Part One: How Conservatism Won | BEHIND THE BASTARDS 

Johnathan Frakes really did do his best to make it obvious Riker was bisexual in ways that would sneak past the censors. One of the ways he did so was by researching our culture and understanding our advanced sitting in chairs weird techniques and using them whenever he could.

44:25 "The kind of guys who are both interested in and able to get a job thinking about nuclear war all day...today we would cordon these people off from the rest of society by getting them into Warhammer 40,000." Robert, I am highly offended by this factually correct statement.

Always find it weird that the era that almost everyone of a certain age in America talks about the 1950s like it was the absolute apex of their country, with a great deal of nostalgia and conviction that we definitely need to get back to that... ...until anyone mentions how high the top rate of tax was back then. Then they get a bit more =/ about it.

the 'meritocracy' lie -> rich people 'deserve' special treatment -> accepting trickle down theory

Whenever I think about conservative thinktanks, I'm reminded of Ross Noble's joke "gay marriage can be legal, but the honeymoon has to be spent destroying a windfarm."

Y'know what my takeaway is here? Conservatives thought that Liberalism had won for all time. It hadn't. There is a common sort of mindset of doomed-ness on the flip side today. But it may not be so bleak. There is still hope.

"The Heritage Foundation" "Thats a good fish name" I fuckin love it.

I love the idea of talking to POWs and extrapolating that morale was bad for an entire country. It would be like aliens interviewing teenage boys and concluding that the entire population of earth smelled bad, were constantly horny, and played nothing but Fortnite.

Happy birthday Robert 🎉 our favorite theater kid turned high journalist- I hope all your wishes come true!

Having read Frederick Taylor's manifesto, I cannot stress how pseudoscientific it is. I was so furious at how stupid he was that I left an amazon review for a book I didn't pay for. His whole thing basically rested on the idea that because he had an education he was clearly smarter than the workers and could direct them better at the job they've been doing for years, and that was mixed with quasi eugenic ideas of natural aptitudes and complaining that workers who didn't go hard enough (i.e pushing themselves to the limit) were ruining the company and therefore their own futures. "scientific management" isn't really scientific and is just a rich nepo baby huffing his own farts and doing a lot of circular reasoning.

"The overwhelming lesson of history is there's no good way to do things." --Robert Evans

58:10 I'm reminded of the Canadian Mommy issues guy preparing for a debate on Marxism (that he used to talk about a whole lot), _with a proclaimed Marxist_ by...reading the pamphlet.

I wish the term "tankie" meant "people who are part of, or who simp to the opinions of, think tanks"

What's birthing my happies?!?

Contrary to popular belief, "liberal" and "conservative" are not mutually exclusive, or even at odds with each other. Liberalism, at its heart, is the idea that people have individual rights and should be able to participate in their government. The Declaration of Independence and US Constitution are incredibly liberal documents. Thus, to be a true conservative in America means holding to liberal principles (and even the fascists claim to hold those principles); conversely, most "liberal" elected officials are actually pretty conservative in the sense that they oppose programs that would greatly benefit Americans because they don't want to fundamentally change the system.

Happy birthday Mr. Bastards!

So do we just send clippings or do we need to fully pull out the nails?

I blame the Soviet Union, the New Deal and Gerald Ford. Bear with me. Lenin argued the reason we need a dictatorship of the proletariat is because the peasants will just always want wealth and not socialism, the new deal just made everyone Conservative middle class people. The Soviet Union, an atheist nuclear armed dictatorship that hates America, it’s like it was thought up in Conservative think tank. Lastly if Gerald fords moderate conservatism had just beaten Carter in 1976 the republicans would have been blamed for stagflation and Ted Kennedy would have walked away with the 1980 election.

Yeah, as a punk from the '80s, some of us thought the world was going to end. And as a fan of underground weathermen (& women) from the '70s, a few of us realized that it actually was ending. Ray-gun did more damage to America than pretty much everything else that ever did damage to America. Greed was good, and good was greed. And the working class was utterly screwed. A few of us could see that, at least.

happy belated birthday robert!

