Host Scot Bertram talks with:

Seth Barron, editorial board member at the New York Post, who explains how the Left is moving power away from the people and into the hands of an administrative class and discusses his new book Weaponized: The Left’s Capture and Destruction of America’s Sacred Institutions.

And Elizabeth Fredericks, associate professor of English at Hillsdale College, begins a series on the British literature of World War I. This week, she focuses on the emotional tone of British writing at the start of the war. 

From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true and the beautiful are taught, nurtured and honored. This is the radio free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.00:25S2

Think globally. Act locally. This was very popular in the 90s with the environmental movement, and it sounds kind of intriguing at first. I propose that people think locally and act locally.00:38S3

This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. That was Seth Barron, author of the recent book Weaponized The Left’s Capture and Destruction of America’s Sacred Institutions. We talk in depth with Seth about his book today and later on, Elizabeth Fredericks from Hillsdale’s English department joins us. She’ll begin a brief series on British literature of World War One. First, we’re joined by Seth Barron. He is an editorial board member at the New York Post reporter and editor. And he’s also the author of the recent book Weaponized The Left’s Capture and Destruction of America’s Sacred Institutions. Seth, thanks so much for joining us.01:24S2

Oh, thank you for having me on. It’s a pleasure.01:26S3

So the title of the book is weaponized, and we’ve heard the term weaponization a lot more recently than, say, 15, 20 years ago. What do you mean by weaponization, as you use the phrase throughout the book?01:39S2

Well, I’m looking at the ways in which certain key institutions in America, and I’m talking about civics. I’m talking about education, policing, and housing, these key institutions that really define the way Americans live. They’ve been infiltrated, subverted, and turned against the people through a weaponization of, I guess, you know, sort of our good nature and our sense of of what’s right. Okay. For instance, take the term the American Dream. Uh, this used to refer to how Americans saw their lives in regard to how their children would would grow up. You know, Americans sought to provide for their kids, get a house, take vacations, and maybe their kids would do better than they did. But at some point, a dream came to mean not something that Americans aspired to, but something that foreigners had. Americans no longer were participants in the American dream. The American dream was something that we were that we owed to non non-Americans, to people abroad, all of whom had a right to it. So by twisting this phrase, they were able to, you know, in my thesis is to change the way we view citizenship and make it that we no longer really have the right to determine who comes here, and that it’s essentially a global, a global right.03:08S3

And immigration citizenship is one of the four main topics in the book weaponized. We’re concerned about the meaning of citizenship and especially about assimilation to when a country stops expecting newcomers to assimilate into a common national culture. What do we lose?03:27S2

I mean, we lose any sense of of unity. We lose the sense of the nation as a nation. It just becomes a place for people to come and hang their hat like a clearinghouse. It becomes a place where foreigners come in and they say, well, we don’t really like the nation, but we like what you’ve done with the place. We think we’ll turn it into something else. So you wind up with society of disconnected people, people who are very low trust in one another. You basically wind up with something that’s not really quite a nation anymore, so much as it is just like an like a, like an entrepot, like a, like a collection of people who are in a place for commercial reasons and, and nothing else.04:13S3

Seth Barron the book is weaponized left the left’s capture and destruction of America’s sacred institutions citizenship, policing, housing, education. Those are the four quadrants you write about and weaponized, and you argue early. If you control the operation of those institutions, you’re in a pretty good spot to control the country. How why did you identify those four places as being the centralized place to turn our focus?04:39S2

Well, when I started thinking about the country in general, and I wanted to write a book about, you know, what I saw the problems that were happening mainly from the left. It occurred to me that, okay, the way America was, was founded is the idea that the people are sovereign and all power stems from the people, not from a king, not from the top, but from the people whom God has invested self-evidently with liberty and, you know, natural rights of self-government, basically. And so in the American system, power derives from the bottom and through the communities and then up to the states and then to the country. Well, this drives the left crazy because they have a universal vision that they want to impose everywhere all at once. So it’s annoying to them to have to consult every different district, every different community, and gain consensus that way. They would prefer just to, you know, they have their diktats and they’d like to just impose them from the top. So it seemed that what was happening was that power was being lifted from the bottom and away from the people and, and raised up to these unaccountable levels like people who have no accountability to, to the, to, to the base. Essentially, an expert class should rule everything. And just to go back to citizenship for a second, like it occurred to me the same way that people are not, you don’t really have a say over who comes to America. Well, I was looking at housing and zoning and the way in which how decisions about what communities should look like are being taken away from zoning boards and the community and lifted up into like the state level where some expert could say, yes, you have to build affordable housing here. You have to allow quadruplexes here, you have to build a, you know, an apartment building near the transit line. And so basically what I saw was the same thing happening, which is that the people who live in a place no longer get to decide what happens there. So I saw it happening at the top at such a broad level, like the borders and citizenship. And then at this micro level, like what happens in neighborhoods. And it occurred to me, yeah, this is the problem. The left wants to capture all the power and they do it by, um, you know, essentially, you know, here’s the thing, I don’t know if you’ve heard this phrase before, think globally, act locally. This was very popular in the 90s with the environmental movement. And it sounds kind of intriguing at first. It’s like, oh yeah, we should think globally, you know, have like a general vision of things and then act locally. But what this really means is don’t trust the evidence of your own senses and your own capacity to think. We have experts over here who’ve done the thinking for you. They’ve got the big picture. So they’re going to impose their thought. And you just think globally, meaning you, you, you adopt whatever construct they have. So. Oh, well, we can’t use plastic straws because those destroy the environment. We have to, you know, get rid of our gas stoves because, uh, that releases carbon and eventually seeds will drown Florida. This doesn’t necessarily with the reality, you see, but they’ve duped everybody in a sense to, to take on this, this vision. So I propose that people like think locally and act locally. And I think that’s the real American. That’s the American spirit that we’ve kind of lost.08:23S3

Seth Barron is with us. The book weaponized the left’s capture and destruction of America’s sacred institutions. On policing, you point out that those who advocate for defunding the police always have this picture of some harmonious society that emerges afterwards, not not one of lawlessness. And there’s this discussion of root causes of crime. And the root causes for our friends on the left. Never are are. going back to the actual person committing the crime. When they talk about defunding and the society that emerges without police, are they, in a sense, saying that police are the root cause of crime in our cities?09:03S2

Well, that is I think that’s a thesis that goes back to like the the 19th century with certain radical thinkers who said, yes, the, the cause of laws or the idea being that laws are put in place in order to protect capital and to protect the elite. And that’s the and then the police are there to essentially just carry that out. And the idea being like, like, as Zoran Mamdani has said, violence is just a construct. The idea of. So he would say that having landlords is a form of violence. Having prisons is a form of violence. Having, you know, punishment as we know it is violence. These are all means of of using state power to control people. So what they would like to do is, well, they say what they’d like to do is to undo these, these strictures and these, these modes of state power and institutional control and come up with a, I don’t know, a more humane society. I think what they really are mad about is the idea that that the police are a they are a recipient of public taxes, public revenue that they don’t. The left actually cannot control. So I think they basically would like to sort of nationalize the police, basically bring the police under their umbrella the same way they did for the teachers and for, you know, certain other public sector groups. But yeah, I mean, they do they do make a very radical argument that that, that policing is, you know, essentially, they say it developed evolved out of slave catching practice in the 1850s or so, where they would deputize people to go out and find slaves and catch them. They see the modern police department as directly, directly connected to to the to the old slave catchers. That’s what police are. They’re just people out to enforce modern day slavery.11:07S3

That’s Seth Barron. His new book, weaponized the left’s Capture and destruction of America’s sacred institutions will continue with Seth in just a moment. First. You might have seen. And judging by the box office, many have seen the new Odyssey feature film. Well, here at Hillsdale College, we can fill in the blanks. We can tell you what you might have missed. We can give you the joy and satisfaction of reading The Odyssey, and we do that through our Hillsdale College online course, The Odyssey, with Doctor Ben Whalen. He’s your teacher. Join him for 12 lectures on the Odyssey. Find it at hillsdale.edu/course. You’ll explore themes of love, marriage, kingship, duty, piety, encounter, Homer’s epic, which displays the full human experience. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ve got to take the online course, The Odyssey with Doctor Ben Whalen. hillsdale.edu/course. hillsdale.edu/ewcourse. For the Odyssey, we continue with Seth Barron. His recent book weaponized the left’s capture and destruction of America’s sacred institutions. Seth, we see this time and again when we have some of these far progressive, far left progressive candidates, socialist candidates, DSA candidates who are are talking about defunding the police, that their support does not come largely from the communities that these policies affect. How does the argument and ideology survive when the consequences are hurting the intended beneficiaries? When the beneficiaries, quote unquote, don’t even support the policies?12:56S2

You know, that’s a great question. And, you know, for instance, you know, you you see that the, the first victims of like defunding the police or, or lessening policing are people in like black communities because they’re, they have the highest rates of crime and thus the highest rates of crime victimization. You know, there’s this great trick on the left where they can just say, well, we haven’t done it right. We didn’t implement it correctly. There wasn’t enough funding. There was too much resistance from the other side. So we just have to keep trying. I mean, it’s the same thing you hear when they say when they explain why socialism is a failure everywhere it’s tried. Well, it hasn’t really been tried. It’s always been it’s always been hurt by American intervention, by sanctions. So sabotage. So we just have to keep going. Um, it’s a wonderful trick they have built into it that they can never be seen to fail. It’s always just a question of doubling down. So, you know, and then you can just convince your followers that that’s the problem. Well, you know, we just have to keep going, comrades. Uh, so yeah, this has been going on for a long time, but it seems to keep working, which is remarkable.14:11S3

Weaponized is the book The Left’s Capture and Destruction of America’s Sacred institution. Seth Barron is the author. On housing, you argue that fair housing or affordable housing is a sneaky way for the left to wage war on the suburbs. Why do they hate the suburbs and what do they want to do about it?14:31S2

The left hates the suburbs, has hated the suburbs for a long time. They see the suburbs well, they formulate. They see the suburbs as a source of conformity. Uh, Of conservativism and essentially racism. Thesis of the left goes that. Cities are where people like where real human life and real human interaction takes place. And the idea being that the people in control hated this. So they decided to build the highway system in order to sell cars and funnel white people out into segregated suburbs where they could all be regimented and routinized and, you know, essentially factory produced into these idealized robots. Now, of course, this is a nonsensical point of view. I’m just explaining what they believe. And according to this thesis, the cities remain the source of all value and wealth creation. And the suburbs just exploit the cities and extract all the wealth. And this is something that the Brookings Institution even recently said, that suburbs extract wealth from the cities, even though, you know, the mechanism by which that happens is never made clear. So and then, you know, what we’ve wound up with are cities that are largely Democrat many times that’s, you know, very there’s a lot of crime, there’s a lot of poverty. And this drives the left crazy because they would like to. Ideally they would they basically want to annex the suburbs. This was Obama’s vision, a regionalization of urban areas to connect the cities and the suburbs around them, to make the suburbs take on the burden of providing for the poor people who live in the city, namely through affordable housing. And this is the affirmatively, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, which was part of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, and extending that to mean economic equality to to to achieve economic Integration. So the idea being that you have to force suburbs to take on the burden of building affordable housing and affordable in this in this instance, just means subsidized. That’s a tricky word switch they’ve used to. I mean, of course, everybody wants to have an affordable house, but technically speaking, any house that someone lives in is affordable to them. What they what they mean by affordable is subsidized. So this is kind of why they hate the suburbs. Suburbs. Suburbs are inhabited by people who have an investment in the community they own. There’s more home ownership, right. And home owners are very conservative. They’re very attuned to home to the value of their homes. This is their major asset. And the left hates this. They call it the home voter. People whose voting patterns are closely tied to how they perceive policies will affect the value of their homes. So undoing this power is, is key to the left’s vision, and that’s why they’ve changed zoning laws to make it that the state can determine what happens in your community. Why Obama and Biden would sue communities if they didn’t have enough subsidized housing for poor people. It’s a very long campaign they’ve been waging, and it’s somewhat effective. Yeah. And so even though suburbs are where most of the economic growth is happening in America today, that’s what they don’t want to admit. It’s not really happening in the cities. And more than that, this idea that the suburbs are where the white people live and the cities are where the black and brown people live, is also false. More, I think a majority of the minority population lives in suburbs. That’s where all of the population growth is happening. So it’s an outdated model that they’re they’re addicted to. And then you wind up with leftists flocking to, to cities like in New York, voting for people like Mamdani. And they have this vision of the world where everyone should live in tightly dense like conurbations. Suburbs should be essentially made illegal. And, you know, there’s a social control element to it. People in the cities tend to be, you know, it’s hard to raise a family in a city, so there’s less family formation, etc., etc.. So this is the vision.19:02S3

On education set that might be, uh, one of the four that has most buy in or most acceptance that there has been a capture and a change, but it’s also different because there are alternative charter schools and private schools and even home schooling. Does that mean that education is the area, perhaps where institutional capture can be reversed most quickly?19:25S2

You know, that’s a great question, and I do see it that way a little bit. I don’t necessarily see that it can be reversed most quickly, but I see it as a model action because this is one place where the teachers unions are the most powerful unions in the country. They’re the largest unions, and they put more money into politics than any other entity, I believe billions, billions of dollars. This is all taxpayer money. Of course, taxpayer money that goes into the schools goes to the teachers unions, who have the power to negotiate their contract and have the power to, you know, affect the political system by putting money into it. So, yes, and they’ve taken it over. But like you said, people have pushed back. And so there are these movements like the charter school movement, which is incredibly popular at, you know, at, at the roots, homeschooling, private education. They, the left wants to destroy all of these, these alternatives, but they’ve been unable to. Mhm. And all of this happens at just with people operating locally. Um, and that I again, like this whole think globally act locally. I really see this as the vision. That’s how charter schools got going. That’s how homeschool homeschooling networks evolved. So I see I see education and the pushback against the relentless institutional capture by the left as one, you know, as a model for how how the people can start to take back America.20:58S3

Seth Barron with us. The book is weaponized. Seth, if this is institutional, the problems are institutional in these areas rather than electoral. What difference does winning elections make? How much can winning elections even begin to fix or address the problem?21:15S2

Winning elections is great. Okay. We need to win elections. But we also have to recognize the way the left operates. The left sees politics as something that happens every day. The right sees politics, like you said, as like the midterms. And then every four years, the elections. The right has a lot of things going on in their day. They have jobs, they have families, they have religion. They have hobbies. For the left, politics is their religion. Politics is their love life. Politics is their circle of social circle. Politics, in many cases is their job because they work in the nonprofit or the government sector. So we have to take on their model, which is relentlessly being involved in politics. I mean, it’s unfortunate that that’s what it comes to because nobody really wants to do that. People want to hang out with their friends at church and with their family and, you know, do projects on the weekends and so forth. But we have to we have to recognize that for the left, they’re always engaged in politics. And then elections are kind of like, you know, one of the fruits winning elections is one of the fruits of their hard work. Um, So elections, we definitely need to win elections. Absolutely. But we have to recognize that politics is a much larger process, and it really requires a certain awakening that the left is ahead of us on this. They’re they’re very, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re always working. Like when we get up, they’ve been doing, you know, they’re, they’re sitting at the edge of the bed waiting for us to, um, they’ve already, you know, done, done push ups all night while we’ve been sleeping, basically.23:03S3

Seth Barron is on the editorial board at the New York Post. You can find him writing elsewhere and editing places, too. The new book weaponized the left’s capture and destruction of America’s sacred institutions. Seth, thanks so much for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.23:19S2

It’s been such a pleasure. Thank you for having me on.23:21S3

Up next, Doctor Elizabeth Fredericks, associate professor of English here at Hillsdale College, returns to begin a brief series on British literature of World War One. I’m Scott Bertram. This is the radio free Hillsdale Hour. Welcome back to the radio free Hillsdale Hour. I’m Scott Bertram. Be sure to follow us on X at Hillsdale Radio and Hillsdale College Podcast Network at h c. We’re joined by Doctor Elizabeth Fredericks, associate professor of English here at Hillsdale College. Doctor Fredericks, thanks for returning.24:10S4

Thanks for having me.24:12S3

Starting a brief series here about a very interesting course that you just completed, teaching British literature of World War One. And it’s great because we have a little bit of of cross-pollination here, both little literature, a little bit of history coming through that literature as well. And we start with something that I call the war. They thought they were fighting as World War One begins in 1914. What’s the emotional tone that’s dominating British writing and what’s driving it?24:42S4

Yeah. So the tone is, is a time of change. The poets overall are sometimes resisting the lingering traces of the Victorian era. Modernism is still in its very early stages and is mostly a fringe avant garde movement. And so the poets who are trying to innovate away from the Victorian period are actually still very formal poets. A lot of their work is very pastoral, bucolic, sometimes a kind of rehashed romanticism. They’re sometimes called the Georgian poets. After some anthologies that a number of them appeared in. And the tone of some of the poetry, including by other poets who are sort of lingering major figures that carry over from the romantic period, like Rudyard Kipling. There’s a real desire for some kind of new test of courage or national identity. There’s a real hunger to prove themselves. The last war that Britain had really been in was the Boer War, which of course had very mixed results and was very far away from home. So you see, you see this desire to kind of push and re-establish and establish masculinity and patriotism. And alongside it, then you also have this, like I said, pastoral, bucolic, romantic sort of tone of the English countryside. It’s very idyllic in a lot of ways. So those are sort of kind of some of the dominant strains or modes that you see in that poetry in 1914, even before the war. And then especially once the war begins, you have major poets like Robert Graves, Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon and D H. Lawrence are all kind of very significant younger poets at this particular point in time. And they are, as I mentioned, also very formal poets, too. They’re writing in very traditional meters and forms. Modernism hasn’t made its inroads yet. Imagism and futurism are these very avant garde movements that are read only by very small groups, and are also seen as having too much connection to either Europe or America to really be English enough to sort of satisfy the desire at this point in time.26:37S3

World War One has been called the most literary war. Do you think that’s right? And maybe a little bit here, too, as to how you conceive the course while you’re interested in teaching this?26:48S4

Yeah. So one way I conceived the course was that I was always teaching around this period in other courses that I taught. So I regularly teach a course on Victorian and modern British literature. We always do a day on the World War One poets. We always do THETS Eliot’s The Wasteland as well. And I always do Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. And all of these works have their either very explicit connection to the wars. In the case of the World War One poets, we focus primarily on Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. There especially. But to. The Lighthouse also has in that famous time passes sequence in the middle. Some very direct references to the war and war poetry. And of course, one way to look at T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland is that it’s this poet of post-war England and post-war London in particular. So those were things that I just I really loved them. I really enjoyed them. I also taught a course on the Bloomsbury Group. These are all writers who lived through the war. They mostly don’t fight in it, but they do engage in it in different ways. E.M. Forster, for instance, works in the National Gallery during the time period in which London is actually on the receiving end of some air raids and is putting like the best masterpieces in storage and putting the third rate masterpieces on the walls, which he said felt very appropriate. That’s the correct company for him is the third rate masterpieces. And he also then worked in the Mediterranean identifying, uh, soldiers who were missing in action among the wounded. So you have all these connections. And I also really love some of the more recent literature that’s come out about World War One by Pat Barker and Itchy and Hutchinson and some other writers. And so I was just going, I really just want to pull this all together into one class and see what it’s like to go through it. The big challenge of producing the class actually became how to order it, because the works are not published in the same order as the time periods they deal with. And so if we read by chronological order, we would read, for instance, the Wasteland, which is about post-war London, before we read something like David Jones’s in Parenthesis, which is about his actual time fighting in the war. And so he’d be constantly bouncing around time wise. And so I actually, and this went very much against my instincts in some ways organized the course according to the time period in which the works were set, rather than the time in which they were published, in order to give us a more coherent reading experience. But I’ve never had a course where that was such a problem to kind of grapple with. So yeah, so going back to World War One as the most literary war, I think in a lot of ways it is right. One, and it’s part of this is some sociological things that are going on. You have the educational changes of the Victorian era that have caused this explosion in popular literacy, as well as the rapid increase from the same time period in print and periodical culture, which just means people are accustomed to reading. And also more and more people are accustomed to writing. So you have more and more working class writers or lower middle class writers, as opposed to the production of literary material being the work of the literary elite or the cultural elite. And so you have this army where people are just so accustomed to reading and writing, and that makes it very easy for them to produce work and also to consume work, whether that’s about the war or other things. A lot of what they’re reading in the trenches is actually not war material as well, which is really fascinating. Another interesting effect of this being a literary war is that because the Western Front is so close to home, it is incredibly easy for soldiers to quickly receive books and newspapers from England. And so you have soldiers who will write back to their family in the UK and say, I would really like a copy of this book that came out last month. Can you send it to me? And sometimes within a week they would have a copy of it, if not even less. And so there was just this very quick delivery time back and forth. So books were shipped to the trenches quickly and easily and then circulated among soldiers in the trenches. Newspapers also came very rapidly. Also, one of my favorite details is that you had the production of trench newspapers themselves. Soldiers on the front lines were producing material, newspapers and magazines for themselves in a variety of ways. Sometimes these were handwritten. They would just take paper they had and produce a handful of copies, writing them by hand, and then circulate them. Sometimes they would make use of military printing materials and supplies in order to produce them on actual printing materials. And then sometimes they found printing equipment in towns that had been evacuated and then just made use of those as well behind the front lines, and then circulated those newspapers or magazines up to the front lines. And so the just the sheer quantity of printed material that’s produced is incredible. Even away from the front lines. You have conscientious objectors in prison who are also producing newspapers in prison, sometimes on squares of toilet paper, which they would then post in toilet stalls for the other prisoners to read because they were forbidden to actually speak to each other. And so just the impetus to write everywhere is, is remarkable. And they produce a tremendous amount of material as a result.31:47S3

Talking with Doctor Elizabeth Fredericks about the British literature of World War One these early days here, what do some of the early war poems reveal about how that conflict was imagined before people really understood what was happening?32:01S4

Yes, there’s this real notion, especially in the early days of 1914, of defending both small nations like Belgium and also defending Englishness itself. There’s a lot of pastoralism in these early poems, a very idealised picture of rural England that poets like John Masefield and John Freeman invoke in their particular work. And so they give this sort of very idealized rural place. And how people think this. Imagine this. This is what you’re fighting for. This sort of heart of Englishness, which is also such a fascinating move because most of the soldiers on the front lines don’t actually come from there. Most of them come from industrial environments. And so it’s a very imagined world that they’re kind of being encouraged to fight for. Thomas Hardy, interestingly, is one of the few who sees this war from very early stages as a real rupture between the two nations, who were linked in many ways, reflecting on the fact that their monarchs are cousins, for instance, by intellectual and artistic traditions that become very entwined in the 19th century. Like other English writers, he does blame the Germans for the war primarily as the aggressors who have started it, but he finds it appalling. He finds it a real shift from what he sees as this 19th century culture of exchange and mutual improvement that is just suddenly warped and defaced into violence and horror.33:22S3

Poems by Rupert Brooke are covered in the class two. Why are his poems so powerful and so persuasive at the time?33:29S4

Yes. So there’s I mean, one is that he is a poet on the rise, so he’s already a pretty well respected and admired young poetic figure, very talented by all accounts, also very beautiful. So he has this kind of public persona that’s built on both his appearance as well as his work. And so there’s there’s that name recognition that comes. It’s also impossible to avoid the fact that he dies very, very early in the war and tragically, not even in conflict. He dies of septicaemia from an infected mosquito bite that he actually retains in 1914. So he doesn’t he barely even makes it to combat in a meaningful way. Nonetheless, he does a lot of the things that we sort of talk about. He presents this very beautiful, again, rural, idealised England that he imagines he’s fighting for. He also gives there’s this very interesting, very beautiful religious tone, famously in his five part sonnet sequence, The Soldier. He gives us that line about, Thank God who has matched us with this hour, and the sense that this is going to be something that makes people better versions of themselves. There’s this image of idealized masculinity that he offers, this idea of like soldiers into clean water. Slipping is one of the images that he gives. And then in the fifth poem of that sequence, he gives this idea of, if I should fall in battle. Think of that as there’s some corner of England that is forever there. Now, like if I die abroad, Englishness is there too. And so we sort of spread it in this way our ideals, our virtues, our beauty, our kind of everywhere. And it’s a sort of romantic death that he offers one that’s very in line with all these young public school men raised upon classical literature, and this ideal of dying in battle gloriously and beautifully. These poems, I think, kind of feed upon that and offer that as well. And so it’s, it’s a just this intensely idealized, gorgeous picture that he offers of what it means to go and fight, and then also what it may mean to go and die. That downplays the terror and elevates the nobility of what he thinks that he is doing.35:36S3

Idealized masculinity is a phrase you use. Do. Do we see that? Do we see duty? Do we see sacrifice that become integral parts of this early writing?35:48S4

There’s a lot. And Kipling is one of the most interesting writers to turn to to see some of this. One thing you do see is a lot of, um, Christ like imagery that appears particularly in his work. If you look at his poem The Children, for instance, where he’s talking about because Kipling, of course, is too old to go and fight himself and has incredibly poor eyesight, so they wouldn’t take him even if he wasn’t over 40 years old. But so he’s reflecting on the children of people like himself who are going off to fight, and he has the remarkable line, he says, where they bought us anew with their blood. And you’re like, that’s just this inevitable Christ like image that he’s offering of the sacrifice that the soldiers are giving. And this is, of course, his poetry in the early days there as well. His very famous poem from very early in the war, from almost the literal beginning for all we have in our lives, this very borderline religious as well as patriotic duty, that you must go fight because it’s not just what your country asks of you, but in some way it must be what God is asking of you too. And so both the the duty and sacrifice elements there have this very strong religious pull that’s, that’s very hard to resist there. And the masculinity piece is definitely part of it as well. Like this is also just what you would do if you’re really a man, you will go and defend England, and you’ll also go and defend the little countries like Belgium, who are small and don’t have big armies and need, like the brave Tommy, to come and stand up for them. Jessie Pope, a very famous propaganda writer for this time writes, for instance, poems that cast the British Tommy as the David who stands up to the Goliath who fights, and so again cast in the strongly religious as well as patriotic mode.37:24S3

Talking with Doctor Elizabeth Fredericks about the British literature of World War One in the early days. Right now, the 39 steps. It’s not about trench warfare, but it is in this World War One conversation. Why does it belong?37:38S4

Yeah. So the 39 steps is by the novelist and politician John Buchan. And it’s not explicitly about trench warfare. It was also the very first thing we read in this class. And my students, the day they came in to talk about the first day, they just looked slightly puzzled. And I was going, I bet you guys didn’t think you were allowed to have this much fun in a class about World War One literature. And they went, no, no, we did not expect that because it is a tremendously fun novel. Now, Buchan doesn’t fight in the war, but he has this history in British government and military. He was stationed in South Africa after the Boer War in Lord Kitchener’s kindergarten, as it was called, which is a number of young, sort of upwardly mobile people who become political and economic figures in Britain later. And so he’s one of those. When he returns to England, he remains involved in the civil service and in 1915, 1914, 1915, we actually don’t have a very good handle on what he was doing, which has led some to suspect he was doing intelligence work, but he also, at one point is ill. Or maybe he says he’s ill and he’s actually doing intelligence work again. It’s a little fuzzy for people who’ve actually dug into it, but that’s the time period in which he writes the 39 steps is in early 1915. And so the war has begun, and Buchan has this eye towards morale on the home front from the very beginning. Significantly, he does become the director of information in 1917, which makes him a propaganda, essentially the head of propaganda for the British government, and he later becomes the head of intelligence. So very interested in morale, in what people are thinking and in controlling the image of the war. And so the 39 steps, while it’s not explicitly about the war, if we think of it as propaganda, writing about that indirectly about the war, it fits very well. It’s not about trench warfare, but it is about a conspiracy to start an international war in Europe by assassinating a head of state suggestively headed by German conspirators. So it’s barely subtext that it’s about World War One. And so it’s written very early in the war. It’s serialised in Blackwood’s Edinburgh magazine in summer 1915 and then published in full in the fall. And it’s it’s a thriller. It’s essentially just a domestic espionage thriller with this main character, Richard Hannay, who’s just an ordinary guy. No, no one particularly special, as he goes to great pains to point out. He just stumbles into this conspiracy rather by accident, and then has to do something about it because he’s just a good, straightforward, honest British man. Made his pile in South Africa has this connection to Scotland. And so this is this is sort of the figure that you have. He’s very ordinary, like your soldiers who were fighting in the war, not particularly prominent, not particularly skilled in special things, but he just has this decency of character and this determination to do what’s right and to do what must be done. And because he has spent this time in South Africa, he also has a remarkable number of practical skills as well. So that’s very helpful. And it’s immensely popular in the trenches. There’s a soldier who writes to Buchan saying that he ripped through the whole thing in a single night when he was posted on the front lines. So it gets passed around. It’s immensely popular, and it does give you this character of like, oh yes, here are what ordinary British citizens are capable of, which is foiling tremendous evil just through their sort of practical intelligence, common sense, and basic decency, and he goes on to write multiple. He writes multiple novels throughout World War One that continue to be very popular and then continues, of course, to write them after World War One as well. But it’s this immensely popular trench novel, and like I said, immensely popular work of propaganda fiction as well, when you look at it that way.41:26S3

The description of 39 steps makes it all the all too clear why it became a Hitchcock film later on.41:34S4

Yes, Hitchcock film has been a miniseries, and now it’s also an extremely successful comedic play as well. It’s just its afterlives are extraordinary.41:42S3

So if literature was providing a some, some a morale boost or providing some reassurance to the home front during the beginning days and years. Well, beginning months of the war, let’s say, where do we first begin to see some cracks forming in that confidence story of the war?42:01S4

You see, the cracks begin to form throughout 1915 as it becomes clear that this war is not going to be one of a consistently moving front or these interesting and and quick offenses that create rapid changes in the conditions of the war. But they really expand significantly in 1916 with the particularly devastating battles of that year that continue into 1917 as well. The long battle of the Somme in the summer in particular, is just especially horrifying for the soldiers who were fighting. Uh, and numerous soldiers serve in that battle. The novelist David Jones, for instance, himself points to 1916 as a year where it really felt like things changed. Famously. You have like the Christmas truce of 1914, where the soldiers came out of their trenches and played soccer in no man’s land and exchanged gifts. And and so that happened in 1914. More sporadic, smaller versions of it happened in 1915. But after 1916, nothing like it ever happens again. Things harden. There’s just more disillusionment. There’s far more suffering and, and things just aren’t changing. And you just have such heavy casualties in these battles where you have, for instance, a million casualties in a single day of particularly terrible offenses. And just it’s really impossible to maintain that sort of bright and lively picture of the war you get from something like the 39 steps. It’s hard to maintain that sense of sort of clean, idealized beauty that you get from Rupert Brooke. The soldiers are suffering from things like trench foot, which is what happens when you’re wearing all these wet shoes and wet socks for days upon days. And and so, yes, the struggle of all of that just becomes more miserable when your reality is rats and lice. It’s hard to be rosy about the situation that’s happening and go, yes, indeed, this is the this is the idealized picture of the world that we came here to fight for.43:58S3

In part two, we’ll talk about telling the truth about what’s happening in those trenches during World War One. Doctor Elizabeth Fredericks with us, associate professor of English at Hillsdale College, talking about her course on the British literature of World War One. Doctor Fredericks, thanks for joining us on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. That will wrap up this edition of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Our thanks to Seth Barron. His book weaponized the left’s capture and destruction of America’s sacred institutions. And Doctor Elizabeth Fredericks from Hillsdale English Department. Remember, you can hear new episodes every week on this station. You also can find extended versions of some of our interviews, or listen any time to the podcast. Find [email protected] or wherever you get your audio. Until next week, I’m Scott Bertram, and this has been the radio free Hillsdale Hour.

The post  How the Left Captures Institutions appeared first on Hillsdale College Podcast Network.

Despite the Phi Sigma Epsilon fraternity closing its doors on the Hillsdale campus in the late 1980s, for more than 40 years the Phi Sigs continued to gather on their property on Hillsdale Street for Homecoming and other special events to reconnect, remember, and celebrate their friendships. In 2016, Phi Sig alumni came up with a pavilion idea and concept for their property. Partnering with the College, that plan was eventually finalized, and in 2024, the Phi Sig Alumni Pavilion was built and dedicated. Two of those Phi Sigs, Trip Banks and Ross Anderson, talk about the project and their lasting legacy.

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Informative. Inspirational. Uplifting. Those are the goals of the White and Blue podcast. We are here to tell the interesting stories of Hillsdale College alumni, who number more than 15,000 strong. Our guests will share about their time and experiences while on campus, and also the impact they have had on the world since graduating. What makes the Hillsdale College graduate unique? We will explore that question and more, including how alumni have impacted the past, present, and future of the College. Won’t you join us?

No pride in our hills tells me. Any good. Neath the white and blue.

Welcome to the White and Blue podcast. I’m Doug Goodnow and my co-host is Colleen McGuinness. We are here to tell the interesting stories of Hillsdale College alumni. Or more accurately, help them share their own stories. Here’s a little bit about today’s guest. Vietnam War veteran Duane Dutch Van Fleet was part of a combat operation in South Vietnam. The US marine participated in numerous combat patrols and operations. Wounded twice during combat operations, he returned home from the war and attended Hillsdale College, graduating with honors. He returned to active duty as an officer participating in combat operations and operations. Sharp, sharp edge, Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. A decorated war hero, he retired from active duty in 1998. Dutch, thank you for joining us today.

Pleasure to be here.

