Hal Jespersen’s National Review Institute Caribbean Cruise, November 2022
This is Hal’s report on a Caribbean cruise sponsored by the National Review Institute (NRI) on the Sky Princess. This is my fourth politically oriented cruise, which is much more about political speeches, panel discussions, and get togethers with like-minded folks than it is about tropical vacations. My previous cruises with NRI are here and here. My wife Nancy is completely uninterested in politics, so she does not object when I go on these excursions by myself.
Thursday, November 10 — To Miami
I signed up for an NRI welcome reception in Fort Lauderdale on Friday, the night before the cruise, but it is not possible to reach there in time for the 6 pm start when you are flying from San Francisco. So I flew out the day before, selecting a nonstop flight from San Francisco to Miami. I was a bit concerned about tropical storm Nicole coming in from the Bahamas, but she veered to the north and hit Florida mid state, which meant that west coast flights to MIA were unaffected. I flew United Airlines nonstop. Getting an Uber or Lyft at MIA was quite a chore because of chaos in the arrivals area. I elected to stay in a small hotel in Miami Beach, the Blue Moon (not recommended), figuring I could walk around and sightsee in my free time.
Friday, November 11 — Miami, to Fort Lauderdale
Since I had most of the day to kill, I booked a last-minute food tour of South Beach. In my travelogues I often go into considerable detail about these tours, which I love to take, but this one was just average, so I'll be brief. There were nine of us plus our guide, a friendly guy named Gary who was born in Jamaica but has lived in Miami for decades. The whole tour was on or around the Lincoln pedestrian mall. We started with some hors d’oeuvres of hummus, zucca fries, and avocado salsa (which is exactly like guacamole but it's made with the larger Florida avocados). Then to a coffee stand for pastalito Cuban pastry and Cuban sandwiches (the latter unusual for me because it also contained a potato cake), both delicious. The Cuban coffee, about a 2 cc serving, was brewed with sugar in the grounds. We walked through the Time Out Market, a modern food hall, which looked great, but we didn’t stop for more than restrooms. Then a small Peruvian restaurant for a ceviche of Corvina and shrimp and a dish with beef, onions, and tomatoes, whose name escaped me. We finished at an ice cream shop called Frieze, where I had the worst coconut ice cream in memory.
I Ubered to our hotel in Fort Lauderdale, the Meridian next to the airport. (Ubers in Florida are much cheaper than in California for some reason.) The hotel was part of an extra package for the cruise that included a Friday night event and then Saturday transport to the ship. We had a nice reception with a hosted bar and lots of hors d’oeuvres and then an hour program with Carlos Giménez (currently a congressman, formerly a fireman and then mayor of Miami-Dade County), Rich Lowry, and Charles C. W. Cooke, who talked primarily about the election in Florida. This was followed by another reception that included small sandwiches, so I didn't need to find dinner.
Saturday, November 12 — Embarking Sky Princess
I had originally hoped to do some walking around scenic Fort Lauderdale and the beach in the morning, but the hotel is way outside of town next to busy highways, so that didn’t pan out. I just cooled my heels until 11:15 when we gathered for the bus transport to the pier. Our bags went on a separate truck and I didn’t see mine again until it arrived in my cabin. The check-in at the terminal went smoothly and it was only about 15 minutes before I boarded, a little after noon.
I have travelogued a number of Princess cruises, so this report will not bother with touristy details about the ship, such as my entertainment or dining/wining choices. Except to say that NRI included a drinks package with our fare, so we could have *15* free drinks per day. This is not something I would sign up for because I don’t come close to that level of consumption. And, the quality of food in the Princess main dining rooms varies from pretty decent to mediocre—somewhat like international airline food—although the service was always excellent. I ate most of my lunches in Alfredo’s Pizza restaurant.
The sail away festivities in FLL are always interesting. As we passed by the apartment buildings at the mouth of the harbor, the residents had a big Princess logo (the sea whore) on display and the ship played the Love Boat theme on the main horns.
There was a 90-minute NRI reception at the outdoor bar at the rear of the ship (the appropriately named Wake View pool) and then dinner at 8. We have rotating table assignments and tonight I was at a table with, and sat next to, Rich Lowry, NR’s editor in chief. Lively discussions ensued, particularly about He Who Shall Not Be Named.
