David Harsanyi on the Partisan Divide
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Welcome back to another episode of Broken Potholes with your hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. Another fantastic program on tap for you today. Our first guest will be Melissa Williams and what a story she has. And then after that we will be speaking with David Harsanyi, the author of Eurotrash. Fantastic book for any of you who have not read it. But first, Melissa, welcome to the program.

Hi, thank you for having me. So for folks who don't know, Melissa was a sheriff's deputy in Arapahoe County, Colorado for 28 years. A mom of two. She's 46 years old. She had a fantastic record as a police officer working 60 hour weeks in a department that like every other police department in the country right now is not

Fully staffed where officers are being asked to do far more than they ever have before. But Melissa, you also have or had a little second side gig. Tell us about that.

Yeah, so I was operating an OnlyFans page, and it was more or less a hobby, something that my husband and I did just, you know, for fun. Sure. And a co-worker or former co-worker discovered it and reported it to my agency. Now, and for folks who don't know, OnlyFans often has some risque content, but it is subscription-only. Right.

Right? Correct. You have to be over 18 and you have to be behind a paywall. Well, and so not only this guy may have found your site and then that ended up with you getting fired, but, you know, from my perspective, wasn't he just as culpable if he's on there paying for this site as you were? And shouldn't he have been fired right alongside you if they were going to do that? Well, I wasn't fired. I took a severance.

So it's what we officially call it. But I mean, yeah, if you don't like it, don't look at it. Right. Kind of my perspective. This story, this, this story has two elements that always make me giggle a little bit on such things as one,

You had a female colleague turn you in, which, you know, women supporting women. I've always appreciated that line. And two, you obviously had fellow law enforcement officers who were able to find you. And I'm sure they weren't looking for you when they did this originally. How's the reaction been from your family, your neighbors, people you deal with? I mean, you've been 28 years. So you're, you know, you're, you're a person in the community that people know and obviously like.

What's the reaction been from them? Shocked initially, but the support that has been shown to me and my family has been pretty incredible. You know, I didn't want this to get out. I didn't want the neighboring agency officer to report me. And whenever it was discovered and I tried to sneak away quietly,

It didn't happen. And so we had to sit down and really brace ourselves for what was going to happen. And we own it. We did it. And, you know, we're glad people support us. I mean, my question, Melissa, is that you weren't in uniform. There was no indication that you were a sheriff's deputy on your site. There was no connection between that and your professional life.

This was something you were doing on your own time. So why should anybody care what you're doing when you're not in uniform, not at work, and not on the clock? Well, and I guess that's really the question, and I don't know why people care. You know, but someone cared, and then some other people cared, and it blew into this situation. You know, I...

Someone makes it to the media, and here I am. Melissa, how has the media treated you on this? Have you been surprised by it? It's been better than you thought. It's been worse than you thought. How has the media treated you during this experience? I would say, for the most part, probably 85% of it has been positive. I have...

avoided reading a lot of comments and things like that. I've had friends and family send me articles I haven't even had time to read. I never thought in a million years that I would be known

as viral, global, national. You know, so I didn't think that Wolfie Goldberg would be talking about me on The View. Like, I just never expected that in my lifetime. How have your, you know, it's always interesting, Sam and I are in politics, and we are often,

something happens or someone takes an unpopular position, let's say, and they, you know, people come out against them and then behind the scenes, they whisper and say, oh, I support you. Have you found that with your fellow law enforcement officers you dealt with that behind, they said, I'm with you, I feel bad, what can I do? What's the reaction been with your colleagues?

So for the most part, I really didn't hear from many people during this whole process. It was a handful of folks. And they would tell me, oh, so-and-so was saying this and so-and-so was saying that. And then ironically, they subscribed and started asking me for free things. So it's kind of mind-blowing in that aspect. But anyone who defended me through the process has not left my side, even after everything blew up.

So I'm thankful that that didn't happen. But it's interesting the backside of it also.

What's been the most difficult? This is Chuck. We're with Melissa Williams, a police officer of 28 years in Colorado who set up an only fans page on the side as a hobby. And the department that she worked for did not like it. So she has accepted a severance and moved on. What has been the most difficult item with this? Is it explaining to family and friends what happened?

Is it just the notoriety? What's been the most difficult thing for you? Because obviously, you know, look, you're a strong woman, but, you know, this takes a toil. And what's been the hardest part for you? How it's affected my kids. You know, they're tender. And so we're lucky we have a really strong family and we teach them, you know, we back each other. And we might not always agree with

you know, something that one of us has done, but we defend each other and we support each other and we're working through it. And that's really been the hardest part for, for us. You know, it's one thing for our parents to find out. It's another thing for our kids to find out. Right. So. Right. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Now, are you, are you still doing the, the only fans, uh, the page and website or what?