So you’ve had an amazing career. Amazing life. Tell me about the origins of why you wanted to to be in the military. I know you you grew up not too far away from from Hillsdale.

That’s right. I grew up in, uh, reading Michigan, and, uh, my dad was a farmer, a dairy farmer and a crop farmer. And, uh, I went to reading high school and I drive his pickup truck full of corn up there and get the feed ground and then pick up the ground feed after after I got out of school sometimes. And, uh, in those days, all of my dad’s friends and all the guys at the feed mill were World War Two veterans. And they would talk about combat and Africa and Europe and in the South Pacific and like that. And I said to myself, and I may not even realize I was saying it to myself, but I wanted to be like them. And that just kind of lodged in my heart. So when, uh, when the time came, I was just ready to graduate from reading high school and I went to the delayed delayed entry program and reported for duty in August of that year, 1966.

So what was your first mission in the Marine Corps?

All Marines go through about approximately eight, eight months to 12 months training to go in boot camp, infantry training regiment and MOS qualification schools. And from there, I went to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, for a very short period of time. And then I was sent directly to Vietnam, and I joined an infantry company in the field Delta Company, first Battalion, seventh Marines, and we were patrolling in Chu Lai. Then we moved up to Da Nang, the Da Nang area. More accurately, the Happy Valley area. It’s called the Rocket Belt. And we were basically trying to interdict the North Vietnamese army that was in that area. About, I would say approximately 9000NVA North Vietnamese army. And, um, that’s where we patrolled day and night for the entire time I was in country.

Tell me about the first time you were wounded and what that experience was.

The Tet Offensive started. And for us on 5th February 1968 and the fighters, the the junior enlisted people, which I was at that particular time knew the North Vietnamese were getting ready to do something big, but we didn’t realize big meant 90,000 men. So, uh, we were we were on an ambush patrol and, uh, contacted a, the lead element of an NVA, probably a reinforced regiment. And, um, we had contact with them and then broke contact and went back to our hill. And, uh, as we were coming up to the hill, another one of our patrols, a platoon sized patrol. About 30 Marines had hit the actual full complement of the North Vietnamese unit that was moving through our area. And, um, we had a tank with us and we moved towards the enemy. But at that time, the radio transmissions, the radio, uh, conversations we were hearing on the net, it was supposed we didn’t realize it was a large Vietnamese unit. So we spread out online and moved up towards them and they turned our flanks almost immediately. And, um, I called in, there’s a sequence you have to use when you’re calling in supporting arms. And the only advantage we ever had over the North Vietnamese was our artillery, mortars and our air, especially our air. So I called in the mortars, I called in the artillery, and we could see then the North Vietnamese combat power was building. And then I called in the air after that. So this is, um, kind of archaic compared to the way they do things in today’s world. But all we did to mark our position was pop a smoke grenade, and the planes went over and they said. I said, we’re just north of that yellow smoke and it has to be certain colored smoke, not red, not green, yellow for an airstrike. And I stood up and I through the through the smoke grenade towards the enemy so that the so the smoke wouldn’t drift back towards us. And I told the pilots what, which how far they were ahead of us. And as I threw the smoke grenade, I could see a North Vietnamese soldier come out of a tree line, and he shot a. Burst out of an AK 47 towards me. I had picked up a rifle off a dead North Vietnamese soldier earlier in the day. I had stuck through my cartridge belt. Two of the bullets hit the. My. The rifle and split the rifle in half knocked me in the air and as I was spinning the. Another one of the bullets hit me, going east and west, thank goodness. Not north and south. And that was the first time I got hit. That was about 6:00 in the morning. I got medevacked about 4:00 in the afternoon and we were lucky to get a medevac on the ground. Fire was so intense that the helicopters wouldn’t land. That’s just that’s just life in in battle. As if the ground fire’s, uh, is heavy. They’re not going to risk a bird to come in and and to help you out.

So in that battle, you had just called an airstrike. Did that airstrike happen or were you not able to call it because of your.

All, all the time? All the time. I was hit before I was hit. And after I was hit, all that, all the things I described earlier were happening in sequence like that. Okay. You just have to kind of, uh, when I got hit, my radio operator took over until we, um, until we could kind of get a, get a handle on, I understand fully what was happening on the battlefield.

Mhm. And it was 9000 Vietnamese. And how many of you.

You know, that’s that’s Vietnamese wide like that again. Okay. The the regiment or so, whatever it was that was against us was probably, we were guessing 800, maybe a thousand, maybe more. And like that. And there were 88 Marines in the field. Oh, man. All the ones. There was a unimproved road. A dirt road went right down through the battlefield. The 30 or so Marines on the west side of the of the road were all were completely, uh, overran to begin with. And that’s when we could feel the, the ground fire was coming from our front to begin with. And then as the battle go on, they were turning our flanks, trying to surround us. And so we started to pull back. It was all the whole battle happened in rice, about 4 or 5ft high, not 4 or 5ft high, but 3 to 4ft high. And, um, so we were able to hide somewhat in the rice to pull back and like that. And we were, we, we pulled back as much of our wounded as we could, but we didn’t, um, we didn’t, we have to leave. We had to leave some of the dead behind.

Mhm. So you were rescued, MEDEVACed out and recovered and then decided I’ll go back.

I was met when I was medevaced. They medevaced me to a naval support activity in Danang, and from there there were thousands and thousands of wounded and killed Marines and soldiers to in the hospital there in Danang. So they put us on a C-130 aircraft and flew me to Camranh Bay. And that’s a resort area. It’s really a beautiful, beautiful area of Vietnam, white beaches. And this. So I was in the 12th Army hospital and the 12th Air Force Convalescent Center, and actually it’s reversed the 12th Air Force Hospital and the 12th Army Convalescent Center for about a month. And then we caught a bird back. They sent us, released us from the hospital, flew us back to Da Nang. And I got to my hill and I still had the stitches in my stomach from my wound. And, um, we went immediately on an operation. And the second day on the operation, I was hit by Russian artillery.

Wow.

So I was just in and out of the hospital real quick.

So what was going through your mind through all this? I mean, you know, I’m I’m guessing like growing up and reading, getting shot isn’t something that happens every day. What was going through your mind?

My, my world then and my world now is, um, it’s, it’s, you know, I talk about all these things and it seems like it’s, um, it seems like it’s unique and something very unusual. I had a couple purple hearts. I was wounded by friendly fire a couple times too. But that’s what happens to front line infantry, marine infantry units like that. And there are guys in my unit that have been wounded. Most everybody in the unit had been wounded at least twice. Two Purple Hearts and one of my friends named Steve Sacco. He’s a retired lieutenant colonel. He was a corporal then as I was. He had three purple hearts. And actually him and I went through our marine training as officers together and like that. But the things I did were just part of the job. It just I had a friend of mine in reading way back when, and I was when I was just in high school, you know, I got really naive, you know, and, uh, so I wanted to be a marine. And he had been a marine on Guadalcanal in World War two. And I said, boy, I want to get a Purple Heart and I want to do this like that. And he was just, you know, working in the garage there in this gas station. And he said, you don’t have to worry about the Purple Hearts. They’ll they’ll come easy enough.

Oh my.

God.

So you were wounded that second time. And then what?

When I got back to the our company Hill, they process you. If you have two purple hearts or three purple hearts, two purple hearts, depending upon when you’re, um, where you’re at the length of how, how many months you’ve been in country, they either send you to Okinawa or someplace in the South Pacific to finish out your 13 months, or they medevac you back to the States. I was about month ten, so I had two months to go on my. Or as you were three months to go on my on my tour. So they sent me to Okinawa and I was the chaplain’s assistant for a commander, Don Alexander from Tupelo, Mississippi.

Wow.

But then you make it back to the States.

Yep.

And decide I want to go to Hillsdale College. So tell us about that journey.

My first garrison duty, they medivaced me to Hawaii, and, um, I got my feet on the ground. I was a doing this and doing seldom in the Marine Corps. Whatever your job is, your school train job do you do? You’re always doing something that you’re not trained to do. Keeps you on your toes, you know? And, uh, so I was working, I was working in an armory there in Hawaii. I got transferred back to Camp Lejeune. And because I was highly decorated, I always got some really good jobs. And I was a career planner for a, for a marine regiment. And, um, we were talking about VA benefits and what I could get by going to school and this, that and the other thing. And, um, I was starting to see the relationship from being an enlisted marine to being an officer. And of course, in no matter what, if you have a battlefield commission or whatever in the military. You need that college education. And so, um, I decided to take, uh, they offered a chance to get out early if you would go to college. And I took that because I thought I knew I couldn’t do enough to help the Marines, my Marines as an enlisted guy, as I could as an officer. And I knew I could be a good officer as the ones that were around me. And so that’s, that’s the path I took.

So then how did you end up at Hillsdale? What’s that story?

Local guy Myles Zanzibar from reading it was a commander of all the of the American Legion post in Michigan. And he grabbed me by the nape of the neck and brought me over to Tony Fowler. And the three of us sat around the table and they let me go to, uh, they just I didn’t have my VA benefits in line or any of my disability in line, but Mr. Fowler and, uh, and my friend Myles Zanzibar, they let me go to school and I think I told you this story during the time I’ve been talking to you previously. The Mr. Fowler didn’t get a check from the VA until I was until I was a junior at Hillsdale College.

You were a good bet, though.

I think so.

Well, I know you were quite an athlete in high school, and I saw some of the letters from, I believe, Warren Sprague, about potentially playing football for the for the Chargers. Yeah. So yeah. So you get on campus. Tell me about that. Because Vietnam War veterans were not really the most welcome folks on college campuses during that time. But Hillsdale was different.

Hillsdale was much different. Uh, I think when we talked earlier, the I went to freshman orientation. You know, when I first started out as a freshman here at Hillsdale College like that. And I was, I was apprehensive because, um, I didn’t know how the students would accept me because again, there’s a, there’s a lot of bad information out about Vietnam. What we were doing, no matter where our forces are in the world, we do more good than harm, but no one ever hears about the good. They just hear about the, you know, the things that are semi bad or bad. And, um, so I went to freshman orientation and um, the kids and the professors and the, uh, the counselors or whatever were just curious about me, you know, I’d been there and came back and not very many guys were around and I was smart enough and articulate enough to talk about it intelligently and like that. And my relationship with all my professors and all the, um, I saw Mr. Kabalevsky’s picture on the, on the on the wall over there in the Dow Center yesterday. And him and I used to joke around and stuff when I was on campus. And, uh, it was just a really, really warm. It helped me transition back from the Vietnam experience back to being a, uh, a productive citizen again. And, uh, just if, if Hillsdale College wouldn’t have been there as a benchmark for that. I’d never made it back. I’d I never made the transition back.

So you mentioned you were highly decorated. You got good jobs when you came back because you were highly decorated. You talk some about that and what that means to, you know, an average civilian that doesn’t know military speak, which I know is its own language.

You know, decorations are kind of a it’s kind of a touchy subject with everybody, especially the enlisted guys like I was then. And it changes over the years like that. Like my, one of my, one of my, um, awards has a V on it for valor. And if you got that award, it didn’t have, we didn’t make that award. We, the Marine Corps unless we put a V on it. But the proliferation, the change of the decorations has changed over the years like that so that they are not more easily obtained. But there are more more of them given out like that. And there was a I’ve, I’ve written several articles about about the award system. I’ve actually written the Secretary of War just recently about after you guys left, because we chatted about that a little bit, asking to have maybe somehow, some way in retrospect, to leveling the playing field for all these decorations and awards for the enlisted and the officers. Because valor doesn’t make it doesn’t make any difference if you’re an enlisted man or an officer. Valor, valor. And, um, I would like to, I would like to keep talking about that to people, and especially to some of our senior politicians. I’ve always, uh, one of my friends in San Diego was a three star admiral. And, uh, I was moaning and groaning one day this about this, that and the other thing. And he said, who’s your, uh, uh, who’s your state senator? I said, I don’t know, sir. He said, well, who’s your state representative? I don’t know, sir. Who’s your senator here in California, sir? I don’t know, he said, then be quiet until you start writing things down and telling people how to feel. Then you got no, no, no business, Start moaning and groaning about that type of thing and, you know. Decorations opens. A friend of mine when I was at I was at Headquarters, Marine Corps after I was a company commander in the first Marine Division. And as a captain, I had to have any school at all. I just basically just like I left Hillsdale, Hillsdale College, I had never been to amphibious warfare school or anything, so I didn’t understand staff functioning. However, comma, there I am at headquarters, Marine Corps doing corporate level management and staffing. And he just reached over and he tapped my ribbons and he said, my wards, you know, over my left breast pocket. And he said, you got instant credibility and awards do that for you. And there’s a, there’s an old Marine Corps saying that nothing replaces experience outside the wire. And what that means is in a, in a position combat position, you have barbed wire all the way around your position. But once you get outside the wire, you’re on your own. So outside the wire, nothing, nothing matches the experience like that. And I don’t think even today that anybody can match my level of experience.

Well, you said earlier that your effort and work and valor and service was just part of the job. Not everyone views life like that. Like yeah. Well, I injury being wounded death. That’s just part of the job. That’s a big deal for a lot of people. And so I know you probably don’t like talking about it, but what when you’re talking about decorations and awards, what were some of those things for in particular?

Most all my all my combat awards are, were in, were in battle and, um, or in, in, in harm’s way. And, um, they’re, they were awarded because, uh, I was there at that particular time. And so if you look at a Marine’s uniform, you can tell by his awards and like that where he’s been like that and what, what they really and by the devices that are on them and like that And, um, they just, uh, every time, every time I distinguish myself on, um, and doing something, especially in the fleet marine forces and not in a staff job back in the States, uh, I was rewarded in that way and like that, but, um, I think my awards are meaningful to me and that the people that gave them to me, general Krulak for one from the Krulak family, some of the giants of the Marine Corps, it was their way of manifesting to me that I was one of them. I’ll tell you a real quick story. I was at. I did joint duty down in Tampa Bay at. Uh, I was one of the first Marines to be selected for Special Operations Command because I was a jumper, a parachutist, and a scuba diver and all the rest of the stuff. So they, uh, one of our, one of our, uh, persons in the staff was a, had just been promoted to captain in the Navy. And he went to a meeting up in Washington, D.C., with some of the heavy hitters in the naval services, the sea services, and they were pretty much seals and marine combat veterans. And the fellow that the captain that we sent up there from our command had not been in combat, but he had been he was really smart and well educated. Naval Academy graduate, this, that and the other. But he walked in there by himself without me or somebody like me with him and like that. And and he and he came back and he called me into his office and he said, Dutch, they wouldn’t even talk to me. I said, you need to take me along, sir. I told you that. I said, no, you weren’t. You weren’t part of the group, you know, that type of thing. But I could have got you in there. They’d let you sit in the corner and listen anyway.

The street cred. They’re Dutch.

So all the awards. And again, Colleen and I had had the honor of visiting you at your house. And your house is like a like a mini military museum. I think to all the experiences you had which which honor an award meant the most to you and why?

I think the, um, all my, all, all my, my awards and all my experiences, um, in Vietnam, um, mean, mean the most to me because we were, and I know you guys are doing a lot of leadership work here at the college. A lot of times the junior people are, there were just were just boys like I was then and like that. And we were challenged to do things that we far beyond our, our imagination like that. And I may have told you this story earlier as well, but there were three of us sent to a to join an infantry company in the field. None of us were trained to do what we were sent there to do. And normally the, the, the jobs. And in the military, we call it the billets that we were filling were filled by captains and lieutenants and officers or senior staff NCOs. And um, we didn’t have the equipment we needed. We didn’t have the training we needed. We didn’t have batteries for our radios. We didn’t have radios. we didn’t have the right weapons. We needed more pistols, we needed more rifles and this, that and the other thing. And we pulled all that together. And by the time we left in the I Corps, which was the northern provinces of Vietnam, we were calling in 60 to 70% of all the artillery airstrikes like that in the I Corps. And we didn’t we didn’t even know what we were doing. Every once in a while I’ll say, gee whiz, do we really do that? And that’s what I’m really proud of. And we were just those three guys were like almost everybody out there just doing spectacular things. And, um, some of the myths that go along with Vietnam is that the North Vietnamese were, you know, in black pajamas and single shot 22 rifles and this, that. And the other thing, the North Vietnamese were well armed, well equipped and ready to fight, willing to fight. And a lot of times they were better. And they’d been fighting in that territory for 10,000 years. So they kind of had enough. They kind of had an upper hand on us. We, um, like in Tet Offensive. Like I was talking about the other time like that, they came down and they were gonna they were gonna come down there and they were going to do us in. They were gonna, they were going to overrun us and, and like that. And we just said, no, not today and like that. And, um, and we did it. And that’s what I’m really proud of.

Well, I think we’ll take a break here and, uh, be right back with the white and blue podcast.

Good. Meet the white and blue.

Now it’s time for the Hillsdale History Minute, where we bring a slice of Hillsdale College history to the White and Blue podcast. Did you know that a higher percentage of Hillsdale students enlisted during the Civil War than from any other Western college? Of the more than 400 who fought for the union, four earned the Congressional Medal of Honor, three became generals, and many more served as regimental commanders. 60 gave their lives. Welcome back to the White and Blue podcast, where we have 2026 Alumni Award winner Dutch Van Vliet and Dutch. Uh, you’re going to be getting the Elizabeth Smith Friedman Freedom Award at our alumni banquet here. We’re in the midst of red, white and blue weekend. And obviously it’s a we’re thrilled to be able to present you with that award. Long career in the military. We talked a lot about your Vietnam experience, but you went to Hillsdale, graduated, and then became an officer. Tell us a little bit about that path. And you were involved in a lot of other military operations leading up to your retirement. So tell us a little bit about your your post-Vietnam career. Okay.

I went to, uh, all through all the, uh, normal training that an officer goes through. I went to OCS and, uh, they call it the basic school, which is, uh, 30 days of training crammed into over a year and, uh, then went, went out to the fleet. And, um, I think you have to understand my service, the Marine Corps like that. You have to understand that, um, the schools are all fine and dandy, but where you learn how to be a marine is in the fleet marine forces leading Marines, being aboard ship, being forward deployed. And, uh, when I, after I got finished my training, I went to Okinawa and joined third Battalion, fourth Marines, did a 12 month, 12 month tour there and like that, then went back to the States and, um, went to a marine barracks where I was the nuclear security officer and the guard officer. And from there I went back to the Fleet Marine Forces at Camp Pendleton. I was a company commander and, um, first recon Battalion and a company commander in second Battalion, ninth Marines with golf company. And from there to headquarters. Marine Corps ran all the retirement and all the training for the Marine Corps. When I say I operated it like that, I had several enlisted people in about 50 middle aged ladies that work for me and they really did the work because, you know, they had the the expertise. And from there I went to headquarters, Marine Corps, I went to OCS and I was a company commander in Charlie Company and our Officer Candidate school. It’s hard for us to find field grade officers for that can be company commanders in OCS because, uh, the training is rigorous. It’s very physical. You have to be a, you know, semi jock, an athlete like that. So it, uh, I’ve always been a runner and like that when I was a young man in a way, and, um, I fit in well there from OCS. I went to Okinawa again. And from there I was from, from when I went to Okinawa the last at that time, I was in the Fleet Marine Forces almost continually from that point on, I was forward deployed in, um, in, uh, with second Battalion, fourth Marines out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. I was a major then, and I’ve been to the Fleet Marine Forces forever. And then we did a non-combatant evacuation of the embassy, the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia, Liberia, and we were coming back, and I was going to be transferred out of the Fleet Marine Forces. But Desert Storm had hit. And I asked a friend of mine who was a general back at Camp Lejeune, and I’d take any job, any job and. But don’t leave me on the shore when you guys go to. When you guys deploy back to Desert Shield and Desert Storm. And so they just kept me in place in my battalion like that two for excellent battalion. And I finished that and came back, selected for command and became a battalion commander after that. And, uh, but it was a, uh, my, the real blessing of my Marine Corps career is the, I was always able to use my level of experience and, um, savvy and preparing our Marines for long periods of time. And this, and I think this is a real foot stomper. Here is the, you know, you have to be willing to share the hardships of the field and the same hardships that the enlisted guys are, are going through and like that to really understand, really understand what they’re going through. You’re not only responsible for them, but their families, you know, and, uh, that’s a big responsibility. You know, a lot of times you have to step in and find out what’s going on, uh, you know, with their families and what, how it’s affecting their performance as a, as a marine in the field. And, uh, you know, we had, uh, we were forward deployed in the Mediterranean and, um, one of my Marines, uh, son was killed in an auto accident and we were like 200 miles in, in, in the, uh, from Marseille. We had to get him out of Marseille. Back to the show, back to the Mediterranean and getting back to the world. Getting back to the road and flying back to Frankfurt and flying back to the United States. And believe me, it’s not easy because there’s no book. There’s no book for it. You know, there’s no there’s no answer to a lot of these problems. And as a leader, you have to find those answers. And you just can’t say, it ain’t my, it’s not my, it’s not my responsibility. If someone else is going to go ahead and do it because that kid needs to get home. And that’s just one example. And there’s all kinds of other examples where you, as the individual marine leader, have to go ahead and step in there and figure it all out for yourself and without any help in most cases like that. And just to make sure that your Marines are taken care of and all those other Marines that are standing around there watching all this to see how you react to this. There’s an old marine saying, for every order given there’s a vote taken, you better make sure that that votes in your favor, you know.

So you mentioned earlier that you went to college specifically so you could go back into the Marine Corps and be an officer and lead and make a career out of your service. And so what does military service mean to you?

It’s a I used to think I used to say it was a, like a kind of a cliche that it was my calling and like that. But I think the, um, I think what it means to me is I was put into a position to help people that were in the same, same level of, uh, understanding and development in their lives as I was at one time. And I was the most qualified to do that. And it wasn’t about it was it was more or less taking most of most of the people you come in contact with Marines you come in contact with. They’re not career Marines. They’re just in there for 3 or 4 years. But what you want to do is hopefully by help them build their character and by by example. And there’s no leadership. And unless there’s leadership by example, you know, you can’t be at the rear of the column while the column moves down the road and expect to be the leader. You’ve got to be up there and be willing to share the hardships and all the rest of it with them and show them that you love them and you care for them. And, and that’s and that’s what you have to do. Another quick Van Fleet story here. We were in, uh, in Desert Storm and the equipment we had was, um, dated. It had been aboard ship, but it wasn’t the best equipment. So we had to do with the bad stuff. The equipment was out of date. It wasn’t, it wasn’t combat ready until new equipment came back from the states. So we could get that stuff and put it in our inventory and move forward against the, against the enemy. And, um, my Marines, um, they had painted on the side of one of our, we were mechanized battalion, the side of my tractor. They painted Dutch’s dream like that. So one day I came back to the tractor and we were working on our equipment and working on our bodies like that. As we move forward in the desert, it became harder and harder to live and harder, harder, more difficult to keep our equipment up. And the kids, the young Marines, were just, they were, uh, they didn’t act. They didn’t act normally like they normally do, weren’t joking around that type of stuff. I said, what’s wrong with you guys? And so they told me that one of the other officers, same grade as I was, but he was in a senior billet to me, was, uh, coming in after hours with his Marines and taking equipment out of my vehicles and put it in his vehicles, because he was the direct support of the colonel like that. I said, don’t worry about it. I said, because I’d already made one of my buddies was in charge of bringing the new equipment in, so whatever they took didn’t make any difference. Anyway. So this other fellow, his name was actually Joe. So this is a good story. I can use his name. So this other fellow and I were standing there talking one day and I said, um, so the kids were telling me that the young Marines are telling me that you’re taking equipment out of my my tractors at night. He said, well, we need to do this for the colonel. We need to do this for the colonel. And I said, you know, Joe, you said you can have anything you want. But he said, whatever happens, whatever happens. I said, the bottom line is my Marines, new equipment or bad equipment. My Marines love me more than your Marines love you. And we’re going to be in charge. So when all this was over with and we moved into Kuwait, we actually moved into Kuwait City. All the equipment he had, even the new stuff had broken down and my kids had taken care of. My young Marines were in charge of the entire regiment. That’s awesome. That was. But that’s that’s what it is. Because they I’ve seen they sleep. They sleep on their desks so they can pass an inspection to get up early, have a couple areas to a couple extra hours to work and like that. And that’s what you, that’s what you’re there for. You’re. And hopefully when they get into a position, even if it’s in a job in the, in the, in the civilian world that they have. They have the good values and like that, that they can go ahead and, and be better people, people that other people look up to, you know.

So you end up retiring, what, 98? You’ve been retired for almost 30 years now, but it seems like you very are still very connected, at least to your former colleagues. Talk to me about walking away from, you know, the career that you had in the military and what you’ve been doing since that time.

Yeah. I, um, when you guys come down to visit us, um, uh, it kind of was a, it was a good jolt for me because I kind of neutral at that particular time. So I’m working on, um, project second breath right now. So it’s, uh, but I did a lot of writing when I first retired and like that. And, um, I kind of, I kind of, again, kind of went neutral on that, but I’m going to start writing more and doing more. And, um, when I was, uh, when I was a sergeant in the Marine Corps, the question that you always are asking an inspection is what’s your primary duty as an NCO? And you would in. The standard answer was, my duty is to pass on what I know to my juniors because that’s important. And, um, all my experiences like that not going to do anybody any good unless I put it into writing and pass it on. And like I said, I wrote the Secretary of War a short note the other day, just as a heads up, because I’m going to give you some more letters. And, um, you’d be surprised and I’m surprised that how receptive people are. Senator wicker is one of our senators from Mississippi. And, uh, one of my representative is Senator Representative guess. And, um, they’ve sent a, I organized a veterans ceremony in our community last year for a new brigade, a Mississippi National Guard brigade that came in and they sent a three star general down there. And Mr. Guest got a three star general to come down there as his representative and like that. And I’m just going to keep doing things like that, doing things to hopefully to better educate people on what the military’s the the average person doesn’t know a tank from a, you know, from a ladybug, that type of thing. And you hear, and that’s it’s important, it’s important for American citizens to know more about their military and to know what it takes to be know what the difference is between you. For me, I watch these news newscasts on, on the on the television, and you’ll see these guys and you can tell by the way they carry themselves in the military. You can tell by their ribbons and their bearing, you know, how they carry themselves, whether they’re real straight shooters or not. And like, and the difference between, say, the administration’s maybe the previous administration and the present administration on how they carry themselves and like that. And we need to talk more about that. We need to communicate more about that because the the military, the we were talking about awards and here’s here’s a van fleet as I’m a Dutch ism, okay. Awards are Awards are a covenant between the the people of America and those and those the citizens of America and the citizens who are serving. And between them is the. Is the military. And that there has to be a. There has to be an understanding and a in a in a common ground between the two. These guys can’t be telling, can’t be standing and sending the place of the people. They aren’t the people. They’re just administrating the citizens that are now on active duty like that. And right now that system is broken. And that’s. I don’t know how many people understand that, but if you keep saying it, keep saying it to the right people. It’ll get through. It’ll get through.

You mentioned, um, running earlier. I know running has been a big part of your life up until just recently. So tell us about maybe the the most rigorous race you’ve ever run.

Oh, I, you know, it’s such an enjoyment. When I was when I was a runner like that, I don’t I never really thought about it being rigorous. I run run in some pretty good heats and stuff like that, I ran.

What was the one you liked the most then?

Probably the Marine Corps Marathon, which goes down through D.C. I’ve ran that about 9 or 10 times while I was stationed up in that in the Quantico area, Washington, D.C. area. And, um, it was always a, um, two things about, about, about the running is, uh, in my family, uh, weight control and military appearance is an issue. And I can look at a chocolate cake and gain £20 and running, running gets that away from me. And I do my best praying and my best thinking when I’m running to. And, uh, so it just kind of.

Therapy.

Like that. And I was stationed in California in the early 70s when, uh, when the, uh, when the running was becoming popular and that type of thing. And it’s, um, when you’re in Okinawa, you can, uh, like, you know, for deployed someplace like I was in Okinawa, deployed five times in Okinawa. And it’s a beautiful place. It’s a kind of a paid vacation really, but, you know, you can kind of lose your, lose your focus over there. And you can either start drinking and, uh, and doing things that aren’t productive, or you just get a PT program and it’s a way you can entertain yourself, that type of thing. And, um, I’ve ran the Boston Marathon, I’ve ran three, uh, 650 milers and this type of thing like that. So I really enjoy it. It’s a, it was an enjoyment thing for me. And I like people, people. Some people say, well, I don’t like the, I don’t like to be recognized for this, that I do like to be recognized. I like to do dads, I like to I like the medals, I like the awards, and I like that. I like that and like that. And I, I just I finished the Hattiesburg Half Marathon, the five K in that. And I finished third in my age group and that was 75 to 80. I like that, so I’m pretty proud of that.

That was just what, a couple months ago?

A couple months ago.

Three out of three Dutch.

Yeah.

No, I’m just kidding.

No, but.

You were doing Ironman competitions too.

Not Ironman. I just I do the sprint sprint triathlons and triathlons. Yeah. That’s right.

Well the 50 miler that’s was that an ultra ultramarathon.

That’s the beginning of the ultra. Yeah. Okay. The I’ve done it. I’ve done uh, 650 case two. And uh, it’s actually an easier, um, it’s an easier, uh, experience running 50 or 50 milers than it is a marathon for me. Like that marathon takes a lot out of you because, you know, it used to be in the Boston. I qualified for the Boston at, uh, sub three hours and sub 250 and that’s flying. And you gotta, I mean, that’s, that’s you got to be dedicated to do that type of thing.

Isn’t a 50 K like 35 miles or something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. 35.

You think that’s easier than a marathon?

It is, because you pace yourself. Oh, okay. And you carry these little pouches of M&Ms. You’re chowing down the whole time like that. It’s, uh, it’s it’s a it’s. I wasn’t all that good at it, but it was, uh, it’s an enjoyable.

You like the sweets, I can tell.

Yeah.

Yeah. I would eat a lot more pouches of M&Ms than probably you had to make it through that.

So speaking of Van Fleet, you found your name on the Civil War?

Yeah, I knew it. I knew it was. I knew it was there. You know, I don’t I’m embarrassed to tell you this. I don’t know that much about him. Uh, I haven’t done I don’t.

Speaking of Doug’s civil war. Sorry. I want to go back to Doug’s Civil War history minute, but we’re talking about the Civil War soldier Monument at Hillsdale, and there’s a van fleet on it, and Dutch is telling us about that.

And I think he. I did a little research on it, and I think I think my grandpa might have told me that he won the was awarded the silver silver Fife, but I’m not sure what that is. But he was in Gettysburg and that’s really all I know about it like that. But I knew the name was on this, on the on the monument, because I’ve been back a couple of times since I graduated and I knew it was on there.

But you don’t know. Is he a great uncle or grandfather?

I’m sure he is.

Yeah, I don’t know exactly.

There’s, uh, my, my kin came from Upper New York State and came down here. My, my granddad, my great granddad had six boys that came down here. He gave him 60 acres of land and two teams of horses. And my grandpa was the last of the boys to live.

Wow.

So for the last 20 some years or so, you’ve been living in Columbia, Mississippi. We had a chance to visit you there. Why? Mississippi? Of all the places.

You know, we, um. When we decided I had orders to California, and, uh, our youngest girl was just starting school and that type of thing. And, uh, we just didn’t want to go to California. And so we wanted a quiet place. And, um, I came up on a weekend interviewed for a teaching job in Columbia, and, um, I was still thinking that teaching was the way it was when I was in high school in 1966. And I soon found out after I retired that that was the case. But anyway, I came up and found a house and, um, I got, got, uh, got a job at the same time, she’s a teacher, certified teacher and, um, and got everything pretty much it looked good. It looked good. A nice quiet place like that. And I don’t think that a guy like me with as much time as I spent in the service. I’m pretty sure this is a truism. There’s. You’re not. No matter where you go, it’s not going to be an easy transition. And, uh, kind of like what we were talking about. What did you do? And like that, what you need to be doing now and like that, it’s taken me a long time to kind of get, get that grasping like that. And I don’t, I finally gave up making the transition, to be honest with you, but I try to use my experience and my, um, my expertise in certain areas to help other people out. And, um, and, uh, I say I work with Colonel Cooksey. He’s our brigade commander, Mississippi National Guard in our area like that. He was a marine corporal when he was on active duty and came out and joined the Mississippi National Guard. Now he’s senior to me as a colonel. And, uh, so, um, I just try to do what I can do and like that. And I think that’s important. You know, people that come from small town Mississippi is, um, people that come from, from that type of a rural environment like that are you just need to it’s difficult, but it helps, it helps our, it helps everybody out if we kind of talk back and forth like that. And maybe in most of the time, a lot of the time it doesn’t make any difference. But every once in a while you see a little glimmer that that.

Yeah, you’re still a Yankee, aren’t you?

Yes, I am a Yankee. Yeah. Proud Yankee.

All right. What’s the, uh, you’ve talked about leadership here some we’ve talked in the past about leadership. It seems like something you’re passionate about is leading and and helping others around you. What what would be maybe the the most important leadership lesson you’ve learned in the military?

I kind of mentioned this before, and I think when you were down to the house in our home there, I said the same thing. There was a, there’s something on, um, on the internet the other day about, um, kids that were, uh, young people who were leaving college and going into officer candidate school or whatever. And doing this. You have to be, you have to be, you have to challenge yourself to be the example at all, at all times, in all things like that. You have to be physically and spiritually strong and you have to hold that, hold yourself to those higher standards and, and to be, be true to yourself and be true to your Marines. And so you can, can develop them and to be better people and to, um, and to show them by example the how to, how to obtain their, their own personal, uh, or personal goals and professional goals as well. Like that. But it’s leadership by example 200% of the time.

