The Federalist Radio Hour

The founders predicted that there would be a day when the federal government abuses its authority. Mike Farris, co-founder of the Convention of the States Project, joined the Federalist Radio Hour to explain how the founders knew we would need structural changes to reign in that abuse of power when that day comes. Also joining the show, and opposing the call for a convention of the states, was Phyllis Schlafly, founder of Eagle Forum. Farris explained the current movements to use Article V of the Constitution, to call for a convention of the states, and to work with state legislators to restore checks and balances. “The thing that we know for sure is that you have to have two-thirds of the states agree on the topic to call a convention, otherwise we would have had a dozen or more conventions by now,” he said. Schlafly disagreed with both the need for a convention and a state’s power to call for a convention, arguing that Article V gives the sole power to Congress to call for a convention. “I wouldn’t want the kind of changes that a lot of people who will show up as delegates to this alleged convention, would be supportive of,” she said. “We should beat up on (our representatives), and not beat up on the Constitution.”

Justice Antonin Scalia fundamentally influenced the Supreme Court and changed the behavior of critics who disagreed with him. Joining the Federalist Radio Hour today to remember the late Justice and to speculate on the future of the court is Randy Barnett, lawyer and law professor at Georgetown University Law Center. Barnett said Scalia, who died on February 13th, transformed the court even as a single dissenting Justice. “No one had more influence on the direction of a Supreme Court, maybe other than Chief Justice Marshall, than Justice Scalia had,” he said. Later in the hour, Domenech and Barnett discussed the type of person that Obama might appoint to the court and the consequences for how Senate Republicans address any nominations. “I do think if the Senate Republicans are unable to hold the line here, it could very well spell the end of the Republican control of the Senate and it could even lead to the end of the Republican party,” Barnett said.

Today on the Federalist Radio Hour, two veterans joined the conversation on the recent debate on women in combat and women in military selective service. Amber Smith, former Army Kiowa warrior helicopter pilot, and Mike Donnelly, a combat veteran of the first Persian Gulf War. Top generals in the military have told Congress that women should not only be allowed to have combat roles, but should also be available for the draft, but many Americans believe this is morally wrong. Smith said not requiring women to be drafted is discriminatory towards men. “There is no such thing as partial equality or picking and choosing when we want the rules to apply to us,” she said. “With equal opportunity comes equal responsibility.” Donnelly held the opposite belief, saying he doesn’t believe women should be serving in direct combat roles, or drafted. “I disagree with the decision of this administration to move so quickly, to use the military for social experimentation, and to make a decision that is so profound without getting input from the American people,” he said. They also addressed the ways which the military should be reformed and the growing divide between the military and civilians. “In the civilian world, people are viewing veterans as people to be pitied, or that there is something wrong with them… insteading of allowing them to use their priceless leadership and experiences to be leaders in their communities,” Smith said.

Dr. Andrew Sabl recently wrote about the ways the constitution now encourages demagogues to be elected. He joined the Federalist Radio Hour to discuss populism, David Hume and why hypocrisy is a good thing. Sabl is a visiting professor of ethics, politics andamp; economics and political science at Yale University. Sabl said the founders created a system that was just as much about the people that they didn’t want elected, as it was about who they did. “More than Federalist Paper, says that it’s going to be difficult for a demagogue. For somebody who practices the low arts of popularity, as Hamilton put it, to get elected because they have to practice those arts in more than one state,” he said. Domenech and Sabl discussed how both Bush and Obama have degraded the balance of powers to a degree as an executive, and how Congress is incentivized to pass responsibility to the agencies. “It’s a systemic problem. It’s widespread. It’s in both parties, and it’s not something that can really be corrected by just trying to make Congress stronger, in a way, under any future executive,” Domenech said. Later in the hour, Sabl explains the premise behind his upcoming book on the virtues of hypocrisy. “My view is not that what people believe has no effect on how they act,” he said. “The question is what kind of effect does it have and on what level?”

A rising number of young Americans have labeled themselves as socialists as the term has peaked in popularity with the rise of Bernie Sanders. David Azerrad joined the Federalist Radio Hour today to discuss the meaning and implications behind these labels and other words like “inequality,” “liberal,” and “progressive.” Azerrad is the director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics, and the AWC Family Foundation fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Some have tried to compare the implementation of socialism in European countries to America’s failure to do so. Azerrad asked what the point of the endless comparisons are, because copying Denmark is neither desirable nor possible. “We are a nation that has been shaped by certain institutions, we have a certain way of mind, certain way of looking at the world, and what works for Denmark...can’t be applied to America.” Later in the hour, Azerrad explained the issue of income inequality and how the lowering of tax rates has contributed to the rise of inequality, but how other massive global changes to the economy that have had a greater impact. “The implication that this is because of tax rates and Reagan doesn’t do justice to reality,” he said.

