The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg The Dispatch

At the end of an especially busy week in pundit-world, Jonah sits down with us all to ruminate on some of the more noteworthy topics that may have flown by too quickly to actually wrap one’s brain around them. On the docket: The final debate, some useful counter-programming on the Biden email hullabaloo, getting (erm…) a “grip” on Jeffrey Toobin, and much more. Plus, Jonah has some more evergreen thoughts on the gradual defining down of conservatism, and what the G-File has meant to him after all these years.

Show Notes:
-Get tickets to The Dispatch’s post-election event – What’s Next: Election 2020 and Beyond
-The Dispatch’s final debate wrap-up
-Star Trek: “Patterns of Force”
-This week’s G-File
-The “MacronLeaks”
-The Editors podcast talking about the Biden email scandal
-The members-only (so to speak) Midweek Epistle
-Lucy.co, use promo code DINGO to get 20% off of all products
-ExpressVPN.com/Remnant for 3 months free with a 1-year plan
-Bradleyfdn.org/Liberty to subscribe to We the People

Last time Tim Alberta, Politico’s chief political correspondent, was on the program, life in America was crazy, but in a typical, everyday, post-2016 kind of way. We figured that it was time to have him back now that we’re in the process of rushing towards a new form of crazy at Spaceballs-levels of ludicrous speed (“They’ve gone plaid!”). Tim takes us through some of the issues that voters in purple states actually seem to care about (Hint: The Hunter Biden drama isn’t one of them) while also touching on the confusing lack of a substantive foreign policy debate in this election cycle, the simpler times of the Christmas Tree tax and the Dubai ports deal, and the shocking value-add provided to one’s life by the purchase of an Arby’s gyro.

Show Notes:
-Get tickets for The Dispatch’s “What’s Next” event
-Tim’s page at Politico
-Tim’s most recent book, American Carnage
-Matt Glassman talks about the lack of a foreign policy discussion
-The Christmas Tree tax
-Jonah on the 2006 Dubai ports deal
-Congress slowly spending more time on memes
-Matt Gaetz’s raiding party
-KittyPooClub.com, enter promo code DINGO for 20% off your first order
-Bradleyfdn.org/Liberty to watch the latest episode of We The People with Justin Danhof

Co-founder of Echelon Insights, Golden Retriever companion, and professional Tea Leaf-Reader Kristen Soltis Anderson breaks a long hiatus from Remnant appearances by returning to the show today. As conventional wisdom on the right settles into the idea that “the polls were wrong in 2016,” Kristen gives us a bit of a reality check on why the conditions in 2020 aren’t that simple. She also talks about her newest research on the attitudes of young voters, with some surprising results. For one, young people aren’t nearly as pessimistic as you may have been led to believe: “Two-thirds of Gen Z and Millenials believe that they can achieve the American Dream … through their own actions.”

Show Notes:
-Sign up for The Dispatch’s “What’s Next” event
-Kristen’s latest research for the Walton Family Foundation
- KSA’s Twitter thread on how emotion continues to infiltrate election analysis
-FiveThirtyEight’s politics podcast
-Pew: Younger people remained far less likely to [view the Vietnam War as a mistake] than those age 50 and older.
-Grand New Party, by Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat
-Try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com/Dingo
-DonorsTrust.org/Dingo to receive a free copy of “6 Reasons to Use a Donor-Advised Fund”

This weekend’s Ruminant sees Jonah starting off in some classic Remnant Bingo™, but peppered in with a healthy dose of interesting new information on those topics – in this case, anti-Enlightenment nationalism, and the establishment of fair rules under classically liberal societies. This comes along in addition to a rundown of the ham-fisted efforts by many outlets to pretend that “originalism” is actually something much more radical and antediluvian than it really is. Then, Jonah moves on to a topic that our culture could desperately use some clarification on: “Justice” and “social justice” are two different things – and “bending the will of every institution towards social justice … is how you end up with a kind of soft totalitarianism.” And, in this particularly relaxed-fit episode, we even get some rank punditry on the tail end on subjects like the censored New York Post story and much more.

Show Notes:
-Get your tickets now to The Dispatch’s “What’s Next” event
-The most recent G-File
-Against Empathy by Paul Bloom
-Mazie Hirono being weird
-Making fun of originalism to own the cons
-Rod Dreher’s new book, Live Not by Lies
-Rod responds to his Morning Joe appearance
-The Post story in question
-ExpressVPN.com/Remnant to get three months free off of a year-long plan

Here we are, in the wreckage of another simply wonderful Supreme Court confirmation hearing; who better to discuss the aftermath, next steps, and what these hearings do to the court than Ilya Shapiro? As Jonah says, Ilya is likely “the guest most consistently asked to make a comeback - mostly by the guest himself,” but it’s easy to see why. In addition to giving the 411 on why these hearings have transformed into so much “senatorial bloviation,” he also can talk about the bigger picture as a result of the research he did for his incredibly timely new book on the politicization of SCOTUS. It has been a long time coming for this return - and much like Ulysses’ journey back from Troy, it was worth the wait.

Show Notes:
-Ilya’s book, Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America's Highest Court
- Ilya in USA Today: End confirmation hearings
-Telefon, mind control scene
-Pete Buttigieg’s 5-5-5 Plan
-Barrett: Roe is not a super-precedent
-Barrett’s article on precedent
-Ginsburg’s history with Roe
-The history of an internecine fight on the right about judicial activism
-Ilya Shapiro on “Team Liberty”
- Shapiro on Shapiro
-Lucy.co, promo code DINGO for 20% off all products
-Bradleyfdn.org/Liberty to hear Trent England on the Electoral College

Today, we bring you Will Saletan of Slate – after having struggled mightily against the malevolent whims of technology in order to get it ready. Not since Episode 11 has an installment of The Remnant so risked the sanity – nay, the very essence – of all participants involved. Luckily, the conversation more than makes up for these struggles. Jonah asks Will what it’s like to be a genuinely liberal guy in an industry space that has moved largely past actual liberalism, and then Will turns the tables on Jonah and asks him what it’s like to be genuinely conservative in an era of dwindling conservatism. Afterwards, stick around for SCOTUS punditry and what could be described as a worrying amount of Hegel-talk (for awareness: a worrying amount of Hegel-talk is any Hegel-talk).

Show Notes:
-Will’s page at Slate
-New River Media
-Dallas retcons itself
-Candidate Trump reacts to the crowd while announcing travel ban
-“The 5-5-5 Plan”
-“What I Learned From Amy Coney Barrett,” by Laura Wolk
-Fukuyama’s piece on social capital
-LiquidIV.com, use promo code DINGO at checkout for 25% off anything you order
-Keeps.com/Dingo to receive your first month of treatment for free