Israel, Iran, and Senator Cotton's Letter

Dr. Arnn joins Hugh Hewitt to discuss Israel, Iran, and Senator Cotton's letter.

Each Hillsdale Dialogue features Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn, nationally syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt, and members of the Hillsdale faculty, discussing the Great Books and notable figures of Western and American history.

Transcript:

HH: If I hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t believe it. But a thousand people showed up last night to watch Dr. Larry Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College, and me talk about the Constitution. Dr. Arnn was also very kind and did not mention that I looked like an extra from Deliverance having broken a tooth right before the show got underway. I’m sure it looked great on hi-definition television. But I’ve had that repaired, Dr. Arnn, since then. Were you amazed at that turnout last night?

LA: Yeah, I was, and by the way, you’ve always had a great face for radio, Hugh.

HH: It was especially a great face for radio last night. But it’s always one of those things where the show must go on. I just didn’t know I was on hi-def looking like Jethro from the Ozarks last night. But that’s okay.

LA: You were a hit last night, Hugh.

HH: We had a good time. I spent most of my time trying to recruit Jared Veldheer to become a Cleveland Browns when he’s done playing for the Cardinals. I didn’t know Hillsdale graduated NFL stars.

LA: We’ve got two playing right now.

HH: That was, he was really quite something and well spoken. And in fact, tell people about him before we go the serious stuff about the Constitution, because it really was quite a nice tribute to the college what you said about the classes that he takes, along with your Supreme Court clerk.

LA: Well, little Jared Veldheer, who’s only 6’ 8” and 340 is a Hillsdale College graduate who graduated in biology with an excellent grade point average. And like everybody at the college, he took half his curriculum was in the core curriculum, which is the same for everybody and difficult. And Jared thrived during that, and is one of the best football players. He was voted most valuable player of the Arizona Cardinals, and he signed a $35 million dollar contract with them. And he’s one of the best linemen in the National Football League. And also, he’s a sweet, wonderful young man, really great.

HH: He is. I took him aside last night, and I said why didn’t you come to the Browns? He said two words – Joe Thomas, who happens to be the best tackle in professional football. But I said you could play on the right side of the line. But nevertheless, he’s going to be an Arizona Cardinal for four more years, then we’ll get him. And he has a beautiful wife who’s also a Hillsdale graduate. And she’s an athlete. And it was just a wonderful night meeting all of them. But we were talking about serious stuff. And the serious stuff got even more serious today, because I woke up this morning on the plane back from Phoenix, read that in reaction to Bibi Netanyahu’s win, President Obama has let it be known that we are considering withdrawing our veto of U.N. Security Council resolutions that would call for a return to the 1967 borders, an astonishing, almost, Larry Arnn, I never thought I would report such a thing.

LA: Well, you know, I’m like Hugh. I read that, I’m like you, Hugh. I read that this morning, my jaw dropped. And then later, I wondered to myself why am I surprised, because every time Obama takes a big beating, he does something more radical than the things that produced the big beating. I mean, he was all but campaigning against Netanyahu, and the race apparently, if the news reports are true, turned in the last few days as Netanyahu’s opponent turned more toward Obama, and Netanyahu turned farther away. And so his effect on Israeli politics was polarizing and negative. And so unhappy with the vote by that little besieged country, he threatens to cut the rug out from under them.

HH: Now our friend, Senator Tom Cotton, may have contributed mightily to the turn of events in Israel by penning the open letter that 46 of his colleagues signed onto. And you were at pains last night to explain that was an appropriate and Constitutional action by the Senator. Would you expand on that? This is a Hillsdale hour that is different from other Hillsdale hours, sort of like Passover night. Why is this Hillsdale hour different from others? Because we’re talking about last week’s events, not last century’s events. But tell people about it.

