Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

Modern views on how future technology is likely to change our lives range from bloviatingly aspirational visions of utopia to musings on whether the latest advancement in AI will destroy humankind in our lifetime or merely enslave us all in Matrix-style battery capillaries. Yet debates on whether technology is a neutral tool for our benefit or a near-unstoppable force leading us to a particular destiny are nothing new. In 1964, French philosopher and sociologist Jacques Ellul wrote The Technological Society, in which he argued technology had a totalizing effect that could potentially dehumanize our world in its never-ending effort to make all things efficient and "useful".

While he's somewhat critical of Ellul's determinism, this episode's guest—Jason Thacker—gleans much wisdom from Ellul's warnings. Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis and Jason Thacker discuss competing views of technology and how they might help us for a foundation for dealing with the technological challenges we face in our digital public square.

About Jason Thacker

From https://jasonthacker.com/

Jason Thacker serves as an assistant professor of philosophy and ethics at Boyce College in Louisville, KY. He also is a research fellow in Christian ethics and director of the research institute at The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is the author of several books including Following Jesus in the Digital Age and The Age of AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity. He also serves as the editor of The Digital Public Square: Christian Ethics in a Technological Society and co-editor of the Essentials in Christian Ethics series with B&H Academic. He is the project leader and lead drafter of Artificial Intelligence: An Evangelical Statement of Principles, and his work has been featured at Slate, Politico, The Week, USA Today, Christianity Today, World Magazine, The Gospel Coalition, and Desiring God.

He is a graduate of The University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies. He also holds a Master of Divinity from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he is currently a PhD candidate in ethics, public theology, and philosophy. He serves as an associate fellow with the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge, an advisor for AI and Faith, fellow in science and technology at the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Seminary, and a research fellow with the ERLC Research Institute. He is married to Dorie and they have two sons.

You can follow Jason on Twitter @jasonthacker

About The Digital Public Square

Brooke was one of the contributing writers to the recently published book The Digital Public Square. In The Digital Public Square, editor Jason Thacker has chosen top Christian voices to help the church navigate the issues of censorship, conspiracy theories, sexual ethics, hate speech, religious freedom, and tribalism. Many of the contributing writers (David French, Bonnie Kristian, Bryan Baise, and Brooke Medina) have been prior guests on the Saving Elephants show.

In the aftermath of the Civil War and prior to the first World War lies an often overlooked era in American history known as the Gilded Age. This was an extraordinarily "messy" period where it's often difficult to identify the heroes to extol or villains to condemn. But it is also a period that has unusually similar parallels to our own times from rapid technological advancements, growing partisanship, and the unraveling of communities and traditions. We might benefit from a closer understanding of the lessons learned in this messy period.

Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is joined by returning guest Avi Woolf, a fellow podcaster who has been working through an in-depth and nuanced series on the Gilded Age on his podcast Avi's Conversational Corner. He joins Josh to help decipher the mess of this era.

About Avi Woolf

Avi Woolf is a writer, editor, translator, and podcaster whose work has been published in Arc Digital, Commentary, National Review, The Bulwark, and The Dispatch. He was chief editor of the online Medium publication Conservative Pathways, and he—in his words—"hopes to help forge a path for a conservatism which is relevant for the 21st century while not abandoning the best of past wisdom."

Avi hosts his own podcast entitled Avi's Conversational Corner, a podcast on culture, history, and politics in a broad perspective. You can find Avi on Twitter @AviWoolf

In this brave new digital world, opportunities for hate speech seem ubiquitous and increasingly dangerous. How should a conservative balance their values of limited-government and protection of the vulnerable in social media? How do we answer the charges of "silence is violence", or that speech and equal violence from a legal, cultural, and moral framework?

Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is joined by frequent guest Brooke Medina to grapple with the problem of hate speech. Josh shares his experiences of being harassed while (briefly) identifying as a woman on Facebook and Brooke draws from her contributing chapter in the recently published book The Digital Public Square: Christian Ethics in a Technological Society.

About Brooke Medina

Brooke Medina serves as Vice President of Communications for the John Locke Foundation, an independent, nonprofit think tank in North Carolina. There Brooke manages a team of talented communications, design, and media professionals. Brooke oversees the implementation of the organization's strategic communications efforts and regularly engages with the press and public through written commentary, television and radio interviews, as well as public speaking engagements. In addition to these roles, Brooke is responsible for creating and implementing the foundation's marketing strategy.

Brooke is a graduate of Regent University, holding a B.A. in Government and a minor in English. While in college, she attended both the Koch Leaders Program and Koch Communications Fellowship, programs that focus on the philosophical underpinnings of market-based management and classical liberalism. She is currently a member of the American Enterprise Institute's Leadership Network.