Yes, it is still up running. It has been crazy. I had 400 fans and I'm up to 4,750. Well, congratulations. I mean, honestly, you got to be approaching your... What was that number again? What's it increased to? 4,750.

Wow. Wow. Let me ask you this. Let's go to a different subject here for a minute. What's it like being a female police officer in a fairly male dominated environment? It can be difficult. You feel pressure to perform much higher than your male coworkers. I would say I probably worked 10 times as hard to get to where I did in my career.

So you have to prove yourself over and over and also getting the respect of your male partners and making sure that they understand you can handle your own and you don't need them to jump in and, you know, someone's yelling at me and giving me a hard time. I don't need you to step in.

Let me handle it, you know. But once you do that, you're golden, right? Like your partners respect you and know that you can handle yourself. And so I just had over my career, you know. I started off in records, and I worked my way up to lieutenant. So a lot of tears, a lot of sweat. It was difficult, but I was proud of what I had done for sure, and I was a damn good cop. Yeah.

Well, you apparently were. I mean, you started in records and you became a lieutenant, 28 years. And it has to come to a point you have respect to many officers. Do you feel that this episode –

diminished some of that respect or you still feel you have that respect of your colleagues for the good? I mean, you obviously a very good officer. You don't go 28 years, become Lieutenant starting records without having some skillset, right? So do you feel, do you feel that's diminished a little bit by this episode? Is it something that you regret?

I don't regret it. I do think for some people it did diminish, but I have message after message, you know, from people who worked for me. I'm the cop I am today because of you. I respect your leadership and you're still one of the most influential women in law enforcement in my career. So I've been really fortunate in that aspect because

Um, I was afraid everyone was going to hate me and, you know, call me names and be disrespectful, but that respect is still there in a lot of aspects. And it helps other women realize that you have to be strong to work in this field. Um,

Obviously, I don't anticipate anybody else will go through what I have as far as an OnlyFans page and such, but be strong. And that's the hardest part in this career is because there's a lot of times you fight back the tears at work and you go home and you're just like, can I go back tomorrow? Melissa, you know, this strikes me as one of those times when there is a significant difference between the reality of society and sort of governmental hand-wringing.

That this is something, I mean, whether we're talking about OnlyFans or any of the number of sites that have pornography on them that are by far the biggest content and traffic generators on the Internet. I mean, this is not something that is not broadly accepted quietly throughout society. And yet government has this sort of moralistic hand-wringing reaction. And the result is...

I'm assuming your department, like all the others, was understaffed before. Now they've lost another outstanding officer. Can police departments, can government afford to do that? I don't think that we should be trying to run our staff out of agencies. I think that it's really important to keep people there who...

respect the position and work really hard. And, you know, it's really hard for hiring. I mean, I, you listen on countless oral boards, trying to hire people, um,

But it's not the same. You know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, there was 10,000 people applying for five jobs. And now you have, you know, maybe 800 people applying for five jobs. And it's just difficult. You know, people don't want to work in this field. Broken Potholes will be coming back in just a moment. We'd like to thank Melissa Williams. Very much appreciate you having you on the program.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. On the line with us right now, a gentleman I am very excited to talk to and someone who wrote a book I am very excited to talk about, David Harsanyi, author of Eurotrash, senior writer for National Review, syndicated columnist, classical liberal. David, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the program. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

David, hey, this is Chuck. You wrote a great short piece today in the National Review in the corner called Democrats' Fantasies of Political Dominance. Explain to our audience a little bit about it, because it is funny how much they're wailing and gnashing of teeth about Roe v. Wade when reality is it would just simply give people the right to vote on it, which they all claim they love democracy. So talk to us a little bit about what you're seeing in D.C.,

Right. It's kind of like Democrats these days seem to be playing Calvin ball where, you know, they just make up the rules as they go along. So sometimes, you know, when they have, let's say, a very slim majority in the Senate, they want, you know, majoritarian rules to, you know, to prevail, like no filibuster all of a sudden. And when, you know, when they have Roe v. Wade on their side and they want the court to decide it, when you say I'd like to give it back to the people, obviously,

abortion is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, then they say that you're a fascist or whatever. So they're constantly sort of, or, you know, they come up with the new

standard that, you know, this one columnist in the Washington Post said, you know, the Republicans tricked people, you know, with the court by using minority, you know, minoritarian functions of the court, you know, of the Constitution, which by the states and the Senate, you know, so it's like you can't win when you're following the rules. You lose. And when you're not, you lose. And they keep

living in this imaginary world where they have one set of rules and Republicans have another, and it just can't work that way. It's not merely moving the goalposts. They actually just keep changing the game you're playing, don't they? I mean, whatever the argument is, they will turn it around and turn it into something entirely else.