LA: Well, so, and let’s enter the caveat that I know less about last week’s events than I do last century’s events, but here we go. So Senator Cotton, who’s a star, in my opinion, he circulated a letter that was sent to the leader of Iran saying, making the point that under the American Constitution, if he makes an agreement with the President alone, and not a treaty ratified by the Senate, then that can be undone by the President any day. And I thought it was authoritative under the Constitution of the United States. And this was read to be, by many people, a break with the tradition that the president takes the lead in foreign policy, and the Congress does not undercut him. Well, that’s not quite true that that’s what happens for a lot of reasons. One of them is there were all kinds of Congressional resolutions meant to undercut Reagan in the 80s. But the deeper truth is this. The Congress and the president are given different powers for a fundamental reason about Constitutionalism. And they’re elected in somewhat different ways for that reason – the Senate and the House different from each other, and both different from the president. And so they have to cooperate to produce important policy. So in various times in American history, in the most recent time since the Second World War, they have cooperated greatly. But the price of that was that the executive branch, the president and his people, would talk to key members of the Senate, usually the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Tom Cotton is on the Foreign Relations Committee, and work out what they’re going to do and confer about it in advance. And it wasn’t that anybody ever agree, nor was anybody ever demanded to agree until now that we have to do whatever the president says. And he didn’t go to the Senate and confer with them and say I’m going to take this approach, what do you think, and how can we work out something we can both support. In reaction to that letter, Obama and his team, his team more than Obama, had said that the Congress, in fact, won’t be able to undo this deal, because many nations will ratify it. Well, that means that Obama is saying that he’s going to present the Congress with a fait accompli. And Tom Cotton is resisting that.

HH: Now in the course of doing so, among others, Hillary Clinton has blasted the Senate. I want to play for you the former Secretary of State’s denunciation as it is specific to our colleagues in the Republican Party.

HRC: The President and his team are in the midst of intense negotiations. Their goal is a diplomatic solution that would close off Iran’s pathways to a nuclear bomb and give us unprecedented access and insight into Iran’s nuclear program. Now reasonable people can disagree about what exactly it will take to accomplish this objective, and we all must judge any final agreement on its merits. But the recent letter from Republican senators was out of step with the best traditions of American leadership. And one has to ask what was the purpose of this letter? There appear to be two logical answers. Either these senators were trying to be helpful to the Iranians, or harmful to the commander-in-chief in the midst of high stakes international diplomacy. Either answer does discredit to the letter’s signatories.

HH: What do you make of that charge, which is of near treason?

LA: Yeah, well, there you go. And the point is there’s something she leaves out, right? So when Harry Truman and Dean Acheson, who was Secretary of State, made their first agreements with Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican who led the Republican Party out of a period of isolationism, that they would work together, and that they would work out policy, and get it agreed before the administration went and did the very dramatic things it did. It did the Marshall Plan, which supplied funds and loans and outright grants to European countries after the Second World War, and the Truman Doctrine, which helped to save Turkey and Greece from communist interference. And so they went and talked about all that stuff, right, and they got it all right. But then in addition, Acheson and Harry Truman assured Vandenberg that every agreement they made with every country, even if it was just after the pattern of all the other agreements they were making, they would bring each individual one to the Senate for a debate and a vote. And Obama is not making commitments like that. So the point is if you’re going to remind anybody in the world that it’s only an agreement with one man whose term is soon to be up and not a Constitutional act of the American people, if he’s not going to bring it to you so you can argue about it, then you might as well do that now.

HH: And you might as well do it via what is in essence and op-ed, but that it would call down this reaction as extraordinary. Let me play for you, and I am going to encourage people to call 1-800-520-1234. Normally, Dr. Arnn and I don’t take calls during the Hillsdale Dialogue. But we will, because this is so important. The first of many cuts from Marco Rubio, here’s Senator Rubio today, cut number one:

MR: First of all, answer the fundamental question. Why should we care about what’s happening with Israel, in Israel and about Israel? And there’s two reasons I think we should care. The first is because Israel represents everything we want that region of the world to be. Israel is a democracy, as evidenced by the vibrant election process that they just underwent. Israel is a free enterprise economy, developed economy that provides prosperity for its people and its partners in trade and commerce. And Israel is a strong American ally. A democracy, free enterprise and a strong American ally – don’t we wish the entire Middle East looked that way?