Staff Editor at Reason magazine, Elizabeth Nolan Brown, spent four days at this year’s ANV Awards in Las Vegas. Brown joined The Federalist Radio Hour to report her experiences at the premiere adult video awards and what the adult entertainment industry thinks of the presidential candidates. Brown had conversations with porn stars and others in the industry about politics, the debate on consent, virtual reality adult videos, and market forces with amateur and web-cam performers. At the AVN expo, there was a wide-spread support for Bernie Sanders, especially with the young female performers she said. “I talked to two people who had both played Donald Trump and one of them was a huge Trump Fan and the other one was actually a Hillary Clinton fan and they both liked to argue about politics together,” she said.

Yuval Levin is the editor of National Affairs, a quarterly journal of essays on domestic policy and politics. He is also the Hertog Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a contributing editor to National Review and the Weekly Standard. Levin joined the Federalist Radio Hour, where he discuss his observations on political trends and frustrations, both in Washington and across the U.S. Levin noted the extreme sense of nostalgia coming from both parties, longing to return to their glory days. “Everybody is talking about something they miss in American politics and very few people are talking about what’s actually happened and where we are now and what our strengths might be, as well as what our weaknesses are.” Domenech and Levin also discussed how the bottom third of American society is experience less integration with the institutions that make success possible. “Family, religion, community, work--all have been breaking down for people and I think this is a direct function of exactly the same process that is driving our diversity and economic dynamism,” Levin said. Both contributors to National Review’s Against Trump symposium, Domenech and Levin discuss what Trump supporters look and sound like. “One of the things conservatives need to wrestle with is that their ideology and their policy prescriptions have nothing to offer the Trump voter,” Domenech said.

The Obama administration is going to leave behind a legacy of the abuses of executive power and the expansion of the administrative state. John Yoo is is a law professor at UC Berkeley and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He served in the Justice Department from 2001 to 2003 and is the editor of Libertys Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State. Yoo joined the Federalist Radio Hour to discuss the founder’s intentions for balance of powers and how the expansion of the government explains so many political scandals in the last decade. Congress has given so much power and so many resources to the President, Yoo said. “Congresses of both parties for many decades have contributed to this by giving more and more power to the agencies,” he said. “People are very dissatisfied with government because of this dynamic, because their representatives don’t make the laws. They transfer them to bureaucrats.” Later in the hour, Yoo explains the war games he uses to teach students how easy it is to critique the government from the outside and after-the-fact. “When you’re inside, you make decisions with not that much information, under the pressure of circumstances, so the decision making is rushed and it’s interesting to see how people think through what to do.” He applies this to the current candidates we are about to pick the next President from. We should pick presidents not because they are good legislators but because they made good decisions under fire. “That’s a different quality. Some people are good at it and some people are not good at it,” he said.

After the results of the New Hampshire primary, the anti-Trump forces are in disarray. Fox News Digital Politics Editor, Chris Stirewalt, joined to Federalist Radio Hour to discuss where the candidates go from here and why New Hampshire may or may not matter. Ben Domenech said that while Donald Trump is the frontrunner for the nomination, Ted Cruz remains as the likeliest nominee for the party. “Cruz has been able to appeal outside of his box of the conservative base to evangelicals, to libertarians, and to other more hawkish conservatives,” said. “He does basically the second best against Hillary Clinton out of any one in the field after Marco Rubio.” Stirewalt said Donald Trump is a fundamental rebranding of the Republican party. “But he rebrands it, not as the conservative party, but as the Trump party,” he said. “What does Donald Trump stand for? Stuff Donald Trump says.” New Hampshire is where the road ends for John Kasich, because as Chris Stirewalt noted, he ended up courting a lot of Democrats. “Republicans will want to have a Republican,” he said. “Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio aren’t done yet. It will go down as one of the costliest (at least on Jeb Bush’s side), ugliest, and probably most counterproductive fights we have seen in a long time.”

Today’s New Hampshire primary is going to tell us a lot about the candidates, the pollsters, and who is dropping out next. Charles C. W. Cooke, writer at National Review, and Ian Aldrich, senior editor at Yankee Magazine, joined the Federalist Radio to speculate on the first primary of the 2016 election. Cooke and Domenech discussed how conservatism may or may not endure and adapt through this election year. “None of the candidates except for Donald Trump would excel the end of conservatism,” he said. “It can’t be killed...but it might hurt conservatism in the United States for a long time.” And reporting from New Hampshire, Ian Aldrich discussed the state’s midnight voting phenomenon and the ground work he’s seen from candidates from for the last year. “I think with this election, there has been a lot of energy behind it on both sides,” he said. “It’s felt more palpable than it has in year’s past.” Domenech said this election could do a lot of damage to pollsters’ reputations if results don’t line up with the predictions they have sustained for months. “This is a situation where pollsters are really hoping Trump wins tonight.”

Katherine Mangu-Ward, writer and editor at Reason Magazine, joined the Federalist Radio Hour to discuss the evolution of socialism, the democratic debate, this election’s libertarian moment, and why you shouldn’t vote. She said after a poll Reason conducted over a year ago, they discovered that millennials have no idea what the word “socialist” means. “I think it’s telling that the word that got said so many times in the Democratic debate that actually started losing it’s meaning was, ‘progressive,’ she said. “That’s a far more relevant word and that is what we’re really talking about here.” Rand Paul’s success or failure isn’t determinative of the success or failure of libertarian ideas. Mangu-Ward said she doesn’t think that his dropping out of the race should be interpreted as the libertarian moment wasn’t real. “I think part of Ron Paul’s success, was that he was the wacky one on the stage and with Trump sucking all the air out of room, I think the breath of fresh air thing just didn’t work this time around.” Later in the hour, Mangu-Ward explains how voting will not change the outcome of an election or even a close election. “Complaining is a far more fundamental right than voting is a duty.”

Today on the Federalist Radio Hour, John Schindler, national security columnist at the Observer, security consultant, and former NSA analyst, talked on the most recent news from the State Department regarding Hillary Clinton’s emails and discussed other national security threats around the world. Schindler said the emails have turned out to be even worse than he expected. “Team Hillary has been pushing back on this--on what was marked and what wasn’t and these words games they specialize in,” he said. “Twenty-two (emails) were judged to be ‘Top Secret’ entirely, now pushing 30 based on the latest indications and there are some real bombshells in what has not been released.” Later in the hour Schindler explains some of the situations unfolding in the Middle East and Russia and how a future president is going to have to address them in the next year. “Whoever becomes President on the 20th of January of next year is going to face a wicked problem in Syria and the surrounding states due to the catastrophe that has befallen Syria since 2011,” he said. “There are no good options here, after what President Obama has overseen.”

William Gairdner, author of The Great Divide: Why Liberals and Conservatives Will Never Ever Agree, joined the Federalist Radio Hour to discuss democracy, reason, marriage, freedom and the future of civil conversation. Gairdner said he sees a new political philosophy growing which he classifies as libertarian socialism. “It’s not pure libertarianism and it’s not pure socialism, but it’s enough of both to say we now have a new political model which has mutated in the western world,” he said. “They aren’t very concerned about freedom except when it comes to their sexual and bodily freedoms.” Gairdner’s book suggests that the state aims to take away social bonding in civil society by offering state bonding as a substitute. “As these libertarian-socialist entities continue to grow...governments simply move in through what I call substitute caring,” he said. “To take over what used to be the functions of free people in their own civil societies.” Another element critical in conducting civil conversations is the ability to be present and how our phones and media have made it more difficult to do so. “These devices have tapped into an incredibly powerful urge that people have to communicate, but only with those of their choice,” Gairdner said. “In the past, your social circumstances required you to develop the skills to communication with anyone who was around you. In other words, to be gracious, to be kind, to be well-mannered and to hone all those skills.”

Did Ernest Hemingway write drunk and what did he actually drink? Museum of the American Cocktail co-founder and author of To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion, Phillip Greene, joined The Federalist Radio to answer these questions and discuss other cocktail folklore. Greene also explains how American cocktails have experienced a renaissance in the last two decades, just as how the food and drink industry has. “We started to see it with single-malt scotches and small-batch bourbons--it just continued with the revival of bitters. People just wanted to get back to getting away from mass-produced, commercialized, bland, lowest common denominator offerings,” he said. But first, Ben Domenech addresses Donald Trump’s recent complaints about the Iowa Caucus and claims of Ted Cruz’s voter fraud. Even Trump’s backers in the media are not going to be able to defend these complaints. “They’re not going to be able to stand up there and say with a straight face that there was any kind of voter fraud. It’s just not something that stands up under any kind of scrutiny,” he said. andnbsp;

Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the house, and Sean Trende, senior elections analyst at Real Clear Politics, joined the Federalist Radio Hour to recap Monday’s Iowa caucus. After discussing Hillary’s angry victory speech and Donald Trump’s biggest campaign mistakes in Iowa, they offered their advice to the candidates going forward into New Hampshire and North Carolina. Ted Cruz is a divisive figure. “Maybe the most divisive figure in politics today, but that’s not the perspective people of Iowa had of him,” Ben Domenech said. “I thought it was very telling that he was able to win Iowa, despite his position on the issue of ethanol.” Gingrich said he thinks Rubio is going to have to consolidate voters who aren’t willing to take the risk Trump or Cruz. “Remember, Bill Clinton lost all the way until the Georgia Primary,” he said. As someone who has always been on the fringe of Congress, even as late as Obama’s presidency, Bernie Sanders is now someone who half of the Democratic electorate are supporting. “There is this energy on the Democratic side to push things further than they did with Obama, and especially if the Democrats lose, that energy is not going away.”