I mean, Donald Trump won the presidency, like him or not, and he won in the same way that every president founding won the presidency, using the Electoral College. And then he named and, you know, he nominated Supreme Court justices, and then they were confirmed in the same way that every justice was confirmed, going back to the founding. So I'm not sure what do they want Republicans to do, unilaterally step down and say, actually, you know, you got more of the popular vote, so you do what you want. I mean, it's just insanity. Yeah.

Well, it's very clear that they have no interest in opposition in any way, shape or form that they can't handle debate. I mean, it's really gotten to the point that anytime anyone says anything they don't like, it's branded as racism or hatred or whatever have you. Yeah. How do you win that argument?

I don't know. I mean, you know, it's funny because I spent years, you know, being sort of contrarian. I'm not down the line conservative and everything. And, you know, but lately I don't see any common ground with liberals because everything is identitarian. Everything is about race. Everything is about pretending that democracy is ending when you don't get your way. It's impossible to have any kind of debate over substance. And you don't really see it anymore. You know, everything is about...

how racist the right is or how we're all supposed to pretend that we participated in the January 6th riot or something. Well, we have nothing to do with it. I don't take ownership of that in any way, nor should I. So I don't know. It's gotten pretty ugly out there. And I guess just keep making your case and you hope that people either get tired of their case or embrace your own. David, do you think we've ever had a moment in our country's young history, and we are a young country still, where it's been...

This ugly in D.C. I would submit to you probably the 60s that they had social media probably been worse than it is today. But do you do you feel a sense that just both sides just have no common ground? And there's a point later we'll discuss your book is I think a lot of it based on two sides have been different foundations of how they viewed life, which goes with faith and so forth. Do you I mean, you're there, you know, a lot of people, do they feel this is the worst of times or is it just are we just exaggerating that?

I mean, obviously, I think the Civil War was worse, but it was kind of a different situation where you had... And no social media then. So yes, it could have been a lot worse. Yeah, exactly. It would have been worse with social media, for sure. But that was more of a regional thing where you don't have that now. It's more like urban, suburban, rural thing now in a way. But I mean, I think it's pretty bad only because at one point, I think we...

shared a, you know, there was at least a common shared idea about what the country was about, certain freedoms and things like that. Now, you know, it's malleable and people stretched it and came up with new ideas, but in general, everyone would pretend free speech is important. You know, the right to be able to defend yourself is important. Property rights are important. I don't think that's the case anymore. I mean, I think you have a large contingent on the left that want to destroy the constitution. I don't say that it,

is trying to smear them i say it by pointing out the things that they argue and want and um especially progressive so that is dangerous because we no longer ever shared understanding of what what being an american is about and that uh that is very dangerous and i don't even think that happened in the 60s david um let's talk here briefly about the supreme court coming up so joe biden's male pick a supreme court justice really not a surprise in many ways

Do you think Republicans should just fight this tooth and nail or should we go with the Lindsey Graham approach, which I'm of this approach that elections have consequences? So unless this person has a horrid background on a myriad of reasons, this is his pick. This is part of the consequences of winning elections. What is your what is your stand on that? I guess it depends who the person is going to be. I think you need to make the case.

in the confines of the rules and not smearing them in the way that they smeared Kavanaugh or Bork or Clarence Thomas, that this person is not good for the Constitution. It's

It's amazing how little the word Constitution comes up in pieces and articles about who the next Supreme Court justice is going to be, which is essentially, not essentially, it is their job. That's their only job. We talk about color and all these things. I think that's problematic. But I don't think that Republicans should, you know, engage in the kind of things the left did with Kavanaugh, obviously, or others. I think they should make a case and then look at the consequences because, yeah, elections do have consequences.

Well, and from another perspective, too, I think if there's anything Democrats want over the next six months heading into the 22 elections, it's an extended Supreme Court fight that will energize and fire up their base. Yeah. The thing, though, is I think conservatives get more fired up about courts than the left does. So if you have someone who's a real radical on Congress,

you know, whatever, on abortion or whatever issues. I think that could work both ways. But I agree in general, if you have just a sort of mainline, mainstream, liberal type, you know, I think you ask them the right questions, and then you move on. You don't want to make a big deal out of it because you had your chance at that, and you had a chance to win the Senate, and you didn't, and now there are consequences.

Absolutely. Absolutely. What do you think we should be looking for with Ukraine and Biden? And by the way, we have one minute, so we'll carry this over to the next segment. So maybe start with what you're first thinking about what's going on that we can continue in the next segment on this.

