3 Whisky Happy Hour

Two guesses about the topic of this special bonus edition for today's semiquincentennial, and neither of them count. That's right: we take up the Declaration of Independence and revisit some of the lingering issues that have arisen during this season of renewed debate about America's "birth certificate," as well as a few that haven't seen much discussion.

For example, John noted in National Review Online that contrary to popular impression, the Declaration does not reject energetic executive power, while Steve recall for The Daily Wire (alas, paywalled) the contrast between how the left handled the bicentennial in 1976 and how they are approaching it today, calling it "The Patriotism Crisis That Could Tear America Apart."

Sample:

"Patriotism among a growing number of Democrats seems conditional about whether they are in power or not. And a conditional patriotism is a weak patriotism. The last time so many Democrats were conditional about their attachment to the country and their fellow citizens ended in a civil war. “Patriotism is civic friendship,” the political philosopher Harry Jaffa once wrote. “Patriotism is the link between justice and friendship in its purest or transpolitical form. Those who see each other as utterly alien cannot be fellow citizens.”

Note: The 3WHH will be going on hiatus for the rest of July, as we retool the show for a new season. Stay tuned for announcements on our group Substack, Political Questions, for updates.

Well, that was quite a finish for this year's Supreme Court term, which, as usual, released the most controversial and consequential cases on the very last day of its sitting. This wrap-up episode—the first of a double-episode package for Jul4 4 since we missed last week's regular episode—dwells a lot on the birthright citizenship case, with sharp disagreements among the 3WHH bartenders, but from there we move on to ponder the ambiguity of the "Humphrey's Straddle," and the significance of the ruling striking down one of the key pillars of government regulation of campaign financing—the so-called "coordination" rule. 

We close out this first of our double-header with a celebration of America's new heroine, Sophie Cunningham, who is making is forget all about Sydney Sweeney.

This epicly (is "epicly" a real word?) gonzo episode finds Steve still somewhere in the middle of the storm-tossed north Pacific Ocean, while John and Lucretia hold down the fort from various locales back on dry land. 

But who else can knit together the return of McDonald's hot applie pies with Elon Musk's hot SpaceX IPO, hot Apple i- devices and their security issues, hot section 702 renewal, hot rulings from the Supreme Court, and the need to take all of these in sections.

Speaking of taking things in sections, we do our best to break down the Trump-Iran MOU, though our thoughts may be obsolete by the time these pixels reach your screen, since news overnight suggests the interim terms of the MOU are already being violated, turning the whole scene into chaos.

But our collective judgment is that the critics are being a bit premature, and that there are good reasons for taking a wait-and-see attitude. As someone likes to say, we'll just have to see what happens, as it is far from clear that the MOU is Obama-lite.

Meanwhile, since today is Juneteenth, don't miss Lucretia's modest proposal for how the liberation of slaves in 1865 should be commemorated, over at Civitas Outlook. 

(Since Steve is producing and posting this episode from the middle of the ocean, we're making it an ad-free edition, since the geography-based auto-ad placement might post up some truly bizarre ads. Enjoy!)

This week's episode, which finds Steve over in Japan but still with a hoarse voice, ranges widely from exonerating John Yoo from being implicated in a major whiskey heist, to what the prodigious drinking habits of the Founding Fathers has to say about constitutional law today. Justice Neil Gorsuch reminds us that “John Adams took a tankard of hard cider with his breakfast every day. James Madison reportedly drank a pint of whiskey every day. Thomas Jefferson said he wasn’t much of a user of alcohol—he only had three or four glasses of wine a night.” 

Ah, the great ones.

Speaking of the Founders, we make a nod to the tragic passing of Gordon Wood, and naturally manage to get into an argument about history and historians.

But the central topic of today is considering John's foray into grand strategy in his Civitas Outlook article this week on "America Doesn't Need to Fear a 'Thucydides Trap'," , and while Admiral Ackbar needed to fear a trap, John doesn't think so. But what was Chinese premier Xi trying to do in bringing up the subject in a public session at the recent summit with Trump? One doesn't imagine Trump being a reader of Thucydides, though one can easily see him liking the outcome of the Melian debate. In fact, maybe that's what he's up to with Iran? Who can tell.

So your three bartenders are back from overseas, but still a bit jet lagged and struggling to keep up with the news. Was it a good week? The firing of Scott Pelley is certainly good news, as are the initial results of the California primary, where the energy and enthusiasm is clearly on the side of the outsider insurgent candidates. (Knock on wood: let's see how the "vote counting" goes over the next several weeks in the "incompetent" Golden State.) 

Not such a good week for John Bolton, nor for aesthetic sensibility, if the Obama library is any indication. Why does the left prefer brutalist ugliness? We have our suspicions. . .

We do our longer dive this week into some meta-narratives about the Supreme Court, inspired by Paul Moreno's terrific Law & Liberty article, "Save the Last Branch for Me." It's a new day indeed.

We also get in our licks at woke British policing, Star Trek, and the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, which has some rather uncommon Eucharistic forms. Oh, also McDonalds news, just to keep John Happy and well fed.