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Episode 68 – Divided We Fall with David French

Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

Release Date: 10/06/2020

169 – Unsolicited Advice with Blake Fischer show art 169 – Unsolicited Advice with Blake Fischer

Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

With the 2024 elections in rearview both parties are trying to grapple with what lessons they should learn.  Who better to offer unsolicited advice than Josh Lewis and Blake Fischer, the respective hosts of the and podcasts?  As two Trump-skeptical conservatives on the outside looking in, sure both parties are eager to hear their thoughts on how both parties should proceed in the elections ahead.   In this episode, Josh and Blake take a deep dive into what went wrong and what went right for the Republicans in 2024 and what might help them secure their newfound majorities for...

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Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

As 2024 comes to a close podcasters everywhere will be doing one of those hackneyed and insufferable “a look back at the year’s major events” shows. Not to be outdone, Saving Elephants will be getting in on the action as well with another livestream roundtable to bloviate and pontificate about the numerous twists and turns of our most recent trip around the sun.  Of course, unlike all those other shows, you never know when the panelists will get into an argument about whether Burke, Strauss, Hayek, or Scruton would have had the more insightful outlook were they alive today.

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Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

As Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is wont to do, here is yet another episode exploring the political and philosophical brilliance of Edmund Burke.  But this time he is aided by scholar and professor Daniel Klein to examine the late writings of Burke’s life as Europe was descending into revolutionary chaos.  What was Burke’s understanding of liberty and natural rights, and how did it differ from many of his more radical contemporaries?  How did Burke distinguish between reforms that were constructive or destructive, and why did he seem so reluctant to use them in some...

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“I do not believe,” wrote F. A. Hayek in his book , “that the widely held conception of ‘social justice’ either describes a possible state of affairs or is even meaningful.”  Hayek would complain “social” was a sort of “weasel word” that carried a lot of unexamined prescriptions.  To call something “social justice” is to advocate for something without bothering to fully explore what that something might even be.   What are the philosophical underpinnings of social justice?  What does it practically mean, and how could it practically apply.  And...

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Should conservatives be bullish or bearish on the incoming Trump administration? Will Trump 2.0 deliver us to the sunlit uplands of a prosperous free market economy, sensible immigration reform, and reductions in wasteful deficit spending and overbearing regulations? Or will America become a dreadful hellscape with an executive branch consistently thwarting its constitutional limits and a GOP-controlled congress refusing to hold them in check, federal departments and agencies run by charlatans and conspiracy theorists, trade wars and industrial policies that would make late 19th century...

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Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

“The biggest takeaway from the 2024 election,” , is that “independents have officially broken the duopoly and now share the title of America’s largest political group with Republicans.”  But what is an independent, exactly?  What do they want and how are they different from those who proudly affiliate with the Republican or Democratic parties?  And what might this portend for the future of American politics?   Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is joined by pollster Brett Loyd to make sense of the rise of the independents in the electorate.   About Brett Loyd...

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Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

Sure, the major news networks had all the "experts", but how many of them opined on what Buckley, Burke, or Kirk would think of the election results? Listen to Saving Elephants' livestream on election night as results come in from another stellar panel of cross-partisan contributors: , , , , Kent Straith, , John Giokaris, , and Steve Phelps.

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Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis flies this election day episode solo to offer his thoughts on how your vote is more likely to impact yourself than it is the races, having grace for those who choose to vote differently than we do, and why conservatives should take courage in a profoundly discouraging time.   Special Election Night Livestream   You’re already staying up late to watch the election results.  Why not watch them with another august cross-partisan panel brought to you by Saving Elephants?  Join us, beginning 9PM CST, as we analyze the results in real...

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The most [assuredly not] important election of our lifetime is a little more than two weeks away. The candidates are in the home stretch as each of them make their final pitch to the dwindling undecided voter. Join another venerable group of panelists as we share our thoughts on the state of the race and our hopes and fears with a coming Harris or another Trump administration. Panelists include: Brooke Medina, Eric Kohn, Mike Taylor, and Nate Honorè

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164 – What is a Woman with Kimberly Ross show art 164 – What is a Woman with Kimberly Ross

Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

Saving Elephants meticulously avoids many cringeworthy tropes in today’s “conservative” media and opts instead for deeper conversations on the conservative worldview and what it can offer Millennials.  As such, there is much low-hanging-fruit among the fruitier parts of the Left that isn’t as vigorously explored as it is in the aforementioned “conservative” media.  But that doesn’t mean these topics are off limits—just that they’re to be approached with conviction and clarity.   Josh Lewis welcomes Kimberly Ross back to the podcast for a wide-ranging discussion...

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Hardly anyone disagrees Americans are divided, or that our divisions are problematic.  But could continual political partisanship and polarization actually fracture the United States into multiple nations?  What is the likely outcome or potential risks if we do not find a way to reverse the negative polarization?  What are the preconditions for state secessions, and how close are we to meeting those preconditions?  Is the United States facing another civil war, acrimonious divorce, or eventual reconciliation?

 

Those are precisely the questions David French sets out to answer in his new book Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.  David joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to discuss the threats political polarization represent for the United States, what our history can tell us about the likelihood of these dangers, and how returning to the Madisonian blueprint of the extended republic may offer the solutions to many of the controversial political battles today.

 

David French is an Iraqi war veteran, attorney, free speech and religious liberties advocate, political commentator, and author who has been at the center of some of the hottest political battles over the past four years.  His name was used to coin the term Frenchism to describe a deference to classical liberalism and opposition to the new nationalism and authoritarianism on the Right (see the Saving Elephants article on Frenchism for more information).

 

French has served as a senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice and the Alliance Defending Freedom, has lectured at Cornell Law School, and spent much of his career working on religious-rights issues.  He served as president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).  He retired from FIRE in 2005, citing plans to serve in the United States Army Reserve as a judge advocate general officer.  He was a staff writer for National Review from 2015 to 2019, and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.  In 2019 French left National Review to join the conservative news site The Dispatch as a senior editor.