The Hanania Show

Inez and I begin by discussing two major Supreme Court cases from last week, SFFA v. Harvard, on affirmative action, and 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, on whether a private business can be forced to create a website for a gay wedding. We talk about how the affirmative action decision impacts the incentives of universities, and how its holdings might find their way into other areas of law.This leads to a broader discussion about free speech and when it’s justified for government to tell social media companies they can’t censor users. I take the problem of false information and bad actors much more seriously than Inez does, although I definitely understand her point and feel conflicted on this issue. I just really hate government interference in the market! By all means, crush CRT, LGBT, and everything else in public schools and cut off their funding, but I find it very hard to get myself to support the state telling private actors what to do under almost any circumstances. I just love liberty and freedom too much. As we find out, I’m much more inclined than Inez is to agree with the Goldwater position on the Civil Rights Act. It seems to me that her worry about modern discrimination against conservatives has led her to take a more left wing position on whether the federal government should have told private actors in the South who they could associate with in the 1960s. This just confirms my fear that as soon as you start to accept any arguments for government intervention, it’s the first step towards communism/civil rights, or god forbid, industrial policy. If we could silo the censorship issue and simply work on that I would be reassured, but I worry about general anti-market trends on the right.We close by talking a bit about Vivekmania, which is taking the Republican primary by storm. This conversation touches a bit on generational differences and aesthetics, and his strengths and weaknesses as a candidate. Listen here or watch us on YouTube.Links:* My immediate reaction to SFFA v Harvard* My thread on how markets are the cure to discrimination* Goldwater speech on the Civil Rights Act* My appearance on Vivek’s podcast* My take on Vivek right before he jumped in the race* Vox on Vivek (and me)* Vivek video at Moms for Liberty This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.richardhanania.com/subscribe

Inez joins me one day early this week, as she’s traveling on Thursday.We talk about the coming decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, wondering what the more moderate decisions of the Court over this term imply for what it will do about affirmative action. The way I see it, the previous cases indicate that either the justices have been chastened by Dobbs or that they’re building good will to finally strike down affirmative action. The second half of the podcast revolves around unlovable men, and how hard life is for them. Inez and I seem to agree a good bit on sex roles, male/female differences, and where society has gone wrong. I talk about the shift from PUA to incels in our culture, and how that reflects a more general increase in mental illness over the last decade and a half. I also express my discomfort with the idea of turning low status men into a new identity group that we need to have compassion towards. Conservatives usually understand how self-defeating and limiting such an approach can be in other contexts. We get into the pluses and minuses of putting the focus on individuals changing their behavior versus more systematic efforts. I recommend people here read my article How I Overcame Anxiety if you haven’t already.Listen here or watch on YouTube.Links:* Me, “SCOTUS Must Go for the Heart of the Race State”* Me, thread on the impacts of getting rid of affirmative action in California and Michigan* SCOTUS getting its liberal rulings out of the way?* William Deresiewicz, “Unfuckable Hate Nerds” (Tablet)* Inez, “Gender Crisis is Really a Marriage Crisis” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.richardhanania.com/subscribe

This week, Inez and I begin on the OceanGate tragedy, and the reaction to it. We have similar intuitions about the story, which is that society progresses through risk taking and pushing the frontiers of science and technology, and that often involves doing things that are risky and dangerous. One can’t both want a more dynamic civilization and then demand government regulation every time something goes wrong. Ezra Klein wrote a recent op-ed on DeSantis’ latest book, and also had a podcast discussion about it with Carlos Lozada. Inez talks about her experience with the Tea Party, and I present my own, more jaundiced perspective of the movement and its motivations. We discuss the implications and meanings of Birtherism with the advantage of a decade of hindsight.I ask whether Klein has a point about the lack of positive vision in the DeSantis campaign. Inez questions whether this is something you need to win, and I think the idea that you do has deep roots in American history. I argue that she may be more negative about American society than most other people are, but we come to an agreement that if DeSantis did actually come to power, there would be costs to trying to undertake radical change.Listen here or watch on YouTube.Links:* CBS report making the trip to the Titanic six months ago* Me on the relationship between commercial travel and scientific progress* Klein op-ed on reading DeSantis’ book, podcast on the topic* HW Brands, Heirs to the Founders This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.richardhanania.com/subscribe

This was a great conversation with Inez, as it got into some deep differences regarding how we see politics. We start by discussing the Trump indictment, and how bad the charges against him are. From Inez’s perspective, this is just the latest part of the story of a permanent bureaucracy going after its political opponents. My argument is that, while sometimes conservatives can make a reasonable case that they’re being treated unfairly, this is not the best way to understand the Trump indictment. She thinks that the DOJ has violated a norm of not indicting a former president, while I believe that it would be strange to let conduct this flagrant go unpunished. I think Inez better represents where conservatives are than I do. There’s sort of two axes, one on policy, where you can be right or left, and another where one can be temperamentally extreme or moderate. I think we’re mostly aligned on policy, and I may be more right wing than she is on a lot of things. But I’m much more resistant to talking about a deep state or a government bureaucracy that is out there oppressing anyone who is right wing or disagrees with them politically. I think conservatives can win, that they do so all the time, in fact, and their main problems are rooted in their own incompetence and stupidity. But Inez gives another perspective, so listen to understand where we differ on these things. I cite a recent Yglesias piece on Trump, which I think hits the nail on the head.His con is not that he’s convinced conservatives that he’s honest. It’s that he’s convinced conservatives that his lying and shamelessness is a superpower that he deploys on behalf of their issues and causes. And it is true that he has at times deployed dishonesty and shamelessness to advance conservative causes. But much more frequently, he deploys dishonesty and shamelessness to advance himself, often at the expense of conservative causes.Interestingly, Inez doesn’t disagree, but still ends up coming to a different place on the Trump indictment and whether he’s worth defending.As part of the discussion, we debate whether the federal government does actually target conservatives. I say it doesn’t, or the degree to which it does is so negligible it’s not worth worrying about. Trump, I think, has done an excellent job of convincing conservatives otherwise. We close with some discussion of Chris Christie (clearly one of my favorite topics), and whether we’re moving towards an emerging consensus that says candidates are going to have to more directly go after Trump.Listen here or watch on YouTube.LinksMatt Yglesias, The Orange Man is BadJosh Barro, It’s Time for GOP Candidates to Pile on TrumpChuck Grassley accusations against BidenVideo of Chris Christie challenging Republicans to go after Trump. Also, his answer on abortion Poll showing Christie only 5 points behind DeSantis in New HampshireHanania, The Biomechanics of TrumpismHanania, DeSantis Should Challenge Trump to a Fight This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.richardhanania.com/subscribe

This week, Inez and I start by talking about Chris Christie and Mike Pence entering the 2024 race. We talked about the potential impact of a Trump federal indictment, which we found out was happening less than two hours after our recording. That led to a discussion of the slippery concept of norms, why they’re necessary, and how they’re broken. I bring up my theory that Bob Dole hawking Viagra breached some kind of threshold and changed our politics. We also talk about the role of the Clinton impeachment. We close by talking about Pride Month, and the backlash to it. People appear to have had enough, with recent successful boycotts against Target and Bud Light, and the resistance to what is happening in schools. Inez has some opinions on where LGBT craziness came from. She thinks it has something to do with a misplaced maternal instinct. I think that’s part of it, but am still not completely sure why trans in particular has become such an important issue to educated white women. I have my own theories, which I don’t get to here. I enjoyed Inez’s critique of TERFs from the right.I realized during this conversation that we’ve probably been limiting ourselves by talking too much about the horserace, and we have many more interesting things we could be discussing. So while we’re still going to focus on 2024, expect broader conversations like this one in the future. Listen here or watch on YouTube.Links: * Bob Dole 1998 Viagra commercial* On George W. Bush speaking at a marketing company* Members of Congress beating the stock market* Mike Pence on a potential Trump indictment* California office of the governor bullying localities and Armenians* Machaela Cavanaugh screaming about trans kids in the Nebraska legislature. Her profile in New York (Apple News link).* Backlashes to Pride month: Muslims in Montgomery County, MD, and Armenians in Glendale, CA* Me on the LGBT dialectic * Semafor on the backlash to Pride Month This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.richardhanania.com/subscribe

This week, Inez and I start by talking about a recent article arguing that the definition of “conservatism” has come to mean loyalty to Trump. We then go on to discuss the entrances of Mike Pence and Chris Christie into the race, and what their roles in the primary might be.Inez hopes that Trump participates in the debates and thinks that him doing so would be good for democracy. This leads me to ask her what she thinks about the DeSantis strategy of freezing out the press.Josh Hawley recently wrote a book on masculinity. His effort was critiqued by David French, and this triggered Inez, so we talk about it. I think she has French Derangement Syndrome, and one can have a more sympathetic reading of the sentence that bothers her so much. During the conversation, I mentioned that there was an Elon Musk tweet where he wrote “Being fixed,” presumably in response to complaints that Twitter was suppressing Matt Walsh’s trans skeptical movie. As it turns out, he was responding to Inez herself. The woman gets results.Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.Links:* My tweet on the FiveThirtyEight article on conservatives and Trump* The DeSantis name controversy, Trump’s response* Me on the first post-DeSantis announcement poll* Steve Kornacki on Christie’s entrance into the race* David French on Josh Hawley’s masculinity, Inez’s response This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.richardhanania.com/subscribe

Hi everyone, with Ron DeSantis’ announcement yesterday, it feels like the 2024 election is officially underway. A lot of smart people I talk to hate the superficial aspects of politics, as I learned when interviewing Bryan Caplan recently, but I can’t help myself. To me, it’s the best show on earth. I like to think my social and political views are sophisticated and nuanced, but I find the sillier aspects of our democracy as enjoyable as boomers who spend their evenings glued to cable news. Yes, I want reasonable legislative and regulatory changes that improve the world, but I also want to be entertained, and there’s nothing like the arena where policy and showmanship interact, especially during election season. I’m going to be having a lot of thoughts on the 2024 cycle, so I decided to start a podcast to get it all out of my system. It’s called Clown Car, and it’s going to focus on the election, along with other topics in American politics. My co-host is Inez Stepman, who is a policy analyst for the Independent Women’s Voice and whose work appears across a wide swath of conservative media. We’re aiming to release a new episode every Thursday evening, after being recorded on the same day. She’s right-wing and smart, so I enjoy talking to her, and I look forward to many more conversations. This week, the topics covered are:* The glitchy DeSantis rollout* The state of the 2024 race* What DeSantis’ strategy should be* Whether focusing too much on wokeness issues is a mistake* If optimism or pessimism sells in politics* Tim Scott’s campaign announcement as a kind of throwbackIf you are getting this, it’s because you’re subscribed to the Richard Hanania newsletter. If you just want the articles but don’t want the podcast, you can go to your settings, find this newsletter, and uncheck the box for Clown Car.Listen to the show here, or watch on YouTube, where you can also sign up to get all future episodes. Links:Kornacki on the Obama/Hillary raceTrump’s hilarious response to the DeSantis launch Trump talking about his “button”, and Kim Jung Un being able to compare it with that of DeSantis Blacks for Trump DeSantis answer on the Ukraine WarHow Trump once handled his own glitchPoll showing Americans believe the country is on the wrong trackMost and least popular public figuresRankings of governors, senators This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.richardhanania.com/subscribe