Sunday, November 13 — Princess Cay
We arrived near the private beach resort on Eleuthera Island, Bahamas, parking about two miles from shore. The tenders and ferries were quite slow in transporting folks. I queued up for a ticket at 10:30 with the intention of a barbecue lunch on the beach, but as soon as we arrived at 11:30, a torrential downpour started, so I reluctantly stayed on the ferry and went back to the ship.
The NRI session started at 3 in the Vista Lounge. During the week there were also book review sessions (for a book that didn’t interest me) and “Burke to Buckley” sessions about “Mediating Structures between the State and the Individual,” none of which I attended.
First was a Post-election Recap with Rich Lowry, Andy McCarthy, Charlie Cooke, and Jimmy Quinn. (Jimmy is the NR correspondent for national security and moderated this session.) The discussion went back and forth among candidate quality vs lack of GOP message vs Donald Trump. They discussed state results, good and bad. And then a general discussion of the overall Trump problem for 2024 (with no obviously achievable solution).
Media Landscape with Rich Lowry and Charlie Cooke. Topics included misinformation, Twitter, and experiences dealing with CNN.
What After Affirmative Action? with Bill Allen and Andy McCarthy. Bill is an emeritus professor of political science at Michigan State. I had not encountered his work before, but I was very impressed with his comments. Bill thought that the supreme court will deliver results in June that will be more important than the Dobbs decision this year in terms of public reaction, including widespread demonstrations and possibly riots. Andy was a bit more skeptical of the court results, based on his listening to the five hours of oral arguments. Bill raised the concept of guardianship, which is the condition that the state wants to keep its minority groups mired in. He advocated a definition of emancipation as a full achievement of citizenship versus merely breaking of chains.
Dinner was at a table with Veronique de Rugy. Despite her standing as a well known conservative economist, there was actually very little economic discussion.
Monday, November 14 — At Sea
The ship’s clock advanced into the Atlantic time zone overnight, so we had a relatively earlier start than most cruisers are used to. (It’s really annoying when a ship changes clocks before actually entering a new time zone. Since GPS says we’re still geographically in EST, my clocks have been off by an hour all day.)
The first set of sessions were 9–11:30. We started with a very brief video that had excerpts of a longer piece destined for Bill Buckley’s 100th birthday commemoration, about Bill and Ronald Reagan. Then panel discussions:
Primary Process and Election Integrity with Rich Lowry, Andy McCarthy, and Jimmy Quinn. Quite a lot of topics here, including the primary process; acceding to the trend for mail-in ballots; Democrat interference in Republican primaries (quite successful, it turns out); Stacey Abrams; the loss of some state legislatures; the neutering of party leaders.
US Role on Foreign Stage with Rich Lowry, John Hillen, John 0'Sullivan, and Jimmy Quinn. I had not encountered John Hillen in person before, but I was quite impressed with his insights on foreign and military affairs. (He is a former assistant secretary of state and a member of the National Review Inc. board of directors, and the James C. Wheat Professor in Leadership at Hampden-Sydney College’s Wilson Center for Leadership in the Public Interest.) Topics included the cost of US leadership in the world (worth it); the confusing rise of center-right parties in Europe; how the UK conservatives seem to be losing their way; why we should practice “selective disengagement “ from China; the US’s lack of energy in supporting useful international coalitions; the danger to Taiwan (John thinks the next ten years are the dangerous ones); and the Ukraine war, where we should emphasize military aid, not necessarily other types.
Impact of Conservative Court with Andy McCarthy and Charlie Cooke. Current court precedents of affirmative action (Charlie described them as “garbage”); why the two current cases before the court are clearly violations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, regardless of their 14th Amendment status; why a ruling by the court probably wont have much of a practical effect; EPA lawlessness; student loan fiasco (a “tyrannical act”); the questionable actions of Roberts to favor court collegiality over conservative purity; and the Lorie Smith religious freedom case (website design for gay weddings).
There were optional “Breakout Sessions” from 1:30 to 4, but this was a misnomer because they were held in sequence and everyone attended both.
Session #1: Question Time for Editor in Chief Rich Lowry. Rich discussed how to influence candidate choice; gave a broad review of the publications/websites in the conservative ecosystem; lamented the demise of newspapers and local news outlets; lamented Donald Trump; lamented the Republican unpreparedness for the Dobbs decision; possible age limits for elected office (would need a constitutional amendment, which seems unlikely); COVID politics; and his role of NR editor in chief, dealing with challenging but talented personalities.
