Mona Charen and I have a new podcast up, with special guest Yuval Levin — that brainy and invaluable contributor to the national debate. He has an unusual gift for public policy — as some have a gift for sprinting, or singing. The topic of this podcast is Republican renewal, essentially. The music at the end is Ravel’s depiction of daybreak in his ballet Daphnis et Chloé.
Throughout this podcast, I thought of Jimmy Carter — yes, Jimmy Carter. And I thought of him in a positive way (which is not all that usual). He used to quote an old teacher of his, Miss Julia Coleman: “We have to adjust to changing times with unchanging principles.”
While I have you on the line, let me say something about our previous podcast. In the course of this ’cast, I said (something like), “As Chevy Chase once said in a movie, ‘I resemble that remark.’” Readers have written to inform me that the line did not originate with him: Curly, on The Three Stooges, said it.
So, a lesson is reinforced: When it comes to comedic frontiers, the Stooges can be expected to have arrived first.