← The Bulwark
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- [00:02]
A
Hi, Bill Kristol here. Welcome to Bulwark on Sunday. I'm very pleased to be joined noon here on Sunday by Jane Nordlinger, who is in Italy. So it's not noon there. You can, you can talk about the time difference and all the other issues of what you're learning from your travels through Italy, which sound very interesting. Jay's been writing about those travels on his excellent substack Onward and Upward with Jay Nordlinger. You should, you should all be subscribing to that. Jay and I were together at the Weekly Standard many moons ago, and then he spent years and decades at National Review with some wonderful, many, many, many wonderful things. Now a senior fellow at the Renewing Democracy Initiative. So, Jay, thanks for joining me. Where are you coming from?
- [00:42]
B
I'm in Syracuse. Not New York, but Sicily.
- [00:46]
A
Wow.
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B
Yes.
- [00:47]
A
Historically, I'm more familiar with the New York version.
- [00:50]
B
Yes, indeed.
- [00:52]
A
So what's, what's it like in Syracuse? I've never been to Syracuse, Sicily.
- [00:56]
B
It is beautiful. It is interesting. It's rich in history. There's something on every block. There's a kind of timelessness about the place. Yet it's lively, it's not sleepy. It's just a wonderful town, I would say. And I noticed something on a walk this afternoon. I thought you might be interested in this. I've been at a lot of Italian towns, hamlets, cities for about a. A month, a little less starting in Milan and going downward. And the street names and the piazza names are familiar. A lot of Garibaldi, a lot of Cavour and Mazzini, others from the Risorgimento here. I've seen Aristotle Street, Socrates street, and it indicates the closeness to Greece. I mean, one could almost swim. Not me, but someone could. Yeah.
- [01:48]
A
I mean, famous, of course, in Thucydides, the expedition, and to Sicily into Syracuse. And Syracuse. Yeah. So it's a real. It's a big colony, a big Greek colony. If I'm not, I don't very little about this. Not as much as my wife, the classicist, but I believe it was a very major Greek colony in olden times. In ancient times.
- [02:07]
B
Yes. Yes. It's come down a bit in the world, but it was once a very big deal. Yeah.
- [02:12]
A
Yeah. So I, I just. We'll talk a little more about sort of the impressions you've picked up over there about the US But I'm really just curious about your Italian trip. You and I've known each other a long time, and you've, you've traveled a lot around the world and Especially in Europe. A lot of it connected with your. Your job as a classical music reviewer. And also you.
- [02:32]
B
You have human rights beat.
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A
Yeah, human rights speed also. And then in Salzburg, you go to. Every year you have a. You interview people on stage and do a lot of work there for the great festival. And later in the summer, I suppose. But what led to this trip to Italy? I mean, there was no particular speech or conference or event that you were targeting?
- [02:52]
B
No, it was long planned or at least long thought about. I was a student in Italy many years ago when I was in college and had my student abroad experience here in Italy, but in Florence and rock Rome. And I always thought I wanted to sort of wander the peninsula from the top to the bottom and then go into Sicily. And life took over and it kept being put off. But I decided that I would do it at the end of this music season. The music season is kind of like the academic year ends in mid May or late May. And so I started in Milan and went east to the Adriatic coast and the back inward and down into southern Italy, Naples, and now in Sicily. And I just wanted to get to know the country better, bask in the language a bit, to hear it around me. The different types of Italian, do some reading, a lot of walking and observing. And you know, I'm no Goethe, but I've been reading about his Italian journey. And this is a country that set his imagination on fire and was a very big deal in his life. And I was reading today what he said about Sicily. He said it's the clue to everything, sometimes translated, the key to everything. And I can sort of see what he meant. Sicily is extra Italian, I would say.
- [04:24]
A
Well, that's interesting. You also are good. I. Especially if you just had conversations over the years and also what you've been writing about this trip, you actually talk to people. I guess knowing Italian helps, but I'm a little more just polite, but, you know, I guess reserved or something. But you're. Maybe you're a little more sociable than I am. That's a. That's.
- [04:43]
B
I'm always bothering people and now that I'm older, they think it's kind of sweet, you know. Now the young people are very patient. I've noticed a different. A change in attitude a bit. And they're. They're sort of charmed now.
- [04:53]
A
That's nice to be.
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B
Yeah.
- [04:55]
A
What slight advantage of being getting older?
- [04:57]
B
Yes, yes.
- [04:58]
A
What, what. What struck you in your conversations and just in both in the sights and sounds, but also particularly curious about your conversations. With so many people you've chatted with and all throughout Italy, both about it, both about life, but also about the US I guess. I mean, obviously, yes.
