultant to the National Security Council during the Reagan administration and author of 38 books.

Perhaps most pertinent to today, Ledeen is an expert on Iran, with deep ties to dissidents and countless individuals in the diaspora cultivated over many decades, dating back to the fall of the Shah and the Revolution of 1979.

I had Ledeen on the Big Ideas with Ben Weingarten podcast to discuss a variety of topics including his views on how long the current Khomeinist regime will survive, what America might do to help topple it, the phony Sunni-Shia split, the nature of Iran's dissidents, what happens the day after the regime falls and more. Tangentially related, Ledeen and I also discussed the targeting of those who challenge the national security and foreign policy establishment, including regarding both Iran and Israel, and the sackings of Larry Franklin and Gen. Michael Flynn -- the latter of whom with which Micheal co-authored a book, The Field of Fight. Ledeen shares his take on Gen. Flynn's guilty plea -- which he believes was given falsely -- and explains why he believes Gen. Flynn was targeted in the first place.

• The false narrative about alternatives for Iran being either appeasement or war
• The impending collapse of the Khomeinist regime and what the U.S. can do to accelerate it
• The history of U.S. intelligence failures in Iran
• How secular and liberal Iran's dissidents actually are
• Whether there is a wedge that can be exploited between Iran and Russia
• What will become of Hezbollah if the Iranian regime collapses
• The allegedly political witch hunt against Iran hawk and Israel supporter Larry Franklin as an illustration of historic anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in the foreign policy and national security establishment
• Ledeen's theory that Gen. Michael Flynn falsely pled guilty, and the real reason why Gen. Flynn was targeted in the first place

Further Reading

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Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio host, columnist, author of numerous books, teacher, film producer and co-founder of Prager University -- and these titles barely scratch the surface of his tireless and impactful efforts.

In a word, he has dedicated his life to advocating for Judeo-Christian and American values and principles across every medium almost daily to millions of people around the world with uncommon common sense, moral clarity and courage.

I had Dennis on the Big Ideas with Ben Weingarten podcast to discuss a variety of topics including the basis for his conservative views -- contrary to his Jewish intellectual peers, how religiosity and one's view of human nature impacts one's politics, reason versus emotion on the Left and Right, the importance of Western values in immigration policy, the state of free speech in America, social media censorship and PragerU and much more.

• How Dennis Prager ended up a conservative as an Ivy League-educated Jewish intellectual from Brooklyn, New York -- contrary to so many of his peers
• How perceptions of human nature divide Left and Right
• Whether government has filled the void of religion for the increasingly secular and progressive American coasts
• How the good intentions that underlie Leftist policy prescriptions lead to horrendous outcomes -- and emotion versus reason on the Left and Right
• The false morality underlying European immigration policy with respect to the Muslim world, and Prager's criticism of Jewish support of mass immigration consisting disproportionately of Jew-haters
• The self-righteous suicidalism of the West
• The Leftist bias of social media platforms and PragerU's legal battle with YouTube/Google

Further Reading

• Show Notes & Transcript

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Professor Richard Epstein is the inaugural Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. He previously served as the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution since 2000. Professor Epstein is also the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law Emeritus and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago where he taught for 38 years. He is a prolific writer who has authored more than a dozen books on topics ranging from private property to torts, and anti-discrimination law to antitrust, a frequent podcaster and one of the most cited legal scholars of the 20th century.

I had Professor Epstein, one of the preeminent classical liberal thinkers in modern American history on the podcast to discuss a variety of topics including private property rights and eminent domain, why classical liberalism is the most sound of philosophies and minimal regulation the most prudent of policies, whether America should abolish the administrative state, attacks on free speech, the wisdom or lack thereof in regulation of social media companies and much more.

• The role that Professor Epstein's famous book, Takings played in Justice Clarence Thomas' confirmation hearing -- and then-Senator Joe Biden's hectoring
• Professor Epstein's groundbreaking theories on private property rights, eminent domain and the Takings and Commerce Clauses
• The practical argument against progressivism
• Whether we should deconstruct the administrative state, and if so how to do it
• The danger to free speech emanating from college campuses in a world of microaggressions, trigger warnings, de-platforming
• The folly of regulating Silicon Valley social media companies
• Classical liberalism versus socialism and libertarianism

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Rachelle Peterson is director of research projects at the National Association of Scholars (NAS), an organization dedicated to upholding "the standards of a liberal arts education that fosters intellectual freedom, searches for the truth, and promotes virtuous citizenship." In that position, she has published numerous reports on trends in academia that threaten these values and principles, including one on the subject of this podcast titled Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and Soft Power in American Higher Education. Mrs. Peterson's research and commentary has been published in outlets such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, and Commentary magazine. She has discussed her research on the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal and on numerous radio shows.

Given China's increasing efforts to flex its soft power muscles in the West -- soft power efforts that betray the true nature of the Communist regime -- I had Rachelle on the podcast to discuss perhaps the best illustration of these nefarious efforts in Confucius Institutes. Confucius Institutes present themselves as being dedicated to Chinese cultural exchange and language studies, but Rachelle argues based on her extensive research and study that they are actually Chinese government funded and staffed tools for propaganda, surveillance and allegedly espionage, which also provide the Chinese government substantial leverage over our academic institutions.

• What Confucius Institutes are, and how the Chinese government is responsible for controlling virtually every aspect of their operations
• Confucius Institutes' propagandizing on U.S. college campuses to whitewash Chinese governmental abuses and create a more favorable public image in the West
• Efforts to stifle academic freedom and criticism of China by way of Confucius Institutes' contracts
• The ideological and financial reasoning behind why U.S. academic institutions invite Confucius Institutes to their campuses, and the leverage the Institutes provide China
• Rachelle's chilling findings in extensively examining 12 Confucius Institutes, including the fears of several of those interviewed to go on record
• Blowback from the Chinese government in the wake of the release of Rachelle's report
• What makes Confucius Institutes unique relative to other foreign cultural exchange programs on college campuses
• Current legislative efforts by members of U.S. Congress to scrutinize and counter the efforts of Confucius Institutes
• And much more

• Show Notes
• Transcript

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For Independence Day, I take a deep dive into Declaration of Independence in terms of its unique place in history and the cause of freedom; the link between natural law and natural rights, faith and freedom; the Founding Fathers' emphasis on virtue and morality to sustain a free system of government; the criticality of the Declaration to understanding the Constitution, checks and balances, separation of powers, federalism and representative government; parallels between the charges laid out against King George III in the Declaration and today's federal Leviathan from the administrative state, to taxation without representation to sanctuary cities; the Founders' views on slavery, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass and failing to live up to the values and principles of the Declaration; the imperative to defend liberty against tyranny.

• Declaration of Independence
• Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence first draft slavery excerpt
• The Federalist Papers
• U.S. Constitution
• John Adams letter to Abigail Adams on celebrating Independence Day
• John Adams on rights and religion
• John Adams on slavery
• Calvin Coolidge 150th Anniversary of Independence Day Address
• Competitive Enterprise Institute's "Ten Thousand Commandments" (2018)
• Frederick Douglass on the Declaration and Constitution in opposition to slavery
• Frederick Douglass response to Dred Scott ruling
• Federal Government "Wastebook" (2017)
• Founding.com
• Benjamin Franklin on slavery
• Alexander Hamilton on rights and religion
• Alexander Hamilton on slavery
• Gary Lawson on the administrative state
• Abraham Lincoln on the Declaration and Constitution
• Abraham Lincoln on the Founders and slavery
• James Madison on slavery
• Nationwide injunctions
• Operation Drain the Swamp by Adam Andrzejewski
• Three Felonies a Day by Harvey Silverglate
• Alexis de Tocqueville on religion in America
• UN Arms Trade Treaty
• Vindicating the Founders
• George Washington on slavery
• The Rise and Fall of Constitutional Government in America by Thomas G. West and Douglas A. Jeffrey
• Woodrow Wilson's rejection of the Declaration preface

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Doug Schoen has been one of the most influential Democratic campaign consultants and pollsters for over thirty years. He has advised presidents, prime ministers and titans of private industry. He is the author of multiple books; his most recent include Putin's Master Plan, The Nixon Effect (interview here), and Return to Winter: Russia, China, and the New Cold War Against America (interview here).

