Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

What is America and what does it mean to be an American?  We Americans have been debating this question for centuries, yet we seem even less united on a common understanding than Americans of prior generations.

America’s original national motto was E Pluribus Unum: “Out of many, one”.  It contained the notion that this diverse country of ethnicities and religions and ideologies were somehow unified in some sense.  In 1956, our national motto changed to “In God We Trust”.  Yet this was no less of a statement on American unity.  In 1956 the Cold War was raging, and the government of the United States sought to distinguish itself from the atheistic Soviet Union.  Trusting in God was simply what it meant to be an American.

And yet no one can deny that there are plenty of Americans who would not claim to believe, let alone trust, in God.  And the idea that the best way to describe ourselves in light of our current political divides is “Out of many, one” seems downright laughable.

Why is it so hard to come to a common agreement on what it means to be an American?  What ideas have been tried in the past?  Why did they fail and to what extent were they ever successful?  How important is it that we reach some kind of consensus?  Joining Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to discuss these questions and more is returning guest Avi Woolf.

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 is 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 has been a guest on the show in two previous episodes as well: the first in which he explored the need for conservatism to find a way to appeal to people who live in urban areas in Episode 26 – Urban Conservatism and the second in which he mulled over the love/hate relationship the Right has long had with institutions of higher education in Episode 49 – God and the Speechless at Yale.

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

Josh takes a break from the guests to cover a little conservatism 101.  Russell Kirk’s pithy list Ten Conservative Principles: begins with what Kirk called an enduring moral order: “The conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order.  That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent.”

The full implications of this idea—not to mention the arguments in favor or disapproving of this view or the thorny business of trying to agree upon a working definition of “moral order”, “human nature”, or “permanent truths”—is precisely what makes this so challenging to untangle.  But untangle we must for, if we ever hope to understand conservatism, we must first understand the foundation conservatism rests upon.

It would be difficult to overemphasize the importance of order.  It’s not some idea relegated to trivial conversations amongst people with a lot of time on their hands, it is quite literally the glue that holds reality together.  “Either order in the cosmos is real, or all is chaos,” explained Kirk, “In a vortex of chaos, only force and appetite signify.”  Everything conservatism defends as worth conserving rests on the idea that there exists some standard by which we can truthfully distinguish what things have value from mere popular preferences.  Our ability to make these distinctions is important, but such efforts would be utterly hopeless if order did not exist.  In that case all we could say is that some people prefer some things while other people prefer other things; we couldn’t make actual truth statements about those things.

Edmund Burke put it more succinctly: “Good order is the foundation of all good things.”  The connection between order and foundation is key.  The existence of order—that is, something that is fixed, absolute, immutable, and completely outside of humanity’s ability to create or destroy—is precisely what grounds reality.  Without it, all that’s left is chaos and appetite.  Humans don’t submit to the gods they create; and if we come to believe there is no truth greater than whatever “truth” we create for ourselves we shouldn’t act surprised when a spirit of benevolence and comradery is insufficient to hold barbarism at bay.  Without order, we don’t have a basis for justice or a universal argument for natural rights and liberty from coercion.

If Kirk’s assertion of the existence of an enduring moral order is true, we’re faced with an abundance of questions, such as:

• Can we define this moral order, or at least discern it? If so, how?
• What is the relationship between societal order and the order within each individual in society?
• Where does this order come from? Is it spiritual in nature?
• What political and legal implications does a moral order impose?
• Doesn’t the flirtation with ideas of a moral order quickly descend into authoritarian theocracy? How does the conservative guard against that?
• What implications does this have for politics or the state? Or is this a matter of faith that should be left out of political considerations altogether?
• What is the relationship between order and liberty? Are these ideas in conflict or can they be reconciled?

Josh tackles all that and more in this episode

For thousands of years the ways in which cities and towns developed has provided us with a of blueprint for what human habitats need to flourish.  Yet today many of our cities and towns have forsaken these tried-and-true methods and instead imposed rational planning and an overreliance on pricey infrastructure projects to foster growth and further development.  What are the potential downfalls of departing from these practices of the past?

Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is joined by Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns to traverse the world of urban planning and discuss the need for a return to the ancient models of development, the terrible costs of over-indebted infrastructure projects to younger Americans, whether or not Wal-Mart is a net boon or detriment to local communities, and how conservatism can help us form a more prosperous and enjoyable world.

Podcast Survey

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About Charles Marohn

Charles (or “Chuck” to friends and colleagues) Marohn is the founder and president of Strong Towns, a nonprofit that supports thousands of people across the United States and Canada who are advocating for a radically new way of thinking about the way we build our world.  Marohn is a professional engineer and a land use planner with decades of experience.  He holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning, both from the University of Minnesota.

Marohn is the author of Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity (Wiley, 2019).  He hosts the Strong Towns Podcast and is a primary writer for Strong Towns’ web content.  He has presented Strong Towns concepts in hundreds of cities and towns across North America.  Planetizen named him one of the 10 Most Influential Urbanists of all time.  He is a long-time commentator on KAXE Northern Community Radio.  He currently co-hosts KAXE’s Dig Deep program, a monthly examination of public policy issues affecting Minnesotans.

Marohn grew up on a small farm in central Minnesota.  The oldest of three sons of two elementary school teachers, he joined the Minnesota National Guard on his seventeenth birthday during his junior year of high school and served in the Guard for nine years.  In addition to being passionate about building a stronger America, he loves playing music, is an obsessive reader, and religiously follows his favorite team, the Minnesota Twins.  Chuck and his wife live with their two daughters in their hometown of Brainerd, Minnesota.  You can find him on Twitter @clmarohn

Listener Mail

Josh responds to a listener’s question about conservatism’s challenges with appealing to minorities and whether our nation’s institutions are worth conserving given the history of American slavery and other past sins.

In 1976 historian George H. Nash wrote The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, a celebrated historical accounting that established much of the narrative for how we think about the development of modern conservatism even today.  George Nash joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to discuss the various strands of thought that emerged after the second World War that eventually evolved into a political movement on the Right.  Along the way, Dr. Nash shares his insights on the colorful individuals who shaped the debate, how they fought one another, and how an eventual loose consensus was brought forth.  Finally, he offers some thoughts on what a lifetime of studying the history of conservatism can teach aspiring conservatives today.

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Help us make the podcast even better: Take the listener survey for a chance to win a Saving Elephants coffee mug.

About George H. Nash

George H. Nash is the epitome of a gentleman and a scholar.  A graduate from Amherst College who received his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University, Dr. Nash is an authority on the histories of American conservatism and the life of President Herbert Hoover.  Dr. Nash is an independent scholar, historian, and lecturer.  He speaks and writes frequently about the history and present direction of American conservatism, the life of Herbert Hoover, the legacy of Ronald Reagan, the education of the Founding Fathers, and other subjects.  His writings have appeared in the American Spectator, Claremont Review of Books, Intercollegiate Review, Modern Age, National Review, New York Times Book Review, Policy Review, University Bookman, Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.  He has lectured at the Library of Congress; the National Archives; the Herbert Hoover, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson presidential libraries; the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum; the Hoover Institution; the Heritage Foundation; the McConnell Center; and at various universities and conferences in the United States and Europe.  Several of his lectures have been featured on C-SPAN.  He has also been interviewed by C-SPAN, National Public Radio, numerous radio stations, and the print media.  Dr. Nash lives in Massachusetts.

Listener Mail

At the end of the episode, Josh responds to a listener’s question about a comment he made in the episode that dropped on Election Day 2020.  Josh had expressed his views that that time that neither major party candidate represented an existential threat to the United States and the listener askes, given what we now know about the election aftermath, accusations of widespread election fraud, the incursion on January 6, and the subsequent white washing of the Republican party, would Josh now view Trump as an existential threat to the country?

Few conservative thinkers are as little known, controversial, or had as great an impact on the conservative elite as Leo Strauss.  Who was Leo Strauss, what did he believe, and how does that inform conservative thought today?  Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is joined by Seth Root to disentangle the mysteries of Straussianism including his views on esoteric writing, the ancients vs. moderns, reason vs. revelation, and arguments against historicism and relativism.  Seth also enlightens us on the different variants of Straussianism and why he identifies as a West Coast Straussian.

