The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Tackling the Admin. State from Sicily

About this episode

The episode features a discussion with R.J. Pestritto on the administrative state and its historical context, recorded in Sicily.

The end of this week finds the 3WHH crew in situ in Enna, up in the highlands of Sicily, visiting the University of Kore for a conference on, well, everything, though it is hard to tell since half the speakers are speaking in Italian and the rest of us arenspeaking in English. John Yoo's incoming plane was delayed—again—but it gave us the prompt we needed to have in John place R.J. Pestritto, the Dean of graduate education at Hillsdale College, but above all one of the most treachant critics of the Progressive revolution of the early 20th century, and the insidious administrative state it birthed. If ever you want to throw down on Woodrow Wilson—and what sensible person doesn't?—R.J. is your man. For this episode we consider R.J.'s recent short monograph for the Claremont Institute's "Provocations" series, Government by the Unelected: How It Happened, and How It Might Be Tamed . Settle in with your favorite chianti for this one, as "D.J.—R.J" as I like to call him when he gets rolling on this subject, really gets rolling on this subject with us. For this episode, recorded in a hotel lobby with some visitors wandering by our "field recording studio (which included Michael…

People in this episode

Host: 3 Whisky Happy Hour Crew

Guest: R.J. Pestritto

Topics covered

• administrative state
• progressive revolution
• political commentary
• Sicily conference
• government critique

Keywords

• administrative state
• R.J. Pestritto
• John Yoo
• Sicily
• politics
• government critique
• progressivism

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Hillsdale College, Claremont Institute

Books & works: Government by the Unelected: How It Happened, and How It Might Be Tamed

Places: Sicily, Enna, University of Kore

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