Power Line

Once upon a time, “CRT” stood for “cathode ray tube,” sometimes known as “television,” but also oscilloscopes, computer screens, some x-rays, and certain other technical devices designed for testing and calibration. Cathode ray tubes went the way of the Dodo bird quite some time ago, and nowadays CRT means something else: Critical Race Theory. There is one way in which today’s CRT resembles the... Source

Who knew that that hottest new thing in the early 21st century would be an old thing—the nation state? Nationalism acquired a foul odor in the 20th century, but ever since Brexit and Trump upset the cosmopolites from Berkeley to Brussels, the idea of nationalism has crept back into favor, at least with many conservatives. I’ve written my own short overview of the issue a couple years ago now... Source

After a week off for travel and for Steve to recover from the pummeling he took at the hands of “Lucretia” in our last episode two weeks ago, the 3WHH is back with some fresh malts and fresh looks at the news of the week. We start with what appears to be the White House cat fight between First Doctor Jill Biden and Veep Kaaaaammmaaala Harris, and then proceed to examine the special House January 6... Source

If you only go by the major media or your local college sociology department, you’d think rural America is a hopeless domain of drug and alcohol addiction, downward mobility, and dysfunction. Far from it, at least in rural Maine, where author Gigi Georges decided to spend several years getting to know and tracking several young women as they made their way through the challenges of their small... Source

This week’s Power Line Classic format show features Prof. Charles R. Kesler, editor of the Claremont Review of Books, talking about his brand new book, Crisis of the Two Constitutions: The Rise, Decline, and Recovery of American Greatness. Crisis collects several of Kesler’s old and new essays and details how we got to and what is at stake in our increasingly divided America. Source

We get letters. And one from a regular listener baited us with the proposition that since FDR’s New Deal—decried here on a recent episode—is now nearly 90 years old, the duty of Burkean conservatives is now to preserve the New Deal rather than pine romantically for the good old days of Calvin Coolidge. To which Steve responded, well, I guess we should do a seminar-style episode about Edmund Burke... Source

Pour a double for this weeks 3WHH, as Lucretia and Steve host Michael Anton to talk about his extraordinary new article, “ The Art of Spiritual War, Or, How to (Posthumously) Conquer the World from Your Desk.” The author of the famous (or infamous) “Flight 93 Election” article in 2016 covers an amazing amount of ground in a short space, which includes rehabilitating Machiavelli in a certain way... Source

As regular listeners know, we never tire of beating up on Progressivism—both the old kind and today’s high-octane version—and we especially like to beat up on Woodrow Wilson. Most of what we know about Wilson’s perfidy comes from the ur-text of Wilson criticism, Ronald J. Pestritto’s Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism from 2005. R.J. (as he is known to his friends), is out this week... Source

The modern conservative movement born in the 1950s had two main objects: It was anti-Communist, and anti-New Deal. Lately, however, some conservatives have warmed up to both FDR and the New Deal, which has to have Robert Taft rolling over in his grave—and maybe William F. Buckley, Jr. too. Conrad Black, an esteemed man of the right, has long championed FDR as a “champion of freedom” (the subtitle... Source

This week Lucretia and I decide to take a break from our recent seminar format—in other words, no schoolwork this week—and just review some of the week’s news instead. Or perhaps we should say non-news, since most of the “news” items we review turn into examples of what’s wrong with journalism today. Call it “The Age of Al Hunt,” in homage to Evelyn Waugh’s device about “the Age of Hooper” in... Source

Fred Barnes recently announced his retirement after more than 50 years as a working journalist, having served as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Star, The New Republic, the Weekly Standard, and the Washington Examiner. He contributed to countless other publications such as The American Spectator and Reader’s Digest, but many people will remember him for his frequent turns on The... Source

All it took was a NY Times op-ed article on the (misunderstood) legacy of Justice John Marshall Harlan’s famous dissent in the 1896 Plessy (“separate but equal”) case to set off a classic “Lucretia” rant: I find the NYT piece more damaging to the cause of equality before the law even than critical race theory. I think [the author] perpetuates that subterfuge that makes it possible for milquetoast... Source

With this episode of the Power Line Show, I’m returning to what I call “Power Line Classic” format, featuring interviews and conversations with interests thinkers, writers, and doers. I took a hiatus from this format last year while I was working on my book, and using the Three Whisky Happy Hour format as a substitute because “Lucretia” does all the work (except for selecting my whisky)... Source

This “mission to Moscow” is not to be confused with the infamous Joseph Davies 1941 book, Mission to Moscow, which Steve calls a “novel” at the opening of this episode, because its pro-Stalinist viewpoint was fiction indeed. Our use of “mission to Moscow” serves a dual-use purpose today: while it isn’t clear whether there was Russian involvement in the ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline... Source

This week we decided to play “clean up on Supreme Court aisle [footnote] four,” and explain further why we think 1938’s Carolene Products decision was actually the most significant of the New Deal era decisions that distorted the Constitution and our subsequent politics. Many of the perversions of modern civil rights politics actually descend from this case that was about adulterated milk... Source

Hoo boy, is this episode off the hook! First, “Lucretia” staged a coup, usurping Steve’s host role, and punishing him for his bad puns, but we finally get to the main event, which is a long conversation with the great Charles Lipson about his recent article, “ Packing the Court, Then and Now.” We take a while to get to the subject, however, in favor of a long prologue about high school whisky... Source

This special 250th episode of the Power Line podcast offers a twist on our Three Whisky Happy Hour format, as Lucretia and I put aside our Glen Livet in favor of talking with Glenn Ellmers. Glenn is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, research fellow at Hillsdale College, author of a forthcoming biography of Harry Jaffa entitled The Soul of Politics, and author of several recent articles... Source

Good grief! “Lucretia” and I take a week off, and everything goes to hell. Minneapolis starts rioting again, and Democrats in Washington start their own riot over court-packing. Meanwhile, the officer who mistook her service revolver for a taser and shot Daunte Wright was publicly identified within 48 hours (Kim Potter), lost her job, and now faces criminal charges, while we have passed Day 100... Source

Winston Churchill wrote that “No two cities have counted more with mankind than Athens and Jerusalem. Their messages in religion, philosophy, and art have been the main guiding lights of modern faith and culture.” For Easter and Passover Steve and Lucretia decided to take up the Jerusalem side of this theme with the help of a forgotten figure who was a major influence on the young Churchill—the... Source

Last night we had one of our special live Zoom events for Power Line VIP subscribers, but a gremlin seems to have prevented many VIPs from getting timely notice of the link to the event. So we decided to post up the audio of the event for VIPs who didn’t get a link or who were unable to join us for whatever reason–and for any curious listeners who want to hear what they’re missing! Source