And you have to live it, like you said earlier, you have to live their life in order to be able to lead by example, which you did, you know, from the ground up.

You’re going to see more bad than good. And that’s just that’s just life. And like that one of my I had several of my fellows I worked for, and I’m kind of embarrassed to tell the story. But, you know, we have a physical fitness test that we take every so often. I can’t remember what it is like that, but it’s demanding. It’s when I was aboard, when I was on active duty, three mile run, 20 pull ups and 80 sit ups within 80 sit ups within two minutes. And that’s you have to be work at it every day, just about to meet that standard. Well, and this goes back to leadership by example. I had several of my CEOs who were just a bit overweight and didn’t didn’t physically train on a regular basis. So like that. And so we do the FFT and all the Marines are out there doing the PFT physical fitness test, doing the physical fitness test, and the boss would come in the next day or the boss, the, the senior officer, and he would come in and get the training NCO out there and take the PFT in the dark with just the corporal sitting there taking down the scores like that, instead of going out there and being with the Marines. And then. So you only scored if you scored 260, you scored 260, you know, like that. I mean, the Marines are going to know, I assure you. Will you take it in the dark or you’re out there with them. What your PFT score is like that.

So they took it so that they weren’t seen or they wouldn’t. Somebody else took it for them.

They were they were afraid to death. They were they they were afraid to have the other Marines to see that they weren’t, they weren’t as good. If you’re a marine officer and this, this, this, this, this a Dutch ism, again, three 300 is the maximum score on ft. If you’re not scoring 285 on that Ft as an officer, you’re shortchanging your Marines, you’re shortchanging yourself. And you need to be. You need to be. You don’t need to be the number one guy in the the the fastest guy in the pack. But you need to be up, up, up front. You really do. Because they know. And the Marines are you know, I told you this story the other day, I think when we were talking like that, you know, there’s 160 men in a in a marine company like that. Of that 160, those guys are all all state football players and track basketball players and like that. And they pride themselves on that because, you know, they’re young, you young guys and very active like that. And they expect you to be able to go out there and, and do to do anything they do and maybe even do it better. And they expect that. And if you don’t do it, you know, again, every, every.

Lead by example.

Yeah, you know, you know, for every order given there’s a vote taken like that and you have to earn that vote. And I guess this is, this is something that’s It’s obvious, and yet it isn’t obvious. You. In battle, you’re betting your life. The preparation for battle. There’s. There is a. There is a article in one of our magazines and one of our periodicals about the M16 rifle, which was poorly engineered, didn’t work in combat and like that. And the author of that article said, well, he said the, the trouble with the M16 was the Marines didn’t clean from from. And they didn’t they didn’t they didn’t know anything about the rifle. So here we are going back to my Vietnam, uh, against a hundred hundreds and thousands of Vietnamese well-trained soldiers and like that well equipped and willing to fight. And we’re not going to clean our rifle before we go into the field. Mhm. Does that sound like it’s the rifle’s fault or the engineer’s fault or the Marine’s fault like that? And that’s just, you know, and you just have to you have to keep yourself prepared. You know, going back to the physical fitness thing, you know, you have to keep yourself prepared to do these things like that. And if you demand somebody to do something, then you better be able to do the same thing. Just that simple. It’s not it’s not rocket scientists. It’s just the way life is, you know, and especially when you’re asking them to bet their lives or family lives and all the rest of that. You’re asking them to do spectacular things with and risk their lives. You’ve got you’ve got to you’ve got to earn that respect.

Well, you’ve certainly earned everybody’s respect here at Hillsdale. And, uh, on behalf of everybody here, thank you for your service.

You’re very welcome. My pleasure, sir, my honor to serve well.

And congratulations on, uh, this award. And it’s an important word. It’s our Elizabeth Smith Friedman, uh, achievement Award for freedom. So for alums who are are endeavoring throughout their lives to preserve freedom. And what is this award from Hillsdale mean to you?

Uh, well, it was a pleasant surprise for sure. And like that and, um, it reinforces all the things that we’ve been talking about today that, uh, somebody maybe from afar like that is still listening and is still, uh, still interested in what I have done and what I’m doing now. And like that. It’s a great honor, great honor, not only for, um, not only for me, but for those guys around the statue out there and for all the guys that follow followed from the Civil War to the present time and are out there serving now. And, um, it’s one of the, one of the nicest things that happened to me in a very, very long time.

Wonderful.

That’s great.

Well, thank.

You. Thank you again.

You’re very welcome.

For Colleen McGuinness, this is Doug Goodnow thanking you for joining us on the White and Blue podcast. And may that spirit long remain.

The post In Harm’s Way: Duane “Dutch” Van Fleet, ‘73 appeared first on Hillsdale College Podcast Network.

On this episode of The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, Jeremiah and Juan discuss the attributes that characterize Odysseus before introducing a lecture from Dr. Benedict Whalen.

Odysseus uses his metis to gain favor with the king and queen of Phaeacia. Here he must resist the greatest temptation of his journey home.

The Odyssey tells the tale of the cunning and crafty hero of the Trojan War on his journey home. After ten years of war, Odysseus faces another ten years of fantastic temptations, deadly monsters, treacherous seas, and impious men. Meanwhile, Ithaca is threatened by suitors who plague his wife and plunder his wealth. When Odysseus reaches home, he must slay the suitors, test the loyalty of his friends and family, and restore order to his marriage and his kingdom.

Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast. I am Jeremiah Regan.

And I’m Juan Davalos. We’re back with the Odyssey lecture number four, The Kingdom of Fascia.

And here’s where we start to learn some of the back story of Odysseus, some of the things that have happened to him on his journeys. Because this chapter, even though it falls early in the poem, recounts events that happened years before, when we see our an Odysseus who has become more fully formed. Now we don’t know. He’s not fully formed because he hasn’t told us yet. But as he tells his story, and even in the way he handles himself on this new island, we can see that he is truly a man of cunning, of wit, of prudence, and is doing a very good job of putting himself in the best situation, the best circumstances possible for success.

What I love about this lecture is that it continues to challenge some of the preconceived ideas I had of the story. I hadn’t looked at the story. As I mentioned, I think it was from the first lecture when we started talking about it in a while. And so I am reintroducing myself to this book.

And so what are you what are you seeing?

What I’m seeing right now is that idea of kleos and or glory and pity and how you have Odysseus that has this episode here at the end of this lecture where he breaks down and he starts having pity not just for the men that he lost, but actually for the Trojans. So he started to have it strange.

So he’s gotten the glory from coming up with the idea of the Trojan horse, which was successful. But he also has remorse. Or he laments, at least I won’t say remorse, but he laments the loss of his men. And so these are experienced at the same time.

Yeah. And that’s something that I found I wasn’t expecting.

If you’re enjoying this lecture series, but could yourself use a refresher on the main points of The Odyssey? Check out The Odyssey in five minutes video that Professor Whalen did for us on YouTube. The link to that video is in the description. He goes over the main characters, the major plot points, and some of the themes of the poem. All in five minutes. That’s Ben Whalen’s Odyssey in five minutes. Link in the description.

Now let’s turn to lecture number four, The Kingdom of Fascia in the Odyssey.

In our last lecture, we saw Odysseus escape from Calypso’s Island, only to be battered by Poseidon and the Great Hurricane and land without even a shred of clothing on Scheria. In that lecture, we looked at how Odysseus, as a desperate suppliant, encounters the Princess Nausicaa and asks for her help. She gave him clothing and instruction on how to approach her parents in the palace. In this lecture, we will cover books seven and eight of the Odyssey in which Odysseus approaches the palace of King Alcinous and makes a desperate plea for passage home to his island of Ithaca. Now, as Odysseus is approaching the palace, Athena appears to him in the disguise of a young maiden, and she offers him some important advice in how to approach the King and Queen. Be bold. Nothing to fear. In every venture the bold man comes off best. Even the wanderer bound from distant shores. The queen is the first you light on in the halls. Arete. She is called and earns the name. She answers all our prayers. What Athena is referring to here is the name arete means she who is prayed to or prayed for. So arete is the queen of the realm. She is the one whom Odysseus should approach as suppliant. She is the one who can intercede on his behalf. Athena goes on to describe Arete’s extremely important place in this kingdom. She says Alcinous made the girl his wife and honours her, as no woman is honored on this earth. Of all the wives now keeping households under their husbands sway. Such is her pride of place, and always will be so dear to her loving children, to Alcinous himself, and all our people. They gaze on her as a god, saluting her warmly on her walks through town. She lacks nothing in good sense and judgment. She can dissolve quarrels even among men. Whoever wins her sympathies. If only our queen will take you to her heart. Then there’s hope that you will see your loved ones reach your high roofed house. Your native land. At last. Arete here becomes another one of the growing number of women who become essential for Odysseus’s great journey home and his successful and triumphant Nostos. We had Calypso, who had to let him go. Nausicaa, who clothed him and gave him instructions. And now arete, who will intercede for him if he is to get passage back home? Homer’s emphasis on these women underscores the great importance of them within the households and the larger political orders that they inhabit are epic. The Odyssey is working towards the restoration of Odysseus marriage, his reunion with Penelope, and through that, the restoration of his household and through that, the restoration of the polis, the larger political order. In all of that, in the restoration of the marriage, the restoration of the household and the restoration of the political order. Homer emphasizes the irreplaceable role that women play. This stands in a nice contrast to the Iliad, in which we saw men butchering each other, and in which force, in a very masculine manner, is the primary mover of the poem. Now the narrative goes on to describe Alcinous Palace as Odysseus enters, seeking to find arete. We get this description a radiance strong as the moon or rising sun came flooding through the high roofed halls of generous King Alcinous, walls plated in bronze, crowned with circling, freeze glazed as blue as lapis ran to left and right from outer gates to the deepest court recess, and solid golden doors enclosed the palace up from the bronze threshold. Silver doorposts rose with silver lintel above and golden handles, too, and dogs of gold and silver were stationed either side, forged by the God of fire. With all his cunning craft to keep watch on generous King Alcinous Palace, his immortal guard dogs ageless all their days inside to left and right. In a long unbroken row. From farthest outer gate. To the inmost chamber, thrones stood backed against the wall, each draped with a finely spun brocade. Women’s handsome work here the Phaeacian lords would sit enthroned, dining, drinking. The feast flowed on forever, and young boys molded of gold set on pedestals standing firm, were lifting torches high in their hands to flare through the nights and light the feasters down the hall, and Alcinous has some 50 serving women in his house. Some turning the hand-mill grind the apple yellow grain. Some weave at their webs, or sit and spin their yarn, fingers flickering quick as aspen leaves in the wind. And the densely woven woolens dripping oil droplets. Just as the physician men excel the world at sailing, driving their swift ships on the open seas. So the women excel at all the arts of weaving that is Athena’s gift to them beyond all others. A genius for lovely work and a fine mind too. Now, this is a lovely description. Keep in mind that Odysseus has been, apart from all community and human society, apart from all political order for seven years, stuck on Calypso’s Island. Here, as he enters back into human society, we see human society presented in a splendid, indeed magnificent way. In fact, it’s really an idealized vision here, If you really wanted to have doors that would keep people out, then you wouldn’t make them of gold. And if you really needed guard dogs, they wouldn’t be of inanimate gold and silver. That is, we have the sense that even the doors, the gates, the walls, the guard dogs, the servants, they’re not really necessary but ornamental. They are decorating the life, the splendid, peaceful, easy life of the King. Alcinous. Now we get a little bit more description of the the external part of the palace that I think is quite important. Outside the courtyard fronting the high gates, a magnificent orchard stretches for acres deep, with a strong fence running round it side to side. Here luxuriant trees are always in their prime pomegranates and pears and apples, glowing red, succulent figs and olives swelling sleek and dark. And the yield of all these trees will never flag or die, neither in winter nor in summer. A harvest all year round for the west wind. always breathing through, will bring some fruits to bud and others warm to ripeness. Pear mellowing ripe on pear. Apple on apple. Cluster of grapes on cluster. Fig crowding. Fig.. And here is a teeming vineyard planted for the kings. Beyond it an open level bank where the vintage grapes lie, baking to raisins in the sun while pickers gather others, some they trample down in vats. And here, in the front rows, bunches of unripe grapes have hardly shed their blooms, while others under the sunlight slowly darken purple. And there by the last rose are beds of greens, bordered and plotted greens of every kind, glistening fresh, year in, year out. And last there are two springs, one rippling in channels over the whole orchard, the other flanking it rushes under the palace gates to bubble up in front of the lofty roofs where the city people come and draw their water. Such were the gifts, the glories showered down by the gods on King Alcinous realm. This description truly underscores the idealized, in fact, almost Edenic qualities of the Kingdom of Alcinous. If he has golden guard dogs and golden doors, so too he has gardens and vineyards planted that are always in bloom, the west wind always blowing through the fruits, always presenting themselves to the humans. This is a sort of vision of perfection, of perfect ease and harmony and plenty and magnificence. Now I’m going to talk more about this description in a later lecture, lecture number eight. But for now, we should simply note how attractive this easy, splendid, magnificent vision should be for Odysseus. Odysseus stands there gazing at all this bounty, a man who’s borne so much and he’s filled with wonder at it. He marvels at the scene. It’s a very attractive order that Odysseus is encountering. Now, when Odysseus enters the palace, Athena shrouds him in a mist, and so he’s able to weave his way to the king and queen, and he throws himself at the queen Arete’s feet. And then the moment he flung his arms around Arete’s knees, the God sent. Mist rolled back to reveal the great man, and silence seized the Feasters all along the hall. Seeing him right before their eyes, they marveled, gazing on him now as Odysseus pleaded, Queen arete, daughter of godlike King Rhexenor. Here, after many trials, I come to beg for mercy. Your husbands, yours and all these feasters here. May the gods endow them with fortune all their lives. May each hand down to his sons, the riches in his house, and the pride of place the realm has granted him. But as for myself, grant me a rapid convoy home to my own native land. How far away I’ve been from all my loved ones, how long I’ve suffered pleading. So the man sank down in the ashes, just at the hearth beside the blazing fire, while all the rest stayed hushed, stock still. Now, it’s interesting here that the Queen arete does not immediately respond to Odysseus. And we’ll see why in a moment. But the entire court is silenced and looks at Odysseus in wonder, until finally an old counselor reminds them of their obligation to hospitality. King Alcinous steps in and says, yes, we should feed and take care of him. And they do. Only later do we realize why Queen arete has withheld her assent and is not interceding immediately for Odysseus. Later in the scene, Homer tells us King Odysseus still remained at Hall, seated beside the royal Alcinous and Arete. As servants cleared the cups and plates away, the white armed Queen arete took the lead. She’d spotted the cape and shirt. Odysseus wore fine clothes. She’d made herself with all her women. So now her words flew brusquely, sharply. Stranger, I’ll be the first to question you myself. Who are you? Where are you from? Who gave you the clothes you’re wearing now? Didn’t you say you reached us roving on the sea? And Odysseus goes on to tell of his struggles with Calypso and how he was shipwrecked and arrived on the island. But we can notice here why arete was reticent, why she hesitated to help Odysseus. She sees this strange, large, powerful man here, dressed in clothing she herself has made. And she wants to know how. Of course arete knows that Nausicaa had gone to the river to wash clothes the previous day. So she’s really asking a loaded question here. Where did you get those clothes that she thinks he must have gotten from her maiden daughter, Nausicaa? Now, Odysseus, in his response to arete, understands what arete is asking. So as he narrates how he escaped from Calypso and was shipwrecked, he then moves on to praise Nausicaa to her mother. He says, I looked up and there were your daughters maids at play on the beach, and she. She moved among them like a deathless goddess. I begged her for help, and not once did her sense of tact desert her. She behaved as you’d never hoped to find in one so young. Not in a random meeting. Time and again the youngsters proved so flighty. Not she. She gave me food aplenty and shining wine. A bath in the river, too, and gave me all this clothing. That’s my whole story. Wrenching but true. Then Alcinous interjects and says, well, she should have brought you to us. Odysseus flatters the father as well. He says, Your Majesty don’t find fault with a flawless daughter. Now, not for my sake, please. She urged me herself to follow with her maids. I chose not to, fearing embarrassment. In fact, what if you took offence seeing us both together? Suspicious? We are we men who walk the earth. So here Odysseus is being quite tactful. It’s quite intelligent. He understands the pointed nature of Aretha’s question and why arete is being reserved, and he understands the point of Alcinous doubts about his daughter, and he’s flattering the daughter, flattering the mother, flattering the father. This flattery works on Alcinous. Alcinous response in fact, we might find quite startling. He’s been very impressed with Odysseus and his narration, and he says, oh no, my friend Alcinous stated flatly, I’m hardly a man for reckless, idle anger. Balance is best in all things. Father Zeus, Athena, and Lord Apollo, if only seeing the man you are seeing. We think as one. You could wed my daughter and be my son in law and stay right here with us. I’d give you a house and great wealth if you chose to stay. That is. Now, what are we to make of this? Clearly, Homer is setting this up as an option for Odysseus. Nausicaa has already said, gosh, I wish I could marry somebody like you. And now I’ll. Sinuous is saying to him, gosh, I wish you could marry my daughter. And if you did, I’d give you great wealth. And again, we should think about how great an impression Alcinous and his palace have made on Odysseus. There’s great wealth, magnificence and ease here. And now he’s being offered marriage. And Odysseus has not yet revealed who he is. He has not yet said his name. In fact, when arete asked him, who are you? Where are you from? He told how he escaped from Calypso’s Island, but he did not say, I am Odysseus of Ithaca. All it would take for Odysseus to live here in ease for the rest of his life would be to make up a different history. Alcinous is offering him his daughter and wealth. Odysseus. We should read in this scene is encountering a great temptation. It’s not just an option, but a very attractive option for Odysseus. In fact, as we’ll see, this will represent the greatest temptation of all. As Odysseus is making his way home to Ithaca now, book seven ends without Odysseus still having revealed his name, and they all go to sleep. But Alcinous does promise that they will take him home the next day. Now book eight opens the next day, and as the Phaeacians are preparing their ship, they host great games and celebrations and feasts for Odysseus. And Odysseus comports himself very well. In fact, he throws the discus farther than any of the other young men of the island, and he is so impressive that the Phaeacian Lords gather together and they all give gifts to Odysseus. These gifts themselves are quite important for Odysseus. If we think of Odysseus trying to accomplish a triumphant homecoming, a nostos, he would want to do so with spoils of war. He’s lost all of his men. He’s lost all of his possessions. But here with the Phaeacians, he’s now earning gifts. They are impressed with him and rewarding him. And so he will return to Ithaca, not empty handed, but with splendid treasure. Now, after Odysseus wins these gifts from the Phaeacians, they hold a final feast for him that evening. And Odysseus sits down at the feast where there is a bard. Homer tells us this. He went and took his seat beside the King. By now they were serving out the portions, mixing wine and. The Herald soon approached, leading the faithful bard Demodocus. Prized by all the people seated him in a chair amid the Feasters, leaning it against a central column. At once alert! Odysseus carved a strip of loin, rich and crisp, with fat from the white tusked boar that still had much meat left, and called the Herald over. Here, Herald, take this choice. Cut to Demodocus so he can eat his fill. With warm regards. For a man who knows what suffering is. From all who walk the earth. Our bards deserve esteem and awe. For the muse herself has taught them paths of song. She loves the breed of harpers we should keep in mind. Part of the reason Odysseus is going to be attentive to the Bard, and part of the reason bards were honored was not just because they provided entertainment, but because in their songs they can establish the kleos of the great men, the glory, the fame, the renown of the great men and heroes of the age. Now Odysseus goes on to ask Demodocus to sing a song about the Trojan War. And this request is itself interesting. We think Odysseus is doing before he has revealed himself to Alcinous is to establish his greatness through this bard sing of his own feats. That is, Odysseus is going to use the storytelling talent of the Bard as a means of establishing his greatness before he reveals himself. This, though, is what happens. Stirred now by the muse, the Bard launched out in a fine blaze of song, starting at just the point where the main Achaean force, setting their camps afire, had boarded the. Or swept ships and sailed for home. But famed Odysseus men, already crouched in hiding in the heart of Troy’s assembly, dark in that horse, the Trojans dragged themselves to the city Heights. Now it stood there, looming and round its bulk. The Trojans sat debating clashing days on end. Three plans split their ranks, either to hack open the hollow vault with ruthless bronze, or haul it up to the highest ridge and pitch it down the cliffs. Or let it stand a glorious offering made to pacify the gods, and that that final plan was bound to win the day, for Troy was fated to perish once the city lodged inside her walls. The monstrous wooden horse where the prime of Argive power lay in wait, with death and slaughter bearing down on Troy. And he saying how the troops of Achaeans broke from cover, streaming out of the horse’s hollow flanks to plunder Troy. He saying, how left and right they ravaged the steep city, saying how Odysseus marched right up to Deiphobus house like the god of war on attack with die hard Menelaus. There he sang, Odysseus fought the grimmest fight he had ever braved, but he won through at last, thanks to Athena’s superhuman power. Now this song is what Odysseus asked for. Odysseus requested a song about the Trojan horse in the fall of Troy, and this would seem to be establishing Odysseus kleos. Here Odysseus, listening to the cunning trick, the trick of the horse that he came up with that brought about the destruction of Troy. This would all seem to contribute to Odysseus glory, but as Odysseus listens to this song, he is moved differently than he expected. Homer tells us that was the song the famous Harper sang, but great Odysseus melted into tears, running down from his eyes to wet his cheeks as a woman weeps, her arms flung round her darling husband, a man who fell in battle fighting for town, and townsmen trying to beat the day of doom from home and children. Seeing the man go down, dying, gasping for breath. She clings for dear life. Screams and shrills. But the victors, just behind her, digging spear, butts into her back and shoulders, drag her off in bondage, yoked to hard labor pain, and the most heartbreaking torment wastes her cheeks. So from Odysseus’s eyes ran tears of heartbreak. Now. Now, readers of the Iliad will remember how that epic ended. It ended with Achilles and Priam, these two enemies both united in their sorrow, in fact, embracing each other in their sorrow over the dead and the lost. It’s a striking simile that Homer gives us at this moment, and Odysseus, instead of reveling in the glory established by this song, is moved to tears. And it’s tears that transform him into a woman wedded to a defeated man. That is, we have to see Odysseus here weeping as if he’s one of the Trojans that he defeated. Rather than celebrating his glory, Odysseus is moved in pity for those he defeated. The last line that I read so from Odysseus eyes ran tears of heartbreak. now. This heartbreak in some translations is rendered as tears of pity. Odysseus is moved to feel pity for the suffering that he inflicted on others. In feeling pity for the Trojans and in being likened to them, Homer is demonstrating through his great hero Odysseus that all human beings must endure pain and sorrow and loss. And it shows interesting growth in Odysseus rather than simply pursuing Kleos. Now Odysseus demonstrates a largeness of soul that allows him to feel sympathy for those whom he defeated in war. His own suffering has led him to appreciate and understand the suffering of others. Now Alcinous notices these tears of Odysseus and finally asks Odysseus, who are you? Book eight ends with this demand and is something of a cliffhanger because Odysseus is about to speak. We’ll look at Odysseus revelation of his name and his story in our next lecture.

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Once per week, Hillsdale College president Larry P. Arnn joins Hugh Hewitt to discuss Great Books, Great Men, and Great Ideas.

Dr. Larry P. Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, joins Hugh Hewitt on the Hillsdale Dialogues to continue a series on The Second World War, Churchill’s sprawling memoir and history of World War II in six volumes.

Release date: 7 August 2026

Read more about Sir Winston Churchill including the official biography of Churchill by Martin Gilbert at the Hillsdale Official Store.

Every week. Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn joins Hugh Hewitt to discuss great books, great men, and great ideas. This is Hillsdale Dialogues, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More [email protected] or wherever you find your audio.00:30S2

Morning glory and evening Grace America. I’m Hugh Hewitt. That music means it’s time for the Hillsdale Dialogue. Doctor Larry Arnn is with me and we are covering this book. Of course, we’re back in Winston Churchill’s The Finest Hour, volume two of his six volume World War II memoir. And this is the Critical year. This is 1940 to 1941, the finest hour of Great Britain. And Doctor Arnn, early on, he writes a letter to Ismay. And you might want to put a word in about Ismay at this point. June 4th, 1940. Things are bleak and. Churchill writes. An effort must be made to shake off the mental and moral prospect. Prostration to the will and initiative from which we suffer. What’s he talking about? And how do you do that?01:18S3

MM. That’s a great theme with Churchill. You have to, if you go to the Federalist Papers, the chapters on the papers on the executive branch are written by Alexander Hamilton. And the point is the word execution is cognate with the word executive. Right. In other words, get it done. And that’s a great theme with Churchill. When Churchill became prime minister in May, his first speech, which we read is blood, toil, tears and sweat was very inspiriting. And then the guys who were working for. He had written a letter during the twilight war between September 1939 and May 1940, he’d written a letter to the Foreign Minister, Lord Halifax, and it runs. The days are full of agreeable work, and at the end of each one not very much has been done. He said we have to live under conditions of stress, of soul that rivals that of the soldiers in the field. So Churchill thought like that, this is war. After Churchill was prime minister for about three weeks, all his private secretaries who became devoted to him were Chamberlain men. He didn’t fire any of them. And they. After about three weeks, their diaries started showing things like, oh, I see, this is how you go about fighting a war. And so Churchill’s trying to stir them up. Get going. Let’s do it. You know, you may like or not like Donald Trump, but there isn’t any doubt that he has an executive temper. And he’s he’s pushing all the time. And he’s not very restrained in how he goes about it. I praised Lindsey Graham earlier for being unpredictable sometimes. Well, that’s another feature of the executive. So this letter is very characteristic of Churchill.03:07S2

You just reminded me, I wrote a column last week for the D.C. examiner that primarily, uh, 9/10 of it was about Lord Palmerston, and part of it was drawn. I don’t know if you read that six volume History of England, but volume five is about Victoria’s reign from Waterloo to her death in 1901. And in it, Lord Melbourne, Victoria’s first Prime minister, says there’s no stopping Palmerston. He does what he wants and he’s just an energetic guy and he. He needs a a blockade of Greece. He orders the blockade of Greece and he gives a five hour speech on the Don Pacifico affair in the House of Commons, and he wins them over. That’s the executive temperament, I think, even though he’s a legislator, member of the House of Commons. Nevertheless, their ministers are either doers or they’re watchers. And he was a doer, and he was the prime minister throughout our Civil War, which I did not realize until I dove deep into him for the purpose of this column. Are you an admirer of his?04:08S3

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Castlereagh and Canning and Palmerston are the makers of British foreign policy. In its heyday, right when Britain was the greatest power on earth. And. And, you know, that began to develop with Queen Elizabeth in 1588. They beat the Spanish and French Armada. But then, you know, by the 18th century, they’re the man, right? They got this big navy and they articulated the main elements of British foreign policy. Churchill repeats them beautifully in many places and tried to follow him all his life. And that is, we are Independent of the continent, and we keep our independence. We take sides in continental disputes when they’re important enough and threaten us, and we’re always against the one that might dominate the continent. That means we only pick on the big boys. And that that means if it’s France, or if it’s Spain, or if it’s Germany, whoever it is who threatens to dominate the continent, we’re for the other guys. And those guys are the guys who articulated that. And it was in the bones of Winston Churchill.05:30S2

And after those three that Castlereagh, Canning and Palmerston, there comes Disraeli and Salisbury, and they’re in that, they’re in that line. And then Churchill kind of completes it. There are periods of weakness and periods where they don’t repair their Navy. And I’m reminded now with some of our strategic depth issues in the munitions stockpile of what happens when you have four or worse, eight years of a president who doesn’t much care. And that’s got a long tail that Donald Trump is working to overcome. But it’s very much a long tail. The other thing that comes through is that Churchill is absolutely fixated on tanks. I mean, they’re falling back across the channel. They’ve got to have airplanes. But he’s pulling out memos that he wrote on tanks and landing craft for tanks from 1917. What was his filing system like? How did he even find this stuff?06:23S3

Well, he, uh, I, I have carried his files around for hours with me. I can tell you in detail. I can tell you in detail how he did that. But, you know, first of all, he had a really great memory. And second of all, his themes are persistent through his life. He’s the inventor of the tank. But if you want to know how to organize your files, there’s, by the way, a tremendous correspondence in 1925 with a man named Sir Warren Fisher, who’s the head of the British Civil Service. Big time distinguished bureaucrat Sir Warren Fisher. Churchill did not become a sir until decades later. Churchill was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Fisher sends Churchill a snippy note about how ministers of the Crown probably shouldn’t have time about how to organise files. Churchill. Send him a note. How to organise the files and. Churchill gave him a tremendous response, in which he includes, for the first time the phrase no longer civil, no longer servants. Ha! Isn’t that good? And and but here’s how he did it. If you open a Churchill file in the Churchill filing cabinets, which is what Martin Gilbert had in the bottom of the Bodleian Library that I used to work in. First of all, the cabinets are arranged thematically, and then the drawers are arranged thematically, so his bank accounts are in one and his. This book is in another, and then the folders. Each one of them is in reverse chronological order and. And the exterior folder. And in each document in it there’s a hole punch, a little round hole in the upper left corner, and then he takes one of those little ribbons with a kind of a string with a metal thing on each end, and he feeds it through so that you can remove a document if you want to, but they’re fixed in place. And when you open it, the most recent thing is on top. And that means that because Martin Gilbert wanted to write everything in chronological order, whereas and that’s the opposite, by the way, from work, because when you’re doing work, you know, everything you know right now and a lot about the past for each issue. And so you start with the current stuff, right? Whereas if you’re writing history, you have to pretend that you don’t know everything you know right now. So you start at the back and then you can be closer to the actual situation we’re in, which is, we don’t know, tomorrow.09:11S2

How did Sir Martin Gilbert get command of the bottle and basement? Because that is one of the world’s preeminent libraries. You can’t miss it if you visit Oxford. I’ve been there a few times. You can’t miss it. But I imagine that that real estate is precious.09:27S3

Yeah. So the Bodleian Library has three main buildings, and they’re connected by and all three buildings. The new library is where this was. It’s across the street and then the main Bodleian Library. And then next to it is the big round building called Radcliffe Camera. and all three of those buildings go three floors up in their reading rooms, and they all three go three floor down, three floors down. And they’re the stacks. So they’re in the basement, right? You go down underground, and those three floors, those three buildings are all connected underground. They’re not connected. You have to go outside to to traverse between them. Uh, in the reading room levels. So anyway, you go to the new library and you have a pass, you have a key, and you get in the elevator. It’s an old timey elevator with one of those things that you swing across, you know, to kind of a cage to close yourself in, and you go down to the very bottom floor and your three floors below ground now, and you get off the elevator and you walk about 30ft and there’s an opening in the stacks. And Winston Churchill’s filing cabinets are arranged in a U. And of course, he wrote an essay on the filing cabinet. You know what kind of filing cabinet should you have? Fireproof. So heavy that it takes two strong men to move them. And because then they can’t be stolen. Very solid. Right. The ones by Mr.. Chubb are the best. He writes and his are all Chubb filing cabinets. So you go down there and in this you in between these wings of filing cabinets there’s a crappy wooden table and a hard wooden chair. That’s all the furniture down there. And I have sat in there for hours and hours and hours and.11:28S4

Well, that’s how.11:29S2

A young scholar becomes a preeminent scholar. Let me talk about this. Chapter 12, though it is it is full of memos about minutiae, about landing craft. Now, we went through this in 194243. I remember from researching an Eisenhower book decades ago that this was a real knotty problem for America, and it required that fellow down in New Orleans at Stephen Ambrose found. That’s why the World War II Museum is there, because he invented our landing craft. But Churchill was thinking about it from the beginning. And this whole chapter is full of minutia about minutia. I don’t know how he had this capacity to write these things, and I am astonished. Well.12:13S3

So you have to relate the two things that are going on. And they’re sort of a mixture of the human capacity of prudence. Half of these memos are about how do we keep these guys from coming ashore, right? Because they may invade us and take London this month. Right. They’re worried about that, right? And we for a while, they had an unarmed army. Most of the ones who got back 50,000 who got back from Dunkirk. Most of them didn’t get back, even with their rifles, and the artillery was all gone. They got a big shipment of rifles first from us, and they started arming their main army. And then pretty soon they had a million man home guard. So he’s worried about that, right. And there’s memos going out about that. And at the same time, in alternation, how are we going to invade Germany and kill Adolf Hitler? And you see, both problems are present. And if you that that thing you read to Ismay, who was a very close associate of Churchill’s, a senior general close to him, all war work beside him, all war, and was eventually the first head of NATO in 194546. We have to work urgently and solving the problem today. How we go about that will be affected by what the next problem is going to be. And the first problem is to save us. And the second problem is to kill Hitler. And pretty soon he’s thinking about the third problem, which is what’s the world going to be like after we’ve done that? And Churchill had those dimensions going on in his mind all the time.13:59S2

Now, I had suggested in my notes that I sent you that you read the two paragraphs on page 226 and 227 that begin the buoyant and imperturbable temper of Britain, which I had the honour to express, may well have turned the scale. I don’t know if you look those up, or if your book was as accessible as the paperback edition.14:18S3

