Conservative Conversations with ISI

In this episode:

• Johnny interviews Henry Mack, Senior Chancellor of Higher Education at the Florida Department of Education, live from ISI’s inaugural American Politics and Governance Summit, an academic conference for faculty and graduate students
• how Florida has been a leader in conservative education reform in promoting the Great Books and “educating for democratic citizenship”

Texts Mentioned:

• “Florida’s Higher Education Reforms” by Henry Mack and Daniel Kennelly
• The University in Ruins by Bill Readings
• Common Good Constitutionalism by Adrian Vermeule

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In This Episode:

• Timothy Goeglein joins the podcast to talk about his new book, Toward a More Perfect Union, about the failures of civics and history education in America, and what we can do to teach students about the Great American Story
• how Howard Zinn, the 1619 Project and other progressives purposely sought to erase American history and miseducate millions of American students through a neo-Marxist lens
• what parents, teachers, and communities can do to help recover a sense of the Great American Story, and revitalize the civic culture that has built and sustained America

Texts Mentioned:

• Toward a More Perfect Union by Timothy S. Goeglein
• U.S. Citizenship Test
• The Shaping of the American Mind ISI study on civic knowledge
• The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones
• The 1776 Report
• Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
• Cyropaedia: The Education of Cyrus by Xenophon
• Gettsyburg movie
• Gods and Generals movie
• John Adams mini-series
• “The End of the English Major” in New Yorker

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In This Episode:

• Kevin Gutzman, professor of History at Western Connecticut State University, joins the podcast to discuss the presidencies of Democratic-Republican presidents Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe
• how the states and sectionalism played an important role in the Early Republic, and why Jefferson and his successors emphasized the importance of state’s rights and decentralized power
• the key events during the presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe that kick off Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny

Texts Mentioned:

• The Jeffersonians: The Visionary Presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe by Kevin Gutzman
• James Madison and the Making of America by Kevin Gutzman
• First Inaugural Address by Thomas Jefferson
• Letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 15 February, 1791
• “Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank” by Alexander Hamilton
• “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” pamphlet by Thomas Jefferson
• James Madison’s Notes of the Constitutional Convention from June 18, 1787
• Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Robert Livingston, 18 April, 1802
• Letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Dickinson, 9 August, 1803
• Proposed Amendment to the Constitution Regarding Louisiana by James Madison
• Trans-Continental Treaty of 1819 
• Monroe Doctrine
• Calhoun: American Heretic by Robert Elder
• Diary of John Quincy Adams

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In this episode:

•  Dan McCarthy gives a lecture on the various elements of the conservative movement to ISI’s staff at our campus in Wilmington, DE
• a historical account of the American revolution and its implications for American conservatism
• why conservatives need to see through “both eyes” of history and ideas

Texts Mentioned:

• Second Treatise of Government by John Locke
• Natural Right and History by Leo Strauss
• The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk
• The Quest for Community by Robert Nisbet
• Crisis of the House Divided by Harry V. Jaffa
• “Is Liberalism Worth Saving?” symposium in Harper’s Magazine
• Roots of American Order by Russell Kirk
• Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
• The Superfluous Men by Robert Crunden
• The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams
• The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
• Memoirs of A Superfluous Man by Alfred Jay Nock
• The Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset
• The Liberal Tradition in America by Louis Hartz
• The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 by George Nash
• The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek
• The Constitution of Liberty by Friedrich Hayek
• Witness by Whittaker Chambers
• Containment or Liberation?  by James Burnham
• The Emerging Republican Majority by Kevin Phillips
• The Virtue of Nationalism by Yoram Hazony

In This Episode:

• Adam Hoffman, a writer for the Princeton Tory, joins the podcast to discuss his recent piece in the New York Times about how the leftist political culture on college campuses has sparked a reactionary shift for conservative students
• how college administrations are not only actively pushing a progressive social agenda, but also seeking to exclude conservative counter-opinions in the classroom and through student life programs
• how the size of university endowments has untethered the universities from traditional channels of accountability, and what can be done to rein in woke campus culture 

Texts Mentioned:

• “My Liberal Campus is Pushing Freethinkers to the Right” by Adam Hoffman
• “Boston College professor assigns students to make their own 'fursonas,' has furries come to class” by Kassy Dillon
• “Toward a Party of the State” by Gladden Pappin
• “The End of the English Major” by Nathan Heller
• “Do Ideas Have Consequences? Intellectual History and Conservative Strategy" video by Sam Goldman
• “Princeton University is the World’s First Perpetual Motion Machine” by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Princeton Tory, an ISI-sponsored Collegiate Network newspaper
• The Kalven Report

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In This Episode:

• William Ruger joins the podcast to discuss the war between Russia and Ukraine, how it came to be, and how America should respond
• why conservatives should take a “grand strategy” approach to foreign policy, global affairs, and the national interest
• how George Washington’s “Farewell Address” strikes the right balance for American foreign policy, and where we have departed from it today

Texts Mentioned:

• “Farewell Address" by George Washington
• Jay’s Treaty
• “The Conquest of the United States by Spain” by William Graham Sumner
• Madeleine Albright Interview with Matt Lauer
• “How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline” by Seymour Hersh
• A Student’s Guide to International Relations by Angelo Codevilla
• Monroe Doctrine
• The Tragedy of US Foreign Policy by Walter McDougall
• The Tragedy of Great Power Politics by John Mearsheimer
• Responsible Statecraft magazine

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In This Episode:

• Mark Tooley, President of the Institute for Religion and Democracy, joins the podcast to discuss “The New Whiggery,” the IRD’s new fellowship on the principles of classical liberalism and the American Founding
• what a Christian realism approach to foreign policy looks like
• how classical liberalism differs from conservatism, and why some right-leaning thinkers like Hayek wanted to eschew the term “conservative”

Texts Mentioned:

• Providence Magazine
• Plough Magazine
• The New Whiggery Fellowship
• “Thomas Aquinas, The First Whig” by Michael Novak
• The Englishman and His History by Herbert Butterfield
• “Why I Am Not a Conservative” by F.A. Hayek
• The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism by Michael Novak
• God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of Academic Freedom by William F. Buckley, Jr.
• “The New Whiggery” by Mark Tooley
• The Roots of American Order by Russell Kirk

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In This Episode:

• Chris Buskirk joins the podcast to talk about his new book, America and the Art of the Possible, about restoring “national vitality” and re-sparking the risk-taking, adventurous spirit that built America
• how financialization operates in the modern American economy and creates mismatched incentives that undermine widespread American prosperity
• why conservatism should focus less on ideological constructs and more on being practical and getting conservative outcomes like stronger family formation, higher life expectancy, and increasing total factor productivity

Texts Mentioned:

• America and the Art of the Possible: Restoring National Vitality in an Age of Decay by Chris Buskirk
• American Greatness: How Conservatism, Inc. Missed the 2016 Election and What the Establishment Needs to Learn by Chris Buskirk
• “Our Mission Statement” by William F. Buckley Jr.
• “I Had to Guard an Empty Room: The Rise of the Pointless Job” by David Graeber
• Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber

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In This Episode:

• Thomas West joins the podcast to discuss the political theory of the American Founding and its reliance on natural law and natural rights
• why students of the American Founding must read more public laws and state laws and constitutions to fully understand the Founding era
• how the Founders fit liberty and equality together in a truly coherent way 

Texts Mentioned:

• The Political Theory of the American Founding  by Thomas West
• The Declaration of Independence
• Virginia Declaration of Rights
• Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class and Justice in the Origins of America by Thomas West
• The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay
• The Constitution
• The Real American Founding: A Conversation course with David Azerrad and Thomas West

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 In This Episode:

• Gladden Pappin joins the podcast to discuss the conditions in modern Western political culture that have given rise to post-liberalism on the Right
• how Hungary draws on often-neglected parts of the Western political tradition as inspiration for their political order
• why the conservative movement needs to focus on family policy as a political lodestar in the post-Roe era

Texts Mentioned:

• Postliberal Order substack
• “Return to Normalcy” by Gladden Pappin
• “Make Birth Free” by Catherine Glenn Foster and Kristen Day
• Make Birth Free  white paper by Americans United for Life
• “Affirming the American Family” by Gladden Pappin and Maria Molla
• American Affairs journal
• Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered by Russell Kirk
• What is Conservatism? edited by Frank Meyer

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