3 Whisky Happy Hour

Ricochet

4.7 (518)
Politics
Updated Weekly

Steven Hayward, John Yoo, and "Lucretia" bring you a whisky-sodden perspective on the week's big headlines, and occasional deep dives into law and philosophy. Listen to the Three-Whisky Happy hour, along with more than 40 other original podcasts, at Ricochet.com. No paid subscription required.

21h ago

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: 25 Years On

This week's episode is 100% ad-free, as we take up the somber subject of "memory against forgetting" (to borrow Milan Kundera's useful phrase) on the subject of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and we didn't want to risk getting an automated ad for "Jihadis-R-Us Truck Rental" or something. John was at the Dept. of Justice that day (and late into the night); Steve was four blocks from the White House (and due to meet there at 11 am that morning), and Lucretia was overseas in Germany toward the end of her stint there as a military spouse (and mom to young children that she never once thought about strangling). In addition to personal reflections, we go through a few of the key issues that became urgent that day, such as the necessary transition from regarding terrorist acts as criminal matters to seeing them more properly as acts of war, requiring a war-fighting mentality. This necessary shift remains controversial of course. John recalls of this in detail in a piece for Civitas Outlook, "Remembering 9/11 and the War We Fought." Don't miss it! We also wonder about the strange twists and turns that have happened in the intervening years (such as having a radical Muslim mayor of New York City today—something unimaginable in the immediate aftermath of 9/11), and finally taking up the question of whether we and our Western allies are finally, slowly coming to grips with the problem of radical Islam, or even non-radical Islam, taking some of our bearings from Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Tablet article, "What Mohammad Atta Was Trying to Tell Us." We manage to end on an upbeat note with a modest suggestion for how to reform "land acknowledgements."
Sep 4

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Is There a Modern Remedy for Ancient Hatred?

John Yoo is off again this week (I know—many of you think he's "off" every week!), so joining us as a special guest is Titus Techera, who wears many hats, including executive director of the American Cinema Foundation; Distinguished Fellow at Hillsdale College; International Program Coordinator, Edmund Burke Foundation; and researcher in political philosophy, Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest. The Romanian-born Techera is one of those non-citizens whose love of liberty led him to become a deep lover of America. We cover a lot of ground with Titus, and since he is currently in Budapest, we get a report on what the new authoritarian government of Peter Magyar is doing to suppress all remnants of the supposedly authoritarian government of Victor Orban that voters turned out of office a few months back. This is not just a Hungarian problem; we also look at France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, where the EU establishment blob is trying to suppress the democratic will all in the name of "saving democracy." From there we take up the question of rising anti-Semitism, about which Titus has some novel suggestions. And finally, as a preview of his next visit with us, we do a lightning round discussion of our favorite John Ford and Whit Stillman movies.
Aug 28

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Privateering Edition

The band is back together again this week as John Yoo ends his truancy, and we take up the fresh legal and constitutional disputes of the moment, starting with the Supreme Court's recent rulings about mail-in ballots and the Trump Administration's efforts to enlist the Postal Service on behalf of election integrity. From there we move on to the novel proposal to bring back prize courts and authorize old fashioned "privateers" to capture Iranian shipping on the high seas and profit from their cargoes—something United States hasn't done since around the time of Andrew Jackson (Trump's favorite president, perhaps not coincidentally). Then, on to the emerging controversy over Flock cameras, and whether we can trust the government not to abuse them or use them to spy on and harass us. This week's cameo appearance is from our favorite classicist Alex Priou, who joins us to discuss his terrifically cheeky recenbt essay, "How to Be an Elitist." And our listener question this week is: why does the president get to select the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Shouldn't that be up to the members of the Court? The president doesn't get to appoint the Speaker of the House, after all, and the language on this matter in the Constitution is incomplete or ambiguous. Hmmm.
Aug 23

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: New Headlines and Old Time Religion

We're a day and a half late with this episode, but better late than never. It's just Steve and Lucretia this week—John Yoo will be back next week—and they spend the first half of the episode updating some of last week's main stories while noting that instead of dying down, they have intensified. The Luigi Mangione Fangirl Murder Mob has extended its tender mercies to Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts wife who (allegedly) strangled her three children apparently—to listen to her demented symathizers—in anticipation of what may become Fourth Wave Feminism. No—we're not making this up! The Jason Arday story continues to have legs, and some strange new permutations, one of which directly includes Lucretia and a strangely self-referential article in the Comical of Higher Education. This resolves into a discussion of what else the Trump Administration and the Republican Congress ought to be doing to force our East German universities into serious reform, and not just renaming their DEI operations and other evasions of the campus rot. (We also have positively identified who will replace Arday at Cambridge, and it's a familiar name.) After a brief intermission, we take up what may turn out to be the central legacy of J.D. Vance, and think other leaders ought to pay more attention to his latest core message. And then we visit one of Ronald Reagan's supposed most egregious gaffs—that "trees cause pollution"—in light of some new mainstream science findings that the Gipper was right after all.
Aug 16

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Will the Rotting Timbers of Academia Finally Fall?