- [05:15]
B
Well, I myself have not brought up the US but some have brought it up with me in sort of a cautious, respectful manner. Now, meaning no disrespect, they say, and they have no idea what my political views are. And they've tended to ask me, what happened? Can you tell us what happened? What is your sense of it? And I think they were once shocked. But my feeling, just generalizing, this is just impressionistic, is that the shock has worn off and now there's more of a sad resignation. I think it's all such a pity. I say they. I mean, I can't speak for tens of millions of people, but I do have impressions. And I was here during that Meloni Trump dust up, which is rather interesting, when Trump said at the G7 the Prime Minister of Israel had begged to have her picture taken with him.
- [06:11]
A
Of Italy. Of Italy, yes.
- [06:13]
B
Prime Minister of Italy, yes. Giorgia Meloni. And this is just a bald faced lie. And you know, in our country you have to kind of roll with it or some people think, think you do. It's just Trump being Trump. We have to navigate the Trump era. You're not supposed to say he's a liar and unfit for office. I mean, you and I do, but a lot of people are sort of delicate about it and they dance around. Meloni said, this is a flat lie. And then Trump went further and said, well, you know, Meloni had been down in the polls, therefore she needed a picture with me. And the opposite's true. You know, Trump's reputation's in the tank here and Meloni is up. And I thought not to be. Well, I'm going to be self referential. I was a student here in 1984 when Reagan was president. And you might have still been teaching Bill, were you in the Reagan administration yet in 84?
- [07:11]
A
No, I was at the Kennedy School at Harvard. Yeah.
- [07:15]
B
And the people around me, I was in Florence and Rome. I might have mentioned were there's an anti Reagan feeling and to a degree, an anti American feeling. And this was, I'd say, truer of my American classmates than the Italians I encountered. But both. And I was sort of proud to defend Reagan and defend the United States. And I was thinking of a moment the other day, that one day in class, this is in Rome at the Dante Alighieri Institute, we had a wonderful teacher, Daniele Fiorentina, and he said he was sort of teasing me. He had made some critical comments. He said, and now Jay will defend America. And I said, you know, because I was, you know, flippant and rash and cocky. I said, well, given what we've done on this continent in recent memory, I don't think America needs defense. And the class went, ooh, yeah. And so I was sort of, rah, rah, Joe America as a student this time around, 42 years later, I said, Brava, Georgia. Good for you for calling out the current occupant of the United States. And it's shameful. I always disliked, not to say despised, Americans who were ashamed of their country. I wonder if I fall into that category now. That would be a strange twist. I don't think so. I am embarrassed. I disliked Americans who were embarrassed by their country, who apologized for their country. And as I said in a recent piece, I've always stuck out like an American thumb. I've loved being an American. I tramp around in my shorts and golf shirt. I've got my Coke or Pepsi Mac in my hand. I ask for ice in my drinks if I've had enough olive oil. I ask for bread, butter for my bread. I mean, I'm just, you know, gung ho out there. I couldn't pass for something un American if I tried. And I wouldn't want to. But I must say there's some chagrin, there's some melancholy in this era.
- [09:21]
A
No, I think that's very really well said, quite lovely and very true to my own feelings, whatever that's worth. And I think many people I know, I mean, it's foolish to pretend that all is well. It's foolish to pretend that our current not just the occupant of the White House, but the movement that's behind him and the excuses that are made for him and the people who. And the actions he's taking aren't embarrassing. I mean, it's foolish to say, oh, it's all, you know, everything's fine. It's just superficial. Well, it's a little more than superficial. Doesn't mean that it's fundamental. Doesn't mean that it couldn't change. Once I was on some, as we all are, many text threads and all this kind of thing signal threads. And one person was saying, a couple of people who are friends of ours and very much where we are politically and conservative and Reaganite, but also anti Trump, and one of them was saying, well, things have been worse and you know, and we'll make it through. And the other person echoed it. It was kind of a nice just pre July 4th salutation. I'm not criticizing them. But, you know, things have been worse, of course, at times. I mean, Civil War, most notably, and Reconstruction, certainly for blacks in the south and when we thought we might lose World War II and 9, 11. But I don't know. I mean, things haven't been that much worse in terms of the actual political leadership. And I think one point Sarah Longbaugh made to me the other just the other day we did the secret podcast together, I was being a little bit pro people, anti elites. The elites have totally capitulated to Trump in a terrible way and I think really done huge damage. The public is reacting against him. And so you got to give the public some credit for being a little bit ahead of the elites. And Sarah agreed with that. But she also did point out that in her focus groups how much the Trumpism seeps through. You know, and this is because of immigration, which I was particularly mentioning in Ford's speech 50 years ago, July 5th 17th, 1976, emphasizing that not only should we welcome immigrants, but we should be grateful to them, we owe them a lot and how different that is. She said she sadly was reporting that she thought people weren't where Trump is. And Stephen Miller never regrets necessarily, but they were more. Well, it's kind of a burden and, you know, we have to put up with them and real lack of appreciation of that background. So I don't know. I think you're right to be. It is. It's foolish to minimize what's happened.