I got them here. Yeah. Okay. And I will read it. Uh, let me make a point. Uh, first of all, if my I knew a lot of people when I was in England from 77 to 80 and on beyond, they’re all dead now. But people who lived through these years, my wife’s family, my her father and her mother. And it’s amazing how often they regard this time in their lives of this maximum danger as the greatest time in their lives. Churchill writes the buoyant and imperturbable temper of Britain, which I had the honour to express, may well have turned the scale. Now I’ll make a point. I had a little to do with Darkest Hour, the movie where Gary Oldman got an Academy Award, and it’s about this time in 1940, and they contrive a. Sorry, I’m wandering now, but I have to tell this. They can drive him to go down in the subway and various people talk to him and suggest things that later recur in his speeches. And I talked to the VP’s at Focus Features. I saw a preview of it in New York. They want to talk to me, and they said, what do you think? They were trying to decide whether to promote the movie for an early dinner or sorry, for an Academy Award. I had an early dinner and and I said, it’s great. And they said, Did Churchill go down in the subway? And I said, on that day? And they said, yes. And I said, no, he did not. And they said, how do you know? And I said, we know everything he did that day. You can account for everything he said, but you still say it’s great. And the reason is, he wrote in a different passage in the first volume in this volume, actually a related passage to this one in which he said that, uh, he was he’d drive around the town and he’d see people with weary faces in the bus queues, and they’d notice him and their eyes would brighten up, and they would give him the V sign. And he said the British had become the lion. And I was called upon to give the roar. So I told that to the people at Focus Features and said, you see, all you’ve done is shown them him giving them, giving him the words that he made so famous. Yeah, that’s what he says here. I had the honour to express may have turned the scale. Here was this people who, in the years before the war, had gone to the extreme bounds of pacifism and improvidence, who had indulged in the sport of party politics and who, though so weakly armed, had advanced light heartedly into the centre of European affairs. You see what he’s saying? Remember, there’s a kinship with George Washington there. You don’t go making commitments that are beyond your power to perform because that will get you in trouble. And he thought they were doing that in the 1930s, and they were making more commitments than they were building weapons Advanced light heartedly into the center of European affairs. Now, confronted with the reckoning alike of their virtuous impulses and neglectful arrangements. They were not even dismayed. They defied the conquerors of Europe. They seemed willing to have their island reduced to a shambles rather than give in. This would make a fine page in history. But there were other tales of this kind. Athens had been conquered by Sparta. The Carthaginians made a forlorn resistance to Rome, not seldom in the annals of the past. And how much more often in tragedies never recorded or long forgotten, had brave, proud, easygoing states, and even entire race has been wiped out so that only their name, or even no mention of them remains. See, Churchill is proud of the spirit, but he’s aware of the danger. And that’s what he’d been worrying about for a decade when others were improvident. He calls them. And that’s why he’s sitting in that chair. In that day he was proved right. Few British and very few foreign foreigners understood the peculiar technical advantages of our insular position. See, we have that today, by the way. It is true that the oceans are not as wide as they used to be, but they’re still there, and we should not ever give up the advantage of them. We have fighter aircraft in numbers on the American continent, and we went 40 years without that. And our strategic defences are better and getting better, and we should remember that. Nor was it generally known, even in the irresolute years before the war, the essentials of, say, sea and latterly air defence had been maintained. You see, in other words, we didn’t abandon everything. Thank God for it. He had something to do with that. It was nearly a thousand years since Britain had seen the fires of a foreign camp on English soil. By the way, isn’t that a good way to talk? Yeah, he might have just said since since Britain had been invaded. Uh, seen the fires of a foreign camp on English soil at the summit of British resistance. Everyone remained calm, content to sit their lives upon the cast. Risk everything. That this was our mood was gradually recognised by friends and foes throughout the whole world. Where he presents in this chapter. By the way, some German memoranda discovered after the war where the German military is commenting to Hitler. These guys are ready to fight. Yeah, you know that helped. That helped prevent the invasion. What was behind the mood? That could be settled only by brute force. So we’re going to find out if that’s.20:31S2

An amazing brace of paragraphs. And I don’t know how long it took him to write it. I doubt anyone does. But he’s channeling his 1940 persona there. He’s bringing it back in 194647. And those are not quotes from documents. He’s recollecting much in the way your in-laws recollect. This is how he felt. He must have felt increasingly confident. Um, he also notes they firmly believe, however, with the help of God, that they will not lack the means to discharge this task. Interesting pointer to the crater, not unlike the way Washington would talk, never got down into the specifics of theology, but very much about Providence.21:15S3

Oh yeah. Well, Washington was a Christian and, uh, but he was also the executive of a land committed to religious freedom. Yeah. And so as with Churchill, He talked at the level of generality proper to that, to include everyone. And, uh, you know, the laws of nature and of nature’s God. If you don’t believe in those, you’re an idiot. And it’s hard for you to understand the basis of America.21:42S2

Now I want to go to the practice.21:44S3

Yeah.21:45S2

In this chapter on July 19th. So we’ve gone a month and a half into preparing for what we’ll talk about next week. The sea lion threat. He replaces General Ironside, who’s got the best name in the book with General Alan Brooke. This is an ex who had been stranded in Europe and he was ordered to retreat. Why does that matter so much?22:07S3

Well, Brooke was, uh, you know, he was tremendously effective, man. Churchill’s team. You know, there were some changes in it. And, uh, Churchill, you know, he very seldom almost never denounces anybody, even enemies, but certainly not people he worked with. But he got his team together and they were good, right? And they were tight with each other. Brooke and Esmay and Jacob and Dill. Those were slim. Those were tremendous guys. There’s down Whitehall. So Big Ben, picture that in your mind. And there’s a street that runs from Big Ben to Trafalgar Square, one of the most consequential streets in history, called Whitehall. And along the way, in Whitehall, if you’re walking away from Big Ben over toward the right, there’s a stand of three generals and they are slim. Let me get remember who they are Slim Montgomery and Brooke. And they’re tremendous people, right. And they had a tremendous war record, and they fought sort.23:17S2

Of like MacArthur or Marshall and Eisenhower.23:21S3

That’s right.23:22S2

And Nimitz has got to be in there, too. I don’t want to get the Navy mad at me.23:26S3

Yeah, yeah. Well, Pat, you know, Patton got include Patton. And, you know, those guys were good and they. And one of the points I, I Victor Hanson’s very fine book, the Second World War, which might be the best book I’ve ever read on the subject. Uh, although Martin Gilbert wrote one too. It’s very good. He makes the point of how effective the British were. And that was possible because of the spirit in the people. And it was possible because of the tightness and skill of the leadership. They weren’t quarreling with each other all the time. You know, they did quarrel. But the truth is mostly what they did was work together. And Churchill was, you know, frustrating to brook Alan. Alan Brook, who became Lord Alan Brook, one word because he kept him up at night, always giving him difficult orders. And sometimes he’d wear out and and, you know, say, gosh, leave us alone. We got a job to do here. Right? And that’s in his diaries. And those are published and it makes it look like that. This was the scene of regular conflict. Martin Gilbert always believed that those diaries and one can read the originals of the diaries, by the way, are distorted by Arthur Bryant, who edited them because the truth is, there are also many, and some of them are in the book. Some of them are not shining instances in the diary where he talks about how he just marvels at Churchill and how well he can think about how determined he is, about how far he can see, including the passage. We cannot help. We could never win this war without him, he says. So it was a very tight. And the snowflakes that we talked about before that Rumsfeld is always sending, they were important because, you know, if you if you’re not, if you send out 30 or 40 notes a day to people which, you know, and their degree in Churchill, their grades of them, right? A lot of them are, are just be thinking about this. This came up to me, this came up to my mind, be thinking about this and that he had confidence in those people.25:40S2

What one example of that is in this chapter, he’s thinking about artillery duels. It’s sort of a premonition of drone warfare that we see today. He’s thinking about long range artillery duels between the Germans and the Brits over the Straits of Dover. And so he thinks we’ve got to get the old decommissioned guns, 13.5in guns from the Iron Duke, which an old ship that doesn’t sail anymore but had big guns, and we got to put them on railway moorings and and run them up and down the coast. That’s not what normally one thinks about in a Prime minister’s job.26:15S3

Yeah, he’s well he also begins the invention. You see the tank and the landing ship for tanks and later infantry and the portable harbor. Right. He’s already thinking about that. And this this month, right when he’s getting ready for invasion. And so he, you know, eventually they built a harbor that they could float across the channel and make a way to get a lot of stuff ashore without a deep port. Well, he here in this chapter, he sends a memo out, be thinking about this because somebody’s thinking about it. Right. And one of the things was he thought you could make them out of concrete and put floats on them, and then they could be places for people to live too. And then you’d go and float them across the channel and then take the floats off, and they sink down to the surface and you’ve got a fort. He said, you know, he’s thinking like that, right?27:15S2

Did you, um.27:16S3

We’re.27:17S2

We’re running low on time here for this week, and we’ll come back to the invasion threat next week. But did you see the movie pressure this summer with Brandon Frazier as Ike and Kay Summersby and the British Meteorology Corps, and all that conversation about whether to go or not go June 4th.27:32S3

And I haven’t watched it yet. I haven’t watched it yet. I did have a talk with Tom Selleck. Let me drop a name here. Now he listens to the show and he’s such a nice man. He narrates our recent movie and he said, Tell Hugh Hewitt to pay attention to the movie in which I play General Eisenhower.27:51S2

Oh, okay.27:52S3

Very.27:55S5

I will do that. Yeah. Because, yeah, you should watch that movie.27:59S2

Brendan Fraser is not quite physically fit enough to be a persuasive Ike, because those men, he does smoke enough to be a persuasive Ike. But I like the fact that the media, the things you got to think about. And this is a theme that will extend into next week if you’re prepared to be invaded, you are then prepared to invade. You agree with that?28:21S5

That’s right.28:22S3

Isn’t that something? Yeah. Yeah. If they look, we’re afraid they’re going to do this to us. If they can do this to us, it proves we can do this to them. And, you know, he’s I mean, one of my my, I think it’s probably my favorite letter that Winston Churchill’s wife wrote about Winston Churchill was when Churchill lost his job in 1914, 1916, in the middle of the First World War. Clementine wrote to the Prime Minister, Asquith, and urged him to keep Churchill in the government. And you’d want your wife to think of you this way. Only Winston has the deadliness to fight the Germans. And I think she was right about that.29:08S2

And it proved it to be the closing line for this week. Page 245 as the month of July and August passed without any disaster. We settled ourselves down with increasing assurance that we could make a long and hard fight. Next week, Doctor Ana and I are doing chapters 14 and 15 on the invasion problem and Operation Sea Lion. And boy, they are fascinating. So do not miss that. All things Hillsdale are [email protected] and all of our prior dialogues, especially on the first book and a half, the World War II memoirs are at hue for Hillsdale. Com. Thank you, doctor Art.29:47S1

Thanks for listening to the Hillsdale Dialogues, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More [email protected] or wherever you find your audio. For more information about Hillsdale College, head to hillsdale.edu.

The post Churchill’s The Second World War, Part Thirty appeared first on Hillsdale College Podcast Network.

Kathleen O’Toole, associate vice president for K-12 Education at Hillsdale College, and Robert Pondiscio discuss his Atlanta Classical Academy commencement speech, the value of learning together in a community, and the promise and perils of AI in education. Robert Pondiscio is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and an affiliate of AEI’s James Q. Wilson Program in K–12 Education Studies, where he focuses on K–12 education, curriculum, teaching, school choice, and charter schooling.

Learn more: https://k12.hillsdale.edu/

A 20-minute podcast featuring professors, K-12 teachers, and friends of Hillsdale College, all speaking about classical education—what it is, why it’s still relevant today, and what makes it unique. Hosted by Scot Bertram.

Welcome to the Hillsdale College K-12 Classical Education podcast, bringing you insight into classical education and its unique emphasis on human virtue and moral character, responsible citizenship, content, rich curricula, and teacher led classrooms. Now, your host, Scott Bertram.

Thanks for listening. The Hillsdale College K-12 Classical Education podcast is part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More [email protected] or wherever you get your audio. You also can find more information on topics and ideas discussed on this show at our website, k12.hillsdale.edu. Today, we hear a conversation between Doctor Kathleen O’Toole, associate vice president for K-12 education at Hillsdale College, and Robert Ponzio. Robert is senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an affiliate of Aei’s James Q Wilson program in K-12 Education Studies, where he focuses on K-12 education, curriculum, teaching, school choice, and charter schooling. We’ll hear discussion about Roberts Atlanta Classical Academy commencement speech, the value of learning together in a community, and the promise and perils of AI in education. Here’s doctor O’Toole.

Well, I’m so pleased to be joined again by Robert Desio, senior fellow at AEI and a wonderful writer on all topics related to education. Robert, thanks for being here again.

Thanks. Enjoyed it. Enjoyed it last time. Looking forward to this time.

Yeah, it was a fun conversation we had. I thought since that conversation, you were the graduation speaker at one of our member schools, Atlanta Classical Academy. How was that experience going to see ACA?

It was fantastic. Um, I have never given a commencement address before. I’ve never been asked, didn’t want to say no to this. And it was just a lovely day. I mean, it’s a very small school, as you might know, incredibly dedicated, diligent, smart staff, wonderful students and families. It was just, um, it was a long way to go for me. I live in upstate New York, but man, what a what a terrific day that was. I was I was flattered to be asked and, um, really enjoyed the experience and I can’t wait to go visit again. I mean, I was there obviously after instruction was over, but just seeing the love that the staff has and the engagement with those students and hearing the description of their academic program made me want to get back there as soon as possible on an instructional day to see to, to, to get a closer look at how they run.

Yeah. Well, I think if you were to visit the classrooms, you’d be really impressed. ACA has been a Hillsdale member school for a long time. It’s one of our earliest schools that we helped to found, and the faculty down there has been. They’re just excellent. I mean, individually they’re excellent and they have this wonderful community with each other. Many of them knew each other from college. They all moved down together right after graduating and then brought on board some really talented people and the community that they have with each other and the way that that community has shaped the community of the entire school, I think is a real lesson for K-12 schools.

And what makes them really shines through. It shines through in every interaction you have with, again, with, with staff, with students, with family members. It’s they’ve really got something special there.

Well, let’s talk about your commencement speech. It was it was on this topic about community and schooling together. And one of the arguments that you made was, there’s something valuable in not just receiving information in school, but receiving the same information as the other students at the same time as the other students. That creates something important. You argue.

Yeah, you know, I think not not the people hang on every word that I write, but I’ve, you know, I’ve said for years that I’ve never had a thought about education that Ed Hurst Jr didn’t have. You know, first, more originally and better. So, you know, I can’t put two sentences together without invoking Hirsch and his work. And and that’s basically the subtext of, of that commencement address. There is value in shared knowledge and there’s also value in learning together. If I’m being really honest, I think I kind of conceived of that commencement speech. I’m not going to say as a shot across the bow of school choice advocates, because I am one. Um, I believe very strongly in school choice. And there and Atlanta classical is, you know, that’s why you have school choice to allow institutions like that to, to, to exist. It’s a, it’s a public charter school, but it, I always worry, I mean, frankly, my, my, my joke over the last couple of years has been I’m always the skunk at the picnic, including my own. Um, I guess because I just see complexity everywhere. So part of the subtext, I didn’t speak about this in the commencement address. But it was what was informing my thinking was, what does it look like post school choice when we are all kind of choosing our own adventure, you know, educationally speaking and, you know, learning what we want to learn when we want to learn it, well, then we may lose something important. We may lose not just, you know, shared knowledge, common knowledge, shared vocabulary, so to speak. We may lose the experience of learning together. I’ve made this observation elsewhere, Kathleen, that that, you know, it’s not as if we couldn’t educate kids differently if we chose, you know, you see this critique all the time. Oh, if Rip Van Winkle, you know, were alive today, the one thing he’d recognize is the school. And usually this is said dismissively, as if, you know, we’re so hidebound that we can’t imagine another way to educate children. Well, that’s not true. We can we can easily do that. And some of us do. But the reason that schools persist in the form that they have had for, you know, decades. Centuries is because we like it. Okay. We it’s a cultural value. It’s a cultural norm. There’s something about the experience of, you know, 25 kids in a room with an adult leading instruction and learning the same things together that has a cultural valence. And so when I, when I say it’s a shot across the bow, and I don’t mean it that way because again, I am a school choice, um, fan. It’s just a caution to, you know, let’s not throw out that baby with the bathwater. Let’s remind ourselves that not just the structure of school and the content of school, but just, again, the, the, the, the cultural habit of learning together is something that we have had and should continue to have. It’s not all bad. In other words, let’s, let’s, let’s not, you know, in, in our effort to, to innovate in our effort to, you know, make education more efficient. Let’s not forget that there are reasons that some of these things persist.

Yeah. Very good. And are those reasons do you do you think that schooling together is successful merely because we enjoy doing it? It gives, you know, direction and and motion to our learning. Or is it is it possible that you learn more quantitative, you learn more and you learn more deeply, simply because others are there?

I’m not sure those are the same things. Learning more and learning deeply. You know, if you think about it, think about something that you know well. And I love the question. And so let’s, you know, I’m not going to pretend that I’ve got the answer, but let’s think through it together. When I think about things that I have learned most deeply and studied most closely, if I’m honest, it’s probably mostly independent study. People can’t see this. But behind me, you know, on this podcast, there’s a there’s a whole, you know, floor to ceiling collection of books. Well, that’s once you get to a certain level of, of sophistication about any topic, all roads lead to, to print, right? You know, there’s there’s no substitute for that. That’s how we engage with ideas over time with with people long dead. You can’t do that in a classroom. So it’s not an either or. I mean, I think there is something to be said for the active schooling as serendipity. It’s the place that you go to learn about the things that you didn’t know that you were interested in until somebody pointed them out to you and said, hey, this is interesting. But at some point, at some level of sophistication, all roads lead to reading and independent study, right?

Well, I don’t know. I mean, so if I think about the times in my life when I learned the very most, it was my undergraduate years, my graduate years, both of those were in both of those situations. I had a tightly knit group of friends who was going through the major with me or going through the degree with me, and we would I’m trying to think, you know, so what did I get from that exactly? A good deal of it was conversation. Yeah.

And challenging each other’s ideas.

Challenging each other. Did we teach each other things? Yes we did. We did teach each other things. We also kind of learned from watching each other how to be a student. Yeah. So, you know, I was a, I was a not very good note taker in high school. And then I sat next to this in when I was a freshman in college, I sat next to this senior in one of these, a class I was taking on Russia. And he was an amazing note taker. He got everything down and I didn’t know that it was possible to take notes in that way at that frequency. And so I just copied him and I was like, if if Dave is writing, I’m writing, and my hand was tired for a week and then I got, I got good at it. And so now I take notes like Dave, you know, so would I have figured that out by just by myself? No.

I wouldn’t the risk of, of diverting us into something completely different. That to me feels like a violation of cognitive load theory. In other words, if I’m spending all of my time trying to transcribe what the professor is saying, that’s that then then some part of me is not engaging with the content. I’m merely a stenographer at that point.

It was that way for me when I was typing in graduate school. But in undergraduate, I was very I was very good in undergraduate because I was copying this one student and I would, I would write and then I would go home and type up or go back to my dorm and type up my notes that I had written. Okay.

And that then you’re clearly at a different level of intellect than I am. I find it difficult to, you know, to walk and chew gum at the same time, let alone engage.

And well, having those two, having those two touches with the material, I think helped me not feel overwhelmed by it.

Okay. But I mean, you raised you’re pushing back on my point and you’re raising raising a better one, which is it’s not an either or. Obviously, it’s not just, I’m going to read great books and engage with with authors. And that’s, you know what my deep study looks like. But then, yeah, I want to pressure test those ideas in a room with other similarly engaged people to, you know, who, who will broaden the lens for me or point out things that I may have missed, etc. so it’s not an either or, but none of it. Back to the point of this, this, this, this talk that I gave in Atlanta. None of this gain says the, the, the larger point, which is there’s something valuable about both of those experiences about sharing, you know, experiencing common common texts, classical texts in common and doing it in community with other scholars.

Yeah. At ACA and at other excellent classical schools, you would in a literature class or maybe a history or philosophy class, you would see seminar discussion going on and teaching via that method is hard and it requires a really good teacher. They have such teachers at ACA, and that is a really valuable thing for students participating in a seminar, because the seminar is, you know, the discussion is only about the text. Yeah. And the students are talking with each other and the teacher is there. Not every class is run this way, but, you know, a couple of times a week, perhaps the teacher is there as a as a guide for the discussion. And the students learn through the discussion to disagree with each other. And when it’s it’s, you know, as I say, it’s hard to do it well, but I have seen classes where it’s been done well. And it’s a valuable thing because students learn a to articulate exactly what they think, find the words for exactly what they think, and then confront another student disagreeing with them, which is a big deal as a teenager. But also if you if you can, if you can develop such trust among the students, they really do learn to help each other learn. And they, they develop a deeper appreciation for all of the various complexities of a text or all of the various ways in which it might be interpreted. And, you know, it’s maybe it’s more efficient for them by themselves to master all of that content. But with some things we’re not seeking mastery of content. You know, when you read hamlet, you’re not seeking mastery of hamlet, seeking to be the kind of person who can think about the big questions that that text raises.

Wait. You’re not you’re not trying to find the main idea of hamlet when you. AU contraire. No, it’s. I’m being a smart aleck, but I’m. You’re making me a little bit wistful because you’re reminding me the best experiences that I’ve had, both as a student, but especially as a teacher, were in exactly that kind of discussion that you just described. For a time, I taught a senior class at Democracy Prep, a charter school in New York City, on civics. And with that, that was my goal was a lot of it. It was basically, you know, a course, an informal course in the the Constitution, in the news. I was forever looking for issues to make the point to students that the Constitution is not some dry, dusty document that’s, you know, 200 odd years old. It’s very much at work in your life. And this usually took the form of reviewing and reading Supreme Court decisions on on, on contemporary issues. And some of the most enjoyable and, and challenging and fruitful conversations were exactly that. And I always used to point out like, look, this decision was five four. This decision was six three. That means the most educated, erudite people that we have ever produced don’t agree. So of course you’re not going to agree either. And that’s I’m not going to say it was, you know, perfect every day. But man, when when it worked well, you would just go home walking on air feeling like, I love this work. I love what I do, I love these kinds of discussions. And I wouldn’t leave this job to go to heaven.

Yeah. And I think those are the those are the teaching moments that the students really remember over the long term.

No question.

So all of this, I think is especially relevant today because we’re seeing the dawn of AI schooling.

Oh, boy.

And there are schools. The Alpha School is one. But there just in general, I think we are tempted by the possibility that AI could reach students who are not being reached. Fill teaching gaps where teachers cannot be found. And, uh, provide a kind of an instruction that is of higher quality than, than the average teacher. And you have written a little bit about this, and I understand you’re going to be writing more about it. And I’ve been thinking about it a lot too. And I thought maybe we could talk about the promise and the peril of AI schooling.

Well said.

Promise and peril. You know, I’ve said for a long time in completely different contexts that every every good conversation about education quickly gets to, well, it’s complicated or it’s not a very good discussion. And none more than this one. I just wrote a piece recently, kind of again, cautioning, you know, my, my, my, uh, fellow education analyst to kind of tap the brakes on, on the anti screen movement because, you know, there has been, as I’m sure, you know, a real backlash in the last couple of years to phones in classrooms, and that has morphed into a let’s just ban all screens and look, to be perfectly honest, I’m. I’m a thoroughgoing edtech skeptic for good reasons. I mean, it just has never lived up to its its instructional promise. Um, but having said that, I have now seen any number of applications of AI in the classrooms that I can’t pretend are not good. Um, I’ll give you one, one quick example. So, um, a year or two ago I was at a demonstration and I wish I could remember the name of the platform. It was an AI product that evaluated and gave feedback on student writing. And, you know, I’m sitting there with my arms crossed like, this had better be good because I was prepared to, to hate it if I’m being, you know, candid. And I started looking at the feedback and it was good, like really good. And I’m a professional writer. Okay. And it was noticing things about the students writing that I didn’t notice. And then I had two thoughts in this order. The first was, well, wow, I’m learning from this. As the teacher. I’m learning from this. I’m now noticing things in student work that if I were still in the classroom, would help me give better feedback. And then the next thought was, well, a lot of teachers probably aren’t even going to look at that. They’re just going to hand back the, the, the AI corrected feedback to the student. But either way, the student is getting good feedback that he, he or she would not have gotten from me as a teacher or frankly, from the indifferent teacher. How do we say no to that? You know, how do we say that that has no value whatsoever? Is it optimal? Is it the kind of lovely discussion that we were just discussing a few moments ago? No. But is it without value? I think also no. Another experience. Um, and I need to be careful in describing this because I don’t want to out anybody. So I was asked to go take a look at a AI program teaching early reading in a, in a school not far from where I taught myself in the Bronx, in New York City. And I walked into the classroom and there were four adults, and two of them didn’t even look up from their phones. I mean, here, here I am, you know, a middle aged white guy in a suit walking into a classroom. They don’t know who I am. They were so indifferent, to be blunt, that they couldn’t be bothered to pretend to be curious about who was this stranger who showed up in their classroom. The only instruction that was going on was the AI program. So how can I say no to that as well? Again, suboptimal. None of us would want our children’s education to turn into, you know, just kids in front of a screen all day. But it’s are we prepared to say no to that, knowing that the alternative may be even worse? Um, it’s I don’t want to be that guy who says, no, you can’t have this because it makes me uncomfortable.

Yeah. Interesting. When I think about AI schooling, the first the first hesitation I have is this point we were making that it seems like if there is a community in that school, it’s a pale shadow of the community that we would see in a classical school, for example, because the students, because the teachers are at best guides and they’re not really the people providing direct instruction. Maybe in Alpha, they provide direct instruction in the afternoon when the students have time to focus on electives. But, you know, for the for the meat of the day, it’s really between the student and the AI. And that’s a very private personal relationship and an individual relationship, I guess with a, yeah, not a person with a fake person.

Let me ask you this, because.

I’m curious about your own experience in what you’ve seen in terms of AI tutors. I was talking to a gentleman the other day, not a great length, but he was waxing rhapsodic about a program that literally allows students to interact with Aristotle. Now, obviously not literally, because Aristotle has been in his grave for thousands of years. But I gather from his description, it’s a AI doppelganger of Aristotle. So you’re reading Aristotle, and now you can interact and ask questions with with, you know, an avatar or some such. Of Aristotle. So does. Does that scratch your itch for deep engagement with. With subject matter and in community with others?

Well, my first question would be who designed that? Aristotle. And what had they read and how much had they understood and how much when, what translation did they work from? You know, like, there are lots of big questions. It’s not so simple to just say, you know, here’s your AI, Aristotle. And then the relationship with the the relationship with the the image of Aristotle is not real. And it, you know, it behaves kind of like a person, I suppose, but it is not a person.

And so it’s not a person. But presumably.

And I’m again, I’m kind of, you know, talking out of my ear here because this is not something this is something I’ve had described to me. I didn’t didn’t interact with it. It’s not hard for me to imagine. And let me be clear, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not promoting this idea. I’m just asking questions about it. I’m now curious about it. Right. One assume that AI has reached a level of sophistication that you could upload to it. Every thought and utterance and written word that we can attribute to to Aristotle. And it can emulate Aristotle, right? So it’s, it’s, um, it’s obviously not the real thing, but it’s closer than, than any of us could, you know, sort of a time machine. It’s the closest thing we’re ever going to get. Does is there educational value in that I guess is the is the question I wonder?

I mean, one thing I’ve noticed about students, even very young students, is they can tell when it’s real and they can tell when it’s not real.

Yeah.

And so I think, you know, it might seem fun and entertaining or something to give them an opportunity to talk to this Aristotle robot or this Shakespeare robot or whatever. But they would know the whole time that it’s not real. And, you know, and then we could, we could take, we could go in two directions with that. We could say, well, let’s make it more real.

Can I interrupt for one second? Sure. Just. Just to push you. Sorry. Sorry. I’m. Now let’s have our own Socratic seminar. Right. You’re not interacting with the real Aristotle or the real Shakespeare, but you are interacting with the real ideas and the real words, right?

Maybe. I mean, again, assuming it’s assuming it’s well programmed, but it’s, um, I don’t know. What bothers me about it is the veneer and the, the personification of it, because I think they, I think we know what’s human and we know what’s not human right now. And I think that’s very good for us that we can discern. And I worry that by making something like that really prevalent, young people would lose their ability to discern what’s human and not human and become kind of detached from reality.

Yeah. No, I think that’s I think that’s a very fair point. But I don’t want to fetishize, you know, one difference and use that as a, as a reason to dismiss the entire thing. And again, I’m going to say this ad nauseam, I don’t want anybody to think that I’m an enthusiast for this. I’m just I’m AI curious at this point, right. My, my larger concern with, AI is what I’ve come to call the illusion of learning. So, you know, again, to invoke Ed Hurst Jr. 25 years ago, when, you know, Google and Yahoo were were, you know, the toast of the town. He wrote an article for the American Educator magazine, and I believe the title was something like, you can just look it up or can you? And he made the point that these these search engines were useful only if you already possessed a certain amount of background knowledge. Otherwise, you know, you you wouldn’t have the discernment to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff in the results that you’re getting when you look something up. And he wrote this piece because, you know, and this will sound familiar again, in the age of AI, a lot of folks were like, well, why do we need to teach kids any content knowledge whatsoever? When we have Google, they can just look it up. Hirsch’s point then and now was, no, these tools are powerful in in the hands of knowledge haves. They are useless in the hands of knowledge have nots. Well, AI kind of puts that on steroids. So what I’m describing as the illusion of learning. Not only can a student use AI to look things up, they can use AI now to produce polished, sophisticated work that without a great deal of discernment, it’s really, really hard to tell. Is this your original work or is this the work of AI? Yeah. And so you bypass the learning altogether. You know, you’re not only not gaining the knowledge to, to, to, to use the tool effectively, the tool is helping you obfuscate the fact that you don’t have the knowledge. And here’s where this gets a little bit perverse is if you think of the way that we, um, reward teachers, okay, this, this goes beyond instruction to education policy. Now. Well, what incentive does a teacher in a mediocre or struggling school have to be honest about this? If they’re evaluated by the caliber of student work and suddenly students are turning in work, that is Looks like it is, you know, polished and sophisticated. Well, that makes me look good as the teacher. So nobody has an incentive anywhere along here, to be honest about the fact that no learning is actually going on. So on the one hand, I’m really intrigued by, by the opportunities that AI will create for, for, for students who might not have access to it otherwise. On the other hand, I’m awfully scared about the potential to just hollow out the entire enterprise, right?

And particularly particularly because the teacher is not there delivering the lesson. The AI is delivering the lesson while the teacher watches. What insight does the teacher have into what the student is doing, what the AI is doing? And how confident are we that our programming of the AI is going to remain within the limits that we set up for it when we started the whole enterprise?

Yeah. I mean, on the one hand, I don’t think the genie is going back into the bottle, so I don’t think it profits us whatsoever to just say, well, let’s just ban it because there’s other issues with that as well. You know, one of the things you hear all the time is, okay, let’s just bring back the blue book. And every writing has to be on demand in class. Well, that’s fine, except now it’s taking time away from those richer experiences that you and I were just describing a few moments ago. If I have to spend my entire time as a teacher guarding against AI creep into in to what I do, well, then that by definition takes time away from richer things that I could be doing with kids. So I’m not sure that’s the. It would work. You’d be, you know, have a clear example of what kids did and did not know based on what they produced with pen and paper in front of you. But it’s also taking time away from, from richer experiences that you and they could be having together.

What do you think about this idea in, um, in school, there are some subjects where we are seeking mastery. And in school, classical school there are and schools that follow a classical curriculum or a great books curriculum. There are some subjects where mastery is not the goal. It’s easy to see how mastery is the goal in lower level mathematics. Once I’ve learned my multiplication tables, I should fully understand them. I should have no further questions about them. I should wrap my mind around them until there’s nothing more to know. But if I take that same approach to the study of history, the study of philosophy, the study of literature, really any of the humanities at the high level, then I am fooling myself. It seems like our current methods for measuring the success of schools are only effective in the subjects where mastery is the goal. It’s very easy to know if a child knows multiplication. It’s very difficult to design a test that tells you whether a child has read and understood Shakespeare. Therefore, I think it is very easy to design an AI tutor that could teach a child one of these lower level, mastery based things, and very difficult and fraught with peril to design an AI to take a child through higher level humanities subjects?

No. I think I think that’s right. But again, you know, I’m going to play the it’s complicated card again. And this is let me take it out of the, the the classroom setting and take it into my own work. So I’ve, you know, I was a late I’m not going to call myself a convert, but a late adopter of, of, of AI. Um, and I’ve noticed something recently, one of the hardest things, hardest things for me to do as a writer is just to get started. You know, I’ve said for years, when people, when people ask me about my writing process, I always joke and say, oh yeah, I should really get one of those that would help. I describe what I do is I just kind of like, I throw ideas on onto the screen like a potter throwing wet clay onto the wheel and, you know, shape it and shape it and then realize, oh, you’re making a vase. That’s what that is. So I’m sloppy in terms of my process. Well, AI helps a lot with that. I can what, what was once a problem for me as a writer is now frankly a benefit. In other words, I don’t have to worry about structure and order. It can. It can do that for me. And I know what I want to say. I know the points I want to make, and then it can fashion it into a usable outline. That or even a draft that I can, I can write from. Lately I’ve noticed, and ChatGPT is the one I use primarily. I’ve noticed because I’ve been using it and because it knows my writing so well, and it knows, I guess, my rhetorical style. I feel like it’s been giving me unsolicited advice on tone, on argumentation. And on the one hand, that would be creepy. On the other hand, it’s pretty good. It’s back to that example that I was using about giving student feedback. It notices things about my writing that I didn’t notice, and makes suggestions that if a, you know that that that are as good as the best human editors that I’ve ever worked at or worked with. And once I noticed that it kind of my first impulse was to be kind of a little bit find it eerie in a sense. And my second impulse was to be a little bit awed by it, like, wow, it’s noticing things now. Make of that what you will. Again, I, you know, I’m just a user. I’m not a sophisticated theorist about AI, but it seems like it’s getting better and sharper. So if it can do that for me as a writer, why can’t it do that for students when they’re learning about Shakespeare, for example, when you’re interacting with the program? Well, maybe it’s noticing something about the argument that you’re making saying, well, you said this, but how about this? I can’t close off that possibility.

Well, I think you can benefit from AI’s suggestions about your writing because you had so many decades of writing without AI beforehand. That’s right. And I think if you were 17 years old and you were writing your first serious essay, an AI was providing you with those suggestions, you would not be in a position to evaluate. And also you’d be incentivized to just let AI do the work for you, and then you’d never learn it.

Yeah, that’s really well observed. In other words, what you’re suggesting, and I think correctly so is you wouldn’t get a chance to, to, to, to find your own voice to, to develop your own style. I think that, I think that’s that’s exactly right. But I guess, you know, and again, I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m just being mindful of the fact that the vast majority, I think of, of 52 million students that we have in this country, we are not suffering from an air of sophistication in their instruction. They are probably suffering from a lack of sophistication in their instruction. So on the one hand, your cautions are very well observed. On the other hand, I’m always going to be that that South Bronx fifth grade teacher who worries that my kids are not going to get what they need to get to the starting line, to even participate in conversations like the one that we’re having.

Yeah. Well, as someone who is AI curious, what are you going to be observing over the next, you know, one, five and ten years? What are you going to be looking for to discover whether this is a healthy whether this is a healthy improvement rather than a great question.

Great question. And let’s, let’s think out loud together about this one as well, because I’d love your thoughts. I just noticed today a survey because it came over the, the website of the 74, which is an education news website. And I thought it was a new survey. Turns out it’s from a year ago, but it’s still interesting. It was a survey that was done, I guess, by Gallup, that described the different things that teachers were using AI for. And somehow, in the aggregate, it turned out that AI was this was the headline of the piece was Saving teachers six hours a week in time that they would have spent doing other things. To me, this is an unambiguous good thing. In other words, you know, the one thing we can’t give teachers more of is time. So if there’s things that we can do that will save them time, then that’s great. But the survey shed no light on what to me is the obvious question. Okay. What are you doing with those six hours instead? I’ve made this point about curriculum for years. One of the reasons that I’m a curriculum fetishist. It’s not because I want to be the guy, you know, who says, thou shalt learn this because I said so. it’s the issue of of teacher time, you know, and when I was a classroom teacher, I was kind of scandalized by how much time I had to spend creating, you know, bespoke lessons, 20, 30 hours a week, creating lessons from scratch because there was no curriculum in the school that was teaching. And I was shocked by that. But it turns out that’s kind of a norm. So ever since then, I’ve been the evangelist for this idea that, look, you know, your your individual lessons may be the greatest thing since sliced bread, however, which is a better use of your time creating lessons from scratch or studying student work, giving feedback, developing relationships with kids and families, etc.. Deepening your own knowledge base. All. Surely all of those things are a better use of teacher time than, you know, opening up that empty plan book on Sunday night and thinking, what am I going to teach tomorrow? So this to me is the conundrum, not a conundrum, but both the opportunity and the question I have about AI. So great if it’s saving you those six hours a week, are you just using them to watch, you know, reruns on TV, or are you using that time to study student work and give feedback? If it’s the latter, then it’s a good thing. If it’s just okay, now, I can work, you know, 34 hours a week instead of 40 or whatever. Then then then less so. But I the long answer to your question is I want to see how we’re how, how AI is changing the job of the teacher to bring it more in line with what I’ve always thought teaching should be, which is less about individual differentiation and more about deepening sophistication.

Yeah, that’s a very good test. You know, are we taking advantage of this extra time to do the things that only we humans can do?

That’s right. Yeah. And that’s exactly how you I’ve said it for years. It’s like, look, you know, I can’t be the one who, you know, engages with the student. I can’t be the one who gives feedback. I can’t be the one who gets to know the kid. You, teacher, are the only person that can do that. So we got to take something off your plate. The only thing I can think to take off your plate is is is is lesson planning.

Yeah. Interesting thought.

Yeah. But let’s, let’s, let’s keep in touch on that because I, when I read this piece about, you know, the, the 6000 hours, it, they weren’t even curious. I seem to to ask that question. Okay. What are you doing instead with that time?

Right. Well, Robert, always fascinating to talk with you. Thank you.

Thank you. Always a pleasure.

Where can we read your work, especially your work on AI? You have a panel coming up, I understand everything.

Yeah. Next week at the Villa Fund in Washington DC. I’m on a on a on a panel, uh, talking about this exact topic. So I appreciate the opportunity to, to think through this and rehearse my lines in advance. But everything that I write as an American Enterprise Institute scholar shows up on our so-called scholar page. So if you Google my last name, good luck. Good luck spelling it and and a e I will take you to my my scholar page at AEI. And literally everything I publish ends up there.

Wonderful, wonderful. Well, thanks again and, uh, maybe we’ll see each other at Atlanta Classical Academy someday.

Oh. Let’s go. Right. It’s summer. Summer’s over. One summer is over. Uh, you won’t have to ask twice. That will be a treat to to to spend some time at that school with you. Let’s do it.

Wonderful, wonderful. Thank you.

Thank you. That was Doctor Kathleen O’Toole, associate vice president for K-12 education at Hillsdale College. And Robert Ponzio, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. I’m Scott Bertram. We invite you to like us on Facebook. Search for Hillsdale College, K-12 Classical education. You also can follow us on Instagram at Hillsdale underscore k12. That’s Hillsdale underscore k12 on Instagram. Thank you for listening to the Hillsdale College K-12 Classical Education Podcast, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. [email protected] or wherever you get your audio.

The post Kathleen O’Toole and Robert Pondiscio on The Promise and Peril of AI in the Classroom appeared first on Hillsdale College Podcast Network.

Host Scot Bertram plays excerpts from a lecture by Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health of the United States, titled “Restoring Gold Standard Science.”

And Mark Edward Lender, author and historian, discusses the keys to victory in the American Revolution and his book War Without Mercy: Liberty or Death in the American Revolution.

From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true and the beautiful are taught, nurtured and honored. This is the radio free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.00:25S2

It turns out that every single additional paper produces less and less actual improvements in health per paper. We’re spending a lot of money, but per dollar that we spend, we’re not getting as much as we might as we have. People have labeled that the scientific stagnation problem.00:42S3

This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. That was Jay Bhattacharya from the National Institutes of Health. Today, we hear excerpts from a lecture he gave in April of this year titled Restoring Gold standard science. And later on in today’s program, historian Mark Edward Lender joins us. He’ll tell us the keys to victory in the American Revolution. First, with Doctor Anthony Fauci and Covid back in the news cycle, we listen back to portions of a lecture by Jay Bhattacharya from the National Institutes of Health, from a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in April of 2026 titled Restoring Gold Standard Science. Bhattacharya begins by giving his diagnosis for what happened during Covid.01:32S2

The problem we have now, and it was it was the reason the root cause of what happened during Covid is that we have a scientific authority that decides what’s true and false, instead of instead of the normal functioning of science. And it’s not just one person. I could, I could highlight Doctor Fauci. And that would be a very simple kind of example, right? Everyone you remember the votive candles to Doctor Fauci anyone? Anyone buy one I one. Just not a single person bought a votive candle. Um, I have to say, it’s I find it deeply uncomfortable also to, to be a scientific authority, because I think really the root of the first scientific revolution was that there wasn’t a scientific authority. What you had instead was you had a displacement of the power to decide for society to decide an epistemological authority. Um, out of the hands of a small number of ecclesiastical powers. And you put it instead in the hands of a few very clever people with telescopes, right. That they got to decide if the moons of Jupiter move. We are in a situation now, and I think Covid made that situation bear that a relatively small number of journal editors, uh, people who pontificate on TV about science directors of the National Institutes of Health get to decide what’s true or false in science, and I think that’s a pretty big problem.03:00S3

Jay Bhattacharya continues by assessing the current state of America’s health.03:05S2

We’re not a healthy nation, and that’s just a sad fact. The Make America Healthy Again movement. I’m allowed to say that political slogan here, aren’t I? It’s a political slogan, but it comes out of a real cry for help from the American people. We aren’t a healthy nation. We have. We have huge chronic disease problems. But because of the Make America Healthy movement again, I think we actually have a chance of, of, of, of solving these problems. Um, but we can only do it if we fix science. If we want to make America healthy again, we have to get the science. We have to launch the second scientific revolution, right? Because it’s not just that we should look to gurus to decide how to make America healthy again. I mean, this is part of the problem. Doctor Aaron mentioned podcasts. There’s some great podcasts out there. But is it easy to tell who to get the information from? No, it’s very it’s very, very confusing. And it’s a symptom actually of the problems of science.04:05S3

We’re listening to excerpts from a lecture by Jay Bhattacharya at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in April of 2026. The lecture, entitled Restoring Gold Standard Science, Bhattacharya continues by outlining the problems of science. Why are we not making more progress? He begins with the replication crisis.04:25S2

I’m going to show you some evidence about this, but it turns out that it is often the case that when people publish scientific articles, even articles you see on TV or touted by podcasters or whatever, when independent people look at the same article or same ask the same question, do the same, even sometimes the same experiment, they don’t find the same answer. And the vast majority of science is not actually subject to replication. That’s a major problem because because what that means is that a lot of what the science we read, a lot of the science that we see, um, is not actually true. Just to put a fine point on it, I mean, it means, it means that when you are making decisions about your health and you go look up an article, uh, you try to read it and it gives you an answer. A lot of the time it’s not right. And that means and that’s true even for your doctors. Your doctors will look things up and they’ll give advice based on, on essentially bad, bad, like bad science. I mean, for instance, I’ll give you an example. Um, are eggs good for you? Eggs are good for you. Eggs are good for you. Now they’re the superfood, right? I grew up in the 19. My dad had a heart attack when I was when I was 13 years old and in the in the 80s, early 80s. And, um, uh, back then, uh, eggs were poison. Remember that? Uh, I did not eat an egg until I was 19 years old. And then it was a horrible egg white omelet. I don’t because because because of the cholesterol thing, right? So egg whites then were good for you in the 90s and now eggs are superfood. Why is that? I could go on about examples like this. It’s the replication crisis, the scientific ideas that that rule our society are not subject to the kinds of things that we all learn when we first learned about science are the basis of truth. Lots of clever people using telescopes to look to the moons of Jupiter. They all see the moons of Jupiter move. Then we decide together the moons of Jupiter move right. We take as authority of someone at Harvard published something and that therefore, that person must be right about that thing, right? It was published in a top medical journal. Authority is replaced replication as the basis of truth in science. It’s a major epistemological problem that’s solvable.06:44S3

The second problem of science, as Jay Bhattacharya outlines, is scientific stagnation.06:49S2

This is a funny claim to make, but it’s actually true. Per dollar that we spend on science, we get. We get less and less advanced than we did ten, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. I’ll show you some evidence on that in biomedicine. Um, just to, just to give some examples of that. There’s you’ve all heard of Moore’s Law. Moore’s law is the, is the, is that the speed of CPUs doubles every, every few years. Right. Um, that actually apparently is no longer true. The speed of CPUs are no longer doubling at that at that rapid rate anymore. Um, in, in biomedicine, it turns out that every single additional paper produces less and less actual improvements in health per paper. Right? So like, I’ll show you some evidence in just a second in a bit about, about randomized trials. Um, that’s now we’re spending a lot of money and we are actually getting advances. I already told you that about the cystic fibrosis and the and the and all, all of the big, big advances. But per dollar that we spend, we’re not getting as much as we might as we have. People have labeled that the scientific stagnation problem. Now, again, I think there’s reason. The reasons have to do at least. I think the reasons the. The way to solve it is, is through some reforms at the NIH that I’ve been working on. I’m going to I’m going to brag about in just a bit.08:13S3

We’re listening to a lecture by Jay Bhattacharya at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in April of 2026. The third problem of science, says Bhattacharya, outlines, is funding concentration.08:24S2

About a third of the portfolio of the of the third of the money that spending. The NIH goes to about 20 institutions, 20 institutions. Now, I know that Hillsdale is not one of them, because famously, Hillsdale takes $0 from federal government. But there are excellent scientists at Hillsdale. And just as there are excellent scientists all across the country, I’ve now gone on a tour of so many different colleges across the country, studiously avoiding as best I could any of the top 20. And the reason I’ve done that is because I wanted to see. And what I found is that everywhere you go in Alabama, in Iowa and Kansas in in in Wisconsin, in Arizona, what you find is excellent institutions not in the top 20 that do not receive, like, you know, a third of our portfolio of money. You have excellent institutions with excellent scientists who have a much less of a chance to get NIH support for their research than if you are a scientist in one of those top 20. And that’s the problem, right? We are competing with the Chinese who have made tremendous investments in their biomedical research enterprise. Actually, they’ve stolen a lot of ours and we’ve trained them too. But that’s another story. Um, we have to. So, but, but in order to solve that problem, in order to really compete with the Chinese, in order to really make the kinds of advances that can translate over to better health for Americans. We have to we have to empower scientists wherever they are. It doesn’t matter if they come from Stanford or Harvard or whatever. If they have a great idea, we should be. We should. We should be funding them. We should be trying trying out ideas with them. All right. So I’m going to give you those are the that’s that’s my diagnosis. I’ve given you my three, three reasons. I think that we have this problem and we’re fixed that we’re in.10:15S3

We will continue in a moment with more from Jay Bhattacharya’s lecture at a national leadership seminar for Hillsdale College on restoring gold standard Science. First, if you have 30s, take a quick break, go to radio our.hillsdale.edu because we want to stay in touch with you. If you click the subscribe button at the top of the screen and then enter your email address, you’ll be signed up for our email list every week. One email from us telling you about the brand new radio free Hillsdale Hour episode. Might it be Victor Davis Hanson this week, or Mollie Hemingway or Doctor Matt Spalding from Hillsdale in DC, or Carol Markowitz or Heather MacDonald? We’ll tell you our guests each week via email so you don’t miss a thing. Go to Radio hour.hillsdale.edu, click the subscribe button at the top of the page and enter your email address, and then we’ll be in contact. We continue now with excerpts from a lecture by Jay Bhattacharya from the National Institutes of Health. It’s titled Restoring Gold Standard Science. This was delivered in April of 2026 at Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar. We previously heard Doctor Bhattacharya outline the problems of science, why we’re not making more progress now, some potential solutions. He begins by outlining and explaining the cause of the replication crisis.11:40S2

It’s authority. It’s authority. We decide that we’ve elevated a relatively few sources of knowledge of of authority to decide for us what is true or false in society. Maybe Doctor Fauci, maybe CNN. God forbid. Don’t do that. Um, you know, it could it could be anything but um, but we, we pick these sources. It could be podcasts. We pick these sources of authority and say, well, this is what’s going to determine what’s true or false rather than, rather than replication. Uh, the way that we solve the problem then is by making replication the standard of authority in medicine, the standard of truth in medicine. Essentially, it’s an epistemological revolution. And actually the the lucky thing for me is that the NIH can do that. And this is something I’m working on this year. Very, very simple thing. First, we have to fund replication, not something that’s like sexy, right? Because I’m like, okay, I’m going to every time I say I’m going to fund replication, I start to see people yawn. It’s a terrible thing. Um, but I have to do it because if I don’t fund replication, then how do you know what’s what’s true or false? Now, I don’t want the government to tell us what what should be replicated, what shouldn’t. In fact, what happens now is if some if some student comes to me and say, Jay, I want to replicate your paper, I view it as a threat to my career. Right? Because what if they find if I’m wrong? Oh my God, a scientist is wrong. That’d be terrible. The problem here is that is that is that we need to make replication a source of advancements in science. Like, it’s actually a great honor. Some scientist comes to me and says, Jay, I want to replicate your work. Well, that means my idea is worth replicating, worth looking at. And if they find it’s not true, then maybe we can figure out why we got a different answer. That’s how we advance science together. Make science into a collaborative thing, rather than one where we’re looking over our shoulder worried that what I what I’m saying doesn’t replicate.13:27S3

Bhattacharya continues by talking about scientific stagnation and how to get things moving once again.13:34S2

The average age at which people got their. Get their first large grant at the NIH in the 1980s, you could be in your 30s and you would get a large grant, you get your first large grant. Now, the age at which a scientist earns their first large grant from the NIH is is the mid 40s. That’s what this very depressing graph shows you. We require young scientists to do postdoc one, postdoc two. Postdoc three. After they’ve done their PhD. After they’ve graduated from Hillsdale, they still can’t get an assistant professor job, much less get support to get to try their new ideas out. Um, it’s also true that it’s young scientists that are the most likely to have new ideas in the first place. Um, this is the most depressing paper I’ve ever this is the paper I wrote in Mikko Packalen is the most depressing paper I ever wrote. I’ll show you why in just a second. Um, the question it asks is, uh, when in your career are you most likely to publish a newer idea? I just there’s no way to sugarcoat this. It’s like it’s the first year after you finish your PhD. My career age is. I first published my first paper in 1996. I’m do the math 30 years old in career age when I was 0 or 1 years old is when I was most likely to publish a new idea. The 30 year olds are all way on the right side of that graph. The probability of publishing new ideas declines monotonically with career age. And yet we are now in a scientific ecosystem where we delay the time to which people get their first support for large, large grants long into the future.15:18S3

We’re listening to excerpts from a lecture by Jay Bhattacharya for Hillsdale College in April of 2026 at a national leadership seminar entitled Restoring Gold Standard Science, Bhattacharya says we also need to change how funding decisions are made.15:33S2

We have to give support for early career scientists. We’ve already done some, some, some, some some things to do this. But this is this is a culture, a major cultural shift that’s taking place in our scientific, uh, um, in science over the last several decades, we have essentially, uh, made it much more difficult for early career scientists to get their ideas, uh, you know, attempted. We made it much more difficult for early careers. We’ve made it too easy to fail as a scientist, as an early career scientist. Right. So what happens is you, um, in Silicon Valley, you start a firm, you’re 22 years old. Somehow you convince somebody to give you $30 million and you start a firm, um, and it fails, but it was a productive failure. And then you get another shot where someone gives you $60 million. It’s a real good business if you can get it, but it’s not everyone gets it right. Um, the problem in science is that if you do your PhD and you don’t get your paper published, well, you don’t get a chance that the postdoc number one, if you don’t get your a, a fancy paper published postdoc one, you don’t get postdoc two it’s so easy to fail in signs anywhere along the training path. And we have to change that. We have to make science more resilient and easier and with with possibilities of success. So that early career scientists can try their ideas out earlier and earlier. Second, we have to start funding ideas that are that we don’t know they’re going to work. We have to fund ideas that are the bleeding edge.16:59S3

And here, Jay Bhattacharya outlines the tricky trap of acquiring research funding.17:04S2

In order to attract scientists to your institution, where that can win those grant applications. You better have great facilities. I can tell you, what I’ve seen is that lots of young scientists at some of these top institutions, they can’t get lab space because it’s so competitive. At the same time, you have people with amazing ideas outside of these top institutions that can’t that don’t have a chance of getting our money because they’re an institution that is not that doesn’t have that fancy lab space the NIH gives you. We give facility support, but the way that we do that is by. We look at all the project money that all the projects. If you look and if you win the projects, um, you get the grant money. What’s the solution to this? The solution to this is a radical change and I’m going to work on this this coming year. You cut the link between the direct money and the indirect money and instead have market competition for the facilities money. And then you allow researchers to more easily move the project money that they’ve won to the places where the labs now are. And you have a dynamic market that attracts scientists to go to the places where the facilities are. Essentially, what this will do is just expand the places where we send our money. Um, and it’ll allow the facility support to go not just to 20 institutions, but to wherever the great scientists are. And then you build the institution up and attract the great scientist to your institution. It’ll supercharge science across the country because the NIH money essentially is a seed seed money that that that attracts other investments in institutions. It shouldn’t just be 20 institutions in this country that get half our money or a third of our money.18:53S3

Doctor Jay Bhattacharya from the National Institutes of Health concludes his lecture by explaining how all of this works together to point toward a second scientific revolution.19:04S2

The unified funding strategy makes sure that the portfolio is at the bleeding edge, that we are funding early career scientists with the newest ideas so that we get back to funding things at the bleeding edge, solve the stagnation problem. But if your funding ideas the bleeding edge, you better check if they’re true. And so you solve the replication crisis. And so you allow people to do replication work to check if these bleeding ideas, the bleeding edge are true. And then finally, you recruit scientists from everywhere with this with this new funding model of funding research. And what you have is a second scientific revolution. I started this with a pessimistic note, and I want to end with an optimistic note. We can solve these the nation’s health problems. We are the most important nation in the world for many, many reasons, not least of which is that we are a nation that is absolutely devoted, that has tremendous scientific accomplishment to point to. And the future is bright. The future is bright because the investments that that that we make in science can translate over to better health for people. If only we if we solve the things that have led to us where we are, there’s no reason for you to listen to me as an authority. Let’s instead reason together and figure out what the what, what, what way to what what’s true in science, and make investments that really meet the health problems of the country. Thank you so much, and thanks for your kind attention.20:29S3

That’s Doctor Jay Bhattacharya from the National Institutes of Health. His restoring gold standard science from April of 2026. At a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar, you can find the entire lecture at Hillsdale. Freedom Library at Freedom library.hillsdale.edu. Up next, historian Mark Edward Lender joins us. We’ll discuss the keys to victory in the American Revolution. I’m Scott Bertram. This is the radio free Hillsdale Hour. We’re back on the radio free Hillsdale hour. I’m Scott Bertram. Be sure to follow us on X at Hillsdale Radio. We’re joined by Mark Edward Lender. He has a PhD in American history from Rutgers University, professor emeritus of history at Kean University, also the author or co-author of 11 books, including Fatal Sunday, George Washington The Monmouth Campaign and The Politics of Battle. And the New One is War Without Mercy. Liberty or death in the American Revolution. Also here on Hillsdale’s campus, part of our lecture series on 1776. Delivering a lecture on Keys to Victory in the Revolution. Mark, thanks so much for joining us.21:58S4

Well, thank you Scott. It’s a pleasure to be here.22:00S3

Mark, how did the British treatment of the colonies initially spark this war?22:06S4

Well, there are so many myths, particularly as to why the Americans won that war. And there’s a question is, did they win the war? Maybe the British lost it. And there is a difference. I was asked for last night’s lecture to to discuss, uh, the keys to the Patriot victory. And it was, uh, historians love to get asked questions like this because the answer is almost completely Subjective. I mean, I’ve got to pick and choose between any number of issues. And historians dealt with this question for generations. You take this disparate group of colonies and you match them up against the probably at that time, the premier military power in Europe, well trained, well equipped army with a very capable officer corps. People make jokes sometimes about the automatons of the British army. That’s nonsense. These were good troops. They were motivated. They were led by a career officer corps. So how did they do it? There’s a lot of things that come into play on this. And I think part of the reason you’ve got to begin with the issue of motivation. I mean, uh, what what possessed these people to take up arms in the first place? And, and for that, I think we have to look back to the British and specifically to Edmund Burke, the Anglo-Irish statesman conservative writer who, in looking at the relationship between the mother country and her colonies, came up with the term salutary neglect, meaning that the British got their empire on a cheap. They had the economic benefits and strategic benefits of the colonies without a great deal of overhead, because they let the colonies rule themselves. The Colonials like the arrangement, of course, because well, they were loyal to the. To the King. They had a very ambiguous relationship to Parliament, and they liked that. This ended with British victory in the Seven Years War, or in the American context, the French and Indian War. All of a sudden they’ve got an empire to run. They’ve got Canada. They’ve picked up colonies elsewhere. So in rationalizing the whole thing, then came this whole series of acts, which, you know, we learn about from third grade on the the Tea Act, the Sugar Act, the Quebec Act, the proclamation of 1763, and that brought an end there, a practical end to salutary neglect. All of a sudden, uh, these colonials are no longer going to have the kind of local autonomy they come to expect as a right as rights of Englishmen. So what happens now? Uh, I think the best answer by a 91 year old militia captain, Levi Prescott. And he, uh, was Massachusetts. He’s a Lexington and Concord, uh, veteran. And he was asked why, you know, what was this all about? He said, well, I, I didn’t use any stamps for the Stamp act. Forget the Tea act. I never read any of these radical Republican ideology, ideological things. We had always governed ourselves. We always meant to govern ourselves. And they meaning the British. They didn’t mean we should.25:17S3

Mark was the entirety of the revolution motivated by this desire to return to self-governance that the colonies had enjoyed under earlier British salutary neglect, or did the motivation for the war change over time?25:32S4

I think there was enough of that feeling to. Certainly there was enough of that feeling to spark armed resistance. I don’t know that there was enough of that feeling to maintain the war until 1783, and for a lot of folks, yes, it was. But, you know, the reasons that people initially go to war aren’t necessarily the reasons that sustained them through a long and traumatic conflict. Unfortunately, war goes on. It tends to develop a momentum of its own and cycles of revenge and retribution set in. And the reasons you went to war somehow become less important because you’re dealing with actual survival as time goes on. And we have to keep in mind that the war for independence was not only a war of major armies and major battles, that was a mere minority of the actual conflict. Most of it took place at the local level between, uh, irregular pickup groups, militia groups, uh, tribal groups, even families defending homesteads. When that kind of conflict takes place, uh, grander notions of liberty and so forth, uh, kind of fade away, uh, and their place taken by, uh, an existential struggle for survival. Mhm. Uh, there was an interesting comment by Lord Carlisle. In 1778, the British sent the Carlisle Commission to negotiate with Congress, saying that everything you objected to will get rid of. No one called it such at the time. But what Carlisle offered, essentially, we would call Commonwealth status today recognize the sovereign. But for all practical purposes you are independent. Your own laws, your own armed forces. Mhm. Well, Carlisle came up with a blank wall and he finally realized that it’s too late. There’s been too much blood, too much treasure, too much pride. And he recognized, and he said that as long as Washington has an army in the field, these people aren’t going to quit. Mhm. And at that point, there was no more talking. It was just going to fight it out.27:48S3

How close did the Americans actually come to losing this battle? Was there ever a point when it was inevitable that they that they would win? Or was there was there this chance of loss?27:57S4

You know, there’s there’s it’s impossible really. Historians have tried. There’s been all kinds of of efforts to say, did the British really, given the resources available to the military, fiscal, diplomatic and otherwise, do they really stand a chance? I mean, at top strength, maybe 35,000 active troops fit for duty. I mean, think about 35000 in the expanse of just the Eastern American states, 35,000 would barely fill a Big Ten football stadium on a given weekend today. They were just stretched too thin, but let’s assume that they had a reasonable chance. I think that chance disappeared after the campaign of 1776, when they had several chances to destroy Washington’s army at Long Island. At Second Trenton, and they didn’t. They? There were other chances, too. I think they stood a chance in the South in, uh, when they came back in strength in 1779, late in the year. But then in 1780, uh, they made appreciable gains in the South. And I think if Cornwallis had followed orders and really focused on bringing South Carolina back into line, maybe, maybe they could have rallied enough loyalist support to, to make a dent in the in the colonial cause and at least perhaps taken the South back. But For various reasons. These things did not pan out for the British. Let’s borrow from tennis. Call them unforced errors and they could have done a classic error as Howe swept across new Jersey in the 1776 was before the Battle of Trenton. He offered pardon, and all you had to do was accept the pardon, read, you know, read, declare your allegiance to George the Third. Go home and stay peaceable. It’s about 3000 people took him up on that. And then within days or weeks, as the British Army moved across new Jersey, disciplined, somehow collapsed. And there’s explanations for that. And, uh, we try to explain it in the new book you mentioned, but they pillaged and plundered their way across the state. Rape was all too common. The town of Princeton was actually sacked. And all the goodwill that Hal had accrued, offering pardon and simply evaporated. And within weeks the new Jersey countryside, which had scattered the state government had scattered. The militia had melted away. I mean, rose in arms. You had a popular rising. And that was very, very, uh, costly. I mean, new Jersey was all but back in the British orbit, and they blew it. And then what happened to those 3000 who had taken the pardon? They were publicly identified in accepting the pardon, and they were ripe for, how should we phrase it, political reeducation. And they were re-educated with a vengeance. Patriot authorities came down hard on loyalists.31:05S3

Mark Lender with us here on the radio free Hillsdale, our mark. Were there any counter revolutionaries in the comedies? How important was it for the Patriots to suppress any of those loyalist efforts?31:18S4

Show me a revolution that survives and allows an opposition to become effective. I mean, you, the Vendée and the French Revolution, the revolutionaries put it down the the white armies that opposed the Bolsheviks. They were put down and they had to if the revolution was going to succeed. And our revolution was was really no different. Patriots understood that their enthusiasm. Many of their neighbors, family members didn’t share it. I mean, there was a lot of loyalty to the Empire. And you establish your ascendancy by making sure that your opponents simply can’t organize effectively and mount a counterrevolution. And the patriots struck hard and fast to make sure that that didn’t happen. And that was a war long effort.32:03S3

Mhm.32:04S4

And the British were never able to cover loyalists to the extent that they could declare publicly against the revolution in any, any safety, any way, and certainly not in strength enough to mount an effective counter-revolution. It was brutal. It was absolute brutal. And terror is not too strong a word to describe what happened in many instances.32:26S3

Talking with Mark Edward Lender, the new book War Without Mercy, Liberty or Death in the American Revolution. A point made that local forces were left to fight according to their own rules, which quite often meant no rules whatsoever.32:38S4

Right. Uh, this was pretty grim. And one thing that my co-author was James Kirby Martin. That’s our fourth book together. As a matter of fact, what we did was we we looked at some of the numbers that other historians had generated, particularly, uh, Howard Peckham, who actually tried to quantify in 1974 in the run up to the bicentennial of the Revolution. He tried to quantify, using graduate assistants and other research assistants, to scour the archives in the various states to quantify the number of military actions that took place. And he came up with a number of, uh, over 1500 land and naval actions. And of those 1300 and change were land actions. Jim and I took a look, and about a hundred of those were 100 more, 100 less. But it was kind of an arbitrary decision, was a major battle. But our chief criteria was for actions that concerned the main American and British armies going head to head with one another, and that come with about 100 of them. So you’ve got like 90% of the war that was fought at the local level, not combat between the main American and British armies. So who was doing the fighting? As I mentioned earlier, it was often ragtag pickup groups, organized militia loyalists against patriots on the frontiers, tribal groups fighting white settlers. Uh, we’ve got instances of families defending themselves on isolated farmsteads. The, uh, the fighting was, uh, all out. Mhm. People understood that you were fighting in a contest where you simply couldn’t expect much quarter much mercy from your opponents. So why should you display it toward them? It got very messy indeed. And if anything, we know that Peckham’s numbers were quite conservative. I mean, we looked at, uh, new Jersey, my native state, the number Peckham came up with was 250 and change actions, uh, in new Jersey. Well, new Jersey was located between the chief British garrison in New York City and the de facto rebel capital in Philadelphia. So you’re right there. You know, you’re going to be in trouble. Mhm. But, um, as a member of the new Jersey archives staff, while Peckham’s research assistant was compiling numbers for him, was also working on his own compilation of what was going on in new Jersey and had much greater access to archival and other local sources. He came up with about 600 actions. I mean, more than double the number that Peckham found. And when we went through those, we found that about 20 qualified as major American British armies going head to head. So it’s again, about that 90% comes up. And we know that in new Jersey it was absolutely brutal. You had part of the northeastern part of the state across from New York City, became known as the neutral ground because nobody could control it. I mean, there was raid after raid counter raid after counter raid. Down south in the southern part of the state, Monmouth County, and below the local inhabitants, local patriots became enraged because the state simply could not stop loyalist incursions from from the coast. And they formed a group whose name says it all. The Association for retaliation. They fought a private war. The Patriot authorities frowned on it because they wanted a war conducted within legal boundaries, because that establishment was not a question of mercy. It was a question of legitimacy they were trying to establish. And while they frowned on it, did they try to stop it? No, no. They’re having their cake and eating it too. Like, tut tut, don’t do that. But nice job. On the other hand. So, uh, it’s this local aspect of the war that I think accounts for a great deal of the violence associated with the war.36:46S3

With all these small scale skirmishes, private wars happening up and down. How did people find out about the status of the war? How did they find out how anything was going in the fight?37:00S4

You know, we have the benefit of 250 years of hindsight to look back and document all this stuff at the time. People frequently had no idea. I mean, uh, there were efforts at communication. They were irregular. Sometimes they were dangerous. I mean, you couldn’t get couriers through certain areas and expect them to survive. We know that sometimes we’re really important messages that American commanders were trying to get the word out. British commanders trying to get the word out. You sent more than one courier and by different routes and at different times, because you knew there was a pretty good chance that the message was not going to get through. Worse, it was going to be intercepted. And that was that was a real problem. So frequently people fought not knowing what was going on elsewhere, particularly on the frontiers. And sometimes when you found out what was going on, it didn’t make any difference to you. A classic example. October of 1781. Cornwallis surrender at Yorktown, out on the frontiers. Did they care? They did not care. That war continued. Mhm. The Indian wars, uh, had settler forces back footed for a long, long time. They didn’t end that until the 1790s. There’s some pretty stiff fighting. Went on well after Yorktown out west. So communication was a real a real problem, even in the more settled east. But when you get out into the frontier areas, it could take a long, long time for people to learn what was going on. And then once you heard about it, it could be even longer to actually verify it. So this was, I mean, communications that we take for granted today. You simply could not take for granted. Mhm. In the 18th century.38:44S3

Mark Edward Lender has written in a book about the Monmouth campaign called Fatal Sunday. For listeners who might not remember Monmouth from textbooks or their their school days. Tell us a little about what that was, when it was and why it needed the focus of an entire book.39:04S4

Well, this battle that was fought in the middle of the state, 1778, after, uh, the British had evacuated Philadelphia and after Washington had gone through the experience of the Valley Forge winter, it was the politics of the whole thing. What did this battle mean? Because, you know, the battle was technically we’re talking about a tactical draw. Uh-uh. Henry Clinton, who replaced William Howe as British commander in chief. Uh, poor fellow. He was in Philadelphia. And, uh, you you get handed the top job with, along with orders saying, give up the only real prize the British had won in 1777. And and he finds out that he can’t even make a complete evacuation because the Royal Navy simply didn’t have the transports to to get the army down. So they you you packed up a lot of loyalists, uh, some military units, a lot of dependents and a lot of your equipment. But then everybody else has got to march across new Jersey, which is a pretty hostile place to the British by this time. What I found was that this was Washington’s chance to redeem himself. He had done a brilliant job in reconstructing the army at Valley Forge, but he had had a very, very hard time early in the winter of 1778. It’s been called the Conway Cabal. Poor Thomas Conway actually had relatively little to do with it. But let’s face it, you had Congress doing its job. You had hired a general to win a war. And in 1777, it did not look like Washington was going to win that war. So the stakes for Washington at the Battle of Monmouth were certainly military, if you’re going to collide with the main British Army. But they were political. If he had lost another campaign, I think Washington’s political problems would have increased exponentially. And working with an archaeologist was great because the archaeology had not been completed when I’d originally written that manuscript and Gary Stone was posted at Monmouth Battlefield State Park as an archaeologist, and I held off because I wasn’t going to write something up. And then the archaeology comes in. So wait a minute. And, uh, when, uh, it was pretty much done, uh, Gary had come up with some wonderful stuff. And the Arc is the team working at Monmouth had come up with some wonderful stuff and really did it didn’t change the strategic look at it, but, uh, looking at the tactical level to figure out actually what happened, because Monmouth is generally considered one of the most complex and difficult to explain of revolutionary engagements. Uh, we straightened out a lot of stuff and we were able to write it up.41:48S3

Very neat. That book is Fatal Sunday, George Washington, The Monmouth Campaign and the Politics of Battle. The most recent book, War Without Mercy, Liberty or Death in the American Revolution. Mark Edward Lender, American History PhD, from Rutgers and professor emeritus of history at Kean University. Mark, thanks so much for joining us.42:07S4

Thank you very much, Scott. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.42:09S3

That will wrap up this edition of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Our thanks to Jay Bhattacharya from the National Institutes of Health. We heard from his lecture Restoring Gold Standard Science. You can find the full lecture at Freedom library.hillsdale.edu. And Mark Edward Lender, co-author of the book Fatal Sunday. Remember, you can hear new episodes every week on this station. You also can find extended versions of some of our interviews, or listen any time to the podcast. Find [email protected] or wherever you get your audio. Until next week, I’m Scott Bertram, and this has been the radio free Hillsdale Hour.