The shocking suicide of the fraudulent Jason Arday alongside the Atlantic cover story about how a mostly leftist scholar "of color" (Tyler Austin Harper) quit his tenure track job at Bates College because he couldn't stand "the insufferable hypocrisy of elite academia," ought to be the last straw for our nation's tolerance for a completely rotten education system, from K-12 through the colleges and universities. But it probably won't be, because the left is not going to give up these premier bastions of political power unless they are crushed. And that can't be done quickly or easily. Joining us this week to take the place of the truant John Yoo is Bates College alum Richard Samuelson, nowadays a professor of history at Hillsdale College, who adds some detail from his own experience as an undergraduate at Bates College, and you will wonder how he survived the place. We also have a brief cameo appearance from John, who notes the peculiar legal strategy being pursued by Liuigi Mangione, the killer of United HealthCar CEO Brian Thompson last year. Keep your eye on this one, as we have a possible conspiracy theory to roll out about it. And finally, we take up a reader comment about something we said last week about the meaning of the phrase, "nature bats last." This is a long episode, but it's ad-free this week, so it zips long even zippier than usual. I want to introduce again the new voice for the show opener, Colin McLean. Colin is a noted voice-actor in Britain, and semi-retired from a distinguished business career in The City. You can read about his voice work at his website Vocal Flair, and I also recommend his YouTube channel, The Healing Voice, where he ranges widely from poetry, music, story-telling, and some sensible psychology.
Aug 8

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Post-Liberalism + "Henry Kissinger" Cameo?

This week's episode features frequent guest Phil Munoz of Notre Dame University, sitting in for John Yoo, discussing his very timely new article in First Things magazine on "The Founders and the Common Good." His article is getting a fair bit of buzz on the interwebs, as it takes up the surprisingly hot topic of "post-liberalism," in particular to dispute the contention of some leading post-liberals that the American Founding was defective and therefore part of the problem. We also take up briefly an excellent article on the same issue by Andrew Walker in The Daily Wire, "The Neutrality Myth: Liberty, Order and the Common Good." Both worthy of your reading pile. (By the way, speaking of First Things, have I mentioned that I am thinking about starting a quarterly academic journal for the OnlyFans community, and calling it First Thongs? I'll show myself out. . .) This episode also features a short cameo appearance by "Henry Kissinger" (we summoned him by means of a Ouija board) to bring his legendary perspective to our current foriegn policy confusion, and we tackle a listener question about populism. Our new voice for the show opener is Colin McClean, a noted voice-actor in Britain, semi-retired from a distinguished business career in The City. You can read about his voice work at his website Vocal Flair, and I also recommend his YouTube channel, The Healing Voice, where he ranges widely from poetry, music, story-telling, and some sensible psychology.
Aug 7

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Emergency Executive Order Edition

President Trump's executive orders Thursday afternoon attempting to re-ground his opposition to birthright citizenship prompted an emergency livestream with me and Lucretia on Substack. We wanted to get ahead of the certain hysteria of the blue-faced crazies on BlueSky (and the media, but I repeat myself) that Trump is "undermining the Constitution" and "defying the Supreme Court." To the contrary, Trump is defending the Constitution from the mistaken assumption that the judiciary—and only the judiciary—has the last word on these matters. We break down the main issues in this 30-minute, ad-free mini-episode. Our regular episode, featuring special guest host Phil Munoz of Notre Dame, and a cameo appearance from "Henry Kissinger," will be out Saturday morning as usual, where I'll explain our new voice over for the intro you hear today.
Aug 1

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: The Hiatus Is Over!

The hiatus for the rebooted 3WHH is over! We got the band back together, and to further paraphrase the political philosophy of the Ellwood brothers, it's 70 minutes to the end of this podcast, we've got a full glass of whisky, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Just like Anthony Fauci in his glam cover shot for In Style magazine back in 2021. Most of our changes are cosmetic, and it it still a work-in-progress, but the two main new features on display this week is a short "cameo" appearance from a slate of contributors we're signing up, and responding to the best reader/listener question. This week's cameo is from Alex Priou of the University of Austin, who has some definite opinions about The Odyssey. Two main topics are on our mind this week: the mendacious Dr. Fauci, and what pathways for legal redress might still be open despite President Biden's pardon. Second, we spend some time discussing the "republican guarantee clause" of Article IV of the Constitution, which is usually overlooked, and thought to be non-justiciable, if not in fact a nullity, similar to the 9th Amendment. We take up this question because of Glenn Reynolds' mischievous suggestion on his Substack that President Trump might be able to invoke the clause to justify sending federal authorities into states with high potential for vote fraud. Here's the key passage from Glenn's article: "So if President Trump announces that we have uncovered massive electoral fraud — as he almost certainly will — and that he is dispatching huge numbers of federal election watchers to oversee voting and counting in areas where fraud has occurred, he would be acting directly under a power that the Constitution has vested in him. For a state to have a “republican form of government,” it must have meaningful elections, and elections that are rigged are not meaningful. Stopping them from being rigged would be protecting a republican form of government. Congress has passed other election laws, mostly for reasons of combating race discrimination, but those aren’t strictly applicable to these circumstances. . ." Could make for some fun times!

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4.7

out of 5

518 Ratings

Horrible explanation of the Thucydides trap

Jun 12

Kevinneedstheword

John gave a horrible explanation of the Thucydides trap. We’re crying out loud, you’re a professor. It is about what happens when similar powers see each other building capability. The outcome was a preemptive attack, but it doesn’t have to end that way.
R.J.Pestritto

Jun 3

Charles1634

The guest for this show was terrific. Please have him on again to fill in for John Yoo.
More liberty bell

May 2

gardenweasel

Once a week is not enough!
Well Done

Apr 20

Gnm98

Engaging witty and smart. Worth the time.

Steven Hayward, John Yoo, and "Lucretia" bring you a whisky-sodden perspective on the week's big headlines, and occasional deep dives into law and philosophy. Listen to the Three-Whisky Happy hour, along with more than 40 other original podcasts, at Ricochet.com. No paid subscription required.