- [11:40]
B
I think it is. Several comments, if I may. In 2024, in the presidential election, two major party nominees, Harris and Trump, three or their four parents were immigrants, and the fourth was the son of immigrants, Trump's father. It's totally normal, totally American. It's hard to separate our country from Trump and Trumpism in that one of the two major parties, our former party, the Republican Party, has nominated Trump for president three times in a row. Never before had anyone been nominated by the GOP for president three times in a row. And the people elected him twice. So he doesn't represent the whole country, but he represents a big chunk of it. And that's a hard thing to get around. And I have to laugh at myself a little because in every generation, older people say the world's going to hell, the country's going to hell, and we're in decline, and so on. It's a cliche. So I say, I'm a walking cartoon. And you noticed this the Other day, Bill, that I was quoting Falstaff. Not Shakespeare's, but Verdi's Mondoreo nonche pu virtu tutto de clina. Rotten, wicked old world. There's no virtue anymore. Everything's in decline. And I laugh at myself. I often quote Charles Rosen, the late scholar pianist, who said, the oldest tradition of classical music is the death of classical music. Because in every generation they say, this is it. It's curtains, it's lights out. We're not gonna have this anymore. But, man, there's a lot of evidence, man, there's a lot of evidence of simply everything downward, downward. And think of the official celebrations of 250 as contrasted with those of 1976, which I remember well, our bicentennial. Everything just seems so low, you know, Kid Rock, kind of a cultural symbol. I can make too much of this. But I think that, you know, all. I'm curmudgeonly, I'm getting older. I gripe and, you know, get off my lawn. Old man shakes his fist at clouds. But, but, But I'm also a realist.
- [13:59]
A
Yeah, we were talking about the 250 before we got on air. I say, I've been writing about this a little bit, too, but to say a word about. You were. You're younger than I am, so I don't know how old you were in 1976, but say word about. About your memory, but also about what actually our then president Gerald ford did on July 4th.
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B
He was magnificent. He handled this so very well. And it was to have been Nixon in 1976, but he left in August 74. And that morning he left the White House, went to Valley Forge, gave a terrific speech. And, you know, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. It was about the sacrifices the patriots made and they were killed in war. And he mentioned my name and how they died and so on, and. And all the blood. It wasn't kind of airy, you know what I mean?
- [14:56]
A
It was really good.
- [14:57]
B
And then he goes to Philadelphia and gives, let's say, the main speech. And I think he goes to New York for the tall ships. He winds up in Washington for fireworks on the Mall. And he just. Everything he said, he struck the right chords. And the next day, this brilliant idea to preside over a naturalization ceremony at Monticello. And he talks about the role of immigration in the American story. And by the way, I believe your father, Irving Kristol, had a hand in this. I remember writing about a ford at Monticello several years ago and noticing your Dad's name, how it had come up. He provided some advice, maybe a little bit of history. But Ford, he just. He performed the role beautifully as the president of all the people. He was locked in a nomination battle with Reagan. There was none of that. Nothing about Democrats, nothing about Republicans. It was so, if I can put it this way, neutrally American. And of course, who really hit a home run on one of our anniversaries was Coolidge in 1926 when, when he gave that baffo speech. He said, people talk about progress and progressivism and going forward. You can't go forward from our Founding Fathers. You can only go backward to kingship, to heredity, to class, to station, to serfdom. It's just magnificent. He said, critics of our founding are reactionaries. They're not progressive, they're reactionary. In other words, liberalism is. It is what Coolidge said. And of course, it was US Grant on our centennial and John Quincy Adams for our 50th. On that day, his father, the former president, and Jefferson both died. What an unusual day.
- [16:47]
A
Yeah, no, there's a lot of wonderful. I haven't really studied at all. 1876, and that cooler speech I've read, and that is very impressive. He was a much more thoughtful man when one takes it. I don't really know that much about his administration, even, but they call him the normal cow. Right.
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B
When he spoke, he meant it. He made it work. He wasn't garrulous, but he chose his words very well.
- [17:08]
A
The 1826, 26 celebration, the 50th, was really. I mean, obviously the fact that Adams, Jefferson died on that day is kind of unbelievable, but Adams himself is asked. Someone goes to see him and he's very ill and says, do you have any. Anything to say, sort of last words, basically, to your countrymen? And he said, just independence. So you have one or two words, something like that. You remember that. He wanted people to remember the day as he had written 50 years before to his wife. It should be celebrated and marked the independence, the fact of independence, and I think the principles upon which independence was declared. Jefferson has a beautiful letter. The last thing he wrote, to my knowledge, meant to be public, meant to be read. He's invited to the celebration of Washington, actually. Kind of. Kind of funny, just like, you know, just like here, 200 years later in 1826. He's obviously down in Monticello. He's not that far away, but he is quite ill. So he says, great regret he can't come. And then a beautiful short letter very easy to find online. Letter to Roger Weightman, who was then the mayor of Washington, declining the invitation because of his illness. And Jefferson writes, though what would the declaration means? That he thinks he's pleased that it has been accepted, in a sense, by our fellow citizens. But he may it be always a beautiful.