Civitas Outlook
Topic
Pursuit of Happiness
Published on
April 18, 2026
Contributors
Steven Hayward
John Yoo
Episode
The Three Whiskey Happy Hour

The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Almost Live from Tampa

About this episode

For the second week in a row, the 3WHH gang (minus one) were on the road, this time recording live in the corner of a hotel lobby before the annual meeting of the Philadelphia Society. The sound quality of this episode is . . . authentic. Yes, I’ll go with that.

John Yoo couldn’t make the meeting, so we have a special guest, our old pal Glenn Ellmers. With John absent, we get our freak on about the Clean Air Act . . . actually we didn’t do that. We did worse: We get down in the weeds of metaphysics, radical historicism, the theological-political problem (especially in the context of this week’s feud between the President and the Pope), dishing on Laura Field’s terrible book Furious Minds, contrasting Justice Sotomayor’s jurisprudence of “feels” versus Justice Thomas’s jurisprudence of principle—the principle of the Declaration of Independence.

And finally, we take up the perennial question, what’s the matter with kids today. And as such the exit music this week is “Kids,” from moe:

Kids will try to run you over

Kids will try to bring you down

Kids will never say they’re sorry

Kids back then are older now.

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Pursuit of Happiness

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