Brooke's writing has been published in outlets such as The Hill, Entrepreneur, Washington Examiner, WORLD, Daily Signal, FEE, and other publications. She is a frequent podcast guest on a variety of shows, a C. S. Lewis aficionado, and, along with Josh, part of the quartet that make up the hosts of the Are We Right? podcast.

You can follow Brooke on Twitter @Brooke_Medina_

About The Digital Public Square

Brooke was one of the contributing writers to the recently published book The Digital Public Square. In The Digital Public Square, editor Jason Thacker has chosen top Christian voices to help the church navigate the issues of censorship, conspiracy theories, sexual ethics, hate speech, religious freedom, and tribalism. Many of the contributing writers (David French, Bonnie Kristian, Bryan Baise, and Brooke Medina) have been prior guests on the Saving Elephants show.

Among the very-online, relatively young, and mostly male cohorts of the Right is a movement growing in popularity and intensity that valorizes the very excesses the Left criticizes as toxic masculinity. This movement, promulgated by the likes of Bronze Age Pervert and Mencius Moldbug and defended or even praised by a surprising array of mainstream conservative outlets, has captured the attention of many a young man yearning for a deeper sense of purpose and pursuits in an age of secular materialism and Leftist wokism.

In this episode Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is joined by National Review Online submissions editor Jack Butler who contends that the West's spiritual vacuum has made it possible for pre-Christian paganism to gain a foothold in the culture and that a return to an authentic faith is the only plausible means of combatting this worrisome trend.

About Jack Butler

Jack Butler is a researcher, editor, and writer who currently works as submissions editor at National Review Online. Jack is a media fellow for the Institute for Human Ecology, and a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow at the Fund for American Studies. He was the original producer of The Remnant podcast with Jonah Goldberg and host of the Young Americans podcast. Jack is an alumnus of Hillsdale College and a graduate of St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati, his hometown. He is also an avid long-distance runner. You can follow Jack on Twitter @jackbutler4815.

In 1948 Whittaker Chambers shocked the nation when, while testifying before Congress, he gave the names of individuals he claimed were working within the United States government as Communist spies for the Soviet Union. Among those named was Alger Hiss, Chamber's close friend and former Communist comrade. The ensuing trial quickly divided the nation into competing narratives. Who was lying and who was telling the truth? Was Chambers insane or, perhaps, seeking to destroy Hiss due to some personal grievance? Was this merely a pretext to the coming Communist "purges" under the McCarthy hearings that took place a few years later? Or had Chambers alerted the nation to the fact there were Soviet spies deep within the government and the prevailing liberal elite of that era had failed completely to respond to the threat?

Sam Tanenhaus, American historian, biographer, and journalist joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to take a deep dive into the remarkable life of Whittaker Chambers, including how Chambers came to break with Communism, whether Hiss was truly guilty, the real threat of Communism of that era, what the Chambers/Hiss trial came to represent for the nation as a whole, Chamber's association with William F. Buckley and the burgeoning conservative movement, and his lasting impact on the Right.

About Sam Tanenhaus

Sam Tanenhaus is the US Writer at Large for Prospect and the editor of both The New York Times Book Review and the Week in Review section of the Times. From 1999 to 2004 he was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where he wrote often on politics. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, and many other publications. Tanenhaus's book, Whittaker Chambers: A Biography, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His books also include The Death of Conservatism and a soon-to-be-released biography of William F. Buckley Jr. and is the US Writer at Large for Prospect.

Perhaps no other individual (or person, for the benefit of the Kirkian insider) was more responsible for resuscitating intellectual conservatism back to life in the mid Twentieth century than Russell Kirk. Today, Kirk's efforts to recover and conserve the "Permanent Things" lives on at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal. Co-founder and Vice Chair of the Russell Kirk Center, Jeff Nelson, joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to explore the legacy of Russell Kirk and its lasting impact on the conservative movement today.

About Jeff Nelson

From the Kirk Center bio:

Jeff Nelson co-founded the Kirk Center with Annette Kirk and is currently Vice Chairman of the Center's Board of Trustees. He served in 1986 and again in 1989 as Dr. Kirk's personal assistant.

Dr. Nelson is Executive Vice President of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (Wilmington, Delaware). He also served as president of the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts (Merrimack, NH). He received his B.A. at the University of Detroit, an M.A. at Yale University Divinity School, and was awarded his Ph.D. in American History at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Dr. Nelson founded ISI Books, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's now nationally recognized publishing imprint, in 1993. Under his direction, more than 110 books were published. During that time he also edited two respected journals of thought and opinion: The Intercollegiate Review and The University Bookman, and is publisher of Studies in Burke and His Time. He also is senior fellow of both the International G. K. Chesterton Institute (Toronto, ON) and the Centre for the Study of Faith and Culture in Oxford, England; and he is secretary of the Edmund Burke Society of America.