HH: 30 seconds, Larry Arnn, pretty hard to argue with that.

LA: Yeah, right. I mean, it’s a free country. The Arabs vote. The Arabs who live in Israel vote in the Israeli election. Their vote means something, unlike their vote in nearly every Arab majority country.

HH: I’ll be right back with Dr. Larry Arnn.

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HH: You’ll be relieved to know, Dr. Arnn, by the way, that Ohio State, The Ohio State University, has won its NCAA basketball game and is advancing on in the tournament. I just thought I would tell you that.

LA: Do they still teach athletes to read there?

HH: Oh, stop that, you Michigan person. Now Marco Rubio took up the gauntlet today, and challenged the President’s assault on Israel in detail. And I want to walk through some of this. Here is cut number two of Senator Rubio, and then we’ll get Dr. Arnn’s comments:

MR: Let’s begin by the aftermath of this recent election. As far as I know, and maybe this has changed in the last few hours, after this election, the President has yet to call the Prime Minister. That is unlike, of course, the fact that in March of 2012, he was among the first to call and congratulate Putin in Moscow, or that in June of 2012, he was among the first to call Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood when they won the Egyptian presidency, or that in November of 2012, they called to congratulate the top Chinese communists on their new position, which by the way, is not elected in the way that you and I would consider there to be an election, or the fact that in 2013, it was an historic phone call they brag about how they called the Iranian president and congratulated him on his election. And of course, in August of 2014, he called to congratulate Turkey’s president, Erdogan, and on and on. Time and again, this president has made a habit of quickly calling these leaders when they win, but as of 4:40 Eastern time, as far as I know, that call has yet not been made.

HH: So Dr. Arnn, was it the habit of Winston Churchill to call bad guys and ignore allies in the course of his statesmanlike career of excellence?

LA: Well, it depends. Churchill said of his alliance with the Soviet Union during the Second World War, if Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favorable mention of the Devil in the House of Commons. So it depended on the circumstances, right? But this is, what you wouldn’t find him being guilty of doing is congratulating bad guys and not, because I mean, you know, bad guys and good guys, that’s a simplistic way to look at it in one way. But the point is, the Arabs who live in Israel enjoy political freedoms that are unknown to the people of Iran. And isn’t that distinction fundamental to what the United States of America is about?

HH: Absolutely. I was also thinking about…

LA: So it’s just extraordinary.

HH: Irascible allies today, we were talking about Churchill last night, and he dealt with the most irascible ally ever. I’m wondering if you’re thinking of the same person I’m thinking of, the haughty, arrogant, insufferable, but absolutely indispensable de Gaulle.

LA: Yeah.

HH: And he managed to make it work.

LA: Yeah, he, there’s a wonderful thing at the end of 1942 that the late Martin Gilbert, recently deceased, writes about in the official biography. They had a secret sessions speech, a secret session of the House of Commons, which they believed in doing, by the way, so that the legislature could be told all about things going on, even if they couldn’t be released in public. And Churchill goes on and on about de Gaulle, and there really are two points. He’s a great man, and the opposition to Hitler has centered on him and rightly, but the second point, he’s not France. No one person can be that. And so Churchill was trying to keep the world, and de Gaulle, from treating de Gaulle as if he was France itself. And that was hard duty. And you know the great saying that he always had, the hardest cross he had to bear was the Cross of Lorraine, a famous Christian cross, but de Gaulle was from the region of Lorraine.

HH: Yeah, but I mean, he put up with it, as did FDR. He even put up with difficult times with Churchill, and they both put up with Stalin, because they were allies. And Netanyahu is an ally.