The post  Launching a Second Scientific Revolution appeared first on Hillsdale College Podcast Network.

On this episode of The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, Jeremiah and Juan discuss the choice that Odysseus makes to begin his journey back to Ithaca before introducing a lecture from Dr. Benedict Whalen.

Calypso had held Odysseus captive for nine years on her island but now sets him free. He is shipwrecked again on the island of the Phaeacians.

The Odyssey tells the tale of the cunning and crafty hero of the Trojan War on his journey home. After ten years of war, Odysseus faces another ten years of fantastic temptations, deadly monsters, treacherous seas, and impious men. Meanwhile, Ithaca is threatened by suitors who plague his wife and plunder his wealth. When Odysseus reaches home, he must slay the suitors, test the loyalty of his friends and family, and restore order to his marriage and his kingdom.

Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast. I’m Jeremiah Regan and.

I’m Juan Davalos. We’re back with the Odyssey lecture number three Calypso.

So in lecture three, Professor Whalen takes us through the Odyssey books five and six. When we meet Odysseus, he is not at the height of his heroic glory. He is a captive now of seven years of the goddess Calypso, a beautiful, immortal goddess who offers Odysseus her hand in marriage. She wishes for him to be her husband, but he resists. He is faithful to Penelope. He longs to go home, and he is stuck in this difficult situation until the messenger god Hermes arrives with a command to Calypso to let Odysseus go to resume his journey home.

Like you mentioned, when we meet Odysseus, he is at his lowest. And it reminded me of the beginning of the Divine Comedy. When we meet Dante, he is at his lowest also, and I appreciate these heroic journeys when we meet the heroes at their lowest, because I think we get to identify with that hero better when we see them at their lowest and the journey that they’re going to go through, and the things that they’re going to learn through that journey, and the virtue that is developed through that suffering.

That’s right though, don’t mistake Homer for a sentimental modern. We have many depictions of heroes who are too humanized. They’re brought too low, they’re shown to be too frail. They’re really not heroic, even at this low point. And it is a low point when Calypso questions Odysseus and says, hey, aren’t I more beautiful than your wife? Why don’t you want to marry me? He responds, ah, great goddess, worldly! Odysseus answered, don’t be angry with me, please. All that you say is true. How well I know. Look at my wise Penelope. She falls far short of you. Your beauty, stature. She is mortal, after all. And you. You never age or die. Nevertheless, I long. I pine all my days to travel home and see the dawn of my return. So even in this temptation. Immortality. The most beautifully formed woman. Because she’s not immortal, she’s a goddess. He still desires. He has the fortitude to be faithful to his wife and seek to return to her. So yes, he even a hero, can be laid low. And yet he gives us something to admire, even in even in his travails.

This is a beautiful chorus, and I encourage you to go watch the chorus, because the online courses team did a fantastic job in creating an environment that displays that beauty. Jeremiah. I believe this is one of the biggest sets.

That’s the biggest set.

The biggest set that we. And how, how big was.

Was it over 50ft wide, 30ft deep and about 20ft tall?

Yeah, it’s it’s an incredible set. We actually have some statues that were 3D printed of.

Athena and Herakles. That’s right. There was supposed to be a statue of a hoplite, but there was an error in the computer file, and the statue was coming out to be 12 or 13ft tall when it was supposed to be seven, so it was too big and we had to abandon him. But the rest of the set worked out pretty nicely.

So I encourage you to go to hillsdale.edu/course. That’s hillsdale.edu/course, so you can enjoy also not just the great lecture by Doctor Whalen, but also the beauty that goes along with the set design and the different images that have been put together for the course.

Now let’s turn to Professor Whalen, who is quite a handsome guy himself, as you’ll know, if you tune in and watch the course with lecture three of the Odyssey Calypso.

In this lecture we are going to cover books five and six of the Odyssey. It is in these books that we finally meet Odysseus, the man of twists and turns. We will see him escape from Calypso’s Island, Ogygia, and begin his re-entry into human society. Book five begins with Hermes coming to Calypso and telling her that she must allow Odysseus to escape. So Hermes skimmed the crests on endless crests. But once he gained that island worlds apart, up from the deep blue sea, he climbed to dry land and strode on till he reached the spacious cave where the nymph with lovely braids had made her home. And he found her there inside, a great fire blazed on the hearth, and the smell of cedar cleanly split and sweet wood burning bright, wafted a cloud of fragrance down the island. Deep inside she sang the goddess Calypso, lifting her breathtaking voice as she glided back and forth before her loom. Her golden shuttle, weaving thick, luxuriant woods, grew round the cave alders and black poplars, pungent cypress, too, and their birds roosted folding their long wings. Owls and hawks and the spread. Beaked ravens of the sea. Black skimmers who make their living off the waves. And round the mouth of the cavern trail divine. Laden with clusters bursting with ripe grapes. For springs in a row. Bubbling clear and cold. Running side by side. Took channels left and right. Soft meadows spreading round. Were starved with violets lush with beds of parsley. Why, even a deathless god who came upon that place. Would gaze in wonder. Heart entranced with pleasure. Hermes the guide, the mighty giant killer. Stood there spellbound. Now, there are several interesting things that we should observe about this description of Calypso’s Island, where Odysseus has been trapped for seven years. First of all, Calypso lives in a cave. It’s not even a house that she lives in, and the cave is representative of the larger natural order of the island. What we hear about the island is that it has many natural splendors. There are woods, these different trees. There are birds, there are wild grapes that are bursting there. There seems to be plenty of food, but it’s it’s simply natural. We have spring’s flowers, herbs, but also the island seems to be uncultivated. There aren’t things built on it. There isn’t horticulture, it seems. There’s simply natural splendors. It’s a simple, uncultivated, natural beauty on the island. I’ll come back to this point later in lecture eight. As this setting has significance that we cannot yet understand, we have to proceed farther in our narrative before we understand the full significance. But I want to note this. Now here we see a life of ease, of peace, of simplicity. That’s all part of Ogygia. And it is represented to us as worlds apart. So Hermes has to fly far across the ocean. Now. It is so beautiful that even a god is spellbound by the sight. It’s beautiful but simple and natural in total isolation. It’s represented to us as sitting on the edge of the world. Now, after gazing at the splendors for a while, taking delight in them, Hermes comes to Calypso and he gives her Zeus’s command that she must allow Odysseus to escape. Calypso is quite frustrated. She says that even though she offered Odysseus immortality along with being her husband, she’s frustrated that he always yearns to be back in Ithaca, that he yearns for his old wife. And she also expresses frustration with the behavior of the gods, that they have their dalliances with different mortals. But she’s not allowed to keep Odysseus on her island. Despite these complaints, however, Calypso assents to the order of the gods. Hermes leaves and Calypso comes to Odysseus on the beach where we see him for the first time in our narrative. With that, the powerful giant killer sped away. The queenly nymph sought out the great Odysseus, the commands of Zeus still ringing in her ears, and found him there on the headland, sitting still, weeping. His eyes never dry, his sweet life flowing away with the tears. He wept for his foiled journey home. Since the nymph no longer pleased in the nights. True. He’d sleep with her in the arching cave. He had no choice. Unwilling lover alongside. Lover all too willing. But all his days he’d sit on the rocks and beaches. Wrenching his heart with sobs and groans and anguish. Gazing out over the barren sea through blinding tears. It’s an interesting depiction of Odysseus here when we first see him. It’s not quite the depiction of the heroic man that we might imagine. This is the man who sacked Troy. He sits here on the beach, weeping day after day. This is not Odysseus at his best. This is not Odysseus, the triumphant sacker of Troy. This isn’t Odysseus, the raider of cities. This is Odysseus, the captured Weeping hero. Now, this is important for our work. The Odyssey as a whole. Because what we will see is that Odysseus, when we first meet him, is at the very bottom of his fortunes. He’s stranded. He’s a prisoner, he’s alone, he’s isolated. He’s living apart from the whole world except for Calypso. And so the movement of the Odyssey, the movement of the work as a whole, will be a movement from isolation to reintegration, from solitude to marriage and political community. A movement from the edge of things, the edge of the known world from a wilderness into the center of a full and flourishing human life and human community. Now Calypso comes to Odysseus and she relates the message from the gods. She says despite her frustrations, she will allow him to build a raft and to escape from her island. But it’s here that Calypso offers one final test for Odysseus. It’s very interesting to see how Odysseus interacts with Calypso, this goddess who has offered him immortality in marriage, she says to him. So then, royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, man of exploits, still eager to leave at once and hurry back to your own home, your beloved native land. Good luck to you. Even so, farewell. But if you only knew down deep what pains are fated. To fill your cup. Before you reach that shore. You’d stay right here. Preside in our house with me. And be immortal. Much as you long to see your wife. The one you pine for all your days. And yet I just might claim to be nothing less than she. Neither in face nor figure. Hardly right is it for mortal woman to rival immortal goddess. How in build in beauty. Now, this is a delicate moment for Odysseus. This is an immortal, a goddess who’s questioning Odysseus on why he wants to return to his home. And the question is a serious one, she says. After all, how can a mortal woman, Penelope, your wife. Compete with me. An immortal goddess. How? In build and beauty? I think also, in fact, Calypso is alluding to the indubitable fact that Penelope must have aged. Calypso is offering immortality here, and she is an immortal. But Penelope Odysseus has been gone for 20 years. She’s got to be older. She can’t have the build and beauty of an immortal. It’s a delicate moment for Odysseus. He needs to respond to her explaining himself in some way, maybe justifying himself in some way. At the same time, not angering Calypso, who’s about to let him finally go home. He responds, ah, great goddess, worldly! Odysseus answered, don’t be angry with me, please. All that you say is true. How well I know. Look at my wise Penelope. She falls far short of you. Your beauty, stature. She is mortal, after all. And you. You never age or die. Nevertheless, I long. I pine all my days to travel home and see the dawn of my return. And if a God will wreck me yet again on the wine. Dark sea. I can bear that too. With a spirit tempered to endure. Much have I suffered. Labored long and hard by now in the waves and wars. Add this to the total. Bring on the trial. Now Odysseus here in fact, is in part playing on his own name. He’s one who suffers pain as as we talked about before. But his response to Calypso’s challenge is quite interesting. He says yes, yes, Penelope, surely she can’t compete with you in Build in Beauty. She is mortal, after all, and she is aging. But Odysseus is clever and cunning here as well, because he tucks in that one detail. That is the difference maker between Penelope and Calypso. And that is. He said, look at my wise Penelope. She falls far short of you in beauty and stature. The thing that Penelope has that Calypso doesn’t have is wisdom. The word in the Greek that Odysseus uses to describe Penelope here is Peripheren Penelope. This is one of Penelope’s attributes. And this is a word meaning cunning or intelligent, or as translated here, wise. And so we can see in part and appreciate in part why Odysseus, the man of twists and turns, the man with Metis, is drawn to Penelope rather than calypso. Calypso is beautiful and immortal, but Penelope has wisdom. She has something intellectual about her. She is Peripheren Penelope. She has some intellectual quality that is that which really drives Odysseus. It’s that which Odysseus really wants to pursue. After this exchange, Odysseus builds his raft and he sails off away from Calypso’s island, eventually coming in sight of Scheria, the island of the Phaeacians. Now, as he does this Poseidon, who is the god of the sea, and who is Odysseus enemy stirs up a massive hurricane that wrecks Odysseus raft and nearly kills Odysseus. Odysseus desperately swims for days until he finally comes to a place where a current allows him to make his way into the island, but he loses in the process all of the provisions that Calypso had provided him with. And so he comes to shore, alive, but barely, and without even a shred of clothing. Homer then tells us he set out for the woods, and not far from the water found a grove with a clearing all around, and crawled beneath two bushy olives sprung from the same root, one olive wild, the other well-bred stock. No sodden, gusty winds could ever pierce them, nor could the sun’s sharp rays invade their depths, nor could a downpour drench them through and through, so dense they grew together, tangling side by side. Odysseus crept beneath them, scraping up at once a good wide bed for himself, with both hands, a fine litter of dead leaves had drifted in enough to cover two men over even three in the wildest kind of winter known to man, long enduring great. Odysseus, overjoyed at the sight, bedded down in the midst and heaped the leaves around him as a man will bury his growing brand in black ashes, off on a lonely farmstead. No neighbors near to keep a spark alive. No need to kindle fire from somewhere else. So great. Odysseus buried himself in leaves and Athena showered. Sleep upon his eyes, sleep in a swift wave, delivering him from all his pains and labors, blessed sleep that sealed his eyes at last. And that is how book five closes. Now, this moment is interesting. I want to point out a couple of things. First of all, notice that the two trees that Odysseus crawls underneath, one is wild and the other is well-bred stock seem to be symbolically suggestive. That is, I think Odysseus beds himself under these two olive trees that are representative of these two different parts of Odysseus. Odysseus is partly this wild man coming from the edge of the world back into human society. And on the other hand, he’s the king of Ithaca. He’s the king coming back to his own. There’s a wildness and a order to Odysseus, the man of twists and turns. At the end of this description, we get a comparison that Homer makes, and this has led later generations of commentators and readers of Homer to call a Homeric simile. That is, it’s an extended description asserting a sort of likeness between two things, and Homer writes, he’s. He’s famous for writing these wonderful and expressive similes. And this is one of the great ones in the early part of the Odyssey, as a man will bury his glowing brand in black ashes off on a lonely farmstead. No neighbors near to keep a spark alive. No need to kindle a fire from somewhere else. So great Odysseus buried himself. That simile. It’s a comparison. Using Lecras as a man will bury his glowing brand to keep the spark alive, to bring it back out. This is how Odysseus buries himself underneath the leaves. We have a sense that the spark that Odysseus carries is himself. He has not a single possession, not even a shred of clothing. And yet he’s burying himself beneath these leaves as a man might bury embers to keep the fire alive for the next day. And we’ll see that Odysseus will emerge in some impressive manner in the next book. So book five concludes with Odysseus beaten down by Poseidon and in a desperate situation. But at the same time, having landed on a on an island inhabited by humans, book six begins with the reintroduction of Odysseus into human society. The book begins with Athena coming in disguise to a princess of the realm. A young maiden named Nausicaa disguised. The bright eyed goddess chided Nausicaa. How could your mother bear a careless girl like you? Look at your fine clothes lying here neglected. With your marriage not far off the day, you should be decked in all your glory and offer elegant dresses to those who form your escort. That’s how a bride’s good name goes out across the world. And it brings her father and queenly mother joy. Come, let’s go wash these clothes at the break of day. I’ll help you lend a hand in the work. We’ll fly. You won’t stay unwed long. The noblest men in all the country court. You now all Phaeacians just like you. Phaeacia born and raised. So come the first thing in the morning. Press your kingly father to harness the mules and wagon for you all to carry your sashes, dresses, glossy spreads for your bed. It’s so much nicer for you to ride than go on foot. The washing pools are just too far from town. So this is Athena’s inspiration to Nausicaa, to rise in the morning, to gather her clothes and to go off to the washing pools which are by this river where Odysseus has fallen asleep. Now, it’s interesting that Athena has planted thoughts of marriage here in Nausicaa’s mind, as she inspires her to go and and do her laundry. She speaks of your marriage is not far off, and this is important for what will emerge as Odysseus meets Nausicaa. We see, in fact, that this really does touch Nausicaa, because when she goes to her father to ask for the cart, he also thinks of marriage. She sort of shyly asks her father for the. She doesn’t want to mention her thoughts of marriage herself, but Homer tells us. So she coaxed. Too shy to touch on her hopes for marriage, young, warm hopes in her father’s presence. But he saw through it all and answered quickly. I won’t deny you the mules, my darling girl. I won’t deny you anything. So we can see. Interestingly, the king also. Her father Alcinous, is also thinking of marriage. So I’ll. Drowsiness has marriage on his mind. Nausicaa has marriage on her mind, and she goes down to the pools to wash the clothing. Now, after they wash the clothing, they leave it out to dry and they start to play with a ball. And the ball gets overthrown at one point and splashes in the water. And it’s this that wakes up Odysseus. The ball. The princess suddenly tossed it to a maid, but it missed the girl. It splashed in a deep, swirling pool and they all shouted out. And that woke great Odysseus. He sat up with a start, puzzling his heart pounding man of misery, whose land have I lit on now? What are they here? Violent, savage, lawless, or friendly to strangers? God fearing men listen, shouting, echoing round me. Women, girls, or the nymphs who haunt the rugged mountain tops. And the river springs and meadows lush with grass. Where am I really close to people who speak my language up with you. See how the land lies. See for yourself now. Now notice the antithesis of what Odysseus wonders to himself. We have. What are they here? Violent, savage, lawless, or friendly to strangers, God fearing men. The friendly to strangers is exercising the virtue of Xenia, of hospitality that we’ve already discussed. And if you exercise that virtue of hospitality to strangers, then you are a God fearing man. That is, you have piety. You have a proper relation to the laws of the of the divine, and the antithesis of the hospitable, pious man is the violent and savage and lawless man. So we have a sense here of what it is that makes a man lawful and peaceful and ordered, or violent and savage and lawless, and that is piety to the gods, and and hospitable, friendly to strangers. Now Odysseus creeps out from the bushes, and Nausicaa, this young maiden is there with her servants, and we get another wonderful Homeric simile as Odysseus comes out from his hiding place, muttering, so great! Odysseus crept out of the bushes, stripping off with his massive hand a leafy branch from the tangled olive growth to shield his body, hide his private parts. I always love that detail. Odysseus, the great epic hero, the sacker of cities. Here, with proper modesty and out he stalked as a mountain lion, exultant in his power, strides through wind and rain. And his eyes blaze. And he charges sheep or oxen or chases wild deer. But his hunger drives him on to go for flocks, even to raid the best defended homestead. So Odysseus moved out, about to mingle with all those lovely girls, naked now as he was for the need, drove him on a terrible sight, all crusted, caked with brine. They scattered in panic down the jutting beaches. It’s a great simile because it changes the way we should understand Odysseus position. On the one hand, Odysseus is here. We have an emphasis. He doesn’t even have clothing, so he seems desperate. He’s a suppliant. He’s a beggar. He. He needs their help. But the simile changes how we understand him. We see him as a lion coming out of his lair and stalking for prey. He is not the suppliant in the simile, but a predator. And he’s coming even to raid the best defended homestead. What homestead would that be? Perhaps the home that we’ve seen at Nausicaa in Alcinous Palace. And so we have a question here. Is Odysseus the suppliant or is he predator? And is Nausicaa the one who can grant help to Odysseus? Or is she the prey whom Odysseus is about to devour? Homer goes on to tell us only Alcinous, daughter held fast for Athena planted courage within her heart, dissolved the trembling of her limbs, and she firmly stood her ground and faced Odysseus, torn. Now should he fling his arms around her knees, the young beauty plead for help, or stand back, plead with a winning word, beg her to lead him to the town and lend him clothing. This was the better way, he thought. Plead now with a subtle winning word, and stand well back. Don’t clasp her knees. The girl might bridle. Yes. I like to ask my students this. Do you think he. He chose correctly here. A huge brine caked, massively strong naked man diving at this young maidens knees. I think Odysseus here exercises proper prudence, proper judgment in standing back and pleading with Nausicaa. Now it’s interesting we see him. This is part of his Metis, part of his cunning that he can evaluate different courses of action and choose the best one. And now we see him as suppliant, asking Nausicaa for help. And here, too, we see that he’s very skilled in his speech. Odysseus, even when naked and landing on an island without a single possession, actually has quite a bit at his disposal, because it has to do with his mind. He launched in at once endearing Sly and suave. Here I am at your mercy, Princess. Are you a goddess or a mortal? If one of the gods who rule the skies up there, you’re Artemis to the life. The daughter of mighty Zeus. I see her now. Just look at your build, your bearing, your lithe, flowing grace. So it’s a great beginning for the line for Odysseus. Are you a goddess or a mortal? It’s almost like one of those cheap pickup lines, right? But Odysseus comes out of the bushes and asks her this, and he praises her. And then he goes on to say, I have never laid eyes on anyone like you, neither man or woman. We have to take this in context. Odysseus, of course, has seen Helen of Troy, unquestionably the most beautiful woman in the world. So he can see that this Odysseus using flattery, building up Nausicaa because he is going to beg her for help. Then Odysseus presents his request for help to Nausicaa. He says, only yesterday, the 20th day did I escape the wine. Dark sea. Till then the waves and the rushing gales had swept me on from the island of Ogygia. Now some power has tossed me here, doubtless to suffer still more torments on your shores. I can’t believe they’ll stop long before that. The gods will give me more still more compassion. Princess. Please you. After all I have suffered. You are the first I’ve come to. I know no one else. None in your city. None in your land. Show me the way to the town. Give me a rag for cover. Just some cloth, some wrapper you carried with you here. And may the good gods give you all your heart desires, husband and house and lasting harmony too. No finer, greater gift in the world than that. When man and woman possess their home. Two minds, two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies. A joy to all their friends, their own best claim to glory. It’s a really remarkable request from Odysseus. He’s asking for advice and for clothing, but he ends expressing what he understands to be the best gift of the gods. When man and woman possess their home, two minds and two hearts that work together as one, we can see what it is that Odysseus is striving for, what he hopes to accomplish on Ithaca. It’s also interesting that Odysseus makes this allusion, saying he prays the gods will give her what she wants a husband and a house, because, as we noted, Athena already planted thoughts of marriage in Nausicaa’s mind. Nausicaa thinking about marriage, her father was thinking about marriage. Now Odysseus comes out and invokes marriage as this highest good, one of the best gifts the gods have to offer their own best claim to glory. In fact, for men and women to live in a harmonious marriage that’s despair to enemies and a joy to friends. Now, Nausica is quite brave. She stands up to Odysseus, and she does promise to help him. And she gives him clothing. And Odysseus goes to bathe himself in the river to clean himself up before coming into town. When he completes his bath and puts on the clothing, we get an interesting detail from Athena. Zeus’s daughter Athena made him taller to all eyes, his build more massive now and down from his brow, she ran his curls like thick hyacinth clusters full of blooms as a master craftsman washes gold over beaten silver. A man, the god of fire and Queen Athena trained in every fine technique and finishes off his latest effort, Handsome Work, so she lavished splendor over his head and shoulders now and down to the beach. He walked and sat apart, glistening in his glory. Breathtaking, yes. And the princess gazed in wonder, then turned to her maids with lovely braided hair. Listen, my white armed girls, to what I tell you, the gods of Olympus can’t be all against this man who’s come to mingle among our noble people. At first he seemed appalling, I must say. Now he seems like a God who rules the skies up there. are. If only a man like that were called. My husband lived right here. Pleased to stay forever. It’s a very interesting moment where Athena adorns Odysseus, makes him look godlike. Then Nausicaa is stunned and filled with wonder by his look, and she is thinking even more of marriage. We might wonder at this moment, what does Odysseus have to do to get Nausicaa’s help? She’s saying, if only a man like that were called my husband Nausicaa’s thinking of marriage. And now here is a truly magnificent man come upon her doorstep as a suppliant. What is she to do? Well, she does give Odysseus advice on how to come into the city. She warns him that the Phaeacians are quite wary of strangers, and so she tells him to come to her parents house, the palace, and to ask them for help. And that is how book six concludes. Odysseus, having escaped from Ogygia and found Nausicaa as a suppliant, is coming to the court of the Phaeacians, and King Alcinous with only his wits to help him as he tries to get passage home. It’s that we’ll look at in our next lecture.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast. If you want to continue learning, please visit hillsdale.edu slash. There you will find over 40 free online courses, including Ancient Christianity, the Genesis story, classic children’s literature, and many more. The courses include additional readings, study guides, fully produced videos. Upon completing a course, you will also get a certificate. All our courses are free because we believe that what you’ll learn will enrich your life, and that a virtuous citizen is the best defense for liberty. So pursue the education necessary for freedom and happiness at hillsdale.edu/today. That’s hillsdale.edu/course. Thanks for listening.

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Once per week, Hillsdale College president Larry P. Arnn joins Hugh Hewitt to discuss Great Books, Great Men, and Great Ideas.

This week: The war in Iran, construction on Hillsdale’s campus, and the Michigan U.S. Senate campaign. Dr. Larry P. Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, joins Hugh Hewitt on the Hillsdale Dialogues.

Release date: 31 July 2026

Every week. Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn joins Hugh Hewitt to discuss great books, great men, and great ideas. This is Hillsdale Dialogues, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More [email protected] or wherever you find your audio.00:30S2

Morning glory and evening Grace America. I’m Hugh Hewitt. That music means it’s time for the Hillsdale Dialogue. Welcome to the last broadcast hour of the week. My guest is Doctor Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College. He joins me each Friday, either to look very far back or just even a week back. In this case, we’re looking at recent news, what’s been going on in the news recently. Doctor Ian welcome. I hope you are having a an excellent summer and that the kids haven’t come back to school yet. So you’re still enjoying yourself, am I right about that?01:01S3

Well, we have to work in the summer. But it is true that the 1650 variables are not on the campus. And so it’s a different kind of work in some ways.01:11S2

Are the teachers there? Because most summers there are teachers courses convening at Hillsdale?01:18S3

Yeah. We have a lot of people come to the campus. We had 1500 K through 12 teachers. We have hostels and they’re always full, and there’s seven of them, I think this summer in the last week. And, you know, hundreds of people come. Yeah. It’s a it’s a busy place, very busy.01:35S2

And and the construction I like to get the construction update. Are we closing in?01:41S3

No. Well, the we’re about a year away on the library, but now it looks like a, a a library. It’s going to be impressive. And it’s you know, it’s if you learn about construction, the early stages of construction are demoralizing to people. We had a hard winter last winter in the quad. The North quad was all torn up, but now it’s looking imposing. And, uh, so it’s, you know, it’s going to be really great, but it takes a while. Uh, we’ve just finalized the design of a war memorial that we’re putting directly across the quad from the library to memorialize our country and our war dead, which are numerous through our long history. And, uh, we’re going to, we’re starting work on a visitor center pretty soon. So it’s going to be a picture. But, uh, right now it’s not a fully complete picture.02:33S2

Well, I raised the construction question because first segment of this Week in Review and we’re taping on Tuesday for a Friday broadcast. So there could be things that happen after the program tapes before it airs. We’re in a pause when we’re talking in our battle with Iran. And the last 13 days before the last three days, heavy bombing of sites. And you know what it’s like to rebuild. I am a little skeptical of our legacy news media saying, oh, they’ve rebuilt everything. They’re doing great. Aren’t you skeptical of those stories that, you know, construction?03:08S3

Yeah, sure. It, um, you know, you know, what do I. So first of all, they’re resilient, right? I thought they would be. I think this thing is very hard. I think it’s part of a great world contest that’s going on intensely now and will go on, in my opinion, for a long time. But we’ve heard him pretty bad, too. They don’t have as many allies as they used to have. Their capacity is degraded, although apparently not removed, and they’ve got Russia and China to help them. And so they will tend to come back. And, uh, when and whether a final end to our problems with Iran will come. It’s hard to say, but the problems existed before the war. And at some point they’re going to be acute in the future if and they are acute now.03:57S2

So in.03:58S3

Your.03:59S2

20 plus years as leading Hillsdale, have you drawn many students from the Persian diaspora heavily located in Southern California, but it’s also throughout the United States? Have you had a lot of Persians who fled the country after the revolution of 79?04:15S3

The answer is a few. Not a lot. We’re pretty full and we don’t really recruit abroad a lot. Although our numbers of foreign students have been swelling lately. Swelling doesn’t mean a big number, but it’s probably tripled to maybe 60 kids or something like that. And we didn’t really make any particular effort about that. We seem to be getting known. And so yeah. And and, you know, if you if you come to Hillsdale College, you have to make a bunch of commitments and you’re aware that you’re going to undergo a torture that applies equally to everyone. So that tends to collapse the differences among our students in in Persian.04:59S2

American.04:59S3

You.04:59S2

Know, diaspora in LA, very achievement oriented, lots of doctors, lots of lawyers, lots of people who excel in business. I just thought they would be showing up. I had one of your own on This Week, Philip Wegman, now ace reporter for The Wall Street Journal. You’re taking over slowly. Major media outlets. John Miller is doing a fine job there. I’m not surprised. But are you are you happy with that? Do you want Hillsdale to own the media too?05:28S3

Yeah. If nothing else, to be able to to hope that it will shut up. It’s no, it it yeah. We’ve, uh, you know, there’s your, your, your buddy Jack Butler, my graduate is important at the Wall Street Journal, I think. Yes. Nine working there now. Yeah. And they get around and they, you know, the reports of them are they know a lot and they’re used to working hard. And, uh, I had a former general editor of the Wall Street Journal come to see me one day. He’s retired now. And, uh, he was on the campus and he paid a courtesy call on the president’s office. And I said, what are you doing here? And he said, I came to get some kids. And I said, uh, good. And he said, here’s a different. And I said, how? And he said, well, what we do in journalism is look at the facts, and we’re not as good at that as we used to be. But your kids learn to look at things and try to see them as they are, rather than impose their theories on them. So yeah, it makes good journalists get a good education.06:38S2

And learn how to write along the way. Let me talk to you and go back to the the war with Iran. There are immediately after I’m done talking with you today, I’m going to talk to one of your fellows, Victor Davis Hanson, historian extraordinaire, and put to him this question. The 1930s took a while for people to realize Churchill before anyone else, that the world was dividing into camps, and it took the United States getting hit at Pearl Harbor to actually join the good guys and the Soviet Union, get double cross to join the good guy. And that war went on for for six years after that. It took a couple of years for it to become clear that there was a Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact and China for a while, and their allies and the West and our allies and an online movement. Now, it seems to me it’s become very clear that it’s China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, a couple of proxies like the Houthis and the Hamas and Hezbollah, and then all the rest of the world has to pick up sides and Venezuela pick wrong. Now they’re on our team. Cuba picked wrong, and they’re they’re out of power. Is it that stark in your mind, Doctor Oren?07:50S3