Way to have been born, champ. Keep it up.

Glorious belated womb escape day!

56:18 and the Germans bombed London, but they didn't surrender, and the lesson we took is that the English specifically will not surrender, because they're so unique.

Assume a perfectly spherical Vietcong soldier

Always love to hear a sidebar about how racist Woodrow Wilson was.

The way Dave said happy birthday was way more adorable than I was expecting at 5 in the morning. Here's hoping that's a good sign for today!

The three words that best describe Think Tanks are as follows, and I quote: Stink! Stank! Stunk!

I've been putting off this one because it's fucking depressing. But substituting the term pervert for expert has highly enriched my life.

I always feel very odd clicking the "like" button on Behind the Bastards. Do I "like" the podcast? Yes. Do I "like" the topic? Not really lol

Excuse me, rude…OUR b’day 🎉 **winky finger guns**

HAPPY BIRTHDAY 🖤 🏴finger nails on the way

Man...the bad guys won. This is edifying but also incredibly depressing.

Hbd 🎉

Show of hands of who thought "Tayloring" was "tailoring" their entire lives...like me.

Well as of today the Supreme Court basically outlawed protesting so I'd say conservatism hasn't just "kinda" won.

Happy Birthday Robert!

I bow before the greatness of this podcast.👐

Ok, where am I sending my fingernails?

Assuming this was recorded a week ago Robert has a late March birthday like me 🥰

I hope Robert someday does a series on old Barry G Water , talked alot about him but never the whackdoo his proper due , freaked Castro tf out which is a terrifying idea , the guy who was willing to use Cuba as a sacrifical lamb to take out The us and survived over 600 assassination atempts was scared of somebody .

I think the biggest jump from Brookings to RAND is going from finding out the facts to finding facts based on what is expected. It's not the malice of "paid to make studies that support specific things regardless of the facts", but is definitely on its way there.

It's like a union for rich people...

Happy Birthday Warhammer dork

Escalators were invented in 1859.

As a failed policy analyst, I endorse this episode.

congratulations on another successful orbit around the sun, Robert.

Liberalism and neoliberalism are conservative ideologies. US liberals are not leftists and never were.

1:15 I did once give my boss my wisdom teeth. She thought they were cool because you could see the cavities.

54:02 They had to have had escalators or else they wouldn't have had "escalation" because Fun fact, the word "escalate" comes from the word "Escalator™️"

Happy birthday Robert.

Think Tanks sound like TV writer rooms saying ‘Yes, and…’ Meanwhile, real life policy is being made to shape the future of the country

Ugh, just finished a test. Good to hear these guys being snarky.

happy birthday! 🎉🎉🎉

I can’t hear this episode in any of the podcast platforms. Is there an issue with it?

happy flat earth day… i mean birthday

Overall good episode but I have two small points: 1. RAND not Brookings was part of Pentagon Papers. 2. The episode title is misleading. This is only one important part of a larger story.

You sure you don't want the fingernails? Mine are impressively long.

My god! So this is why everything is so fucking terrible 😢 thanks Powel! Its all so simple and obvious once you learn the history. It saddens me i knew nothing about this until now 😔

Y’all dropping this like, 12… 1 in da morning?… oh well🤷🏾‍♂️

A Merry Womb Eviction Anniversary to you, good sir.

Who else thought of Fallout: New Vegas during the start of this?

Around 58:00 they talk about a Libs of Tiktok interview that they froze up. What interview are they talking about?

Approx 27:00 I appreciate a good "these data"

48:42 survirvorship bias!

Robathan Robstar Birthmas!

For anyone interested in learning more about the nuclear bombings of Japan, and why their supposed necessity may not have been so cut and dry, Shaun has a great video on the subject: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-RCRTgtpC-Go.html

He keeps mentioning Brookings with regards to the Pentagon papers.....I thought that was the Rand Corp?

Ominous..