About Seth Root

Seth Root is the cohost of the In The Trenches Podcast, a show for conversations with people that are right in the middle of the war of ideas.  Seth was a fellow at Conservative Partnership Institute and an incoming intern at the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding.

Listener Mail

Josh responds to a Mark’s email about his blog post Fifty Conservative Thinkers and conservatism and the environmental movement.  Mark is the author of Old Man on a Green Bike: Chronicles of a Self-Serving Environmentalist, a book on the politics and practicalities of conscious bicycling, inspiring readers to take to two wheels for their own sake, and maybe also the good of the planet.

Syndicated columnist, author, podcaster, and political commentator Jonah Goldberg joins Josh to discuss his work in conservative media, their shared concerns with the direction of the country and sanity of the GOP, and why Woodrow Wilson was possibly an even worse human being than James Buchanan.

Jonah Goldberg hosts The Remnant, a podcast featuring a “Cannonball Run”-style cast of stars, has-beens, and never-weres to address the most pressing issues of the day and of all-time, mixing history, pop culture, rank-punditry, political philosophy, and, at times, shameless book-plugging, and the nudity is (almost) always tasteful.  In October of 2019 Goldberg co-launched and became founding editor of the online opinion and news publication The Dispatch.  He was the founding editor of National Review Online, and from 1998 until 2019 he was an editor at National Review.

A prolific writer, Goldberg writes a weekly column about politics and culture for the Los Angeles Times as well as a frequent “newsletter” The G-File.  He has authored three books, the No. 1 New York Times bestseller Liberal Fascism; The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas; and Suicide of the West, which also became a New York Times bestseller.

Goldberg is also a regular contributor on news networks such as CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, appearing on various television programs including Good Morning America, Nightline, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Real Time with Bill Maher, and The Daily Show.  Goldberg is an occasional guest on a number of Fox News shows and a frequent panelist on Special Report with Bret Baier.

Listener Mail

In this episode we’re introducing a new segment: listener mail.  Josh selects from some of the messages he’s received and responds to them in the podcast.  Few episodes have generated as much feedback as the previous episode: Episode 81 – But, He's a Fighter.  Josh reads a text he received from Jeff saying how much he enjoyed the episode and a tweet and email from Dennis expressing concerns over the episode.

How often have you heard someone say of a Republican politician that they don’t necessarily approve of everything they do or say, but at least they fight?  What exactly do we mean when we say—often approvingly—that someone is a fighter?  Why is the Right so concerned with whether or not someone is fighting?  Who are they supposed to be fighting, and what does it mean to fight?  What is the role of civility in public discourse, and is it possible to maintain an appropriate amount of civility while still fighting?  If we grant that the Right seems to be on the losing end of the culture wars, what is the best course of action?  Does fighting mean we develop our own form of cancel-culture and work to produce as many liberal tears as we can?  Or does it mean we work to rebuild our own cultural values?  Can both be done at the same time?  Is it even possible to make cultural gains through political means?

Bob Burch joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to hash out these questions and more in a conversation where they—ironically—have more to fight about than usual.

“There's a well-worn tale about modern American conservatism,” writes Stephanie Slade in her piece for Reason entitle Is There a Future for Fusionism?  “It says that the movement as we know it came into being during the mid–20th century as a ‘fusionist’ coalition of economic libertarians and religious traditionalists.  These groups, whose goals and priorities differed from the start, were held together mainly by two things: the sheer charisma of National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr., and the shared enemy of global communism.  As long as the Cold War endured, the story goes, each wing was willing to cede some ground to the other…But the fall of the USSR meant the collapse of the common foe that had sustained the fusionist partnership.  It was able to trundle on for a while, powered by a reservoir of goodwill, but it has long been running on fumes.  In the last few years, the alliance's inherent tensions have come to a head.”