Oh, yeah. Yeah it is. And the reason for that is China too is proving resilient. I mean we you know it’s the trouble. The hard thing about the about predictions is that they have to do with the future. But China has gained in strength consistently now for a generation. And they’re assertive and they’re all over the world and they’re you know, the thing that I worry about the most is that we’re studying the Second World War in our long term view right now. And our contribution to, to winning that war was simply decisive. And it had very much to do with manufacturing. The reason the Russians did so well against the Germans in the East and built what was then the biggest and probably greatest military of the age, was that they moved in trucks And those trucks were made in Detroit. And the German army, right through the Second World War was mostly a horse drawn army, and they just couldn’t keep up. And when they confronted us on the Western Front after the Normandy invasions, they couldn’t quite, you know, they were staggered by the speed of it. And the reason is it was moving in machines. Now, China has greater manufacturing power than we have now, and the administration is working on that and trying to build that back up. And there’s progress. But we’re not the world’s greatest manufacturing power anymore, although maybe still the most sophisticated one hopes.09:22S2

So how far along do you think the Clarity Index is in the minds of most Americans? Because when you and I were young, there was a Soviet Union and they were the bad guys in the Warsaw Pact was on their side, and China was on their side. And it was very clear. We have a minute to the break. How clear is the division in the world today in the mind of people coming back to campus in a few weeks at Hillsdale.09:45S3

Well, I think everybody knows it. Yeah. And, you know, there’s another thing that’s like the 1930s is America is angst ridden and it probably worse than it was in the 1930s, although it’s hard to measure. And their angst came from the First World War and the terrible nature of that war and the fact that it sort of changed everybody’s thinking about the past and the future. Well, we have things like that going on in our country that are very serious, and we’re worried about them. Right.10:14S2

Doctor, I want to go back to the Iraq war. There are three results, broadly speaking. And I’ll ask this as well. We can win. I think I know what that looks like. They capitulate or the regime collapses. They agree to simply non-belligerent status and to leave Israel and our friends in the Gulf alone. And the strait is open or we lose. And that means the strait is closed and we can’t open it, or we’re going to have a long, drawn out blockade to wait for them to collapse. Of those three options, what do you think is going to happen?10:50S3

Well, first of all, I don’t think that we’re nearing a end of our problems with Iran. Uh, I think that it’s probable that they will be better in the intermediate future than they have been, because I think they’re weaker. And I think that we’re organized about them. We’ve put we’ve put together a coalition. Like one of the most promising things to come out of this war is that we’ve got a bunch of allies in those Arab states. And, uh, they’re very worried about Iran. Some of them have attacked Iran, which they were very reluctant to do in previous times. And so there’s a clarity there that is healthy. On the other hand, It’s a despotic state, and they have used torture. And there are ten, probably tens of thousands of them who impose the state. And so that’s not going to get overturned tomorrow, probably. And as long as they’re there, they’re a problem. And and so I don’t expect us to settle this soon. And I even I, I thought you people may remember I said on the show at the outset, the idea that we’re just going to do them in right now is optimistic. Probably not. But if we can restrain them. I’ll mention two articles that suggest strategic thoughts. One was an account of the Trump foreign policy, which was he was trying to restrain our enemies. He’s not trying to liberalize them. He’s not trying to turn them into democracies, which are infinite tasks. He’s trying to restrain them. If you see this war in that context, you’d think that he’s had some success and they’re hard to restrain, and we don’t have complete success yet. Uh, the second one is, is about a concept called strategic interdiction. How do you figure out how to hurt them so that their essential capacities to do you harm are compromised? And this article that I read claimed that the Israelis thought better about that than we do. But Trump has done some cool things here. The current cease fire and God knows how long it’ll last. That comes from him saying, okay, every time you take out a freighter, we’re going to take out a power plant.13:11S2

Yes.13:11S3

The blockade. Our blockade was an act of genius. Now it imposes cost on the world economy that we don’t want. Right. I looked this morning. I think oil is selling about $80 a barrel, and that’s pretty good. And, um, you know, if it goes to 200, that’ll be really bad for the world economy and us. And I think I made the point earlier that we are the world’s largest exporter of oil, but we’re also the world’s largest importer of oil, because there are some kinds and some refining capacities that we don’t have. And that means that we have a net advantage. But the world market for oil is terribly significant to us as it is to everyone. So yeah, that’s these problems are deeply rooted and they’re not going to go away tomorrow. China is a powerful country and it’s a despotism. And Russia is a powerful country. How powerful is controversial but powerful for sure. And it has an old habit of putting up with too much out of its government. Whatever problem it is, it’s likely to persist. So that’s going to go on, I think. And I think we have to accommodate ourselves to that world. And another thing people should remember is economies when they’re free. And the world economy has a lot of freedom in it. Not enough for my taste, but a lot. And when they’re free, they adjust, right? And there are huge adjustments underway right now. Major pipeline built so that you don’t have to go through the Strait of Hormuz to get some of the Gulf oil out that’s underway that they’re building that now. So that’ll change things, right? And there’ll still be problems when those are changed. But if we are adaptable and run our affairs well and don’t spend our seed corn on government waste, which is a chronic problem, then we can be a strong nation for a long time, which we very much need to be.15:16S2

And our mutual friend, Dennis Prager, has always said clarity before agreement. And I think things are becoming very clear. Israel has always had great clarity about Iran, but things are becoming very clear for the Gulf Arabs, including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and Jordan and Bahrain. I think UAE always had a good vision of what was going on in Iran. I think that’s a positive, an enormous benefit to the West. Do you agree with that?15:44S3

Yeah. We need you know, I mean, look, it’s just the case that we need allies and we need them to contribute at least as much as we contribute. And so those are important accretions of strength. And, uh, that’s you got to salute that.16:03S2

And are you shocked how shallow is the root system in NATO? My last question in this segment, we’ll go to Ukraine and Israel in the third segment. But what about NATO? I’m just amazed at how little they’ve done, how weak they’ve become.16:17S3

Well, European countries are in a trauma, right? It’s I was in England last month and it’s you know, they’re on their seventh prime minister in ten years, and this guy is pretty laughed and seems vigorous. The last guy didn’t. But they’re not spending the money to defend themselves. And it’s not just the money. Remember, it’s a culture. We’re going to read about that when we go back to Churchill, because of the passages we’re going to take up in the final, our finest hour have much to do with that. It depends on, you know, war is great trial, a national trial. And what is the national will and unity and how well can they. And see they they don’t have that right now. Now, the surging parties in Europe are all. They would all diminish the European Union in its power. They would get control of immigration and they would go down a new track. And the Tories in England, which they pride themselves being the largest political party in in the world. Kemi Badenoch is the leader of the Tories. My wife likes her and she is not going to let anybody run. Who’s for net zero?17:35S2

I’m taping this show with Doctor Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College on Tuesday, when both President Zelensky of Ukraine and Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel are at the white House, they’ve met with President Trump by the time we’ve begun this. And the funeral service is underway for Lindsey Graham, which we’ll talk about in the next segment. I am curious, doctor, at the very beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you said on this program, sometimes there’s a figure appears in history that is unanticipated who’s able to rally a country. And that was Zelensky. And boy, he’s held it together for a number of years. A lot of critics of him in the West, but they’re still standing and they’re doing more than standing. They’re fighting back. And now they’re making a million drones a year, and they’re providing drones to our Gulf allies, and they’re fighting on. Meanwhile, Israel has been flying wing to wing with the United States. This is a fundamental difference from February, when this war began with Iran, or at least the current phase of the war began. How do you assess those two countries as allies? Well.18:41S3

The big the first question about an ally is are they on your side? And the second question is, can they contribute? And Ukraine is just a marvel, right? I was with some military guys at a camp last week, and one of them commented that Ukraine is building more drones in a month than we have in our arsenal. Ukraine? Yup. Little Ukraine. And, you know, they’re striking Moscow and they’ve basically eliminated or what, neutered the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, which is part of the pride of Russian military power going back to the 18th century when they got control of Crimea. So they’ve just done marvels, right? And, you know, Trump likes a winner. And and, uh, you know that it matters. Your allies, you need them to help. And so these guys are pretty strong and, uh, good on them. And the Israelis, too. We’ve known for a long time they can fight and they have fought very well alongside us. And so they’re those are valuable. Right. And if you if you look at what NATO has, you know, if if I’m right, that, you know, I mean, I’m writing something about this right now. If God gives me time, I’ll finish it. And, uh, I was asked to give a talk about, uh, standing on the shoulders of giants George Washington and Winston Churchill and the Anglo American Alliance. I didn’t make up the title, and I thought the title was funny because the effect of George Washington on the Anglo-American alliance and the effects of Winston Churchill were precisely opposite. Yes. And. And so what have those guys in common? Well, come to find out, they have a very great deal in common. Winston Churchill will see evidence of it in these chapters that we’re going to read next week from Finest Hour. Churchill didn’t believe in making commitments except in the interest of his country and commitments that were calculated to be able to perform and make the country stronger. And that’s George Washington, too. And, you know, Churchill became, you know, a great builder of grand global alliances. And George Washington never did that. He stayed out of the war between France, which was vital to our revolution, and England, which was the enemy in our revolution. He stayed out of the thing. Some wanted to join France, some wanted to go join England. He wanted out. So he was neutral. Well, you have to account for the world being different, right? The world is. We are now subject to immediate attack, and technology has changed in ways that make the world dangerous immediately to us that it was not before. I mean, in the First World War, there was no power that could sail a fleet across the Pacific and do serious damage to an American naval base. And our entry into World War Two was provoked by the destruction of Pearl Harbor. That’s because aircraft carriers. And so it’s you know, we need allies. And we’ve got some. And they’re helping out. And Europe needs to get its house in order. One of the themes of this administration has been you’ve got to get your house in order here. I think J.D. Vance, his finest hour, was a couple of speeches he gave in Europe about those themes. You should. And it wasn’t just. You needed to build up your military. And remember, that’s not just money, right? That’s young people believing in the country prepared to fight for it. And he said, you ought to protect people’s freedom, too. Why don’t you do that?22:33S2

As I note, at the beginning of the program, I taped this discussion with Doctor Larry Arnn on the day that Lindsey Graham was being memorialized at the National Cathedral after a ceremony in the rotunda. And I just wanted to ask Doctor Arnn about three things. The the nature of Lindsey Graham, the nature of the Senate and why the D. S a want is on record as wanting to destroy it. And his own state’s Senate race in the primary between Doctor Al Saeed and Congresswoman Haley Stevens. Let’s start with Lindsey. Lindsey Graham, I don’t know how often you cross paths with him. Frequent guest on the show and and always a hawk. Always funny, always smart. And I heard a funny story about Lindsay this week, which is the only thing he feared in life was being called the former senator Lindsey Graham. Well, what did you think of Lindsey?23:23S3

Yeah, well, he has something in common with Donald Trump. He was a I always found him unpredictable. I mean, those great themes in his life defend the country. He was hawkish. And that’s partly right. At least it depends on the circumstances whether that’s right or not. He was usually right, I thought. But he would just come up with the wildest things, you know, and, uh, he get mad at Trump and then he’d support him. And, uh, so he was a nimble, he was galvanizing. And he had a long, great career in the Senate, which is a great thing to have.24:02S2

And the Senate is a unique place. I think it’s unique in the world, actually, for the importance that it attaches to its members, the significance they have. But they still have to act as a body. No one individual matters that much. And the Dsa’s attack on the Senate is really a leveling. It’s a bulldozer of one of our great institutions. I think people should be aware of that, that they’re wreckers of a great institution.24:26S3

Yeah. Well, you know, the key to have good government of any kind, free government is the hardest of the kind. That can be good. You have to have two things. You have to have the gathering and use of power, and you have to have the distribution and check power. And the Senate is a key institution, especially in that second thing. It you know, there’s a lot of debate about the filibuster. And I have a very consistent record about that. I’m in favor of it. When they’re about to do something terrible and I’m against it when when they’re preventing from doing something good. But it’s, uh, uh, so it, uh, but the Senate is that and there is an element like the British House of Commons, is kind of a herd now. Right. And our Congress, as a rule. Right. They don’t make most of our laws anymore. And that’s a pride. Like you will know that the constitutional health of America is strong again, when Congress has authority over all the laws. And right now it makes 20% of them or something like that.25:41S2

They’re getting closer, though. This court is carving back the administrative state. It’s been over four years that that’s unfolded, but it’s getting closer. And I like that. I know you like that as well. Neil Gorsuch is the one who said his book was overruled. He said, we don’t know how many agencies are in the federal government from the Supreme. We can’t count them. There’s so many of them.26:03S3

I wrote there’s a great, uh, that book I wrote a review of that book and, uh, it admire almost everything he’s done. There’s a couple of things we could name, but, uh, that book has a story in there about a guy who lost his fishing boat to, uh. And what he had was they stopped his boat and weighed his fish, and he had some number out of thousands under the right poundage and not enough. And then he went back to the dock and they weighed him again. And this time they found a few too many and they took his boat. And that’s just a local decision by a nameless bureaucrat under laws that are vague and nobody quite knows what they mean, including the bureaucrat. And then he goes, you know, eventually, if I remember the story correctly, is the book opens with this story. I think he died and his wife kept up the lawsuit and was finally vindicated. And then Gorsuch makes the point that most people never get that vindication.27:14S2

No they don’t. So and they’re working on that. I’m I’m glad they are. I want to make sure I get on Tuesday next. Michigan’s going to select someone to run against Mike Rogers. Now I’m supporting Mike Rogers. Hillsdale is nonpartisan. But as you look at Haley Stevens, sort of a traditional left wing Liberal Democrat, and Doctor El-Sayed, who is a DSA er and a Marxist, in my view, though, he denies it. Do you think Michigan is all for turning? Do you think they’re really going to go all the way to the left? They’ve never been crazy.27:44S3

Well, you never can tell. It’s a non-presidential year. And so the turnout will be crucial and not as great as in a presidential year. And so it’s hard to predict what can happen. It’s a close race in the polls at least. And who comes to the polls is vital. I. If the Democratic Party has any sense in it, it needs to put a stop to some of this stuff, right. Because it’s very destructive. This this man, I’ll say this, he’s a very academic guy. Mom has got some academic chops right there, highly educated people. And they’re strongly of the left. And they would undo the institutions that have kept America stable and growing for its history. So if the Democratic Party’s got any sense in it, and it is a very disciplined party, you know, they’ve got, I judge, more central control than the Republicans have. They’ll get out the vote for the other guy. And, you know, and it’s not just a matter of winning the general election. This stuff is, you know, fundamentally destructive to the country. And so and it’s growing in the Democratic Party. And so.28:59S2

And, and it’s a menace. And it’s taken over congressional seat after congressional seat. I think it’ll get turned back in Maine. I think it’ll get turned back in Michigan. Minnesota will be the third. All things Hillsdale [email protected]. And in three weeks when we’re back or four weeks from when we’re tired, we will review what happened in Michigan with Doctor Ryan, talk about what it means for the Democratic Party going forward. All things [email protected]. All of our dialogues are contained over at hue for hillsdale.com. That’s Q for hillsdale.com.29:35S1

Thanks for listening to the Hillsdale Dialogues, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More [email protected] or wherever you find your audio. For more information about Hillsdale College, head to hillsdale.edu.

The post The War with Iran Continues appeared first on Hillsdale College Podcast Network.

Kevin H. Gary, associate professor of education at Hillsdale College, joins host Scot Bertram to discuss the differences between orators and philosophers, the disciplines of rhetoric and philosophy, and how teachers can cultivate a balance between rhetoric and philosophy in the classroom.

Learn more: https://k12.hillsdale.edu/

A 20-minute podcast featuring professors, K-12 teachers, and friends of Hillsdale College, all speaking about classical education—what it is, why it’s still relevant today, and what makes it unique. Hosted by Scot Bertram.

Welcome to the Hillsdale College K-12 Classical Education podcast, bringing you insight into classical education and its unique emphasis on human virtue and moral character, responsible citizenship, content, rich curricula, and teacher led classrooms. Now, your host, Scott Bertram.

Thanks for listening. The Hillsdale College K-12 Classical Education podcast is part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More [email protected] or wherever you get your audio. You also can find more information on topics and ideas discussed on this show at our website, k12.hillsdale.edu. We’re joined by Doctor Kevin Gary, associate professor of education here at Hillsdale College. Doctor Gary, thanks for joining us.

Wonderful. Wonderful to be with you. Thank you for having me.

Talking today about orators and philosophers. The dialectic of classical education. Classical education often speaks about this relationship between orators and philosophers. What’s at stake when we talk about the distinction? And why has it mattered for so long?

Well, the distinction, I think, goes right back into Plato. I mean, we see it clearly on display where Socrates is in conversation, and these are often tense conversations with what are labeled sophists. These are folks that study rhetoric and are there in Athens helping young people learn how to speak well and persuasively. And Socrates is going to interrogate in question. And so there’s there’s this back and forth tension. Um, and, you know, we think of orders and philosophers, we’re talking about two foundational, uh, disciplines of the Trivium logic and rhetoric. And we can see the Trivium as this, you know, wonderful inheritance that we pass on, but we go back into the into the sources we see. There’s this tension right there at the, at the outset. And so I think it’s, it’s really significant. And I and I’m going to say that it’s pedagogically significant. It’s not a tension that we should resolve, but but a tension that we should actually maintain. There should be a dialectical relationship between the orator and the philosopher.

We’ll define some terms here and then ask about a relationship. First rhetoric. What is rhetoric?

Rhetoric, this is Aristotle’s definition is discovering the means to persuade someone. So it’s it’s it’s something that is trying to. So we have our logos, our reason. But we want to speak in a way that will move the person to come to our side of seeing things, but not just logically, but also passionately to, to, to move the pathos or the passions of the people we’re speaking to.

Is that word rhetoric misunderstood in some places today?

I would say largely in contemporary discourse, rhetoric has a negative connotation. We think about politicians that are using rhetoric, and so it tends to connote manipulation, trying to sway this. This is certainly something that the ancients were not, you know, oblivious to. Socrates especially says that rhetoric is just. He says in the Gorgias, it’s just a form of, of. He describes it as like cheap fast food. You know, it’s not the real substance. It’s just it’s just saying what people want to hear. But folks like Cicero and Quintilian and Isocrates are going to say, no rhetoric is speech that moves us to live virtuous lives. And so it’s it’s fundamentally about speech that’s edifying. That’s literally trying to build up the the person. So the contemporary negative connotation doesn’t have often that connection to virtue which which is, which is central in classical rhetoric.

That’s rhetoric. How about philosophy? How should we define philosophy?

I think about this, uh, in relation to a I was at a conference a few years ago, and there was a professor there presenting on stoicism, and he was making the argument, this is the philosophy we need to teach to children. We live in a world that’s precarious, uncertain, and it will help, you know, contend with just all the the catastrophes that we’re dealing with in the Q&A time, the dialectical time. So he gave his rhetorical argument for stoicism. I asked him, I said, so I take it then that you are a stoic. How’s that going? How is the practice of stoicism? And he said, oh, no, no, no, I’m not a stoic. I’ve tried meditation. I wasn’t very, very good at that. And thinking about philosophy, I think, you know, an academic, modern understanding of philosophy sees it as, you know, something that we argue about. It’s a discipline in universities. But in the ancient world, philosophy was a way of life. It was a rigorous way of life that needed to be practiced at every instance. And so Socrates is the exemplar of that. He is a philosopher, he’s a dialectician. And this is the way he lives his life. And we see it on display in all of the the depictions that we have of him. So, so that’s an important distinction between the academic understanding of philosophy and a classical understanding of of it as a way of living.

So why should those two things, rhetoric and philosophy, be held in tension with one another?

This is on display, I think, beautifully in the meno. Meno is a young person who studied with Gorgias, this famous rhetorician who’s come to Athens and has won a lot of fame because he’s quite good at giving speeches. And meno poses a question to Socrates. The question is, you know, can virtue be taught? What he wants is he wants to see Socrates display his rhetoric. Give me a speech that I can I can learn from, maybe mimic and bring it into my arsenal. And Socrates responds dialectically, logically, and he says, well, that’s a great, great question, meno. But gosh, can virtue be taught? I don’t even know what virtue is. And meno retorts, he says, oh my gosh, you don’t know what you don’t want. Virtue is, do you want me to go back and tell Gorgias and all the others, all the other sofas, the wise ones, that you a reputed wise one, you don’t even know what virtue is, and Socrates Actually, then, you know, he’s quick witted. He says, oh, no. Yes, please tell him that. In fact, you can tell him that I’ve not met a single human being who knows what virtue is. And this is a total prod, because meno knows that that Socrates has spent time with Gorgias and and he didn’t. Didn’t Gorgias tell you? And Socrates says, well, let’s not worry about Gorgias. I forget what he said, but you tell me what virtue is. And meno tries and gives three definitions, all of which are incoherent, and Socrates is able to quickly deconstruct them. And so in terms of the tension, I think rhetorically, we can think we know more than we do. And meno gets to a point where he has this famous aporia, this puzzlement, this, he’s totally he’s totally perplexed. And he says, you know, you are the stingray that numbs me. And, and one line, that’s great. He says, you know, I used to give I’ve given up to this point, Socrates, many talks on virtue that I thought were excellent. And now I can’t even say what virtue is. And so the tension is necessary to keep the rhetorician humble rhetoric is this powerful tool to persuade others, and we can dupe ourselves into thinking we know more than we do. And so. So needing to keep that tension. The converse side, though, is the the dialectician is interrogating and asking questions. There’s a deconstruction there that can lead to a skepticism, sort of a paralysis by analysis. And so the rhetorician, there are certain things we know are good and we just need to do them. And the rhetorician is the person who’s going to help us live up to the ideals that we know are true and are good. And so the tension keeps them both vibrant and I think helps keep both of them at their best.

Their conscience, a conscious ways to maintain that balance, to make sure one does not begin to dominate over the other.

Yeah. I think that’s, um, part of that is friendship. I mean, I would say that’s probably the, the, you know, with friendships, the best friendships are always going to be dialectical. Our friends are not going to let us get away with being overly rhetorical. Good conversations are both rhetorical. I’m going to tell you a story and dialectical. Now I’m going to I’m going to question you or I’m going to interrogate you. So I think I think friendship, the best kinds of friendships, the kinds of friendships that Aristotle talks about of excellence, are training grounds for keeping these two together, because we love to hear our friends tell a good story, but we also want there to be a conversation of nursing with in a back and forth. In a way, Socrates, when he’s talking with rhetoricians and he makes this move over and over and over again, he says, please don’t give a long speech. Please make your answers concise so that I can ask a question to clarify terms. And so that’s, that’s kind of the move that I think we’re always trying to do with our friends. And then I would say, and we’ll talk about this with, with teaching as well.

Yeah. This tension that you described, do you see this embodied in particular figures from the classical tradition, and what can educators learn from that today?

So Socrates is the, you know, the classic example of this tension where he’s, you know, at odds with Callicles Thrasymachus, the famous rhetoricians of his day. Gorgias. But over time, you know, there’s the rise of of rhetoric after the the the classical Athenian period rhetoric moves into its its kind of premier standing with Rome. But then there’s the emergence of logic in the scholastic period. But we see this push and pull, this counter Renaissance humanism was largely a concern. That logic, especially as it was displayed in Scholastic thought, was missing something vital in human. That human beings are not just logos. We’re not just mine. We have. We have passions. And so the humanist is trying to write and resurrect an eloquent way of speaking that animates pathos and also takes seriously ethos, the character of the person who’s speaking. And so we see that with people like Petrarch and Erasmus and Melanchthon, who are critiquing and at times making fun of the scholastic ways of writing and, and laying out reasons. And then we also see it, I would say more recently in writers like G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, who have a very strong logos, but are going to do it rhetorically and do it in ways that are creative and actually move us to live into the logos that we understand to be true as teachers.

What are the dangers of producing students who are persuasive but not committed to truth? And on the other hand, what about producing students who know truth but then can’t communicate it effectively?

Well, the danger endures. I mean, the clever sophist is is kind of the classic case. I mean, this was Socrates concern with Alcibiades. This was someone who was ready to go out into the political sphere and to persuade and Socrates, you know, asked, what are you going to what are you going to tell them? You know, I’ll tell them about virtue. And then he uses. Or I’ll tell them about justice. And he uses dialectic to show that you really don’t know what you’re talking about. So the risk is that you get quite good at rhetoric, but you really don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re like Mina, who thought he gave great speeches on virtue or justice and you don’t know. The other risk is that if you don’t see through rhetoric and you’re not able to discern the logos in it, you’re at risk of being duped by modern rhetoricians. The influencers that that populate the internet today, and I would say related to that, you’re at risk of being stupefied. I mean, literally made stupid because rhetoric is it’s enjoyable, it’s pleasurable. It’s pleasing to listen to. And so, um, so there’s, there’s that risk. People, people.

Want to believe it’s the, it’s too good to be true. It confirms all my priors, as you’d say these days, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So I think, I think if you’re not studying logic and rhetoric and keeping them together in this tension, the risk of being dazzled by rhetoric, you’re weak. You’re vulnerable. But but then just being able to speak rhetorically, this is going to be, I think, increasingly called upon, uh, as, as employers get cover letters that maybe AI assisted or AI generated or CVS that look just a little too good to be true. We’re going to say, come on in, let’s have a conversation. We’re going to ask you a question. And so being able to speak on your feet in person, I think that’s going to be at a premium increasingly.

How does this dialectic between rhetoric and philosophy then show up inside the classroom, whether it’s literature, history, science, mathematics, how do we see it?

I think we see it. So, you know, we think about teaching history or teaching science or math. There’s a logos. There are reasons I’m going to make arguments. I’m going to I’m going to convince you of the logic of this field and this discipline. But the best teachers also use humor. They also create stories. They’re trying to awaken curiosity to excite the imagination. Ultimately, I think what they’re trying to do is to guide students to see and delight in the intrinsic value of what it is they’re learning. And so the need to balance logic and rhetoric is, is, is thinking about human psychology and thinking, thinking about rhetoric we risk as teachers to talk too much to monologue at our students. And so needing to check that with dialectic, where we’re asking students questions when we ask students questions, it is a form of formative assessment to get a sense of how are you comprehending and assessing what is going on right now, puts them on their toes, keeps them on edge at the same time. Sometimes rhetoric or excuse me, dialectic doesn’t do enough. Going back to Alcibiades, Socrates uses dialectic and brings them to a point where he admits he doesn’t know what he is talking about, but he says, but you know what, Socrates? I’ll still win with my charm, good look and rhetoric. I’ll still win. And Socrates says, wow, you’re wedded to stupidity, Alcibiades. And so he turns, he changes course and he says, but your real your real competitors are not here in Athens. They’re in Persia. And he describes the education of the Persians, the Persian king, in ways that are just captivating. And so he’s using a rhetorical story to bring Alcibiades along. And so the best teachers, I think, are always holding dialectic and rhetoric together to, move the hearts, the pathos and the logos of their students. And they do it with ethos. The best teachers have character. The students come to trust the teacher. And so when the teacher says, this is going to be hard, but trust me, there’s going to be some good things you’ll understand and appreciate if you if you go along with me, you’re you’re doing that. I mean, this is pervasive in, in teaching, but also in coaching. You think of the proverbial half time speech, right? The players already know what they’re supposed to do. They’ve trained, they’ve studied. Um, and he’s just trying to rhetorically say something that will get, get more of them, uh, as they go into the next half.

You suggest that teachers should be masters of both logic and rhetoric across disciplines. What does that look like in practice for a classroom teacher at a classical school? What habit should teachers cultivate? How can schools help teachers cultivate those capacities?

Well, if a teacher is all rhetorical, you walk in and you’re just listening to them talk for 50 minutes. That’s. They haven’t. They’re not living in the tension. And so, um, there would be that issue if a teacher is all dialectical, I think of, um the great books approach at Saint John’s where it’s question after question and it just goes and goes and goes. There comes a point in time where the teacher, as an authority, as someone who studied this text, I think needs to weigh in and offer a strong, persuasive interpretation of what is happening in this play by, by Shakespeare or this or this dialogue by Plato. So, um, needing to balance the two for two rhetorical, we’re just talking heads and we’re not reading the room because we’re just hearing ourselves talk. If we’re overly dialectical, we’re not being directive enough. We’re not being normative enough in terms of this is the right way to look at this text. And so needing to balance that constantly. Um, and this, you know, is, is definitely a question that requires practical wisdom. It’s going to look a little bit different in math than it will look in history. But I think holding this tension together is, is, is vital and it makes the classroom space more dynamic and more interesting. If the students can know that I’m going to tell a story, but I’m going to turn and ask you a question right now. It keeps it keeps students on edge. And so that’s why I think holding these two together is vital and important.

Are there ways that school leaders or administrators can help cultivate those skills in their teachers, or encourage those skills inside the classroom?

I think, I mean, first off, we have to read the greats. And Cicero says, if you want to be a great rhetorician, you need to you need to read and study the greats. And so there’s professional development. I think I think of it more as spiritual renewal. Reading great text and having conversations, conversations with other other teachers is a way to nourish. Um, we can’t give what we don’t have. And if we’re not going to the well ourselves continually and repeatedly, we can start to, to run on fumes. There is, you know, an education. There’s burnout where people leave the profession. But there’s also burn in where. Teachers stay in the work because they need to. They need a job, but they no longer feel the same kind of excitement and intensity. And so needing to go to the well, the enfants, to the sources ourselves to read these great works and to study them and to have conversations with them. I think part of what we’re talking about ultimately is the art of conversation. Yeah. Which I mentioned in context of friendship. Friends have good conversations, classrooms, the best classrooms are marked by a rich, thoughtful conversation. And this is something parents are trying to do at their dinner tables with their children. Are we creating the space so that we can have a good conversation? And so that’s something we’re trying to do as parents, as teachers, and as school leaders.

Yeah. You mentioned parents. So let’s speak to our parents listening in today. Yeah. How can they help reinforce this balance at home conversations, practices that can help children learn to both love truth and communicate it in a beautiful way?

Well, I teach logic and rhetoric here, and I would say this is a very simple thing that is part of this tradition is, is memorizing beautiful texts, just having it accessible in your heart and mind. And so having that, doing those recitations and performing it, this is something families can do. Uh, say a prayer. Let’s have you say it out loud. And so recitation, um, I don’t think we can overstate how valuable this is because it literally puts the thoughts and the words that are eloquently stated in your heart and mind. And so repeating it again and again to creating space for conversation, protecting conversation. We are distracted from distraction by distraction in this modern world. And so families need to carefully curate a space where there can be conversations that go and are not interrupted by all the things that we let ourselves be interrupted by. So protecting the space for conversation so that when students get to their classrooms, they. They have a sense of what is a good conversation, when not to interrupt, when to listen, when to, to venture out. And so I think that’s the kind of the primary school of conversation. And the school should then reinforce that. And you know, the word school, leisure, leisure is, is something we do because anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. We just enjoy this intrinsically. And so the ideally, the school and the home are reinforcing. And that may not be the case. And so this is where school leaders are not just educating their students, but they’re also helping families, right? This is the kind of thing that would be helpful in the home to reinforce what we’re doing here in the school.

As you talk about, um, memorizing great works, great texts, uh, we had a conversation with Ellen Condit from the Hillsdale Academy here about why it’s important, why memorization is important. And I remember she said, you know, when we, when we remember things, memorize things, we don’t say, I know them by my head or by my brain. We know them by heart. My heart. Yeah. that’s a real, you know, kind of definition of what that means.

Yeah. Yeah. The word record is to write on the heart. Yeah. Yeah. That’s right.

Doctor Kevin Gary, associate professor of education here at Hillsdale College. As we talk today about orators and philosophers, the dialectic of classical education. Doctor Gary, thanks so much for joining us here on Hillsdale College K-12 classical education podcast.

Thank you.

I’m Scott Bertram. We invite you to like us on Facebook. Search for Hillsdale College, K-12 Classical education. You also can follow us on Instagram at Hillsdale underscore k12. That’s Hillsdale underscore k12 on Instagram. Thank you for listening to the Hillsdale College K-12 Classical Education Podcast, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. [email protected] or wherever you get your audio.

The post Orators and Philosophers appeared first on Hillsdale College Podcast Network.

Host Scot Bertram talks with:

Jan Jekielek, senior editor at The Epoch Times and host of American Thought Leaders, about China’s state-sanctioned harvesting of organs from living donors and his new book Killed to Order: China’s Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America’s Biggest Adversary.

