Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values Josh Lewis

In February of 2004 the late Charles Krauthammer delivered the keynote address at AEI’s Annual Dinner.  It was a year into the Iraqi war and several years into the War on Terror.  Krauthammer’s address—entitled Democratic Realism—lauded much of the Bush administration’s approach to the war, but offered some stern warnings on how the war and rebuilding efforts might go awry.  His warnings proved to be profoundly prescient as the following years led to the disillusionment of what broadly (and wrongly) became known as NeoCon foreign policy.
 
What had the Right missed in Krauthammer’s warnings?  What foreign policy approaches has the United States historically taken, and are any of them still relevant?  How might conservatism shed light on the most appropriate foreign policy we could pursue?  Joining Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is returning guest Michael Lucchese to think through the lessons learned in American foreign policy.
 
About Michael Lucchese
Michael Lucchese is the founder and CEO of Pipe Creek Consulting, a communications firm based in Washington, D.C., and a visiting scholar at the Liberty Fund.  Previously, he was a communications aide to U.S. Senator Ben Sasse.
 
He received a BA in American Studies at Hillsdale College and was a Hudson Institute Political Studies fellow and an alumnus of the Röpke-Wojtyła Fellowship at Catholic University of America's Busch School of Business.

Michael is an Associate Editor at Law & Liberty and a contributing editor to Providence.  His writings have also appeared in multiple publications, including the Washington Examiner and National Review, Engelsberg Ideas, and Public Discourse. Michael Lucchese is from Chicago, Illinois.
 
Michael was a previous guest on Saving Elephants in episode 143 – The Conservative Mind at 70 with Michael Lucchese
 

How might music point us to the good, the true, and the beautiful?  What is the purpose of music, and we are guilty of misusing it?  Why are we so obsessed with Taylor Swift?  Musician and conservative journalist Barney Quick joins Josh to discuss how conservatism might better inform our approach to music.  Also discussed are whether or not the elephants can be saved at all, how an owning-the-libs approach misses the spirit of conservatism, and whether or not Principles First has lost its first principles.
 
About Barney Quick
Barney Quick is a journalist whose work appears in magazine features.  He is a frequent contributor to Ordinary Times and a Senior Freelance Contributor for The Freeman News-Letter.  He has been maintaining his blog, Late in the Day, since 2012.  But you can find the bulk of his writings on his substack Precipice.
 
Barney is also a musician and jazz guitarist who could find lucrative gigs, but is well aware he’s chosen a musical life that isn’t going to pay a lot of bills.
 
Barney is an adjunct lecturer in jazz history and rock and roll history at his local community college.
 
You can follow Barney on Twitter @Penandguitar
 

After a stint of episodes taking deep dives into obscure topics, Josh returns to some conservative first-principles by inviting long-time friend of the podcast Cal Davenport on for a wide-ranging discussion on whether or not the fusionist consensus is truly dead, why all the energy in the Right seems to be going towards the NatCons, what’s leading to the rise of populism, how to repackage conservative ideas into digestible slogans, who belongs on the Mt. Rushmore of conservative thought, and how Edmund Burke factors into all of this.  Trigger warning for the Straussian listener: this episode gets a bit Burke-y.
 
About Cal Davenport
Cal Davenport is a veteran podcaster and writer.  He has written for The Wasington Examiner, RedState, The Resurgent and more.  He has worked in Congress, for political campaigns, for think tanks, and in political consulting.  Cal received his M.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Witten/Herdecke University.  You can follow Cal on Twitter @jcaldavenport
 

David Bahnsen returns to the podcast to discuss his latest book: Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life.  David holds a high view of work and, in an era where self-help gurus are teaching us how to work less to achieve a work/life balance, David wants to shift the paradigm to work/rest and celebrate the productive nature of our being.  Also discussed in this episode are what the church gets wrong about work, how each generation brings different challenges and advantages to work culture, universal basic income (UBI), whether the Marxist are right and work under a capitalist system is exploitation, and what the future of retirement might mean for working Americans.
 
