Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts joined us in 2006 to discuss his then just-published book “Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood.” He deals here with problems which have persisted: how to prepare a black child for contacts with police; the effects of feminist theory upon black fatherhood; absent-father black families as a source of social pathology and as a source of suffering for the father himself. Strong stuff, strongly articulated!

Talk-show host Michael Medved writes sharp and popular books advancing an optimistic view of the American prospect. Back in 2009 we discussed his then-just published work, “The 10 Big Lies About America.”

And here’s another charged conversation with the political scientist on our A Team, Charles Lipson of the University of Chicago. As we dart about in our usual free-associative style some of the matters we hit upon are:

• What do the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movement have in common?
• Did Obama represent the last gasp of Democratic Party “progressivism?”
• Is there a  notable decline and disorder in the moral competence of  the white, working class family.?
• Does the presidency really matter or is it increasingly owned by “Wall Street” and the Media?
• Are Jeb Bush, Scott Walker or any other Republican possibilities actually “unowned?”
• What accomplishments adorn Hilary’s “great resume?”
• How about chucking it all for a parliamentary system?

This conversation came before the President’s lecture to the nation and the world about the equivalence of ISIS and the Crusades. That would have made a great extra feature for this edition but you might now want to conjecture about how that fits in with what Charles has to say, early on, about the decay and demise of the “progressivism” project.

We are astonished. The “we” is me and my guest, Charles Lipson, member of our old A-Team and one of the country’s five leading political scientists (by Rosenberg Ranking). Astonished by what? By the man who wasn’t there. Where? In Paris, of course.

Yet other things about the recent performance of our old colleague from the University of Chicago continue to astonish – among them his inability to call Islamic terrorism what it is. As usual with Charles the conversation wanders in many correlated directions including: the talent level of the President’s foreign policy advisors, the appalling consequences that followed from the stance announced way back in the Cairo speech and, probably essential for the rest of the century, the required policy for playing through the struggle with recidivist and homicidal Jihadism.

Victor Davis Hanson is a fourth-generation California rancher has long been concerned about the poor prospects that face the flood of Mexican illegal immigrants even if – or when – they attain legal status. In his book “Mexifornia,” which we discussed with him way back in 2003, he made some worried predictions about the poor life prospects for under-educated young Mexicans who were crossing the border in vast numbers. Those predictions are apparently coming true some 12 years after he voiced them in this conversation.