Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

Award-winning podcaster Brian Dunning joins Josh to discuss conspiracy theories and their impact on our political climate.  Whether it’s allegations that Trump and Putin rigged the 2016 elections, Obama isn’t a natural-born citizen, or Bush and Cheney blew-up the twin towers to justify going to war in the oil-rich Middle East, our political conversations are often bedeviled with conspiratorial thinking.  How do we discern the truth from alternative facts or fake news?  And how do we tell if we’re in danger of conspiratorial thinking ourselves?

Brian Dunning hosts Skeptoid, a weekly science podcast that has been revealing the true science behind popular misinformation and urban legends since 2006.  His latest book, Conspiracies Declassified: The Skeptoid Guide to the Truth Behind the Theories explores, debunks—and sometimes proves—the wildest conspiracies to ever exist, from mind control experiments to lizard people.  Dunning provides some authoritative insight into humanity’s crazy impulse to engage in conspiratorial thinking and offers a hopeful path for those who seek the truth.

Twelve score and two years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.  And what the heck does that even mean?

In this Saving Elephants bonus episode, Josh gives a crash course in the American revolution and explores whether there’s more to this holiday worth celebrating than blowing stuff up and eating fatty foods.

As the incomparable Tomi Lahren once observed—“I mean, I’m a Millennial, so I don’t really like labels”—Millennials don’t really like labels.  Come to think of it, what the heck does the label “Millennial” even mean?  Is it just a designation for the arbitrary date you happen to be born, some series of historical events that supposedly shaped your worldview, or how you’re perceived by people much, much older than you?

Labels can be impersonal and even pernicious.  And yet we are all guilty of labeling people, if only in our minds, into certain groups or subcultures to make sense of the world around us.  So what are the limits of generational labeling?  In what ways do they help clarify or confuse our understanding of each other?  And how did we get into this business of labeling generations in the first place?

Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is joined again by Bob Burch to deconstruct the practice of labeling Millennials and add some clarity to whether it makes sense to think of Millennials as individuals or as part of the generation in which they were born.  You’re welcome, Tomi.

Whether it’s to save Social Security or cover a budget deficit, politicians are fond of declaring they’re going to audit EVERYTHING!  But what does “audit everything” actually mean?  And how likely is it to solve problems like the viability of entitlement programs or ballooning debt?

Drawing on a decade of experience in auditing governments, Josh, CPA, demystifies the auditing process and shows how audits, while vitally important, are usually a cop-out response from politicians who don’t want to make tough choices.

Saving Elephants’ guest Bob Burch is back with Josh to discuss the challenges that conservatism faces, the triumph of 20th century progressivism, regulations that regulate regulating regulators, what “neocon” actually means, and sundry other topics so deep even Adele can’t roll in it.

Ever wonder why conservatives sometimes come across as gloomy pessimists?  Bob and Josh delve into what afflicts the conservative’s soul and offer some hopeful remedies.

Lastly, as promised, here’s a link to Mark Steyn singing I Tawt I Taw A Puddy Tat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNbmLIW8PmA

In the 1950s, Russell Kirk almost single-handedly rescued conservative thought from oblivion and made it a force to be reckoned with again by writing The Conservative Mind.  Since his intended audience was academia, much of his tome is a rather dense and difficult read.  But that's what we're here for--to make highbrow conservative thought easily accessible and applicable for you.  Kirk later summarized his basic arguments in the book into a list of Ten Conservative Principles.  In today's podcast we'll be exploring the first five of those principles.

It turns out the meaning of "conservatism" isn't just up for grabs.  Here we'll learn what conservatism actually means by exploring the writings of old, dead, white guys like Burke, Kirk, Goldwater, and Buckley.  And we'll discuss the three worldviews (economic, foreign policy, and social) that merged to form modern conservatism.