I mean, it's a complicated situation. I think that Biden's basically feckless and doesn't have much real strong experience there because he's been terrible on Putin in the sense of kowtowing to him when he was in the Obama administration elsewhere. Now, he's this tough guy. It's not going to really work. But, you know, I'm not sure that...

We want Americans involved in that situation too deeply anyway. So I honestly, I have very conflicting ideas about Ukraine and Russia. Broken Potholes will be coming right back with David Harsanyi. The 2020 political field was intense. So don't get left behind in 2021. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.vote domain from GoDaddy. Get yours now.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. On the line with us today, David Harsanyi, senior writer for National Review, author of Eurotrash, a book I highly recommend everyone read. David, thank you so much again for joining us on the program. How do people follow you if they want to stay up on your work?

Well, most of my work's at nationalreview.com. They can follow me on Twitter at David Arsani. And that's about it. Fantastic. You just wrote a piece, and I know Chuck's pretty eager to discuss it, but we did want to touch back on Ukraine, Taiwan, what's going on there. I'm going to ask you real quick, because I've asked a number of people and have never gotten an answer to this question.

Where do – putting you on the spot, David. Where do our strategic national interests misalign with Russia? Other than Putin being a bad guy and we deal with dozens of bad guys around the world, I still can't figure out where our strategic national interests and theirs are actually misaligned. That's an interesting question, I guess. Yeah.

I guess the Russian propensity to help nations that are illiberal is something that misaligns with us. For instance, Iran and helping them move towards nuclear weapons. That would be something, for instance, I think we're not in alignment on. But I do think...

There's this hystericism, I guess, in this country over Putin that isn't warranted. I mean, I just think that Russia is a second-rate nation in many ways, and that we act as if they're nipping at our heels or something. It's just not the case. We're looking for Putin gremlins behind every rock here when there's an election, and it's just, I think, hysterical. So I think that twofold. I'd like to weaken him because I think he's a liberal, and I wish the Russian people could be

liberal, you know, capitalistic, you know, success story. But you also, you know, we have to live with the reality of what's going on there and live within that reality. And I, you know, I certainly wouldn't want to go to war over Ukraine or anything else with Russia. And I don't really think Russia probably wants that. So it's complicated.

Well, one way you could certainly we computants by having a great energy policy, which Biden's taken this 10 years backwards on where he's not supplying energy to all the people who need it. We should be exporting it. But, you know, for some reason, people don't seem to understand that's his major source of revenue.

So it's a bit weird. Let's talk about... If you're going to... I'm sorry to interrupt, but if you're going to have Germany, a supposed ally, building pipelines to bring in fossil fuels while shutting down their nuclear program, then why should the Americans put themselves in war footing against Russia to protect who? To protect Germany? Let Germany do that. And, you know, Germany's been a terrible ally, and there's really no reason...

for us to put ourselves in a position where we're going to be fighting a war for whose interest I'm not even sure, for Ukraine? Well, why doesn't the rest of Europe deal with that? So, I mean, I sound like an isolationist, but if they're not going to be on our side in the world, then why should we be expending our treasure and potentially lives to protect that? Right.

Right. And I look, I am no Russian fan. I'm I'm a good old fashioned neocon, but I don't see a reason to go troops here. But you're right. I mean, calling Switzerland's a better ally than Germany and Switzerland is a claim to be an ally of anybody. I mean, it's just I Germany is just Germany is just not there for us. It's a bit of a joke. Let's talk briefly here about you wrote an article that was fantastic. It's not government's job to root out misinformation. Right.

Talk to us about it. It's a problem. I would say in general that the left expends so much energy today just trying to chill speech, to shut down speech they don't like. It's kind of the opposite of what the left was about in the late 60s, for instance, when they were heading up the free speech movement. It's an amazing reversal. It's illiberal. I'm talking about trying to shut, you know, working...

So let me take a step back. So you have like the Surgeon General or the President or the White House saying, listen, tech companies need to shut down A, B, and C. Well, and then if tech companies listen to them, then what is that? That's a...

It's just the relationship. You have the government telling giant corporations what to do, and then giant corporations do it. And most of the time, the misinformation they're talking about is simply speech that they don't like. And obviously, that's a dangerous situation. So I'm a big free market guy. I don't want to tell companies what to do in any way, frankly. But if they're just going to be coercive,

cooperating with the state to inhibit speech or to suppress speech, well then that's a big problem. And that's what happens all the time now. So to me, this is one of the most dangerous things going on in the country right now.