And Kelly Scott Franklin, associate professor of English at Hillsdale College, continues a series on the poems of Emily Dickinson. This week, he focuses on “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” 

From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true and the beautiful are taught, nurtured and honored. This is the radio free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.00:25S2

People called hospitals and said, hey, I’m looking for organs. Can I get them in two weeks? Absolutely. Can I get Falun Gong organs? Absolutely. Those those are the ones we have. Those are the best.00:35S3

This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. That was Jan Yaklich. He’s the author of Killed to Order China’s Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America’s Biggest Adversary. We’ll talk about the evidence with Jan on today’s program. Also later on, Kelli Scott Franklin from Hillsdale’s English Department joins us to go in depth into another poem from Emily Dickinson. First, pleased to be joined right now by Jan Yaklich. He is the author of the book Kill to Order China’s Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America’s Biggest Adversary. He’s also senior editor at The Epoch Times, host of American thought leaders as well. Jan, thanks so much for joining us.01:24S2

Scott. I’m thrilled to be here.01:26S3

This is a book that you could perhaps find in some sort of science fiction. You think it’s not real, you think it can’t be happening. And yet the data and information is is strong. This is about systemic forced organ harvesting in China. Why is this happening and how do we know it’s happening?01:50S2

Excellent questions. Let me explain to you one example of what we discovered back in 2026. And I think that will kind of open up the the road, if you will, to answer both of your questions. Okay. So there was a Israeli transplant surgeon, actually, former head of the Israeli Transplant Association named Yaakov Levy. And he had to pay. He was a heart transplant surgeon. And he had a patient who one day had a really bad condition. And his patient told him, look, I’m tired of waiting. I might not make it. They’ve scheduled it for me in China in two weeks, and I’m going. And Jacob, he couldn’t believe this. Right. And I’ll explain to you in a moment, if it’s not obvious why there’s all these red flags going off in his head.02:41S3

Mhm.02:41S2

He just couldn’t believe that this was possible. But the guy went and got it done and came back with his new heart. And that was one of the whistleblowers back in 2020, pardon me, 2006. That kind of I kind of say I was hit over the head by the evidence, if you will, because I had heard rumors that we knew that actually, that the Chinese Communist Party surgeons had killed people for organs before. But the idea that it was happening at a large scale in the sort of systematic, industrialized way was not something that I conceived or wanted to believe, if you will. Okay. So that that’s a starting point.03:18S3

Can you juxtapose or contrast the way things work in an ethical society and ethical system with the way that things work in China?03:28S2

Absolutely. So here in the US, if you let’s say I need a new heart. Someone has to have a catastrophic accident. And that accident is a very specific kind of accident. Because if the person loses all circulation, it’s that catastrophic. Those organs degrade very quickly. You can’t transplant from a heart from a person like that. So it has to be a very specific kind of accident. But on the flip side, you also don’t want to transplant for someone who has a chance of making it right. And there’s an ethics team that has to make that call. It’s a tough call to make. And then on top of that, you also need to match for blood type and tissue type. And the reason for that is that our bodies reject foreign objects, including organs. So we try to approximate organs that are as close to us to maximize the likelihood that the organ will keep including, you know, of course, this is including the anti-rejection drugs and everything else. And size also matters. Size is something. That’s my point here, is that it’s very rare actually, to get the right heart for a person. And so this catastrophic accident happens, this donor appears, and there’s this field of people that are waiting for that heart, and there’s an algorithm that decides who gets the top of the line, right? Based on availability, based on how long they’ve been waiting there need all that kind of stuff. That’s a normal system. Okay. And the Chinese system under the Communist Party is the exact reverse. And let me explain why. There’s a little bit of a background. And this is something actually that I know has been discussed at Hillsdale to some extent. So I’m very happy, happy to say that in Communist China, they have this long history of creating class enemies, what they call black classes. And so the first one was, let’s call them landowners, okay, the revolution happens. It’s 1949. The Communist Party says, hey, we don’t do private property. We’re going to take that land. Okay. Except that there’s all these people that have worked hard for their land or inherited it, and they have friends and they’re not going to go easily, right? Obviously. So what they did was they they figured out a way. And this is every totalitarian system seems to do this very effectively. They seize the means of dissemination of information, i.e. the media and so forth. And then they use that to push mass dehumanizing propaganda into the system about the group. So for example, um, you know, for the landowners. Landowning is evil. These landowners themselves are evil. They’re contemptible. You should fear them. They’re dangerous. Actually, they took that land from you. You should get it back. You know you deserve it. So we’re going to help. ET cetera, et cetera. ET cetera. And that conditions what that does is when it’s done en masse, you know, again and again it conditions our minds. And some people are more susceptible, some are less to this, to basically bad things being done to this group of people. Okay. Now there is kind of a way out usually, and the way out is if the landowner says, Great Communist Party, thank you for emancipating me from the land. Thank you. I thought land ownership was reasonable. Now I know I’m wrong. And anyway, if they do this, become contrite, you know, basically subjugate themselves to the will of the party. They might live otherwise. You know, a lot of a lot of people were killed. And actually there has been many, many of these class enemies, black classes that have been created by the regime over the years. Part of the reason is also to show the rest of the population what will happen if you go against the regime. It’s like an education tool or something. So so this is an important piece of this puzzle because in 1999 the a group became black classed, if you will, and that was Falun Gong practitioners. And Falun Gong is a very unusual system. It’s a you can think of it like a slow motion exercise system, like a Chinese yoga, but also with very deep moral principles, truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. People that did this and it took it very seriously. And it’s not like a typical what you would think of as an organization. So there’s a lot of teachings, but what there aren’t is a lot of rules. The rules might be there’s no collection of money around it. You’re not allowed to enrich yourself from it. There’s actually no hierarchy in it. There’s no there’s a the Li Hongzhi, the man who wrote the teachings, right? Like you could call him the founder or the teacher, but there’s no worship or something like that. And also, there’s not even a roster. You don’t join a group. You’re kind of living the teachings is what makes you a practitioner. People shared it by word of mouth, and by the end of the 90s, it was 100 million people were doing it, 70 to 100 million by government estimate. And so this was bigger than the Communist Party. And communist parties don’t like something that’s bigger than them in society that they don’t have explicit control over. Right. And with Falun Gong, there really is no way to control a whole fleet of individual practitioners. And what they discovered that. So Jiang Zemin, the dictator at the time, basically blocked, classed them, pushed this mass dehumanizing propaganda through the system. But the Falun Gong kind of as the first black class that did this really at some significant scale. They refused to do the contrite thing. They refused to be re-educated or, you know, you know, really he used the term eradicated. But that didn’t mean kill everybody. It meant break them, get rid of this whole thing. Right. But people wouldn’t do it. They wouldn’t. And sometimes you’ll even see in capitals around the world, in DC and other places, you’ll see people with yellow shirts that says Falun Dafa is good. It’s another name for Falun Gong. Those. That was kind of the slogan that the film Gong practitioners created, really in juxtaposition to this dehumanizing propaganda that they were facing. They were like, no, Falun Dafa is good, Falun Gong is good. It’s not all the things that you’re saying it is. Right. So what? Why is this important? Okay, because this is what this unique situation in Chinese history sets up the killed to order forced organ harvesting industry. Because you have this mass group of people, 7000 million, they’re dehumanized in the eyes of their peers. So people are being conditioned against them. And now the regime not knowing what to do, these people are not going easily. It incarcerates a million of them. We don’t know how many actually, but hundreds of thousands. The State Department in 2005 said half of the people in the re-education through labor camp system in China were Falun Gong practitioners. So just like it’s like massive amounts of gong practitioners in the system. And this is where some very evil person and I kind of hypothesize about who this is in the book and how this developed. Exactly. We don’t know for sure. But he they started blood typing. Tissue typing and organ scanning. These people on mass incarcerated in the system and creating a database. Right. So now let’s say I’m a wealthy transplant tourist. And unfortunately people have done this in some scale. I need my new heart. I’m desperate. I pay my 100 or 200 grand, which is the going rate. And now there’s a database, right? And because there’s so many people in the database, that perfect match for me already exists. And that person can be shipped and killed to order so that I can live. So in this situation, there’s one recipient. This is how it’s the exact reverse of an ethical system. But there’s this whole field of so-called donors, actually innocent prisoners of conscience to be used for as this unwilling organ bank for for for profit and frankly, for the longevity of the super elites in China.10:47S3

Yeah. How widespread is this in China? How many transplants are we talking over the course of a year? How many people are killed over the course of a year in China?10:59S2

So the rough estimate and this is very rough because remember this is all a state secret, right? Right. But there was this massive growth of hospitals, right. The Falun Gong persecution begins. They incarcerate massive amounts of people. And suddenly the organ industry just just starts to skyrocket. They’re building hundreds of hospitals. Okay, hundreds. And so in each of those hospitals is going to be doing some basic, at least a little amount of work because it’s a lot of it’s a lot of work to set up a transplant team. So if you assume the most sort of cautious estimates and you just say this giant transplant team is just doing one transplant today. Reality is they’ll be doing more. But let’s say you were just so that would you would get about 60,000 transplants per year. More realistic would be 90,000 100,000, something like that. Ethan Gutmann testified about this in Congress, I think in 2016 about that, that estimate. So it’s a very large number of transplants. That’s not people. That’s transplants. Right. So with the advent of technologies like ECMO, which is a machine that replaces heart and lungs and allows circulation, they one of the pieces of evidence we collected was that when those portable ECMO machines came online, what happened was that these transplant hospitals started buying them like hotcakes because, you know, in, in a it’s a life saving device here in America, right? It allows you to, to fix heart and lungs situations, kind of bypassing them in a case of severe trauma in China. They use them as a as a profusion device to keep the body healthy so more organs can be transplanted out of a body. This is this is the scale we’re talking about.12:46S3

John is with us here on the program. His book is called To Order. We’ll continue with him in a moment. First, I want to remind you about the new Hillsdale College online course, The Odyssey. You might have heard Doctor Ben Whalen, your teacher for this course, on an earlier episode, and maybe since then have seen the new film. Well, now it’s time to take the online course. hillsdale.edu/course, hillsdale.edu/course. The Odyssey contains themes about love and marriage and fatherhood and kingship and duty. Homer touches on the full experience of humanity in this great epic poem you can learn and appreciate so much more with Hillsdale new online course The Odyssey. Find it at hillsdale.edu/new course, NEWCOURSE. hillsdale.edu slash. New course for the Odyssey, we continue with Jan Jekielek. He’s the author of Killed to Order China’s Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America’s Biggest Adversary. A somewhat uncomfortable conversation about forced organ harvesting under the Chinese regime. Jan, something I noticed when reading Jan is that we hear stories occasionally people going to foreign countries for surgeries, and sometimes the results aren’t great doesn’t work out well. There are infections, right? You get a chop job. That doesn’t seem to be the case here at all in China, meaning this is a very efficient and very successful process that they’ve put together in this organ transplant, this forced organ transplant system.14:30S2

Well, the set of C, the set of incentives is different, right? So I’ve actually been just learning more about this. And you’re sort of run of the mill, pretty horrible cartel transplant deal. Right. Which of course those exist as well. It’s kind of like any organ into any body because, you know, you make the deal, you’re desperate. Someone says a cartel can broker it. You’re, you know, you obviously know that this organ is coming from illicit sources. And then, you know, if it fails, which it often does, what’s your recourse? You’re going to complain to the cartel that it didn’t work out, right? Right. That doesn’t even make sense. Right. So that’s kind of how it works there. But here we have something where the Chinese do you remember there was this hot mic moment back in September of last year? Yes. XI Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong un, they’re watching the parade in Tiananmen Square. And so this I’ll just paraphrase what they said, right? Because it reveals, you know, why this system works so well, so to speak. So she says to Putin, hey, when we’re 70, we’re just babies. I’m paraphrasing here, okay? And Putin responds, you know, with continual organ transplantation, perhaps we can achieve immortality with continual organ transplantation. Perhaps we can achieve immortality, continual organ transplantation. Right. And then she responds, our targets 150 years, we hope we can reach 150 years. And that’s actually 150 years is the target of their elite longevity project. It’s called project 981, they claim. And you always have to take every Chinese statistic with a massive grain of salt that has a political valence. First, the reality valence is not even second. Right. But but I think directionally I’m I’m sure it is correct. They say 16 years more life for people that are part of the Elite longevity project. And yeah, so if you’re a Chinese super elite, you have unlimited on demand organs available to you in perpetuity, right? Basically forever. And that’s, you know, people ask me, how much money do we estimate? It’s about a $9 billion annual industry right across these hospitals in China. But this this is like a whole different level of value, right? If you have no moral boundary and you’re ready to have people killed for organs, um, of course, you also want it to work very well. And then, you know, you’re going to get in bed with other people who share your lack of morals. Um, because they want that longevity too. There was even this, um, there’s an obituary that was sent to me a few years ago. It was kind of creepy and weird, but basically in the obituary, the author writes about the person that passed who was a, I think it was a vice minister, a very high level official in the Chinese Communist Party. And he had been he was known to talk about how many organs he had had transplanted. And this actually made it into the obituary unbelievably right. Like, I just didn’t even know what to make of it then, now I do.17:29S3

John, when we look at, uh, at this system, something you point out throughout the book is, uh, it’s very secretive. Uh, and it’s hard to know a lot about it because the victims here of the systemic forced organ harvesting, they don’t survive. There is a whistleblower in the book. And there’s also one person who did survive, and there’s some, some stories from from him. How do we know what we know? Or at least how do we know what we think we know about this Chinese system?18:01S2

So there’s, you know, as David Matas, who’s I think, one of the heroes of the research of this whole thing, he just says, you know, our problem is not too little evidence, but too much evidence. He likes to say that it’s true. We have really a great amount of evidence of a variety of sorts. I mean, in the early years, one of the problems is that the moment that you reveal some of the evidence, you reveal how you collected it, and then they would close that way of gathering the evidence, if you will. Right. So in the early years, there were hospitals that advertised online that said, here’s the price list and you can get it in two weeks. If you can imagine that we actually we archived some of these, thank goodness, because as soon as we started reporting on this, they those ads disappeared. Okay. People called hospitals and said, hey, I’m looking for organs. Can I get them in two weeks? Absolutely. Can I get Falun Gong organs? Absolutely. Those those are the ones we have. Those are the best. It was Falun Gong were known to be unusually healthy, by the way. That’s part of the sort of weird allure or whatever. Right. And by the way, I just there’s something else I want to mention. Right. No one really did anything about this for 15 or 16 years. Right? This is in the we believe it started around 2000. The Falun Gong are persecuted in 99. It’s starting. It’s really grows like super quick. Up until 2005 2006. And then it plateaus for a bit and keeps growing. Okay. But in 2015 and 2016, the Chinese Communist Party picks another group, adds another group. In the northwest of China, there’s a group called the Uyghur Muslims. It’s an ethnic minority in China. It’s a strategically important area. The US official position on what the CCP is doing up there is genocide, that they’re eradicating this entire group of people. And so what they did up there is they dehumanized them with similar rhetoric, again, as they always do, incarcerated a million plus. But then they went further because the whole area is run like a police state. Basically, they started blood typing and tissue typing people in their homes. Right? Basically, blood and DNA is enough to do the matching. And that’s what they’ve done through almost the whole population up there, from what I’m told. So it’s a very dark thing and it’s also geographically isolated. So it’s easier for that deniability aspect, right? Because again, no one wants to advertise that, that they want to advertise that you can get organs quickly to the right people. They don’t want to advertise how those organs are procured.20:38S3

John is with us killed to order is his book China’s Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America’s Biggest Adversary. You point out that the system makes everyone complicit in these crimes. That includes people inside China, but also outside of China. And and in some ways, the United States being complicit. Why hasn’t why haven’t we done more about this? Why hasn’t the rest of the world done more about this? And I was trying to sort of manipulated us, perhaps to make us complicit in their activities.21:13S2

So it’s it’s very interesting. Like, I’ll share a little bit about how this complicity works, right? But let’s just super briefly internally, right as an example, right. You get called in to buy one of the, you know, MSS Ministry of State security people and you’re told, okay, well, comrade, I’d like to know what your wife did last night. She didn’t come home on time. I was like, oh, you’re creeped out. They’re watching you. You kind of know they’re watching you. It’s kind of how the system works. But you’re like, you know, you can’t really say no to those people. Actually, my mother faced this sort of thing in Poland. And see, what she said was, I’m not really made out to, to say any. I’m not really made out to do this kind of thing. That’s, that’s you could say that because it’s like directly going against these guys wasn’t a good idea. This is what I’ve been told. Right. So anyway, so they, they, they let her go. But she lost her travel rights. She just she was revealed she wasn’t like this big activist, but she was revealed as someone that was not on the regime’s side. Right. But what they could do in that situation. Very often do that. If my mother had had a kid, she if she was, you know, if she was married and if we had this situation that I described, the next thing the guy would say is like, well, actually, my compatriot is over there with your daughter at her school, just making sure that she’s safe. Are you sure you don’t want to tell us what your wife was up to last night? Right? And at that moment, you have to make the decision. What do I do? Right. And so you probably say where your wife was because you think, well, I got to protect my daughter. They’re going to do something to my daughter, right? And now first, you know, you were forced into this. You didn’t ever want it to make this decision, but you are now morally compromised because you had to do something immoral. And they work at you this way in small ways to make these. And this is, you know, um, one word of truth is worth more than the world. I’m kind of butchering a soldier line here a little bit, but this is the reason because it just becomes, you know, just you’re, you’re constantly having to lie to survive. You lie more, but kind of breaking out of that is very powerful and very empowering. Right? In the system. So that’s one way that people get complicit. And if you’re an American working in China, you have to kind of participate that in inadvertently, you have to participate kind of in the lie, if you will, you’re forced to bribe people and so forth.23:40S3

John, that’s a great explanation about how some of the internal complicity occurs. What about the the external complicity? How does China force coerce those outside the country to acquiesce to what they’re doing?23:55S2

It’s just simply the moment that you start having a financial relationship, right? A regular financial relationship with someone on the other side. This is the I had a whole kind of class of people that were. You could think of it as the wooers of the barbarians. They viewed, you know, the name for the for the Westerners and and actually Jiang Zemin, who started the Falun Gong persecution that he that was his job. He was an expert at this. This as on his rise to the top of the Chinese Communist Party, he actually had that deep relationship with Senator Dianne Feinstein long before he wrote all the way to the top. And, um, yeah, so, so you this financial relationship is built and what what you say, if you’re one of these wooers, so to speak, is you’re like, well, look at this great relationship that we’ve created, right? We’re, we’re changing China. You and I are making, you know, big change in China. We’re of course, doing very well financially alongside that. But then there’s those hardliners, those bad guys that want things to do it the old way. Right? And so now, okay, so let me tell you, since we’re friends, here’s what you shouldn’t do. Don’t say anything bad about it. Don’t talk about human rights. Um, you know, we’ll have to we’ll have to transfer some technology here to placate them. But we’re making a difference. We’re working together to change China. This is this was like the standard line. So many people, a lot of and frankly, a lot of people believed it even. Right. Because well, first of all, it’s, you know, there’s this famous Upton Sinclair quote where he says, you know, it’s, uh, it’s hard for someone to notice something if they’re financially incentivized to not notice it.25:35S3

Jan, how far does the complicity go? How deep are we involved in this morass, so to speak?25:42S2

Like we’ve trained some of those surgeons in China, those those Chinese surgeons come to America and get trained and then go do kill to order forced organ harvesting, which is, you know, as far as we know, that by vast, vast, a vast amount, the major way it’s done over there, there may be some legitimate transplantation, but it’s sort of hidden amidst this system. Remember, the incentive structures are really terrible against creating a, an ethical system like I described earlier, because it’s complicated, right? It’s incredibly complicated to have a system like that. And you have to find the right people and match them here. You’ve got the matches, you’ve just got them incarcerated, and you don’t even think of them as being particularly useful human beings at all. So it’s like a bank. Organ bank, right? It’s really messy. We we have partnerships with universities. We have partnerships with hospitals. We have NIH funding for some of these institutions. We provide some of the technologies, like I mentioned, ECMO and other things that actually, you know, there’s a company that provided the technology to do that DNA matching up in Xinjiang. I mean, it just sort of goes on and on and on. And so let’s say you’re one of these people that really doesn’t believe that America should be worried about anything outside of America. We have enough problems here, sir. You know, like, like, I’m, I, I personally believe that when it comes to these kinds of atrocities, you know, that you saw how it spread from the Falun Gong to the Uyghurs. I’m even seeing this really significant uptick in dehumanizing rhetoric against Christians right now in China. And, you know, my friend Bob Fu, who runs China Aid, agrees with me. That’s that’s a non-profit ministry that basically supports persecuted Chinese Christians. And so what does that mean? I don’t know for sure, but I do know that this dehumanizing rhetoric precedes, you know, being added to the to the databases. Right?27:31S3

Right.27:32S2

So that concerns me quite a bit. And, and it’s just this is with these atrocities, they always hurt. But let’s say you’re one of these people that says, you know what? Let’s focus on America. At the very least, we shouldn’t be complicit in this. You know, we can stop those all those channels by which we’re kind of helping it all function and work like that. There is, you know, the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation. They’ve cut off the Chinese, Chinese Communist Party and all of their any basically institution in China. They will not accept any papers related to transplantation because they see this as real. So some people are starting to take a position here. There’s legislation in the Senate right now that has just come out of committee. Hopefully will be voted on soon. The Falun Gong and victims of Forced Organ Harvesting Protection Act. Maybe we’ll see some traction there. And that’s something also that will sanction some of these people, establish in law that this is real. Get reporting on it. There’s another piece of legislation in the House as well, a stop forced organ Harvesting act. That’s it’s a very powerful piece of legislation. So there’s there is movement on this. Okay. But we still there’s wild amounts of things we should do, I think.28:41S3

Yeah. John is with us. His book is called To Order. Throughout the book, there are reminders about the brutal nature of China and the communist regime. You say that there’s no such thing as a civil society under totalitarianism. We have to remember that this forced organ harvesting is a logical outcome of a system that sustains itself through any means to serve the party’s ends. Do we have a fundamental misunderstanding about the threat posed by China?29:12S2

So let me touch on this. I’m so glad that you picked up this piece about how they destroy all civil society. This is like a really something we really fundamentally misunderstood. So, you know, the thing that de Tocqueville noted as he was watching this emergent America and writing about it, right? The thing that captured his imagination and he was incredibly passionate about it was that Americans would see an issue and get together spontaneously to fix that thing, or work on it or build it and create institutions around that. And he thought that this is amazing, that they do this in a way that no one else does. And this is going to make them very successful. Okay. That’s civil society, right? In communist and communist regimes, they have, or in Communist China, they have a department. You know, if it was in the UK, it would be a ministry, right? But a department called the United Front Work Department, whose express purpose. Right. It exists. It’s one of the top most funded by the way of these of the departments to destroy or subvert civil society so they can either put the Chinese Communist Party figurehead into it and run it, in effect that way, destroying it. Right. It stops being civil society, obviously, if it’s controlled by the regime, right. Or if they if it won’t, then they destroy it. That’s what that does. And that and this is they do that both inside China and outside these Chinese police stations. You hear about. Right? In America, that’s the united front work. That’s basically the way that the Chinese Communist Party does that with similar institutions in America. Right, which are ostensibly in that way controls the voice of the Chinese people. So, you know, you’re thinking you’re dealing with civil society organizations in Chinatown, you’re actually dealing with the regime. right? So of course, not all of them have been subverted overseas. They don’t have that kind of power to do that. But internally they have. So externally it’s just a lot of them.31:10S3

Yeah.31:11S2

And I just I think we this is just one example of something we don’t understand. Like we’ve only really been starting to grasp that recently.31:18S3

Jan Yelich is the author of Kill to Order China’s Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America’s Biggest Adversary. Also senior editor at The Epoch Times and host of American Thought Leaders. I enjoy when the author does some of my work for me, because in the back of Kill to Order, there’s an appendix with questions and answers to those who still might be somewhat skeptical or have additional queries about what’s been laid out in the book. It is hard to believe it’s so extreme. It’s hard to believe, as you put in the book, but the evidence is is out there. Jan, thanks so much for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.31:52S2

Scott, thank you so much. And kill to order.com. If you’re interested in the book, that’s the Amazon short link to the Amazon link to order.com. And at the end, there’s actually an email. I don’t know if you may have noticed that as well, but it’s an email that it’s only for people who have read the book. It’s a very special one. I get really amazing letters from people and I try to respond to all of them. So I would encourage you, if you do read the book to to use that email.32:18S3

Wonderful. Kill to order.com for the direct link there. John, thanks so much.32:22S4

Thank you.32:23S3

Up next, Doctor Kelly Scott Franklin from Hillsdale’s English Department joins us. We’ll go inside another poem from Emily Dickinson. I’m Scott Bertram, this is the radio free Hillsdale Hour. We’re back on the radio free Hillsdale Hour. I’m Scott Bertram. Be sure to check out more audio from Hillsdale College on Hillsdale College Podcast Network, podcast.hillsdale.edu, or wherever you get your audio. We’re joined by Doctor Kelly Scott Franklin, associate professor of English at Hillsdale College. Doctor Franklin, thanks for joining us.33:11S5

Thank you for having me.33:12S3

Continuing our brief walk through a few of Emily Dickinson’s poems. And this time we will talk about Tell All the Truth but tell it slant. And we begin with a reading Doctor Franklin.33:26S5

All right. Tell all the truth, but tell it. Slant by Emily Dickinson. Tell all the truth, but tell it slant. Success in circuit lies too bright for our infirm delight. The truth. Superb surprise. As lightning to the children eased with explanation. Kind. The truth must dazzle gradually. Or every man be blind.33:51S3

Tell the truth, but tell it slant. If someone hears this for the first time, what’s her central piece of advice? What does it mean to tell the truth but tell it slant?34:01S5

Yes, that people have. We’ve puzzled over this one for for many years. It’s it’s a clear command. It’s a very assertive opening line. We are, to tell all the truth, leaving nothing out. But she wants it told slant wise. She wants it told. And as you see in the second line, right. Success in circuit lies. And I think for starters, I like to contrast like telling something directly or telling something straight with telling it in circuit that is going around the thing almost like a roundabout, right? You’re going across, you’re going to go straight or you’re going to go through the roundabout. I, I can never figure out roundabouts.34:41S3

Roundabouts.34:43S5

But if you go around an object, you see more of it than if you face it head on. And so on the one hand, it could sound like she’s saying, well, soften the truth or, um, and I do think there’s something about, you know, having to deliver the truth in a way that’s received. Right. But I like to think that she’s imagining the telling of it slant as actually a way to, number one, to actually bridge the gap between the truth and us, but then perhaps even to show something more about the thing to, to reveal more about it. Too bright for our infirm delight. The truth. Superb surprise. We we’re we’re going to be kind of shocked or startled by the truth. And so you need that, you know, and in the discipline of rhetoric, they think about this, right? How do we communicate the truth? Or how do we persuade. But it has to be adapted to your audience, right? It has to be suited to who you’re speaking to. So I think that’s kind of the starting point for for Dickinson.35:43S3

It’s a short poem. Um, I want to focus on this comparison to lightning that she talks about lightning, Something powerful, potentially dangerous, unpredictable. Also temporary, though lightning is gone in a flash, quite literally. So what is that image? Why that image? What do you think she’s suggesting about how humans can experience truth?36:06S5

Yeah, I, so I think she the word for me, one of the key words there in that third line is, is infirm. The truth is too bright for our infirm delight. That is, our capacity to receive truth is limited. Mhm. Dante talks about this in Purgatorio. The pilgrim is he sees an angel, an unfallen angel for the first time, and he’s completely blinded by it. So that kind of, uh, the poet’s job, it seems, or the teacher’s job or whoever it is that’s going to take these words, it has to adapt the truth because there’s something something wrong with us, right? My eyesight isn’t great yet. And so truth has to. It will will blind me, as she says at the very end. And lightning is interesting because she actually uses a simile in that second stanza. And I like to think I like to think that for. For Dickinson, telling the truth slant is using metaphor that I think that’s what she’s getting at is. And in the second stanza, we get a metaphor as lightning. She’s going to give us a simile. Uh, I know this is a hot take for all you English teachers out there and grammarians, but I, I think similarly and metaphor are the same thing. I’m just going to I’m going to take a stand right now. They’re not different. You use like or as for simile, but it’s the same thing. So she says she’s using a metaphor as lightning to the children eased with explanation, kind. So she says, this is how. An example of how you might do it or understand it this way. And children are scared of lightning. They’re terrified by it. They might not understand it, but you might give them an explanation kind. And one of my students who wrote her thesis on Emily Dickinson, she proposed, maybe this is like you tell them a story or a myth or, or you say like, oh, they’re having an argument. The thunderclouds are knocking into each other, or it’s God bowling or something. Like whatever your kind of analogy or metaphor is to help them understand it. And there’s a kindness there. And, and metaphor, if it’s going to give us success, it needs to, to, to really reveal and not obscure. It’s going to, it’s going to ease the truth to us because of our infirmity, because of our weakness. But it is going to deliver something of the truth. So there’s, there’s a statement there about what metaphor does. And poetry, which is full of metaphor, is still, I think, ridiculously going to tell us the truth.38:25S3

Mhm. And she says the truth must dazzle gradually, which is similar to what you’re talking about here. Yeah, maybe little portions as opposed to everything at once.38:35S5

Absolutely. And we I mean, we’ve experienced this ourselves in education. You gradually learn more and more about the world. You might learn more and more about history. I think God reveals to us slowly ourselves so it doesn’t shock us with our. He doesn’t shock us all at once with our. All of our failures. You sort of like reveal. Okay, here’s some weaknesses you have, right? There’s this revelation of truth because we’re weak and we need to receive it. Uh, we need to receive it gradually. And there’s a marvelous, uh, just the sounds there of that poem dazzle gradually. And it’s because otherwise we’ll be will be blind. And on the one hand, you can say, well, that means that the truth is going to be too shocking, but it could also just mean I won’t see the truth unless someone bridges that gap. I won’t even be able to see it unless you can help me to see it.39:26S3

Talking with Doctor Kelly, Scott Franklin, associate professor of English at Hillsdale College, about Emily Dickinson’s poem Tell All the Truth, but tell it slant. This is a very short, tightly structured poem. How does that economy of language perhaps reinforce her argument about the truth.39:43S5

That’s a good question. And Dickinson, some of her poems are really tight, really. And she would even write like on scraps of paper sometimes. So we’ll have like the corner of an envelope flap. And so it fits into the angle. Or you were a doodler. Yeah. She would use any scrap of paper she had sometimes. So she.40:00S3

I read a John Adams the same, the same thing. Paper was so expensive in Adams time that when they went through all his artifacts, they found scraps and corners, and he’d write the tiniest print to fit what he was trying to say in that little piece of paper.40:16S5

Amazing. Much to the chagrin of of historians and biographers. Right? Yeah. So Dickinson’s used to working, you know, in those even physically cramped spaces of a little corner of an envelope. But I think maybe saying too much about it would kind of blunt the vision of the poem we have. We have this opening statement that she unpacks for us. And then the second stanza begins with a metaphor, really the one metaphor of the poem. And. And then she leaves it to us. But yeah, it she doesn’t spend. She’s, she’s so concise. She doesn’t spend a lot of time unpacking that. The truth. She leaves it. Maybe there’s something mysterious still left over in the poem.41:00S3

It sounds the poem sounds almost like a proverb or a set of instructions. Is that typical for for Dickinson’s work?41:07S5

It’s one of her modes. Yeah. She doesn’t. It’s not every poem, but I. I really have noticed that she’ll begin. She has, you know, a poem that she’ll have a poem that just begins with that aphorism or that kind of received wisdom. And sometimes the poem unpacks it and says like, okay, here’s what this means, or here’s how this would work out in a life. Other times, she obliterates it. One of my favorite poems is, um, she. The opening line is they say that time assuages, you know, it’s like everybody says, well, you know, time heals all ills, right? They say that time Assuages time never did assuage like she just immediately contradicts it. So Dickinson will take those received wisdoms, sometimes explode them, sometimes unpack them. This is one of the unpacking ones. She she wants to give us a kind of injunction for how to speak, write, teach, and then gives us an example. Uh, in in what follows.42:02S3

This poem can feel especially relevant today. There’s a lot of talk about honesty and truth, bluntness, and there’s that phrase that seeps into place. Oh, it’s my truth. How might Dickinson speak to some of these modern debates?42:19S5

Yeah, the opening line tell all the truth. I think Dickinson is well aware of of the subjective experience of reality. And she validates that like when we experience reality, it’s in some ways it’s a is a truly unique experience, but I think there’s no doubt in Dickinsons mind that there is the truth. And she just. And she, along with Emerson and some of these other 19th century writers, Melville. They’re aware that the truth might be cosmic. It might be God. And so what I like to think about is I like to think about that moment in Exodus chapter 33 when God says to Moses, I’m going to Moses says, show me your glory. And God says, well, I’m going to go hide in behind this rock, and then I’m going to pass by. And when I’ve passed by, then you can look at my back and whatever that means, looking at the back of God. Well, when Moses has these encounters with God, he comes down. He comes out like glowing, right? So, you know, it’s like in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, you’re going to open up the ark and then your face is going to get melted off you. I think Dickinson’s aware, like Emerson, like Melville, that the truth capital T is real, but it’s like the Old Testament writers, you know, thinking about the tabernacle and the Holy of Holies. God and the truth are overwhelming. Yeah. Eternal cosmic. And so I think she’s thinking about that. But then knowing that even as weak and frail human beings, we’re still called to have some kind of access to that. But it needs to be mediated. It needs to be kind of bridged. I like to think about the myth of Zeus and Semele. Zeus took a mortal woman as his lover, and then someone who was jealous said, well, you should ask him to reveal himself in all his glory. And then, of course, she’s incinerated. Right. And that that model, I think, is, is the kind of a way to understand what Dickinson’s thinking about the truth, capital t God, the nature of things might be too much for us. Has to be has to be bridged to us, has to be mediated in some way or will be overwhelmed by it will be blind.44:36S3

Doctor Kelly Scott Franklin, associate professor of English at Hillsdale College. As we talk about the Emily Dickinson poem, Tell all the truth but tell it slant. Doctor Franklin, thanks for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.44:49S5

Thanks for having me.44:50S3

That will wrap up this edition of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Our thanks to Janice. His book is called to order and Kelly Scott Franklin from Hillsdale English Department. Remember, you can hear new episodes every week on this station. You also can find extended versions of some of our interviews, or listen any time to the podcast. Find [email protected] or wherever you get your audio. Until next week, I’m Scott Bertram, and this has been the radio free Hillsdale Hour.

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