Episode 29 - Conservative Minds with Kyle Sammin
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
Release Date: 04/16/2019
152 – Humanist Conservatives with Jeffery Tyler Syck
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
Fusionism—the viewpoint advocated by the likes of William F. Buckley and Frank Meyer of order and liberty mutually reinforcing each other—has been the dominant form of conservatism in the United States for a generation. In the era of Trump and the rise of nationalist populism on the Right, however, fusionism has steadily lost influence. Should conservatives double down on what’s worked in the past? Or is it time for a different approach that was advocated by some of the original critics of fusionism on the Right? Joining Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is...
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151 – The God of This Lower World
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
What is the single most important virtue for a leader to possess? What quality can make the run-of-the-mill politician into a statesman? Is it integrity, communication skills, resilience, courage, empathy, or wisdom? All of these things are important, of course, and if any are sufficiently lacking we wouldn’t call that a good leader. But what would you say is the chief virtue? Conservative thinkers from Burke to Kirk to Kristol to Strauss and even many of the ancient and medieval thinkers from Aristotle to Plato to St. Thomas Aquainis identified a single virtue...
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150 – We Don't Need No Indoctrination with Luke Sheahan
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
What is the purpose of higher education? Is it primarily to prepare us for the jobs of the future? Is it to ensure the leaders of tomorrow hold the right opinions on important issues? Is it to provide a safe haven for the pursuit of Truth? Thinkers on the Right have held differing—sometimes incompatible—views on the purpose of higher education. Joining Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is returning guest Luke Sheahan to explore these arguments and how conservatives might respond to the rise of radicalism and wokism on college campuses. About Luke...
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149 – The Legacy of Roger Scruton with Fisher Derderian
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
Having published more than forty books on an astoundingly wide range of topics and holding noteworthy positions at the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, the University of Oxford, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the University of Buckingham, Sir Roger Scruton was the quintessential British gentleman and scholar. He was also one of the greatest conservative intellectuals of the last century and the beginning of this century who died in 2020. Fisher Derderian joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis for a woefully incomplete exploration at the legacy of...
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148 – Conservatism in Practice with Gov Mitch Daniels
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
The Saving Elephants podcast has welcomed a wide array of incredible guests who are on forefront of the conservative political movement. But most of the guests discuss conservatism from the perspective of a theory or set of principles or idea. Few have had the opportunity to enact political conservatism as a practice. And few ex-politicians have been as successful as former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels in advancing conservatism as a practice. While Daniels is reticent to label his approach “conservative” or identify as part of red team vs. blue team, his practices...
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147 – Where the Religious Right Went Wrong with JB Shreve
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
One of the strangest political developments over the past several decades has been the devolution of the Religious Right and large swaths of politically active Evangelicals as they morphed from character counts moralists of the 1990s to MAGA Trumplicans. Regardless of the merits of where the Religious Right stands today, one could be forgiven for being perplexed at how they arrived here at all. Joining Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is JB Shreve, creator of podcast and blog, to demystify the Religious Right’s conversion to the Church of Trump. Both JB and Josh were...
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146 – The Myth of Nationalism with Samuel Goldman
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
What does is mean to be an American? And why do we Americans obsess so much over the question of what it means to be an American? This nagging question has plagued our nation since its birth and various national “myths” have been advanced to offer some form of national identity and cohesion. At times one myth has proven stronger than the others, only to be overshadowed as historical events call its sufficiency and truth into question. So where does that leave us today in an era of collective, existential crisis? Joining Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to...
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145 – Smoking Yule Logs and Donning Gay Apparel
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
In 2021, Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis joined three other veteran podcasters on a new podcast endeavor: Are We Right? Cal Davenport, Brooke Medina, and Calvin Moore, and Josh debated a wide range of topics from politics to religion to culture and invited the audience to weigh in on whether or not they’re right. While the show was tragically short-lived, a number of excellent episodes were produced and this is a re-podcast of their Christmas episode to commemorate the holiday season: In the spirit of the season, Are We Right presents an epic Christmas-themed episode unmatched in...
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144 – Conservative Historian Redux with AD Tippet
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
Earlier this year Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis was on AD Tippet’s podcast, . This episode is a re-podcast of that conversation that covered a wide variety of conservative topics from both the past and today. About AD Tippet AD Tippet (the podcast formerly known as Belisarius Aves) is the founder and publisher of the Conservative Historian and . “History is too important to be left to the left,” writes AD. “The Conservative Historian provides content and opinions on conservative thinking through the prism of history.” You can follow Bel on Twitter @BelAves...
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143 – The Conservative Mind at 70 with Michael Lucchese
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
In 1953 a little-known political theorist Russell Kirk repurposed his doctoral dissertation as a book for publication. His book, The Conservative Mind, would quickly become a bestseller, give the nascent conservative movement its name and intellectual moorings, be reviewed and debated in respectable publications across the country, and launch its author to international fame. Seventy years later, the book is still going strong. Now on its seventh edition and reprinted in multiple languages, The Conservative Mind is among the indispensable tomes for understanding the...
info_outline“Welcome to Conservative Minds – a podcast dedicated to examining conservative intellectual history to determine the core values of American conservatism. What does it mean to call yourself a conservative? What did it mean in prior times and how did we get where we are today? We explore these questions and more by turning to conservative political thinkers from the past and present. Each episode we select readings and conduct a discussion to share with you our investigation.”
Thus begins each episode of the Conservative Minds podcast. In a dizzying weekly release, cohosts Corey Astillck and Kyle Sammin read a notable work of a conservative intellectual leader and hold a discussion summarizing the reading and comparing/contrasting what they’ve found to previous readings. The result is an interesting and in-depth approach to examining the many nuances of the conservative worldview.
Since conservatism isn’t a rigid ideology that can be traced back to a single godfather, it can be notoriously difficult to define. What’s more, there are inherent tensions throughout the worldview that create interesting paradoxes. Sometimes conservative thinkers will emphasize one aspect of conservatism over another and the seeming contradictions may take considerably time and effort to work through. Part of Saving Elephant’s mission is to help clarify and define the conservative worldview—no easy task—and Corey and Kyle have made much progress in this endeavor.
Thus far their podcast has included examining the writings of:
Barry Goldwater
Richard Weaver
John Locke
George Will
Robert Bork
Edmund Burke
Milton Friedman
Robert Nisbet
Irving Kristol
William F Buckley
Patrick Buchanan
Friedrich Hayek
Alexis de Tocqueville
Antonin Scalia
In this episode of Saving Elephants, Kyle Sammin joins host Josh Lewis to offer a summary of the discussions he’s had in season one of Conservative Minds. Kyle lives in Pennsylvania where he practices law and writes. His contributions have appeared in The Federalist, National Review Online, Hardball Times, University Bookman, and the Weekly Standard. You can listen to the Conservative Minds podcast here.