Yeah, absolutely. I entirely agree. And I think rather worrisome is that they appear to be looking at China and the sort of techno-authoritarian state they've managed to create rather longingly. Yeah, I mean, they do. A lot of them do because they like top-down control. I'm not saying that they're the same sort of, you know, that they want to have concentration camps or something, but I do think that they admire that kind of control.

Not the concentration camps with tech control, sorry. No, absolutely. Broken Potholes will be coming back in just a moment with David Harsanyi. Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your host Sam Stone and Chuck Warren on the line with us right now. David Harsanyi, senior writer for National Review, author of Eurotrash, a book I actually just finished reading last night, and I have to thank Chuck Warren because he gave it to me as a Christmas gift. And I would say I enjoyed reading it. It was certainly...

A very thoughtfully done book. I learned a great deal from it. I can't actually say that I enjoyed it, though, because it paints a pretty bleak picture of where this country and the world are going. And David...

There's a lot to talk about in the book. But one thing that jumped out to me because I've worked in local government is on page 57 when you're talking about the multiplication of rules and lawmaking coming from the EU being passed down through all these European countries. Bureaucrats produce nothing.

They reduce economic dynamism. And yet we're seeing in Europe and across this country now this massive increase in bureaucracy and rulemaking, which is really stifling economic growth everywhere. Yeah. And that is one part of it. And the other part of it is when you have these giant bureaucracies, you essentially – it's

it's hard to run a country they run the country meaning you undermine the democratic institutions as well because they're unelected but yet they control most things so just a quick example and again you can like donald trump or not but when he became president state department decided that it wasn't going to let him be president and that is a dangerous thing now even if you disagree with the president he's elected and has a job

or the p_b_p_ the p_b_p_ just acted on can issue on moratoriums on on on paying your rent you know or or whatever this is problematic because you have been now just ignoring the competition as well so that's one part of the other or that undermined dynamism it uh... american

The American experience does not have huge bureaucracies in that way. And the Europeans have always had those kinds of bureaucracies. And now they have an even bigger one with the EU, which controls, you know, micro controls what people do in a lot of these countries and doesn't let them really compete. It's a huge and growing problem. And I've always said the problem with an expanding bureaucracy is they have to come up with new things to do.

Right. I mean, you've got a room full of people there. They have to justify their existence. And so what you're going to get is a never ending parade of new laws and regulations and complications. And now it ties back to the censorship. We see them trying to take control not merely of the economic side or of refugees, but of every aspect of society.

Yeah, I mean, you know, that's the problem I have. These big tech companies here and a lot of people on the right are upset with how they act. And then their solution is, hey, maybe we need more laws or we need to get more of the government involved in trying to meet our fairness. Well, you can see in Europe they are involved and they do not. Trust me, they're not like, hey, let's have a more rigorous debate or let's have more opinion. They limit opinions.

and uh... and intrude on opinion three speeches is not treated in the same way they are that it has been here you know people are arrested for saying people can be fine for saying uh... people shut down all the time and a lot of that have to do with the government so

And don't get me wrong, self-censorship is a big problem there, too, and it's a big growing problem here. But there the state also is just a censor because it has that kind of control. Well, I mean, generally, as I watch this sort of tech censorship and overall censorship expand in being a student of history, I can't point to a single example in history, David or Chuck, where the censors were the good guys. I mean, when you look back on it, they're always the bad actors. Yeah.

I mentioned in my book, I mean, you know, people say, well, listen, you know, this is very dangerous because you have Nazis out there and everyone's anti-democratic and so on. It's like Bush's, when he said he was saving, you know, using socialism to save capitalism or something like that. But pre-war Germany had all kinds of hate speech laws, all kinds of censors trying to stop

that kind of speech. And it didn't work there either. It doesn't work even if we concede what's going on, you say is going on, is going on. And though I don't think that that's true. But so hate speech laws have never worked and censors are rarely the good guys. It's true. David, one chapter I found very interesting about your book and something Sam and I have discussed is the chapter called The End of Faith. And it's hard

to come to compromise this when you don't have the same understanding of life in a lot of ways, where you'd have the same foundation, which I think

people in this country had for years. And if you looked at progressives in the left here in the United States now versus the right, they both view life very differently. I mean, the simple fact how they've reacted to COVID is a perfect example of how one side views life and the risk involved, the other side views, I need security and a sure thing on everything. And you brought up a part when you started this chapter, which is interesting, because I remember this article from the Wall Street Journal

I don't know, eight, 10 years ago. And you talk in it that the church of England has been forced to close around 20 houses of worship every year for the past decade. In Germany, the Roman Catholic church has closed down more than 500 churches in the past decade, around 700 of Holland's Protestant churches are expected to be closed and only in the next few years. Um,

We have – America is still to a degree a religious country. I don't really – I mean I know people are going more non-denominational or no really, but they still – there is still a spiritual side to America. Do you see this to be a continually growing problem for the United States and European Union just to meet in the middle somewhere on issues because of that difference? Yeah.