LA: They had three big conferences in the first eight months of 1943. I’ve just been writing about them, because we’ve finishing the documents volume from the Churchill biography from that. And they started all three of those conferences with big disagreements – Europe V. Asia, northern cross-channel invasion V. invading Italy, all kinds of huge questions. And they sat and they talked for days. And then they broke up in agreement and they prosecuted the war together, one of the greatest common efforts between nations in history. And the stresses were solvable, because they were, in the end, friends, as you say.

HH: Cut number three of Marco Rubio today on the President and Israel.

MR: You can start to see the trends here pretty early. In October of 2008, then-Senator Obama told an audience in Cleveland, “There is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach,” which is one of the political parties in Israel, “unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, then you are anti-Israeli,” which is a silly comment to make since at that time, they, that party had been out of power. In January of 2009, the President, upon taking office, makes a quick phone call to the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, before he even phoned the Israeli prime minister. “This is my first phone call to a foreign leader, and I’m making it only hours after I took office,” Abbas’ spokesman quoted Obama saying.

HH: He kept going, cut number four:

MR: In May of 2011, the State Department issues a press release declaring that the Department’s number two official would be visiting Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank, as if Jerusalem was not part of Israel. So they leave that separate. Later in the month, only hours before Mr. Netanyahu departed from Israel to Washington, Mr. Obama delivered his infamous Arab Spring speech, which he focused on a demand that Israel return to its indefensible pre-1967 borders with land swaps. In November of 2011, an open microphone caught part of a private conversation with the President and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy said of the Israeli premier, “I can’t stand Netanyhu. He is a liar.” But rather than defend Israel, the President piled on. He said, “You’re tired of him? What about me? I have to deal with him every day.” February of 2012, at a conference in Tunis, the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was asked about Mr. Obama pandering to “Zionist lobbies”. And she acknowledged that that was a fair question and went on to explain that during an election season, there are comments made that certainly don’t reflect our foreign policy.

HH: You know what’s interesting here, Larry Arnn, is he’s building a case. He’s prosecuting an argument. There’s too little of this in the American Republican Party. I’m glad to see it.

LA: Yeah, that’s it. You, Churchill loved to say in in the House of Commons when they would try to shout him down, I am merely stating my opinion, and then you will get a chance to speak your opinion. This is the process we know as debate.

HH: And it is a process that we amplify here. When we come back, we get to the meat of the Rubio indictment of President Obama with Dr. Larry Arnn. In the meantime, am I right, Larry Arnn, a million people have watched Constitution 101?

LA: No, but all of our online courses put together just passed a million, and probably more than 450,000 have watched the Constitution 101.

HH: Well, I like the Constitution 101. So if you watched on of the other ones, good for you. But go watch Constitution 101. We need it now more than ever at www.hillsdale.edu. All of the Hillsdale Dialogues between Dr. Arnn, his colleagues and me are available at www.hughforhillsdale.com. Stay tuned, I’ll be right back with Larry Arnn on the Hugh Hewitt Show.

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HH: Dr. Arnn, here is Marco Rubio making a point about the various elections the President has opined on and not, cut number five

MR: An election just happened two days ago. The first thing the White House says is you used a lot of divisive language in that election, and that is saying a lot from someone who’s been elected at least once, probably twice on extremely divisive language. But what about when Iran had a fraudulent election in 2009, and the people of Iran took to the streets to protest in the famous Green Revolution? You know what the White House said? We’re not going to comment on that election, because we’re not going to interfere in the sovereignty of Iran. So they will comment on the elections of an ally, calling the rhetoric of the election divisive. But when an enemy, which is what Iran is, has a fraudulent election and kills people that protest against it, we can’t comment, we can’t comment because that would be infringing on their sovereignty.

