Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis and frequent guest Bob Burch delve into questions about looking to our political leaders as role models and the tension between morality and ability when choosing who should govern us.  This discussion was prompted by a listener’s email:   Hi there,   I'm a new follower and listener to your podcast, but I like that after each episode you ask for people to contact you with thoughts or ideas. Since Trump has been in office I keep hearing about how horrible of a person he is a sexist, womanizer, racist, and the list goes on and on. I personally don't believe much or any of that narrative but here's my thought regardless, do we have to elect a president that we view as a role model? And, when did we (Americans) get so consumed with thinking of our president as a "role model"? Let's let our presidents do what they were elected to do!   In every presidential election that I can remember, polls indicate that people care more about jobs and the economy overwhelmingly more than any other social issue. Trump is in office because the majority of voters thought he was better for the economy.   I think that the left and their cancel culture has made it so that if anyone has skeletons in their closet they can never be electable or even run a business!   Once again, people should be finding role models and people to look up to in other places. A teacher, pastor, mentor or even athlete and not their elected leaders; it shouldn't be criteria to be a good public servant or leader of the free world.   I would entertain any thoughts or feedback!   Thanks,   Brandon

 

Who were America’s Greatest Presidents?  Which Presidents had the most lasting impacts that shaped the country in ways that are clearly visible today?  What about those Presidents whose blunders, incompetence, or weakness left the nation worse off?   Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is joined by frequent guest Bob Burch as they work their way through the American Presidents and dissect their legacy—whether great, terrible, or somewhere in-between.  Since this is an enormous topic it’s broken up into three episodes.  In Part 1 covered Presidents George Washington through Abraham Lincoln.  In Part 2 Josh and Bob picked things up with Andrew Johnson through Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  And in Part 3 Josh and Bob conclude with Harry S. Truman through Jimmy Carter (the last of the Presidents to serve before Millennials were born).

 

Who were America’s Greatest Presidents?  Which Presidents had the most lasting impacts that shaped the country in ways that are clearly visible today?  What about those Presidents whose blunders, incompetence, or weakness left the nation worse off?   Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is joined by frequent guest Bob Burch as they work their way through the American Presidents and dissect their legacy—whether great, terrible, or somewhere in-between.  Since this is an enormous topic it’s broken up into three episodes.  Part 1 covered Presidents George Washington through Abraham Lincoln.  In Part 2 Josh and Bob pick things up with Andrew Johnson through Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  And in Part 3, in next week's episode, Josh and Bob conclude with Harry S. Truman through Jimmy Carter (the last of the Presidents to serve before Millennials were born).

 

Who were America’s Greatest Presidents?  Which Presidents had the most lasting impacts that shaped the country in ways that are clearly visible today?  What about those Presidents whose blunders, incompetence, or weakness left the nation worse off?   Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is joined by frequent guest Bob Burch as they work their way through the American Presidents and dissect their legacy—whether great, terrible, or somewhere in-between.  Since this is an enormous topic it’s broken up into two episodes.  Part 1 covers Presidents George Washington through Abraham Lincoln.  In Part 2 Josh and Bob pick things up with Andrew Johnson through the Presidents of the modern age.

 

The incomparable Kristen Soltis Anderson joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to discuss a plethora of topics from the GOP’s branding problem with young Americans, what messaging might appeal to Millennials, whether Millennials are Leftists, and the value of polling.

 

Kristen is a pollster, speaker, commentator, and author of The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America (And How Republicans Can Keep Up).

 

Kristen is co-founder of Echelon Insights, an opinion research and analytics firm that serves brands, trade associations, nonprofits, and political clients.  Through her work at Echelon, she regularly advises corporate and government leaders on polling and messaging strategy, and has become one of the foremost experts on the Millennial generation.  Kristen is also a frequent speaker to corporate and political audiences about emerging public opinion trends.

 

Kristen is a regular presence on television news and has served as an ABC News political analyst, participating in their election night coverage in 2016.  She regularly appears on programs such as MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Fox News’ Fox News Sunday, CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper and HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher.

 

Kristen is the host of SiriusXM’s “The Trendline with Kristen Soltis Anderson,” airing weekly on their POTUS politics channel.  She also co-hosts the bipartisan weekly podcast, “The Pollsters,” featuring Democratic pollster Margie Omero.  She is a regular columnist for The Washington Examiner and has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times and more.

 

In 2016, Kristen was named one of ELLE’s “Most Compelling Women in Washington,” and in 2013 she was named one of TIME’s “30 Under 30 Changing the World”. She has been featured in Marie Claire’s “New Guard”, Cosmopolitan, and Glamour.

 

Kristen served as a Resident Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics in 2014 and has been an invited speaker at many colleges and universities.  She received her Master’s Degree in Government from Johns Hopkins University (with “Best Thesis in the Area of Democratic Processes” honors) and her Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from the University of Florida.

 

Kristen is currently a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  She serves on the advisory boards of a variety of companies as well as a number of nonprofit organizations including ClearPath, Service Year Alliance, the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, and Winning for Women.

 

Originally from Orlando, Florida, Kristen now resides in Washington, DC with her husband Chris and her golden retriever Wally. In her free time, she enjoys growing chili peppers and cheering for the Florida Gators.

 

Is the media biased?  Has media bias always been a problem in the United States, or is it a more recent development?  Does the mainstream media have a Leftwing bias?  Does bias exist on the Right?  Saving Elephant’s host Josh Lewis welcomes Peter Pischke to the show to discuss all things media bias.

 

Peter Pischke is an aspiring journalist and host of The Happy Warrior podcast, a journalistic and intellectual Conservatarian commentary on the news of the day from a more positive perspective.

 

Peter earned his Master’s in journalism from South Dakota State University, but a chronic illness known as Chronic Pancreatitis causing intractable pain and disability has made it challenging for him to fully pursue his passion in journalism.  He attributes his interest in journalism, politics, and news-making to his chronic condition.  When he became sick in 2007 there weren’t any streaming media services to keep him occupies.  Instead, he discovered Glenn Beck while educating himself on the topic of global warming, and turned to talk radio as a way to pass the time.  This inspired him to research the topic more closely and voraciously consume books about media bias and journalism by John Stossel, Bernard Goldberg, Jonah Goldberg, and others.

 

Peter has run for school board twice (and lost), got a South Dakota representative re-elected, and worked on a successful mayoral campaign.  My second run for school board is what got him into podcasting.  The rancor he experienced from his fellow citizens was so very bad that it made him want to create something to share news and help bridge the gap between the political tribes.

 

In addition to podcasting, journalism, and politics, Peter’s passions include patient advocacy for those suffering from chronic conditions, particularly chronic pain.  He’s recently begun doing charitable patient advocacy with chronic pain patients (primarily with social media).  This year, due to struggling with untreated intractable pain and an article he wrote on the topic for The Federalist, he decided to get involved with providing comfort and advice to chronic pain patients.  He believes this is a population under enormous stress and health problems, but society has ignored their suffering almost completely, and the despondency is so very bad.  Specifically, Peter has become very passionate and vocal about the chronic pain aspect of the opioid crisis.

 

The following stats and links were referenced in the show:

 

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/25/media-bubble-real-journalism-jobs-east-coast-215048

 

https://www.cjr.org/innovations/measure-media-bias-partisan.php

 

https://www.journalism.org/2019/06/05/many-americans-say-made-up-news-is-a-critical-problem-that-needs-to-be-fixed/

 

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/media-bias-left-study/

 

https://datausa.io/profile/soc/news-analysts-reporters-correspondents

 

https://www.adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html

 

Does beauty matter?  Very much so!  But why does it matter?  What does beauty do for us?  For that matter, what is beauty?  Bryan Baise—Saving Elephant’s first out-of-state guest to make a repeat appearance of the podcast—joins host Josh Lewis to attempt to untangle why beauty matters.   How we think about beauty can impact how we think about nearly everything.  St. Thomas Aquinas taught that, for something to be beautiful, it must have integrity, proportionality, and brightness, clarity, and texture.  Beauty was portrayed by classical and Christian thinkers as something that involved both the intellectual and moral parts of humanity.  But in modern times people began to question this notion of beauty.  They began to ask why beauty might do for them, and originality and utility became more important than mere beauty in the arts.   In focusing on originality, art became unoriginal in that all it had left to say was that some people like looking at some things and other people like looking at other things and that, in the end, nothing really matters.  In focusing on utility, art became useful but void of the beauty that enriches lives.  When everything has to have a use we lose the ability to look outside of ourselves because we’re always asking “what’s in it for me?”.   Bryan Baise is a professor of philosophy and apologetics at Boyce College.  Bryan is the program director of philosophy, politics, and economics and the program director of the Christian worldview and apologetics.  Bryan is currently working on two book proposals, one about beauty and another about introducing the conservative worldview to a non-academic audience.   Be sure and check out Andrew Snyder’s blog Josh mentions in the conversation and his post The Reality of Beauty, which argues that beauty can better portray reality than even material objects.