I mean, I think we're on the same trajectory. We're far behind because we've, I think, been more religious for a very long time. But, I mean, you know, Christianity is basically dead in Europe. In some countries, it's totally dead. You know, I think the Czech Republic, like 90-something percent of people are atheists. You know, the funny thing is, I'm an atheist, and I still believe that religious foundations are vitally important to having a free society. Yeah.

Christianity gives us the idea of free will, and the freedoms we have came out of religious ideals as well, and the way that we handle and think about life is a religious idea, often, even though I think it's bolstered by science and rationality. But

but the thing is people who believe in something bigger than the state it can't believe in the competition believe in in natural or believe in all these freedom and have an easier time doing that because they think of things bigger than themselves whereas a lot of people who don't believe those things look to the state for guidance in a way that other people book towards faith and i think that that that is a trend that's really troubling and europe frankly it's not a trend that's very new i mean big jump from

looking towards their kings, to looking towards communism or fascism or bureaucratism or whatever you want to call what's going on now. And that's why they have a lot of trouble that we haven't had when it comes to the state.

David, let's talk a little briefly here about just the charitable contribution difference between the United States and Europe. You talk about this in your book. I have found liberals are always quick to want to spend money on something that's not theirs. What do you see in your research and in the book about just how Americans are more charitable than Europeans, even though Europeans claim that we're out to help everyone?

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's like, how often do you hear about the selfish American and that kind of caricature that they, you know, that they have of us? And meanwhile, Americans give, I think, seven times more than a European per capita. We give more charity than the whole world combined. We do it all the time. We do it for all kinds of reasons, including helping people who aren't even Americans. I

I mean, any statistic you look at, Americans are more giving and generous than anyone else in the world. It's not even close. They'll tell you, well...

You know, we give a lot through taxation. And I say, okay, so that's your problem, right? You're giving to the state is not the same as giving to a person in need somewhere. And we do it the right way. And having a big state actually elbows out charitable donations and elbows out, when you elbow out those donations in churches, you destroy the kind of communities that form around them and create this, again, top-down state system.

run, you know, charity, charity organizations always colored by politics rather than just through giving. David, that ties kind of to the overarching theme of the book, which is over and over the American left essentially lies about what Europe is or looks like, or maybe they just don't understand because the only time they're overseas is

They're dealing with people who are like themselves, who are on their same socioeconomic level. And the fact is they just don't like average Americans all that much. I tend to think if they met average Europeans, they probably wouldn't like them all that much either.

Yeah, I mean, they don't like the messiness of American life. They don't like that people get to do stupid what they think are stupid things, and it bothers them. That's what they want. They like the European model of tough and controlled, but they lie about everything over there. I mean, don't get me wrong. There is more, as I argue in the book, it is a bigger state. It is. There is more control, but, you know, they talk about Denmark all the time, for instance. Well, Denmark, you know, and they talk about it as a socialist country, but it's not successful. It's not even socialist, really. It's

It's pretty capitalistic, just as a massive welfare state. So they talk about that, and they talk about taxing the rich. Well, you know what? In Denmark, everyone pays really high levels of taxation, like 60% or more. There's consumption taxes. There's all kinds of taxes. And they don't want to take on that part. They just want to take it from the rich, like some old-school socialist would. So they would give you half the story of what goes on in Europe, or they misrepresent what goes on in Europe.

I'll tell you one thing Europe doesn't talk enough about, and I totally agree with Switzerland on this, is you could be denied citizenship in Switzerland for being annoying. And I would like to hold that standard to Bill Kristol, Jennifer Rubin, Joe Walsh. It's been amazing to watch these supposed pillars of conservative politics

thought leaders just completely lose all sense of what they supposedly believed in five years ago. It's been remarkable.

Yeah, I think that, first of all, I think Switzerland's probably the best European country and, you know, have a soft spot for the British as well, even though they do a lot of things wrong. But, yeah, I mean, you know, you don't like Donald Trump. OK, fine. But then, you know, if you drop every conservative principle you have because of Donald Trump, how are you any better than the person who drops conservative principles to be like Donald Trump? Let's say, I mean, you're no better. And in fact, you're probably worse. Yeah.

But my theory is that a guy like Crystal was a neoconservative person who believed in certain kind of foreign policy but never was really very conservative on any kind of domestic or principled individual liberty angle. So it's kind of an easy transition for him to go to the other side.

