And it's all. Is America the Soviet Union now? Is America ever going to stop spending money that it doesn't have and is Anthony

Fauchy a good guy now? We will discuss all that and more on this Friday edition of the editors hosted by me Charles C. W. Cook,

the coup continues. My Praetorian guard has kept me safe from the retaliation of Rich Larry.

And I'm joined today by Michael Brendan Daughey and by Phil Klein.

Our sponsors today are Catholic Charities and Late Admissions Confessions of a Black

Conservative book by Glenn Lowry from W. W. Norton and Company.

All right, let's start with a really cheery topic

for a Friday, whether or not the United States

is now in its Cold War II, equivalent not to the United States in Cold War I,

but equivalent to the United States's enemy in Cold War I, the Soviet Union.

This provocative claim was made by Neil Ferguson in a piece published earlier this week.

In fact, Neil made the same case in Outline on my podcast a few months ago and it yielded some debate including a response

from Jonah Goldberg which itself yielded some back and forth. So Michael you are habitually dower. Where are you

on this? Do you think Neil Ferguson's case that we are at risk of becoming the Soviet Union in our

Cold War II with China is true? True in part. true.

True in part.

I actually think the weakest part of the analogy is situating it within a Cold war framework.

That is, I think, the easiest part of his case to challenge

would be the idea that China is sitting in the place that the United States was in the 1980s presently. China has extremely serious problems. It has some of the same problems we have but has

them worse. So I don't think that's right, but I do think

his piece overall, you know, is a kind of gathering of analogies that have been

haunting us for a while actually. I mean, you know, you started to hear comparisons in the United States

...