HH: He also goes on to talk about the purposeful misinterpretation of what Netanyahu said prior to the election, cut number six:

MR: The other thing that’s happened is the Prime Minister made a statement about how a two-state solution isn’t possible given the current circumstances. And what does the White House do? They jump up and say well, then that means we may have to reconsider. We may have to go to the United Nations Security Council now and support a resolution, that means not use our veto authority to stop a resolution that calls on Israel to create a Palestinian state with 1967 borders. Why would the Prime Minister of Israel say that, by the way? He’s right. The conditions don’t exist. You want to know why the conditions don’t exist? Well, first of all, let’s go through the history of peace negotiations. In 2000, at Camp David, Israel offered the Palestinian Authority nearly all of the West Bank, Eastern Jerusalem, and the Palestinians said no. In 2000, Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon. You know what that is today? A place where they launch rockets against Israel. In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza. You know what that is today? A place that they launch rockets against Israel from.

HH: Do you think, Larry Arnn, that such arguments make a difference in the American public writ large?

LA: Well, you have to believe that. You have to believe that, because as they say in the beginning of the Federalist Papers, if you’re not going to be ruled by reason and choice, you’re going to be ruled by accident and force. So you have to believe that it’s still possible for points like that to be understood and debated, and the truth of them found, and then to guide action. Otherwise, we should just appoint Obama to do everything for us, which by the way, maybe he’s going to do anyway.

HH: Here is an argument to history that I think you’ll find very interesting, cut number seven:

MR: Well, what about this particularly horrific expression of ideology which appeared in a Palestinian Authority daily as far back as 1998. “The difference between Hitler and British Foreign Prime Minister, British Foreign Minister Balfour was simple. Hitler didn’t have colonies to send the Jews to, so he destroyed them, whereas Balfour turned Palestine into his colony and sent the Jews. Balfour is Hitler with colonies, while Hitler is Balfour without colonies. They both wanted to get rid of the Jews. Zionism was crucial to the defense of the West by ridding Europe of the burden of the Jews.” This is from a daily of the PA, and these are the people that we’re pressuring them to cut a peace deal with.

HH: You see, Larry Arnn, he’s appealing to knowledge of not only Hitler, but the Balfour Declaration. This is, this is high end stuff by Marco Rubio, much like Tom Cotton’s maiden speech was high end stuff.

LA: Yeah, isn’t it beautiful? He’s speaking strongly, too, isn’t he?

HH: Yeah, but…

LA: And he’s right about that. I mean, first of all, the Balfour Declaration in 1916 committed to build a Jewish home in Palestine. That’s the exact expression. And that is the parallel to an agreement that was made with various Arab leaders, and in both cases, the same consideration was given to Britain. You have to join us in fighting against the Turks, whose Ottoman Empire had been ruling all of the Middle East up to that point. But the Turks had joined the Germans in the First World War, and so we’re at war. And so you Jews put up some soldiers and help us fight, and you Arabs put up some soldiers and help us fight, and what you’ll get is a place, a state. Well, the Jews got one, and the Arabs got many out of that. And so the deal was kept, right? And the purging of Europe of Jews, complete purging, was Hitler’s project, but was not anywhere in evidence in 1916.

HH: And it’s important for Rubio to point out, and we’ll come back after the break and talk about this, that the purposeful misinterpretation of history by the opponents of Israel make it more important for our president especially to articulate, even as he negotiates with our enemies, what is, and George W. Bush did this all the time, what is the true and correct historical record, which we have to do if we’re going to win arguments.

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HH: And we’re going over a speech, and there are three more cuts that I want to play for Dr. Arnn, and then people want to talk to you about this, Larry. The final three cuts of Marco Rubio talking about the President and Benjamin Netanyahu, cut number eight:

MR: They’re the people that this president wants to put pressure on them to cut a peace deal with. I think Netanyahu is right. The conditions do not exist for a peace deal with people who teach their children that killing Jews is a glorious thing, that conditions for peace do not exist with a people, with a government, I should say, not a people. The people are victims of this government, the Palestinian Authority, and not to mention Hamas, who teach people that killing Jews is a glorious thing, that there’s no such thing as the Jewish people, that any methods of destroying them is valid, that pay them salaries and benefits. This president is making a historic make. Allies have differences. But allies like Israel, when you have a difference with them and it is public, it emboldens their enemies to launch more rockets out of Southern Lebanon and Gaza, to launch more terrorist attacks, to go to international forums and delegitimize Israel’s right to exist…This is an historic and tragic mistake. Israel is not a Republican or Democratic issue. If this was a Republican president doing these things, I would give the exact same speech. In fact, I would be even angrier. This is outrageous, it is irresponsible, it is dangerous, and it betrays the commitment this nation has made to the right of a Jewish state to exist in peace. No people on Earth want peace more than the people of Israel. No people have suffered more at the hands of this violence and this terrorism than the people of Israel. And they need America’s support unconditionally. If there are differences, they need to be dealt with privately, like you do with other allies. And more than anything else, they deserve to be treated with more respect, not less than the respect this president and this White House is giving the Supreme Leader of Iran…So he would not dare say the things about the Supreme Leader now that he’s saying about the Prime Minister of Israel, because he wouldn’t want to endanger his peace deal or his arms deal that he’s working out with them. I hope he’ll reconsider. I hope the bipartisan nature of our support of Israel is reinvigorated. I hope that once again, this body, this Congress, and this government will recommit itself to this extraordinarily important relationship, because if America doesn’t stand with Israel, who would we stand with? If Israel, a democracy, a strong American ally on the international stage, if they are not worthy of our unconditional support, then what ally of ours around the world can feel safe in their alliance with us?

HH: Now Larry Arnn, I know you noticed this, but I wanted to underscore it for people joining. We began the hour by talking about how there is a partnership between the Senate and the president, and Rubio is appealing to that in vigorous terms, but he’s appealing for partnership, not unilateralism.

LA: Right, yeah, you, it’s like a sports team, right? It’s like anything, any group of people who are trying to work together. When they confront the task they have to do, and they confront people who are not members of the club, they have to find some ground of unity. And what’s so serious about this, in my opinion, is I don’t think Obama is part of that old ground of unity we had on questions like the democratic countries being our best friends. And you know, Rubio made early in this powerful speech, he made the point that it is what we hope will happen in all of the countries in the Middle East, what is right now happening in Israel, that is freedom of the press, freedom of speech, for Arabs as well as Jews who live in the country, the protection of private rights, the responsiveness of the government to popular elections. Representative government is the fundamental thing. And so why would this be happening? I mean, it’s amazing to me. It really is.

HH: And on that note, let’s take some calls. Eddie in San Diego, you’re on with Dr. Larry Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College.

Eddie: Hugh, you guys have been on fire for months. I just comment that you guys are just awesome, so just want to congratulate you guys on the job you’ve been doing the last couple of months. I’ll be quick. I want to put a quick point out there, and then just let you guys comment on it. And Hugh, last week during the Hillsdale hour, you made a comment in talking to Dr. Arnn, the first time I think I’ve ever heard you say that. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but you expressed a very deep level of concern, that I’m genuinely concerned with what’s going on. And I think that guys like me, I’m a rational guy, you know me as a caller, I’m a rational guy. I’m nervous. I feel like Obama is almost like, and I’m mindfully saying this, is that almost like an arsonist setting fires in an Alisnky fashion everywhere. And here we have within the U.S. government the departments, and the judicial system, which is the core infrastructure of this country. They support that, because they have a vested interest in big government, and we have plus or minus 50% of the public that has a vested interest in sustaining these lies. But they don’t realize what happens if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, what’s going on in Russia, and I don’t even know what China’s been doing.

HH: So let me pause and have Dr. Arnn comment, Eddie, because I am pessimistic, and I worry about marriage being redefined by the Supreme Court on one end, and I worry about Iran getting a nuke on another end, and abandoning Israel. But then, Larry Arnn, last night, is upbeat. And so he should be upbeat now.