I'm actually going to see Dan Quayle next week, Sam, and I'm going to ask him what he thinks about Bill Kristol now, his former chief of staff. So anyway, we'll we'll get back on that. I'm going to be curious as to the answer to that question. But but, David, one of the things that the left keeps telling us, and I like that you actually get into some of the statistics on this. The left keeps telling us how racist and discriminatory America is.

But I think anyone who's really traveled would realize most of the world is far more discriminatory than we are, far more racially divided. I mean, that's the one that drives me most crazy. We are, by any standard, by every quantifiable measure, more tolerant than any place has ever been in the history of Earth. I live in, you know, I...

you know, I live in a neighborhood with people from all over the world who in other situations would be killing each other, but here send their kids to the same schools and live together. I'm not saying that we're all perfect. I'm not saying no one ever says something mean about another person. I'm saying that this project here, the way we assimilate people from all over the world, the way we live together has never been matched anywhere. And in Europe, especially where, and it's not only

always their fault. You have these nations, you know, that have a thousand year history and it's one that, you know, most people are one ethnicity. It's a different situation where they hate everyone who isn't like them. There'll be, I mean, just be Jewish in Europe. Yeah. Or just to be, you know, a person of a, you know, be a German person in France. You know, I mean, they have not assimilate people and we do. And to pretend that we are intolerant is just, it's just immoral to say because we've been so good at not being that way.

Yeah, it's terrible. As you point out in your book, in Greece, 63 percent, Italy, 53 percent believe growing diversity makes their country a worse place to live. That's just not the case here. No, no, we don't think that way at all. Even if we lie that we like diversity, we know it's a lie because it's an American ethos to welcome other people.

Absolutely. David, we would love to have you back on the program again and continue this conversation because I think I could talk to you for a couple more hours here. But Broken Potholes has to go. We will be back next week. Be sure to tune in for our podcast only segment, The Return of the Sunshine Moment. Welcome back to the podcast only segment of Broken Potholes, The Return of a Fan Favorite.

The irrepressible Kylie Kipper. I am here. I'm back. And you're bringing? A sunshine moment. Sunshine in the studio. This one's very happy. So a 19-year-old female just set the record for the youngest woman to fly solo around the world.

After landing in Belgium on Thursday, Zara Rutherford completed a 32-mile trip around the earth, becoming the first female, the first Belgium person, and the first person to fly an ultralight aircraft around the world. It took her a total of 155 days, flying at 160 miles per hour, crossing 41 countries. Originally, her plan was three months and 52 countries. However,

However, she had to face some setbacks because of wildfires in California. And she got denied permission to cross China. So she had to go around. Yeah. But she said the hardest part was flying in the extreme cold. She said some places were minus 35 degrees Celsius on the ground. So she was nervous that if her engine were to stall, she'd be hours away from help. And she was unsure if she'd be able to survive that. However, she did. She did the trip completely. Okay.

Previously, the youngest female to have flown around the world was 30 years old. And she is Shasta Wayaz, born in Afghanistan, but traveled to America in 1987. She is the founder of a nonprofit called Dream Soar, which Rutherford was flying around the country to support that nonprofit. And what it does is it brings...

women and girls into the aviation and STEM world. Right now only 5.1% of pilots are women. So they're just trying to bring awareness, move girls into this area and kind of support them, give them the funds that they may need to take classes or be a part of it. But she said the best part of her career is the fact that she's paid to travel and see the world.

I wonder if she celebrated by getting Belgian waffles or Belgian chocolates when she landed. I mean, the Belgian waffles are fantastic. That needs to be part of the narrative on this. Yeah, no, look, there's a real shortage of pilots and it's a wonderful opportunity for women to get in and it's a great paying career. And that's fantastic. That's very, very courageous what she did. It makes me nervous even thinking about it.

Yeah. And folks, if you want to learn to fly, come here to Phoenix. We have some of the best training in the world available right here. So, you know, plug for our hometown. Yeah. But as someone who loves Amelia Earhart and that story and would love to find out what really happened, I enjoy hearing these things. So thank you. So let's, since we got you two here together, let's phrase it as Howard Stern would say, what did we learn today?

First of all, our first guest, Melissa. I'm not sure police departments have the luxury of doing what they did to her anymore. Chuck, I would say that not only do they not have the luxury, that it's simply wrong for them to do that, period. Now, I am not a moralist, but at the end of the day, who cares what the heck she's doing on her own time as long as it's not illegal?

Yeah, I mean, it's a bit naive for her not to think this was not going to come forward, though. Would you agree on that? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I mean, this stuff always gets found out because let's be honest, men are horny.