Session #2: Financial Markets and the Economy with Veronique de Rugy and Dominic Pino. Kevin Hassett was scheduled to do this, which I was really looking forward to, but he had a family emergency and couldn’t attend the cruise. Dominic is a young Fellow at NR and is involved in the Capital Matters podcast. Topics raised by questions included Vero’s lamentation that the GOP is not promoting economic growth policies anymore; ESG trends in corporate governance; energy independence (or preferably “abundance”); the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency (Vero thought we will enter a multipolar world with the $ claiming about 55% share); deregulation; inflation; and shrinking workforce participation.
There was an invitation-only 1955 Society reception at 6:30. Nice conversations, but the bar chosen was too warm for comfort as we were dressed up for formal night on the ship. Dinner was at a table without an anchoring speaker, although we did get Lindsay Craig, president of NRI. One of the guests was an executive at Google responsible for donating $millions to US conservative groups; I wasn’t aware they did that.
Tuesday, November 15 — San Juan, Puerto Rico
This is the first of two islands on our trip that I have not visited previously, despite a number of Caribbean trips and cruises over the years. We arrived in San Juan under rainy skies at 7 am. The skies soon cleared and I ventured out at 9:30, walking to two huge forts maintained by the National Park Service, starting with Castillo San Cristóbal, which was the second fort erected, over 150 years beginning in 1634. The largest European fortress in the Americas, San Cristóbal was built to protect the walled city and the first fort from overland attack, which had already happened by forces from England and Holland. It also has a number of World War II fortifications.
The second fort was a one-mile walk away along the waterfront and the remnants of the wall that once surrounded the city. Castillo San Felipe del Morro, “El Morro,” was primarily defending the harbor entrance. It was built from 1539 to 1790. I happened to be there at the same time as Charlie Cook and Dominic Pino. I walked back to the ship through Viejo (Old) San Juan, which had some colorful buildings, but nothing I found compelling other than the nondescript building that claims to be the birthplace of the Piña Colada in 1963.
After an afternoon of relaxing and a calzone from Alfredo’s Pizzeria, there was a single NR session from 4 to 5.
The Drift: Stopping America's Slide to Socialism with Kevin Hassett. Well, oops, Kevin couldn’t make the cruise, so instead we had an entertaining hour with Peter Travers and John O’Sullivan reminiscing about William F. Buckley, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan. Peter is the chairman of NRI among many other roles and accomplishments, but I knew him because we had an extended discussion at a reception of maps of the battle of Princeton (where he lives) and the 9 AD battle of Teutoburg Forest. The discussion on stage included visits to No. 10, the nature of WFB’s celebrity, the Falkland War, debates with Gore Vidal and James Baldwin, and NR’s frequent quarrels with all Republican presidents since Ike. An interesting tidbit I didn’t know: WFB was an Army pallbearer at FDR’s funeral!
I got back to my balcony just as we were sailing out of the harbor and managed to get some water-side shots of El Morro. Six pm brought another hosted reception at the Wake View bar and dinner tonight was unassigned seating.
Wednesday, November 16 — Amber Cove, Dominican Republic
We arrived around 8, in brilliant sunshine. Amber Cove is a totally tourist area about 6 miles from the northern coast city of Puerto Plato. (Nancy and actually visited PP in 2000 on another cruise, but I have zero recollection of what we saw or did there.) After a long walk on the pier, you arrive at a series of typical cruise port shops and bus stops for shore excursions. I got off the ship and walked around a bit, but since I did no shore excursions and the humidity was pretty high, I only stayed out about an hour, and then returned to the ship. If I had been here with Nancy, I might have signed up for a snorkeling trip, but I don’t like to do that sort of thing alone.
The NR sessions resumed at 3.
Why Debt Matters with Veronique de Rugy and Dominic Pino. This was one of the typical lamentations about the federal debt that could have been presented without significant modification five or ten years ago. What has changed a bit is the Republicans now seem to have no stomach to do anything about it, not just the Democrats.
Across the Pond with Charlie Cooke and John 0'Sullivan. I was expecting one of those cultural things, like Ho-Ho, two countries divided by a common language, but this was a somber discussion of the poor state of the British conservatives, including Liz Truss’s fall; long-term tension in the party regarding European integration, culminating in the “Brexit screwup”; and the Irish problem (John said that he expected them to never achieve unification, and also highlighted the dangers of Sinn Fein attaining control in Ireland, getting access to lots of intelligence info about the recent past).
The State of Black America with Bill Allen. Bill outlined his recent book of essays with this title. He expanded on the idea of the guardian state, which came to fruition in opposition to Reconstruction principles, treating blacks (he refuses to say African-Americans) as the equivalent of minors who have not been emancipated from their parents. He sees no distinctions between blacks and non-blacks (his term) as to the danger of the guardian state with its victim mentality. He regards the current DEI movement as the modern equivalent of featherbedding, as a form of rent seeking ideology that is toxic.
No cocktail reception tonight, just dinner at assigned seats again.
Thursday, November 17 — Grand Turk
This is the second island on this itinerary that I have not visited previously. If you look on a map, Turks and Caicos seems pretty big, but Grand Turk Island is quite tiny, to the southeast of the two large Caicos islands. We arrived at 7 to beautiful weather, including a brief gust of wind that blew my $80 Tilley hat, a favorite, right off the pier. It’s floatable, so it just sat there. Nearby crew members couldn’t help because they had no hooks or grabbers. They summoned the pier lifeguard, who said he couldn’t jump off the pier to get my hat, but he radioed his supervisor, who zoomed over on a jet ski and retrieved it! I walked off with a comfortably wet hat and the lifeguards with a $20 tip.
I walked along the beach and down the main island road to about halfway to the town, but didn’t see much and returned, netting about 7 miles in my walking account. Along the way I encountered some nice donkeys out loose, two grazing away unsupervised and one just walking down the side of the road; the latter must have been nervous with me coming up behind her because she crossed over to the other side. (I am not stupid enough to get close to the rear end of a wild donkey.) At the entrance to the airport there was a replica Apollo Mercury capsule on display. It was on Glenn Road and there was a broken sign about Friendship 7, so this commemorates a ground communication station here that monitored John Glenn’s flight, and I understand that Glenn and one other Mercury astronaut were taken here after splashdown. Back on the ship, I enjoyed my fourth pizza of the week at Alfredo’s.
The NR sessions resumed at 3.
State of the Academy with Bill Allen, John Hillen, and Jimmy Quinn. One theme of this discussion was “ruin of the university.” But more interesting was a quote originated by Marc Andreesen: “The modern university is a political madrassa married to a trade school married to a hedge fund married to a sports team married to an adult day care center married to a visa law firm.” Some of the topics covered were: academic freedom does not exactly equal freedom of speech; universities are in an arms race of amenities and turning into trade schools (where the trade being thought is actually leftist tasks like DEI); universities are replacing religion for leftists; niche traditional outlets like Hillsdale or the emerging U. Of Austin are fine, but we need to focus on turning around the big existing ones; we must be very careful to target our donations to the latter; a challenge is how to plug STEM students into a free society.
Pathology of Privileges with Veronique de Rugy and John Hillen. This was not about white privilege, but government-granted privileges to individuals and corporations. They can be called cronyism or corporate welfare, and hey corrupt the soul of capitalism. Sadly, most of the cash goes to the largest companies, most of which are able to obtain their own capital. They discussed the reverse case, where government withholds privileges as punishment, such as the recent actions against Disney by Florida; Vero decried such practices. A thorny exception to the free market needing to shun privileges is in the area of national security, and I couldn’t see that our two speakers agreed on a solution.
"Judge me by the color of my skin?" with Bill Allen and Dominic Pino. This talk was modified from its original intent because the previous Bill Allen session raised so many unanswered questions that they wanted to continue to discuss aspects of Bill’s background and open up the floor. He grew up in northern Florida (Amelia Island), attended Pepperdine when it was in South Central LA, as a pre-med, and was an early Republican, an activist for Goldwater’s campaign and Reagan’s gubernatorial. He was inspired by the great Harry Jaffa to focus on political philosophy and he spent some time today outlining Jaffa’s scholarship on Lincoln and the Founding. Unlike his friends Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, he had no great difficulties or obstacles thrown in his academic career. There were questions from the audience about why blacks and Jews vote in Democrat lockstep and his answer was pretty simple—the party that offers things is more attractive to groups than the party that wants to take things away.
Tonight is the second “formal night” of the week. (“Formal” has certainly changed for cruisers over the years. When Nancy and I started in the 80s, it was primarily tuxedos and the female equivalent. Now Princess says “Dress to Impress” and a number of guys don’t even wear a jacket, let alone a suit or tux. I have devolved to a sports jacket and tie.) There was no NRI reception and I was assigned to another speakerless table. After dinner there was an unhosted cigar smoker with cognac back at the Wake View pool.
Friday, November 18 — At Sea
Morning sessions were 9–11:30:
State of the Business Environment with Peter Travers and Dominic Pino. Peter went over the pros bc cons of the current environment. Cons: Fed interest rate manipulation is not permitting price discovery (for currency); there has been a tsunami or money unleashed; energy production has been suppressed; these have cause an atherosclerosis of the economy. Pros: the digital economy is driving productivity; the US dollar is rock solid, the most attractive currency in the world; the venture capital industry is strong and it allows non-linear advances, unlike conditions in more bureaucratic economies. There was a discussion of cryptocurrencies and Peter made an interesting point that a lot of its early success was driven by Chinese businessmen getting their money out of China relatively unseen.
Libertarians on the Right with Veronique de Rugy and Charlie Cooke. Charlie and Vero were on opposite sides on whether libertarians should align themselves with the GOP as the only realistic vehicle for advancing their programs. Charlie was yes, and in a general discussion about voting said that unless a candidate was a serial killer or something else disqualifying, he would select the one with whom he agreed at least 51% of the time. Vero said the the Republicans no longer even paid lip service to free market principles, and specifically cited Marco Rubio as someone she would never ever vote for. Regarding “national conservatism,” both said it was a disaster but Charlie pointed out that when you consider all of the Trump policies that conservatives agree with (other than tariffs), the remaining differences are essentially just stylistic.
Balancing Morality and Politics with John 0'Sullivan and Dominic Pino. They discussed the morality of lying and inflation and touched on the moral characters of Clinton, Boris Johnson, and Churchill.
Two afternoon “breakouts”:
Session #3: Durham Investigations with Andy McCarthy. Andy is way too detailed to record much of what he says, so ill be brief. He warned us not to be disappointed by the Durham report, suggesting that it was probably a stretch to appoint a prosecutor looking for federal crimes to go after political mischief. But he does assume that Merrick Garland will publish the final report, with few redactions. However, the critical involvement of the intelligence community will probably be black-holed. He is quite convinced that we’ll see Trump indictments and listed seven or eight active investigations that could bear fruit, including one new to me involving supposed abuse of the IRS to go after Comey and McCabe. During his talk it came over the news that Garland had appointed a special prosecutor for Trump. He answered questions about treatment of the January 6 pre-trial detainees; the unequal treatment of 1/6 versus the months of summer riots in 2020; his estimate of Garland as a Justice employee and later federal judge; the Comey/Hillary email affair; and Biden’s marijuana pardons (almost no federal prisoners are there because of marijuana usage).
Session #4: Challenges and Opportunities with Lindsay Craig and John Hillen. This was a big brainstorming session, broken down into tables of eight. We had to come up with challenges facing the conservative movement and then corresponding opportunities for what to do about them. There were dozens of each, which I did not record, but were all pretty sensible, albeit generic, like forming alliances with other groups. Then Lindsay outlined how NRI is attempting to address some of them.
There was another evening cocktail reception. I chose to skip the final main dining room meal at a speakerless table because these have been rather lengthy affairs and would interfere with my packing and getting the luggage out in the hall by 10 pm.
Saturday, November 19 — Fort Lauderdale and Flying Home
My only shore excursion of the trip was today, selected because I had ten hours before my flight home and I needed to keep busy. It had the snappy name of “Debark intracoastal waterway by boat and Las Olas Boulevard with Miami airport.” We had to assemble at 8:15. The process was quite efficient and I was off the ship in 15 minutes. US Immigration was super easy using face recognition—no passport, no vax card, no customs.
Our excursion bus took us downtown where we boarded a small boat called Carrie B, complete with a fake paddle wheel. We sailed east on the New River, past Millionaire’s Row, and onto the Intracoastal Waterway. South a little ways was the cruise port, where eight ships were docked and we looped around a bit. On the way back we saw lots more magnificent mansions and their large (or mega) yachts parked out front. We drove a big loop around Fort Lauderdale, including route A1A along the beach, and then stopped for 30 minutes for us to walk around trendy Las Olas Blvd. I got a panino in an Italian bakery (about 3X the cost of a similar one in Italy). Then we dropped a load of folks at FLL airport, four passengers returning to Sky Princess for their next cruise, and five of us to MIA.
The NRI cruise was excellent, with lots of interesting sessions and great people to talk to and wine and dine with. Too bad we didn’t have better election news to digest. I heard that a possible follow on cruise may be Alaska in the summer of 2024 and I will consider going.