LA: Okay, I will. So let me say about Eddie’s first point that it appears with me and Hugh Hewitt that the whole may be greater than the sum of the parts.

HH: (laughing) That’s absolutely true.

LA: About this whole thing, yeah, we’re in a terrible situation. And I’ve been styling it for a year or so now, the third great crisis in the history of the American republic, like the Revolution and like the Civil War. And it looks like those, in some respects. It’s the fight about the fundamental principles of the country and what they mean. There are forces in play, you named some of them, Eddie, that you can’t quite see how you will overcome them. In the case of the Revolutionary War, the greatest military and greatest, most powerful nation on Earth, and in the case of the Civil War, an enormous momentum toward just letting the slave states go and keep their slavery. And so it didn’t, you couldn’t see how would overcome that. But what happened was, and this is why I’m hopeful. First of all, the difference between freedom and tyranny is fundamental, and people love the former and hate the later. So there’s an advantage to people who are defending that.

HH: Save the second part for when we come back. Dr. Arnn is my guest, one more segment in this week’s Hillsdale Dialogue. Stay tuned.

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HH: Dr. Larry Arnn, when we went to break in this Hillsdale Dialogue, you were saying the reasons for your optimism is that people prefer freedom over tyranny. And the second?

LA: Well, just, so I never listen to the Senate of the United States. I’m a busy guy, and I have better things to go. This week, I have listened to two fabulous speeches. And that means that better people are showing up. And that’s very important, and a sign that there’s going to be a fight about this stuff. And if there’s a serious fight, it’s hard to think that it’s going to go wrong.

HH: Well said. Brian, Colorado Springs, you’re on with Dr. Larry Arnn. Can you be quick, sir?

Brian: Yes, I can. I just wanted to make a quick comment. I really think the elephant in the room is, and people aren’t really afraid to say it, is that Obama an anti-Semite. I don’t think he’s done anything to support Israel, and I think Rubio just laid it out plain and simple.

HH: Brian, thank you. I raised this with Dennis Prager today, Larry Arnn, our mutual friend, and he denies that. He says that he is rather a man of the left for whom anti-Israeli positions are not anti-Semitic. They’re simply reflexive of the propaganda of the small versus the large.

LA: Yeah, good for Dennis. I don’t really know, and of course, that’s a question about the man’s motives. I disagree with the principles he states. They’re very clear. He is a man of the left, and I disagree with so many of his actions. And you don’t really need anti-Semitism to explain his actions. He really believes that what, there need to be no more war, but we can’t really let these differences of kinds of regimes get in the way.

HH: Lorenzo in San Antonio, you’re on with Larry Arnn.

Lorenzo: Gentlemen, what Rubio just did, that’s a perfect reason to have him as the GOP candidate, to endorse him, him along with somebody like Bobby Jindal as a VP, because they can both think fast on their feet.

HH: Well, neither Dr. Arnn nor I take sides in these things, do we, Dr. Arnn?

LA: No, but I would say that there’s a list of five or six people. And if you could get any one of them today, I’d take it in a heartbeat.

HH: Tommy in Houston…

LA: And I’m not putting you on that list, but there is such a list.

HH: Yeah, 30 seconds to Tommy in Houston, go ahead, Tommy.

Tommy: God bless Rubio and his rhetorical skills. I think Obama is angling for some sort of world leadership, U.N., something. He certainly doesn’t seem to care about this world, this nation and his job as it’s defined in the scope of his work.

HH: Larry Arnn, last 30 seconds to you, and everyone to www.hillsdale.edu to sign up for Imprimis. What do you make of this president’s worldview?

LA: It is a shameful thing to take office under the Constitution of the United States and ignore its principles and its procedures.

HH: And that is well and well stated. Larry Arnn, always a pleasure. www.hillsdale.edu, America, sign up for Imprimis, take the online courses. For every Hillsdale Dialogue, consult www.hughforhillsdale.com.

End of interview.