Dr. Nelson has edited two book collections: Redeeming the Time by Russell Kirk, and Perfect Sowing: Reflections of a Bookman by Henry Regnery; he co-edited an award-winning treasury of the historian John Lukacs' writings entitled Remembered Past; and was project director of the popular national college guide, Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth About America's Top Schools. Dr. Nelson was featured in a New York Times front-page news article about a major reference work he co-edited, American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia; and he is series editor of The Library of Modern Thinkers. Jeff Nelson is a frequent and popular guest on radio and television talk shows across the country.

You can follow Jeff on Twitter @JeffOttoNelson

About The Russell Kirk Center

The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal is located in Kirk's ancestral village of Mecosta, Michigan. It is at its heart a residential research and study center, a community of fellow travelers that lives together in the Center's six cottages, and gathers in the Kirk Library of some 15,000 books and in the family house, where ideas and community join in what Dr. Kirk used to describe, borrowing from Tolkien, as the Last Homely House. Like his hero Edmund Burke, Kirk is a perennial thinker, anti-materialist and a Christian humanist. At the Kirk Center and in the writing of Kirk, generations connect, community and tradition live, the politics of prudence and humility extolled, and imagination, religion, and key societal beliefs, practices, and institutions studied with a view toward cultural renewal. Inspired by Russell Kirk, the Kirk Center cherishes the Permanent Things as the best way to enliven the conservative mind and to re-enchant our world.

And so I hope listeners of this podcast will visit the Kirk Center website, kirkcenter.org. Sign up for the Center's newsletter, Permanent Things, and find great classic Kirk content regularly curated by Cecilia Kirk Nelson. Finally, one of the premier conservative book review publications, The University Bookman, posts new book reviews each weekend and has its own weekly e-newsletter that features reviews and interesting content from other groups and podcasts, including the occasional Saving Elephants episode.

Book Recommendations

Here are four of Jeff Nelson's book recommendations on Russell Kirk:

First, James Person's Russell Kirk: A Critical Biography of a Conservative Mind is a wonderful introduction to Kirk and the key areas of his thought.

Second, as mentioned, Bradley Birzer's Russell Kirk: American Conservative is a thoroughly researched standard biographical treatment that is both insightful and lively.

Third, Gerald Russello's The Post Modern Imagination of Russell Kirk is one of the best analyses of Kirk's thought and the role that both ideas and imagination play in it.

Finally, for a discussion and application of Kirk's understanding of the Moral Imagination, especially as a kind of process or mode of knowledge, through the prism of great children's literature, Vigen Guroian's Tending the Heart of Virtue is especially good.

Our digital world is saturated in "facts" but there's little agreement on what constitutes "truth". If we can no longer agree on what sources of information can be reliable, is civil debate even possible? To what degree is the problem exacerbated by social media? To what degree is this simply a problem of human nature? Bonnie Kristian joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to discuss the knowledge crisis and our inability to reach consensus on what constitutes truth. Bonnie also shares her thoughts the challenges of unplugging from the digital world, whether our current woes are likely to get better in the near future, becoming better consumers of news, and dealing with people who we believe hold false views.

About Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian is a journalist and author specializing in foreign policy, religion, and politics. Her column, "The Lesser Kingdom," appears in print and online at Christianity Today and her writings have appeared at The New York Times, The Week, USA Today, CNN, Politico, Reason, and The Daily Beast. She is the author of two books: Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today. Bonnie is also a fellow at Defense Priorities, a foreign policy think tank.

A graduate of Bethel Seminary, she lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and twin sons. You can follow Bonnie on her Substack and on Twitter @bonniekristian

What do Russell Kirk and Martin Luther King Jr. have in common? Though they're traditionally depicted as coming from opposing political orientations, National Ambassador for Braver Angels John Wood Jr. believes a deeper understanding of their religious convictions and societal aspirations reveals an important commonality between these two men. And this commonality points us to the restoration of tradition and community.

John Wood Jr. joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis as they explore what value Kirk and King symbolize in the conservative project of restoration. They also discuss whether Jesus can heal our political divide, the role of faith in politics, and what John's experiences as a black conservative has taught him.

About John Wood Jr.

John Wood Jr. is the National Ambassador for Braver Angels—the largest bipartisan, grassroots organization in the United States that seeks to depolarize our politics. In 2014, Wood was the Republican nominee for California's 43rd congressional district and ran against the formidable 17-term Maxine Waters. Wood has served as Vice-Chair of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County, America's largest county-level Republican party. He is a musical artist and a noted writer and speaker on subjects including racial and political reconciliation. You can find him on Twitter at @JohnRWoodJr

The conservative tradition embodies centuries of accumulated wisdom from some of the brightest and most inspiring thinkers you'll find. Yet for the young conservative eager to learn more about this tradition, choosing which books to read can be a daunting task.