About David Bahnsen
From David’s website:
 
David L. Bahnsen is the founder, Managing Partner, and Chief Investment Officer of The Bahnsen Group, a bi-coastal private wealth management firm with offices in Newport Beach, CA, New York City, Minneapolis, and Nashville managing over $3.5 billion in client assets.  David is consistently named as one of the top financial advisors in America by Barron’s, Forbes, and the Financial Times.  He is a frequent guest on CNBC, Bloomberg, and Fox Business and is a regular contributor to National Review and Forbes.  He has written his own political viewpoint blog for over a decade.
 
David serves on the Board of Directors for the National Review Institute and was the Vice-President of the Lincoln Club of Orange County for eight years.  He is a committed donor and activist across all spectrums of national, state, and local politics, and views the cause of Buckley and Reagan as the need of the hour.
 
David is passionate about opposition to crony capitalism, and has lectured and written for years about the need for pro-growth economic policy.  Every part of his political worldview stems from a desire to see greater freedom as a catalyst to greater human flourishing.
 
He is the author of the book, Crisis of Responsibility: Our Cultural Addiction to Blame and How You Can Cure It and his most recent book, There’s No Free Lunch: 250 Economic Truths.
 
His ultimate passions are his lovely wife of 18+ years, Joleen, their gorgeous and brilliant children, sons Mitchell and Graham, and daughter Sadie, and the life they’ve created together in Newport Beach, California.
 

Fusionism—the viewpoint advocated by the likes of William F. Buckley and Frank Meyer of order and liberty mutually reinforcing each other—has been the dominant form of conservatism in the United States for a generation.  In the era of Trump and the rise of nationalist populism on the Right, however, fusionism has steadily lost influence.  Should conservatives double down on what’s worked in the past?  Or is it time for a different approach that was advocated by some of the original critics of fusionism on the Right?
 
Joining Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is Jeffery Tyler Syck to argue for a conservative alternative to the fusionists and NatCons: humanist conservatism.  The humanist conservative is interested in preserving the diverse daily practices of human existence, as advocated by noteworthy thinkers like Michael Oakeshott, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Peter Viereck.  It’s a quitter, more moderated form of conservatism that—Syck believes—could offer an antidote to the excess of the nationalist populous radicalism ascendant on the Right.
 
About Jeffery Tyler Syck
From jtylersyck.com
 
Jeffery Tyler Syck is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pikeville.
 
Tyler’s academic research focuses on the development of American democracy and the history of political ideologies. He is the editor of the forthcoming book “A Republic of Virtue: The Political Essays of John Quincy Adams” and is completing a second book manuscript entitled “The Untold Origins of American Democracy.” This second book describes how the political debates between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson forever altered the republic created by the American founders – leaving behind an increasingly majoritarian democracy. His essays and articles on politics, philosophy, and history have appeared in several public facing publications including Law and Liberty, Persuasion, and the Louisville Courier-Journal. Tyler’s academic work has recently been published in the journal Pietas.
 
A native of Pike County Kentucky, Tyler’s political thought and writing are strongly shaped by the culture of Appalachia. With their tightly knit communities, the mountains of Appalachia have instilled in him a love of all things local. As such his writing most often advocates for a rejuvenation of local democracy and a renaissance of rural culture.
 
Tyler received a Doctor of Philosophy and Master of Arts in Government from the University of Virginia. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Government and History from Morehead State University where he graduated with honors.
 
You can follow Tyler on Twitter @tylersyck
 

What is the single most important virtue for a leader to possess?  What quality can make the run-of-the-mill politician into a statesman?  Is it integrity, communication skills, resilience, courage, empathy, or wisdom?  All of these things are important, of course, and if any are sufficiently lacking we wouldn’t call that a good leader.  But what would you say is the chief virtue?
 
Conservative thinkers from Burke to Kirk to Kristol to Strauss and even many of the ancient and medieval thinkers from Aristotle to Plato to St. Thomas Aquainis identified a single virtue as the chief “political” virtue.  A virtue so important that Edmund Burke referred to it as the god of this lower world.
 
What is that virtue?  That’s exactly what Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis explores in this solo episode.
 
Mentioned in the episode: Saul Alinsky’s interview on William F. Buckley’s Firing Line.