Even though Doug and I disagree on several political issues, I am proud to call him a mentor and friend. His insights on politics and policy are not at all clouded by ideology, something rare in the world of punditry and prognostication. And his experience, judgment and wisdom are unparalleled. Perhaps most importantly, Doug and I share a love of country and belief in the imperative to defend it.

I had Doug on the podcast to draw out some of his lessons from a life well-spent as a master practitioner and student of politics, to share his insider view of government and how it has impacted his political philosophy and to discuss his strong beliefs on the threats that face us both globally in terms of China and Russia, and at home in terms of the bloat of government, rot in our institutions and our inability to share in a common vision for America.

• How Schoen's life in politics has influenced his views on governmental power
• The polarization and personalization of politics
• Whether Schoen is a man without a party as a centrist Democrat in an increasingly progressive party
• The challenge of rising to power without compromise
• Political lessons from Bill Clinton
• Why Nixon was the preeminent political actor of the 20th century
• The strategic threat posed by China
• Whether the Russiagate collusion-mongers have done more damage to the U.S. than Russia could have ever hoped to have achieve itself
• The perilous state of our national security and law enforcement institutions
• What Schoen saw in the 2016 presidential election that other political pundits and prognosticators missed regarding Presidential Trump's odds of defeating Hillary Clinton
• And much more

Further Reading

• Show Notes
• Transcript

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Amy Wax is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she specializes in social welfare law and policy as well as the relationship of the family, the workplace, and labor markets. She is the author of Race, Wrongs, and Remedies: Group Justice in the 21st Century.

Professor Wax has become a controversial figure because of her politically incorrect comments advocating in favor of bourgeois values and the WASP culture from which they stem, and in her claims that black students had generally performed at significantly lower levels than other students in her classes in context of a conversation about the downsides of affirmative action -- comments that got her ousted from teaching the first year civil procedure class for which she had previously won an award for "teaching excellence."

Professor Wax and I touched on her beliefs regarding bourgeois values, the comments on race and academic performance that got her ousted from teaching her first-year class, the ramifications of her case, Professor Wax's criticism of affirmative action and diversity, the state of free speech on college campuses, grappling with uncomfortable truths, the anti-Western nature of the modern academy and much more.

• Wax's transition from apolitical science student to conservative law professor
• The merits of bourgeois values and the primacy of culture
• What those who attribute societal outcomes almost purely to economics get wrong
• Wax's observations on the relatively poor performance of black students in her classes, which triggered a series of events that would leave her removed from teaching her mandatory first-year class
• Affirmative action and discrimination
• Why Wax believes diversity is not an "unalloyed good"
• Wax's response to critics who would argue her classroom is an "unsafe space" for minority students
• The dangerous paradigm on college campuses of "safe spaces," "trigger warnings," "disinvitations" and "de-platforming," whereby offensive speech has been deemed an act of violence, justifying a physically violent response
• The broader ramifications for society of anti-free speech college campuses
• How Wax would like to see her case at Penn Law remedied
• The anti-Western state of the academy in the West

Further Reading

• Show Notes & Transcript

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Andrew C. McCarthy (@AndrewCMcCarthy) is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, contributing editor of National Review and author most recently of essential books on the threat of Islamic supremacism including Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad, The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America and Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy.