Most online lists of top conservative books contain familiar titles of classic tomes that inspire and challenge readers to this day. Yet far too often such lists also include authors such as Charlie Kirk, Ann Coulter, Sebastian Gorka, Dinesh D'Souza, Dan Bongino, and Mike Lindell who, while they may be gifted at inflicting liberal tears, have nothing of value to say on behalf of their supposed conservative convictions. There is so much more to conservatism than owning the libs and brandishing firearms in your social media profile picture. What's more, many lists are inflated with works on libertarian, patriotic, religious, or cultural topics that, important though they may be, are only tangential to conservatism.

It is particularly challenging for us younger conservatives to cut through the noise on the Right today to explore the deeper, auspicious truths of our rich heritage. As such, I've compiled a list of 40 must-read conservative books worth your time and attention for this episode. Whether you read all, some, or only one below, you will be getting a healthy dose of conservative thought that cuts through the banality of most political discourse and gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a conservative.

It would be an impossibility to rank these books in order of importance, relevance, insightfulness, readability, etc. As such, I have opted to list the titles alphabetically. There is no perfect place to start; just find a book that strikes your interest and dive in!

In this episode I cover the second twenty books in the list. If you want to hear the first twenty check out episode 126. Here are the books I cover in this episode:

Heaven Can Indeed Fall: The Life of Willmoore Kendall – Christopher Owen

How to be a Conservative – Roger Scruton

I, Pencil – Leonard Read

Ideas Have Consequences – Richard Weaver

In Defense of Freedom and Related Essays – Frank Meyer

Intellectuals and Society – Thomas Sowell

Natural Right and History – Leo Strauss

Neo-conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea – Irving Kristol

The Quest for Community – Robert Nisbet

Rationalism in Politics – Michael Oakeshott

The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism – Leo Strauss

Reflections on the Revolution in France – Edmund Burke

The Right – Matthew Continetti

The Road to Serfdom – F. A. Hayek

Suicide of the West – Jonah Goldberg

The Vision of the Anointed – Thomas Sowell

The Theft of a Decade – Joseph Sternberg

Them – Ben Sasse

What Is Conservatism? – Frank Meyer

Witness – Whittaker Chambers

The conservative tradition embodies centuries of accumulated wisdom from some of the brightest and most inspiring thinkers you'll find. Yet for the young conservative eager to learn more about this tradition, choosing which books to read can be a daunting task.

Most online lists of top conservative books contain familiar titles of classic tomes that inspire and challenge readers to this day. Yet far too often such lists also include authors such as Charlie Kirk, Ann Coulter, Sebastian Gorka, Dinesh D'Souza, Dan Bongino, and Mike Lindell who, while they may be gifted at inflicting liberal tears, have nothing of value to say on behalf of their supposed conservative convictions. There is so much more to conservatism than owning the libs and brandishing firearms in your social media profile picture. What's more, many lists are inflated with works on libertarian, patriotic, religious, or cultural topics that, important though they may be, are only tangential to conservatism.

It is particularly challenging for us younger conservatives to cut through the noise on the Right today to explore the deeper, auspicious truths of our rich heritage. As such, I've compiled a list of 40 must-read conservative books worth your time and attention for this episode. Whether you read all, some, or only one below, you will be getting a healthy dose of conservative thought that cuts through the banality of most political discourse and gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a conservative.

It would be an impossibility to rank these books in order of importance, relevance, insightfulness, readability, etc. As such, I have opted to list the titles alphabetically. There is no perfect place to start; just find a book that strikes your interest and dive in!

In this episode I cover the first twenty books in the list:

A Conflict of Visions – Thomas Sowell

A Time to Build – Yuval Levin

The Abolition of Man – C. S Lewis

Basic Economics – Thomas Sowell

Black Rednecks and White Liberals – Thomas Sowell

Coming Apart – Charles Murray

The Conscience of a Conservative – Barry Goldwater

The Conservative Affirmation – Willmoore Kendall

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 – George H. Nash

The Conservative Mind – Russell Kirk

The Constitution of Liberty – F. A. Hayek

Democracy in America – Alexis de Tocqueville

Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered – Russell Kirk

The Fatal Conceit – F.A. Hayek

The Federalist Papers – Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

Fools, Frauds and Firebrands – Roger Scruton

Free to Choose – Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman

God and Man at Yale – William F. Buckley Jr.

The Great Debate – Yuval Levin

The Gulag Archipelago – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn