JAMES PANERO, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, NEW CRITERION: I'm joining tonight as an anti-metrite. I am taking a stand against the metric system, the original system of global revolution and new world orders.
CARLSON: God bless you. And that's exactly what it is. Esperanto died, but the metric system continues. This weird, utopian inelegant, creepy system that we alone have resisted. How long can we hold out against it, would you say?
PANERO: Well today, as you mentioned, the United States stands nearly alone in the world in maintaining customary measures -- the inch, the pound, the foot, the mile -- and we should stand tall on our own two feet, I say, because it was customary measures that measured out the Industrial Revolution and customary measures that took us to the moon.
The metric system, meanwhile, is the product of the French Revolution. It was imposed at the business end of the guillotine.
CARLSON: So why are our leaders so anxious that we join the rest of the world in using, you know, Rob Speyer's favorite standard of measurement? I don't understand.
PANERO: Well, that's right, because it's assumed to be progressive, it's assumed that everyone has gotten behind it. Let me take you back to a bit of history, 1793, the height of the French Revolution, the height of the French terror, the chopine, pouce, pied du roi -- that's the foot of the king, the measurement of France replaced it with the meter.
Now all customary measures use man and his labor as the basis of its measurement. What's an acre? It's the amount of land that a yoke of oxen can till in one day. A mile comes from relay passes or 5,000 paces -- a thousand paces of five feet each. A meter is what? It's an abstract division of the globe, that isn't even accurate.
CARLSON: So it's completely made up out of nothing.
PANERO: It is totally made up and here is something else, even worse than overturning custom has been the meters in position of 10. It's a 10-size fits all mentality.
Now, here's how it gets crazy. The French Revolution went all in for 10. They tried to impose a 10-day week, a hundred hours, a hundred minutes, a hundred seconds. They had a whole revolutionary calendar. Now the metric system with its tens is what remains of their radicalism.
Now that sounds reasonable. Actually counting my 10 is pretty good. We have 10 fingers. You can count your money in 10. It's good for abstract calculations.
It's not great for measuring things in the real world. There's a reason why our measurement system is twelves, eights and sixties. It comes from ancient knowledge, ancient wisdom from the Romans, 12; from the Babylonians, 60. Why?
Because those numbers divide up evenly into thirds, fourths, halves and enables common people to make calculations and to measure their lives without complex arithmetic.
What's a third of a foot? It's four inches. What's a third of a meter? 33.3 something centimeters, it doesn't even add up. You see the problem right there?
CARLSON: I do. I do see the problem. And I've never heard it as eloquently expressed as you just did. I think you give a lot of us heart to keep fighting against the global tyranny of the metric system and bless you for that.
PANERO: Well, thank you. You know, our system is quaint, but it's ours. It connects us to our ancestors through cups, through teaspoons and tablespoons. I can still cook the recipes of my grandparents. And it's that connection to the past that the French Revolution and the revolutionaries have always tried to destroy.
CARLSON: Yes, I'll accept the kilometer when we accept the euro. Never. Thanks very much. Good to see you.
PANERO: All right, thank you, Tucker.
in any other year, this would be the stupidest thing you could ever read wrote:
