Episode 66 – Monetary Mayhem with Joseph Sternberg
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
Release Date: 08/25/2020
Episode 75 – A Peaceful Transfer of Power
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
Tomorrow Joe Biden will be sworn in as our 46th President. Yet this inauguration will mark the first time in American history that the outgoing president refused to accept the results of the election and actively worked to overturn them. And, for the first time in modern American history, we were deprived on a peaceful transfer of power. On January 6, 2021 our country was attacked. My country. Your country. Though the events took place several weeks ago, it is important to keep them fresh in our minds as we reflect on what it means to be Americans and to...
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Bonus Episode – Remembering Roger Scruton with Bryan Baise
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
One year ago today, on January 12, 2020, Sir Roger Scruton died at the age of 75. Thus passed one of the greatest intellectual minds of the past century. Scruton was an English philosopher and writer who specialized in aesthetics and political philosophy. He wrote over 50 books on philosophy, art, music, politics, literature, culture, sexuality, and religion, as well as novels and two operas. Yet his greatest achievement, according to Dr. Samuel Gregg with the Acton Institute, was to put into words and give form to conservatism as a philosophy beyond a...
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Episode 74 – Conserving Liberalism
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
What is the opposite of conservatism? It’s liberalism, right? Well…it’s not quite that simple. Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis goes guestless in this episode to take a deep dive into the good, the bad, and the ugly of liberalism and to explain why liberalism, far from being the opposite of conservatism, is actually much of what conservatism is trying to conserve. But to get there we first need to untangle what we mean by liberalism. What is liberalism? What is the goal of liberalism? What are they “liberal” about? What is the...
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Bonus Episode – Two Burkeans and a Straussian
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
Last week cohosts Cal Davenport and Seth Root of the podcast invited Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis on their show for some no holds barred discourse around the topic of whether David French’s recommendations for addressing the growing political divide in the country are sufficient, achievable, and ideal or fail to go far enough. Throughout the conversation Cal and Josh appeal to Burkean arguments while Seth holds his own defending a Straussian viewpoint. What are the solutions to the nation’s political divide? Are David French’s solutions too Frenchist? Is...
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Episode 73 – Formative Institutions with Yuval Levin
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
Among the legions of intellectuals and academics milling about Washington D.C., few commands more respect than Yuval Levin. Yuval has worked in the nation’s capital for decades and has a surprisingly hopeful message for the prospects of conservatism’s future and the fate of the republic. Yet he is soberminded about the challenges we face, chiefly the failure of our institutions to form us into the kind of people fit to live in a society of ordered liberty. Yuval joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to discuss why are institutions are important, why they’re failing...
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Episode 72 – The Millennial Presidents
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
About a year ago Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis and frequent guest Bob Burch did a series exploring the American Presidencies from a conservative perspective. The discussion took place over three episodes: The series ended with Jimmy Carter as he was the last president to serve before the oldest Millennials were born. Now Josh and Bob pick things up where they left them and walk through the Millennial Presidents: Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Donald Trump is excluded as his term as president is ongoing and—quite...
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Bonus Episode – Leading Questions – Post Election Breakdown
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis participated in a panel discussion on the podcast to discuss the possible impact of a Biden presidency on the Republican and Democratic parties, the historic nature of Kamala Harris being the first female VP, and the future of American political discourse. This is a rebroadcast of that panel discussion. The panel also includes Leading Questions hosts Calvin, Kent, and Steve and guests Saeed Khan and Jennifer Moore.
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Episode 71 – Exploring Burke with Wes Siler
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
The 18th century British statesman Edmund Burke is often credited as being the father of modern conservatism. His most famous work—Reflections on the Revolution in France—is heralded as the most eloquent counter-revolutionary political text ever written and lays much of the foundation for the conservative mindset of the West. Yet Burke is challenging to read and comprehend. His 18th century prose and deeply complex arguments seem otherworldly in an era of bumper-sticker political slogans and surface-level philosophy. Russell Kirk—perhaps Burke’s greatest...
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Bonus Episode – The 2020 Elections – Now What?
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
Saving Elephants’ own Josh Lewis hosts an election night panel to discuss the incoming results of the race and what it may mean for the future of the country, Republican and Democratic parties, and conservative movement. Meet the panelists: Brooke Medina: Brooke Medina is a homeschool mother of four and the Director of Communications at where she manages Civitas’ outward facing platforms, oversees messaging strategy, and handles all press relationships. The North Carolina based Civitas Instituted is a nonprofit policy organization dedicated to removing barriers to freedom so that...
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Episode 70 – Election Day
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
It’s finally here! It’s Election Day. After what feels like the longest year of our lives, the campaign season is over. While voting and elections are still fresh in our minds, now’s as good a time as any to reflect on the voting process. Yes, you may have already voted, but the act of voting is about so much more than checking a box once every four years. It’s about the life-long process of becoming the sort of people fit to live in a free republic. It’s easy to get tripped up right out of the gate if you’re fuzzy on the purpose for voting in...
info_outlineStephanie Kelton’s book The Deficit Myth released in June was just the latest in a series of books, blogs, articles, podcasts, and videos extoling the virtue of Modern Monetary Theory (or “MMT”). We’re told that governments that have sovereignty over their currency can afford a wide array of social programs from entitlement expansion to generous welfare benefits to the Green New Deal. Leftist are ecstatic that they finally have an answer to the Right’s persistent question “how are you going to pay for all this stuff?”
But is MMT sound monetary policy? For that matter, what is monetary policy? What did famous economists like Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes have to say about monetary policy? Was it a mistake for America to get off the gold standard? What is the Federal Reserve, and why can’t they seem to leave the interest rate alone? Do deficits matter? If so, how?
For most, monetary policy may sound like a subject that’s dreadfully complicated or—far worse—boring. Yet this opaque subject matter is very important to our economic wellbeing. In fact, bad monetary policy greatly exacerbated economic downturns to the point of creating The Great Depression and The Great Recession. Sound monetary policy benefits us all, and it’s imperative we understand what sound—and not so sound—monetary policy looks like.
Returning guest and friend to the podcast Joseph Sternberg joins Josh in a discussion on monetary policy that’s both digestible and engaging. We last heard from Joseph in episode 35 when he dropped by to discuss his book The Theft of a Decade: How the Baby Boomers Stole the Millennials’ Economic Future.
Joseph is a member of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, where he writes the Political Economics column. He joined the Journal in 2006 as an editorial writer in Hong Kong, where he also edited the Business Asia column. He currently lives in London. He graduated from The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia with an economics major.