Episode 14 - The Price of Greatness with Jay Cost
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
Release Date: 09/04/2018
139 – Perspectives from Across the Pond with Sarah Stook
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
The United States and United Kingdom have enjoyed and, at times, endured a symbiotic history, culture, politics, and global relationship. Often understanding the quirks of one nation helps us better understand our own. Sarah Stook, journalist of American politics and history, joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to discuss what Americans and Brits can learn from one another, what unique challenges face young, British conservatives, the importance of the British monarch, and whether American politics looks as off-the-rails from an outsider’s perspective as it does from those...
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138 – The Conservative Historian with Belisarius Aves
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
“History offers not simply a chronicle of events but, more importantly, opportunities to gain insights about the human condition from the experience of other times and places,” writes Thomas Sowell in his provocatively titled book . “That is, it offers not merely facts but explanations.” Yet history’s capacity to benefit us is naturally limited by our natural biases. “History cannot be a reality check for visions when history is itself shaped by visions.” To learn how to extract beneficial explanations from history, therefore, we must first learn how to...
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137 – Political Theology with Jonathan Cole – Part 2
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
Christian or not, it’s undeniable that Western civilization, and the United States in particular, has deep historical roots in Judeo-Christian teachings. Scripture has shaped much of our culture, thought, values, and politics. But while plenty of Biblical passages appear to have political implications, there’s little consensus among the general population—to say nothing of the religiously devoted—what a political worldview based on the Bible should look like. Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis continues his conversation with Jonathan Cole on the topic of political...
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136 – Political Theology with Jonathan Cole – Part 1
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
“I never discuss anything else except politics and religion,” English writer, philosopher, and Christian apologist G. K. Chesterton once quipped. “There is nothing else to discuss.” For some sensible, genteel Americans, politics and religion are precisely what you don’t discuss in public and—perhaps even—in private company. Others discuss both with ease yet may have trouble thinking through what their politics might say about their religion, or how their religion ought to inform their politics. The discipline of political theology specializes in studying...
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135 – Cool Ellul with Jason Thacker
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 , in which he argued technology had a totalizing effect that could potentially dehumanize our world...
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134 – Gilding a Mess with Avi Woolf
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
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...
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133 – Grappling with Hate Speech with Brooke Medina
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
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...
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132 – Classical Period Non-Perverts with Jack Butler
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
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 and 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...
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131 – Witnessing Whittaker with Sam Tanenhaus
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
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...
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130 – Cultivating Kirk with Jeff Nelson
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
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 . 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 : Jeff Nelson co-founded the Kirk Center with Annette Kirk...
info_outlineHas American politics always been this divisive? Would you believe it was once much worse?
National Review columnist and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Jay Cost joins us to discuss how a difference of opinion in the early days of the American republic led to a fight that can still be felt today.
Founding Fathers Alexander Hamilton and James Madison went from being close allies to bitter political opponents shortly after the nation was formed. Jay Cost’s latest book— The Price of Greatness–tells the story of how this epic rivalry between two great men laid the groundwork for much of our political strife today. His message is important in understanding part of what makes our politics so divisive and how we can overcome that division.
In addition to National Review and the American Enterprise Institute, Jay’s work can be found at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Weekly Standard, and various other notable publications. Jay has written three books: “The Price of Greatness: James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the Creation of American Oligarchy”(Basic Books, June 2018); “A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of Political Corruption”(Encounter Books, 2015); and “Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic”(Broadside Books, 2012).
According to his AEI bio, his interests are broadly focused on civic republicanism in the United States, with emphases on the political theory of James Madison, the problem of political corruption, the role of political parties, the development of civic institutions over time, and the power and responsibility of Congress. He writes and speaks frequently on American elections, with a special attention on placing contemporary trends in historical context.
As will be evident throughout the episode—Jay has a commanding knowledge of U.S. history and its impact on our political world. If you enjoy the discussion but have an unquenchable thirst for more, I’d highly recommend you buy the book and then truck on over to the podcast Jay and his colleague Luke Thompson cohost called Constitutionally Speaking; a show about how the Constitution works and how it was put together.