The problem with this “well-worn tale”, Stephanie contends, is that it isn’t true.  Fusionism, as developed by conservative thinkers from William F. Buckley Jr. to Frank Meyer, was a philosophical orientation that sought to advance both virtue and liberty as societal ends whereas the coalition on the Right that formed to combat global Communism was born out of political expediency.  As such, fusionism is just as relevant in a world where Communism is no longer the global menace it was in the prior century, in spite of competing voices on the Right calling for a realignment of market-skeptical Common-Good Conservatism, nationalism, and populism.

Stephanie joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to discuss the true history of fusionism, what it became the dominant consensus on the Right, and why it still remains relevant today.  Also discussed are some common objections to fusionism, how fusionism can fit within the broader worldviews of libertarians, conservatives, and classical liberals, what is meant by “liberty” and “virtue”, and the seductive dangers of the post-liberal movement.

Stephanie Slade is managing editor at Reason, the libertarian magazine of "free minds and free markets."  Prior to joining Reason, Stephanie worked as a speechwriter, a pollster, and a regular contributor to U.S. News and World Report.  In 2013, she was named a finalist for the Bastiat Prize for Journalism.  In 2016–2017, she was selected as a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.  She's a proud graduate of the University of Florida, where she earned a B.A. in economics.  She also has an M.A. from American University.  You can find her on Twitter @sladesr

The Saving Elephants podcast turns three years old today—no joke!  To celebrate Saving Elephants is releasing a bonus episode: a re-podcast from the Conservative Minds podcast where Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis joined Corey Astill and Kyle Sammin to discuss Frank Meyer’s classic book What Is Conservatism?

Conservative Minds is a podcast about conservative ideas and thinkers.  Hosts Corey and Kyle explore what it means to call yourself a conservative, where conservatism has been, and where it's going.  Each week, they select readings and conduct a discussion to share with you our investigation.  You can join the conversation by liking them on Facebook or following them on Twitter at @consminds.

The book What Is Conservatism? contains multiple essays from twelve prominent conservative intellectuals compiled by the father of conservative fusionism himself, Frank Meyer.  Just what is conservatism?  Many people are groping for answers, especially as conservatives seem to retreat into factions—Tea Partiers, traditionalists, libertarians, social conservatives, neoconservatives, and on and on.  But this illuminating book shows what unites conservatives even as it explores conservatism’s rich internal debate.

What Is Conservatism? features brilliant essays by such leading lights as:

• F. A. Hayek, Nobel Prize–winning economist and author of The Road to Serfdom
• William F. Buckley Jr., founder of National Review and the man perhaps most responsible for the rise of modern conservatism
• Russell Kirk, whose seminal book The Conservative Mind gave the conservative movement its name
• M. Stanton Evans, author of the conservative movement’s central credo, the “Sharon Statement” (1960)

It also includes a foreword by #1 New York Times bestselling author and The Dispatch founder Jonah Goldberg explaining the influence of What Is Conservatism? on conservative thought and the book’s relevance today.

Host of the Leading Questions podcast Calvin Moore joins Josh to discuss his journey away from the Evangelical faith and a traditional, conservative, Republican culture.  Calvin became disillusioned with the Christianity of his upbringing and dissuaded from the politics commonly attached to it over many years of wrestling with hypocrisies and disingenuous arguments.  His story is an excellent example of the dangers in short-sighted political strategies and belief systems that fail to take the experiences of others into account.

Calvin Moore is the host of Leading Questions with Calvin Moore, a weekly moderated roundtable discussion about ongoing issues in our culture.  The podcast brings together disparate voices on a particular issue, discusses disagreements, considers one another's positions and, at the very least, leaves the table with a measure of respect for the person on the other side of the debate as they strive to create a space for passionate, yet healthy dialogue.

Always the inquisitive, skeptical member of his family, Calvin has consistently pushed the boundaries of accepted conventions in his search for truth and understanding.  With the rise of new media, he noticed the degradation of dialogue between disparate viewpoints, which led to the creation of this program.

Calvin earned his Bachelor of Science in History Education at Rochester University in Rochester Hills, Michigan.  His focus is on the African-American experience in the Early American Republic and Presidential History.

Calvin resides in Michigan with his wife, Jennifer.