In Part II of my in-depth interview with Andy, we discussed Russiagate, the pervasive unethical and at times lawless behavior of law enforcement and the intelligence community with respect to Donald Trump and Russia versus Hillary Clinton and her e-mail server, the apparently limitless mandate of Robert Mueller's special counsel, obstruction of justice and much more.

If you missed Part I of my conversation with Andy on his experience prosecuting the jihadist mastermind of the first World Trade Center attack and what it taught him about the Islamic supremacist threat America faces, the primacy of religion and why Islamic supremacists choose jihadist savagery over assimilation, willful blindness in American national security and foreign policy, folly in American foreign affairs from Syria to Libya, and the imperative to collapse the Khomeinist Iranian regime, be sure to catch up here.

• Russia's historical attempts to "interfere" with U.S. elections, and its imperceptible impact on the 2016 U.S. presidential vote
• McCarthy's dissection of the double standard in the DOJ/FBI's handling of its investigation of Hillary Clinton versus that of Donald Trump, and the unwillingness to bring Clinton to justice over Clinton Foundation impropriety if not worse and destruction of State Department emails
• Former FBI Director James Comey's monumental error in testimony on the counter-intelligence investigation implicating the Trump campaign that ultimately served as the basis for Robert Mueller's special counsel
• Mueller's limitless special counsel mandate and brazen tactics against Paul Manafort
• Politicization of law enforcement and the intelligence apparatus, and its detrimental long-term impact on American national security
• How to root out corruption in the FBI, CIA and DOJ, and the suspicious if not lawless acts of Obama DNI Chief James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan
• The disingenuous nature of the Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian meddling in the 2016 election
• The double standard in the treatment of Paul Manafort versus Hillary Clinton and her email server
• McCarthy's obliteration of the obstruction of justice theory
• President Obama's involvement in Russiagate

Further Reading

• Show Notes
• Transcript

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Andrew C. McCarthy (@AndrewCMcCarthy) is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, contributing editor of National Review and author most recently of essential books on the threat of Islamic supremacism including Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad, The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America and Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy.

In addition to being one of the nation's foremost national security analysts and legal experts — formerly serving as Assistant U.S. Attorney in the vaunted Southern District of New York — he is one of the most humble, insightful and devoted patriots I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.

In Part I of my in-depth interview with Andy McCarthy, we discussed his experience prosecuting the jihadist mastermind of the first World Trade Center attack and what it taught him about the Islamic supremacist threat America faces, the primacy of religion for Muslims in the Middle East and in the West, why Islamic supremacists choose jihadist savagery over assimilation, willful blindness in American national security and foreign policy regarding the nature of the jihadist threat, folly in American foreign affairs from Syria to Libya, and the imperative to collapse the Khomeinist Iranian regime.

• How McCarthy, an Irish Catholic kid from the Bronx became one of the nation's foremost legal experts on jihad and Sharia law
• The prosecution of the Blind Sheikh and his terrorist cell over the first World Trade Center attack and plots to destroy other New York City landmarks
• McCarthy's impressions having sat face-to-face with some of the world's most evil jihadists, and why their portrayal as genocidal maniacs is wholly inaccurate
• The strength of religion over other animating factors when it comes to jihad, and the West's projection and mirror-imaging
• Why Islamic supremacists do not want to assimilate into Western culture or adopt Western principles such as freedom of religion and individual liberty
• The willful blindness and arrogance of America's national security and foreign policy establishment over Islamic supremacism and the Middle East
• Whether America is better off in homeland security and foreign affairs almost 17 years after 9/11
• McCarthy's belief in the Bush Doctrine
• What America's national interest is in Syria
• McCarthy's fear that America will be unwilling to engage in future wars of necessity given the expense in blood and treasure of the last two decades
• What McCarthy would do if he were counterjihadist czar
• The West's disastrous record of colluding with the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots
• The disaster of Iran Deal and the imperative to collapse Iran's Khomeinist regime

Further Reading

• Show Notes
• Transcript

Thanks for Listening!

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