JWI Presents: Anchoring Truths Podcast James Wilson Institute

2020 represented an inflection point for what some refer to as the Marxist "long march through the institutions." However, this inflection point was not spontaneous. Rather, according to our Anchoring Truths Podcast guest Mike Gonzalez, Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, it was evidence of what he and his co-author call NextGen Marxism. We discuss how this NextGen Marxism arose, what it means for how the Left operates, what it portends for this coming summer's Democratic National Convention, and any hopeful signs it may be abating.

Buy NextGen Marxism here

Follow Mike Gonzalez on X.com/Twitter here

Mike Gonzalez, the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, writes on critical race theory, identity politics, diversity, multiculturalism, assimilation and nationalism, as well as foreign policy in general. He spent close to 20 years as a journalist, 15 of them reporting from Europe, Asia and Latin America. He left journalism to join the administration of President George W. Bush, where he was speechwriter for Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox before moving on to the State Department’s European Bureau.

Gonzalez, who joined Heritage in March 2009, became a Senior Fellow in June 2014 and a chaired fellow in 2019. He is a widely experienced writer and public speaker. He has written for National Affairs, The American Interest, Foreign Policy, The Claremont Review of Books, City Journal, Quillette, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time.com, The Hill, Forbes.com, USA Today, The Guardian, The National Interest, The Daily Signal, National Review and others. Gonzalez has appeared on Fox, MSNBC, PBS, the BBC, CNBC, NPR, C-SPAN, The Voice of America, Television Española, Canal Plus, as well as many other networks and stations in the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Gonzalez got his first regular reporting beat in 1981, covering high school sports for one summer for The Boston Herald. He went to work for Agence France-Presse in 1987, reporting from around the globe for the news agency for six years, including covering the war in Afghanistan, where he traveled with the Mujahedeen in the late 1980s. In his first foreign assignment, in Panama in 1987, he was arrested, jailed overnight and expelled by the dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega.

After taking off two years to earn a master's in Business Administration from Columbia Business School, he next logged 11 years with The Wall Street Journal, writing a column on the stock market in New York before being posted to Hong Kong in 1995 as Deputy Editor of the editorial pages of the newspaper’s Asia edition. Between 1998 and 2003, he served in the same capacity for the European edition in Brussels, before returning to Hong Kong as chief editorial page editor. 

Gonzalez holds a bachelor’s degree in Communications from Boston’s Emerson College, and a master's in Business Administration from Columbia Business School.

Arabella Advisors is the largest network advising and steering billions of dollars to left-of-center causes. All but a tiny percentage of Americans is unaware of its influence. Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, and author of a new book about Arabella, joins host Garrett Snedeker to explore what is Arabella and how it drives so much of what happens on the Left, particularly for progressives in the legal sphere through more well-known initiatives such as Demand Justice and Fix the Court.


Scott Walter is president of Capital Research Center. He served in the George W. Bush Administration as Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and was vice president at the Philanthropy Roundtable, editing Philanthropy magazine and producing donor guidebooks on assistance to the poor, school reform, public policy research, and other topics. Walter has written for and been quoted in such outlets as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Chronicle of Philanthropy. A Georgetown graduate (where he studied under Hadley Arkes), he served as a senior fellow at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and as senior editor of AEI’s flagship publication. He lives in Virginia with his wife and four children.

Buy the book here.

Learn more about Capital Research Center and Mr. Walter here.

Dr. Jay Richards, author of Fight the Good Fight, joins host Garrett Snedeker for a spirited discussion of how to fight the culture war in 21st century America. Dr. Richards is
the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, Executive Editor of The Stream, Assistant Research Professor in the Busch School of Business and Fellow of the Institute for Human Ecology at The Catholic University of America.

Buy the book here

Follow Dr. Richards here on Twitter

Statistics on marriage and family formation in modern America seem to get worse year after year. Why is this the case, and what can be done about it? Prominent sociologist Brad Wilcox joins host Garrett Snedeker for a in-depth discussion of Wilcox's new book "Get Married." The book describes why America’s most fundamental institution matters for our civilization more than ever. And for men and women looking to establish strong, stable, and happy unions for themselves and their children.

Brad Wilcox is a professor of sociology and the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, the Future of Freedom Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He studies marital quality; marital stability; and the impact of strong and stable marriages upon men, women, and children. The author and editor of six books, Wilcox has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, and National Review, as well as for scientific journals such as the American Sociological Review and the Journal of Marriage and Family. A Connecticut native, he now lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife and family.

Purchase the book here.

Learn more about the Institute for Family Studies.

JWI Founder & Co-Director Hadley Arkes celebrates the advent and arrival of new JWI Co-Director Gerry Bradley at a conference JWI co-hosted with First Liberty Institute in March 2024. Prof. Arkes details and praises Prof. Bradley's intellectual contributions over a lifetime of teaching constitutional law.

Popular columnist, radio host, lawyer, and legal commentator Josh Hammer returns to the Anchoring Truths Podcast to discuss his latest piece of legal scholarship in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Common Good Originalism and Common Good Constitutionalism: a Convergence? Host Garrett Snedeker, who has co-written several times with Hammer, draws Hammer out on debates animating legal conservatism such as originalism, legal positivism, and the moral ground of law.

Hammer is the Senior Editor-at-Large of Newsweek, where he also hosts "The Josh Hammer Show" podcast, "America on Trial" podcast, a syndicated radio show, and writes a weekly newsletter, "The Josh Hammer Report."

Hammer is also a syndicated columnist through Creators Syndicate, host of the "America on Trial" podcast for The First, a fellow at the Edmund Burke Foundation and the Palm Beach Freedom Institute, and a popular campus speaker. He was a John Marshall Fellow with the Claremont Institute.

Prior to Newsweek, Hammer previously worked as an editor and writer at a different publication, and before that he practiced law as an attorney and clerked for Judge James Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He is a graduate of Duke University and the University of Chicago Law School. In addition to Newsweek, Josh has been published by dozens of other leading outlets, both lay and academic.

Finally, Hammer was a 2021 James Wilson Fellow and currently the Contributing Editor of Anchoring Truths.

READ: Common Good Constitutionalism and Common Good Originalism: a Convergence?

LISTEN: Josh Hammer Show, America on Trial