And women are, let's, can I say this, Kylie, overly curious about what their men are up to online? Absolutely. Yeah. That's probably safe to say. Well, they're overly curious about what their fellow female colleagues are doing. That too. That's why I always find the women support women needs a lot of improvement because they don't a lot of time. That's a talking point. Let's be really honest. That's a talking point. Women are horrid to each other.

But nonetheless, I do think it was naive for her to feel that this was not going to come out this hobby. And I, you know, I'm interested. I'd love to have her back on the show in about six months and say, OK, six months later, was it worth it? It's a great question. And that's a conversation I would like to have. And there's a difference between saying, oh, yeah, financially, it's been great. Or I had a I mean, she I mean, look, she went from recording.

to a sergeant, a real lieutenant. I mean, she obviously was good at her job. No doubt. They didn't just promote her for her health. So I'm interested if she feels losing a job, which she obviously loved for years,

for this hobby was worth it. And that's something I'd like to have her come back on the show. Let's talk about David Arsani real quick. That book's really important. And I wish if there's one book, you know, every year you wish there was one book you could give to your friends. That's a book that I wish many of our friends and colleagues would just read. It's a, he's a good writer. So it's a, it's an easy read.

Not because it's not well written. It's just he's you know, he writes like a reporter. So it's a it's a better read than a novelist. It's an entertaining read. And I mean, a little frightening when you get down to it. Yeah. I you know, the various takeaways there, you know, they don't in Europe have the freedom of speech we have here. And it is muzzled. Look at the look at the slander laws in England.

Well, and then by the underlying numbers, those aren't achieving what they aim to achieve or claim to achieve, right? Because what you're doing is just pushing racism and bigotry into the darker corners of society. Right, right. And, you know, I am concerned. I mentioned the chapter about faith. I am really concerned that because we don't have these, let's just call them common values, right?

Where do you where do you know you always mean start negotiation and say you're divided you want to find common ground My concern right now with America my concern with the world. Where is our common ground for people? We disagree with others and well, that's the problem and so if you becoming more secular as America it is I don't think we're ever gonna be in the point Europe is I disagree with that but that being said I

You have to have a common ground to reach conclusions and negotiations to have a favorable treatment by both sides. And I think we're getting further and further away from that. So we're a secular nation.

it's imperative that we push more. You need to understand the Constitution. But the problem is they don't even see the they see the Constitution as just a relic. It really needs to be ignored and redone. And if you ask liberals that, you know, it's the same point that believe 44 percent of people who don't take a vaccine need to be put away. I mean, they just believe in a completely different way of life than you and I and Kip and others do. Yeah, not only that, but

They believe in enforcing their way of life. I'm perfectly happy to let someone wear two masks, get six shots a year, do whatever they want to protect themselves. But I'm not going to try to force anyone to do any of that.

No, no, not at all. Not at all. And, you know, which makes this whole Joe Rogan controversy about Neil Young interesting since Neil Young made his career being a war protester and hiding behind the First Amendment. Well, I see. I think what happened is he fried his brain with drugs and he doesn't remember when he actually had thoughts of his own, because the fact of the matter is you're right.

This guy made his all those artists from the 60s made their name as counterculture, anti-government voices. And here they are. They are now the the voice of big tech authoritarianism. And thank God Spotify was smart enough to just let Neil Young cancel himself. Well, it's remarkable. And another point that the hypocrisy of that is a man who was a drug addict for decades, right?

How many people have died on the war on drugs? Oh, I mean, you were part of you were the part of the problem, Mr. Young, whether you want to be cognitive of that or not. That's just the reality. No, that absolutely is. And look, I don't I don't blame him for any of those deaths. But at the same time, him blaming other people for, you know, for Joe Rogan coming on and having honest discussions with scientists who debate the government line is

It's beyond irresponsible. It's just disgusting. It absolutely is. Kip, what did you learn from the show today? You need to put me on the spot. Yeah. You know you're sitting in front of a microphone. It's going to happen. I know, but I was spending so much time preparing my sunshine moment. Okay, so what did you learn from today? Okay, I learned that someone just set the record for a 19-year-old female to fly around the world. That's what I learned.

All right. Well, folks, we can't even get the people in our studio to listen to our program. We've got a problem. I am listening. It's just a lot of pressure for a not experienced radio co-host like myself.

You do just fine. You do good. Everyone loves you when you're on here. Yep. Yep. Well, Sam, great show. Kip, thanks for arranging it today. Absolutely. Love to have David Harsanyi back. Folks, follow him at National Review. I would love to get him back on. So, Kip, we're going to make that a mission here in a couple of months because I thought that was just a phenomenal discussion. Absolutely. I'll do that. Have a great weekend and great week, folks. David Pottles, back next week. ♪

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