Self interest produces incoherence; Selfishness produces corruption

I like everything about this show but the comedy.

powell used to beat on black & hispanic ppl in arizona who tried to go to da polls

of COURSE robert is an Aries

Oh no I'm getting information from an Aries 🤮

I had no idea this guest was the head writer for Some More News. I thought they had like 4 people working on it total... hardly enough to have a "head" of anything or bother mentioning it.

Dave has clearly watched Slavoj Žižek’s A Pervert‘s Guide to Cinema. Flippin’ Freak.

😂😂😂😂😂😂

Won, but can’t seem to win elections though. 😂😅

Let's see...House Unamerican Committee, University of Chicago, (Milton Friedman), John Birch Society, the flip with the Southern Strategy....I mean, it's kind of weird how much was left out when trying to tell the story of conservatism's rise. You did mention National Review and Ayn Rand at nearly seventy minutes in, but you went up through and finished the 1950's, into the mid '60's, with none of them being named? I mean, if you want, you can dismiss Rand for it being distopian fiction as you said, but William F Buckley founded National Review, kind of weird not to mention him either. Instead, you focus on how the Dems were so darkly supportive of the military, when for the most part, the Dems had been the party to take us to war. Until Reagan, the only real foreign war the Republicans initiated was the Spanish-American War. I'd argue that the preview of the positions we see today would be 1916. Sure, Wilson's a horrible racist, but moving past that, Hughes was the first real example of a Republican pushing for war and Dems ardently being anti-war. It's considered THE reason Wilson was able to get re-elected, not the Democrat typical position. The Congress that didn't want Wilson's League of Nations was a Democratically controlled congress. But Hughes also ran on the agenda specifically of removing liberal laws previous Republicans put in place like the 16th Amendment and the Adamson act. Until the switch to Conservatism along with the Southern Strategy, Republicans typically were the peaceniks. Here, Landon's 1936 RNC nomination acceptance speech included "Republican presidents sent delegates to the Hague conferences and one of them took the leading part in the termination of the Russo-Japanese war. Another Republican President called a conference which, for the first time, produced a reduction and limitation of arms on a wide scale. Still another led in securing the treaty outlawing wars. In purpose and achievement, our party has a record which points the way to further helpful service in creating international understanding, in removing the causes of war, and in reducing and limiting arms. We shall take every opportunity to promote among the nations a peace based upon justice and human rights. We shall join in no plan that would take from us that independence of judgment which has made the United States a power for good in the world. We shall join in no plan that might involve us in a war in the beginning of which we had no part, or that would build a false peace on the foundation of armed camps." That's the guy running *AGAINST* FDR, and this is *before* Germany's invasion of Poland where anti-war could be dismissed as just being at least semi-ok with Nazis. Peaceniks. I didn't shrink Landon's quote with ellipses because he literally said all of that about it together, without distraction. Granted, Willkie wouldn't have the same anti-war position in 1940, but his position was merely to assist allies, not begin a war. When we finally did have another Republican president, Ike, he's the one who ended his presidency warning about us the military-industrial complex. It's a common arguing point and well discussed how the two parties switched position on racial issues after Ike and with Johnson v Goldwater, but warhawkishness was just as big a flip-flop between them in our history.

you're the guy that writes the cringe comedyt on Some More News

Is this guy still pushing war with Syria?

I like to say I'm socially right fiscally left. It makes sense to me because I'm a social libertarian but want a well regulated market.

Please start to cover Project 2025 on BTB or on It could happen here.

I found it impossible to listen to this episode because the guest is borderline illiterate about very basic aspects of reality and every time he opened his mouth I had to strain to stop my bones ejecting from my body.

They decided not to use nukes in Vietnam, because there was too many of the enemy, impossible to wipe them out, they still wouldn’t surrender, and nukes have bad optics. Note that some of the “Big Six” in Japan still wouldn’t surrender after they were nuked twice. They didn’t care. But the threat of Tokyo (including Hirohito) being nuked, twisted their arm.