 

Do conservatives care?  Those are the Right are often characterized as uncaring.  But what do we mean by caring?  Does the conservative worldview make us distant and calculating, or does it open the way for us to care for one another without abandoning sensible policies?   Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is joined once more by Bob Burch to untangle these questions and more.

Join Josh Lewis and Bob Burch as they explore the surprisingly nuanced idea of equality and show why conservatives have valued variety over equality.

 

Visions of the future are often replete with uniformity not (currently) seen on earth.  Star Trek foretells a future in which barriers of culture, religion, class, nationalities, and politics have given way to global unity at times extending beyond even the human race.  The conservative recognizes that such a world wouldn’t be one of living long and prospering, but an authoritarian dystopia obliterating the varieties that make civilization a possibility.

 

The conservative is a wet blanket on starry-eyed fantasies of a world where distinctions in  currency, class, and cultures melt away.  The conservative is that dreary realist in the room crushing dreams of a society in which human equality has been extended to both outcomes and incomes.  The conservative is a killjoy who scoffs at notions of a government capable of administering perfect social justice.  But, in the end, it is the conservative who defends with his dying breath Beauty and Virtue in danger of succumbing to some radical’s ideological vision of a cold, narrowing world of equality.

 

It may sound laudable to insist on a broad definition of equality for all, but the conservative rightly recognizes the institution of government is ill-equipped to carry out this lofty goal.  Much like wantonly declaring there will be peace leaves a nation all the more vulnerable to war, declaring there will be no inequalities leaves a people vulnerable to the machinations of social experimentation.  Noble Laureate Milton Friedman, in his 1978 lecture at Stanford University, observed that “a society that aims for equality before liberty will end up with neither equality nor liberty.  And a society that aims first for liberty will not end up with equality, but it will end up with a closer approach to equality than any other system that has ever been developed.”

 

Because conservatives hold that mankind is as much a spiritual creation as a biological organism, they reject efforts to bring about a social utopia through mechanical or scientific means.  Such attempts to reduce men to machines is seen in the progressive visions depicting our future.  Individuality is swallowed up in uniformity to such a degree that everyone wears a similar uniform in a society where all racial, religious, and cultural differences on entire planets are obliterated.  The last “prejudices” that exist are between alien races.  Uniformity, a classless society, the obliteration of cultural diversity—such is the endgame of a worldview devoid of the constraints of conservatism.  Yet history has shown us time and again, these lofty aims inevitably lead to new and even more savage forms of inequalities.

Modern feminism claims to fight for equality for women.  But what is feminism?  And what do they mean by equality?  Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is joined by Rachel Bock, a biologist who abandoned feminism when she came to believe it was leading her away from what she truly wanted in life.  Rachel has since been vocal about her experience with feminism and its inherent dangers for women, warning:

 

“When I was a feminist I didn't understand: ‘feminists destroy the family.’  Science progressed.  I worked 70+ hr weeks, checking experiments at 3 am, in lab at Christmas....My friends had children.  Now they have families and I have publications.  Don't make my mistake.  I am not saying that girls shouldn't pursue science if they want.  By all means, go for it.  But we cannot simultaneously push girls into intense, demanding career paths while neglecting to mention that the majority of them will want children, which requires its own planning.”

 

“To be clear, I am grateful for my career and for supportive parents, teachers, colleagues that all wanted me to succeed and be happy.  I always loved science and deeply love that I was able to study it for so long.  I am not angry.  I am not placing blame elsewhere.  I made all my choices w/ the information I had at the time.  This information was heavily biased towards career and caused me to prioritize work over my romantic relationships.  There were many missed opportunities there.  The feminist view that I had was that if I didn't prioritize my science career, I was giving into the system that just saw me as a baby-maker.  I wanted to prove I was more.  There is so much wrong with that perception, which is why I feel that feminism was a cancer on my mind.”

 

Rachel Bock is a biologist with over 15 years in scientific research and writing for both technical and informal audiences.  She has received numerous awards for presentations, published in peer-review publications, and taught children, college-students, and adults about science.  Her areas of research has involved immunity/disease, evolution and genetics, physiology, ecology, wildlife, and statistics.  Rachel holds a Master’s in Biology and left her Ph.D. after 3 years when she realized the path was no longer for her.  She has since focused more time on building a fulfilling family life with absolute work/life balance.

 

You can find Rachel on Twitter at @RachelBock9 or check out her website at rachelbock9.com.