Paul Gottfried on the State of the Conservative Movement

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We have someone actually we've had on the podcast before today, a reoccurring guest who I respect very deeply, and I appreciate his work, especially in Chronicles magazine when

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I'm privileged to get that magazine at my home, and that is Dr. Paul Gottfried. Dr.

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Gottfried, we appreciate you being on the podcast again to discuss conservatism. Thank you. Thank you for having me on again.

00:39

My pleasure. We were just talking about your life a little bit, and you have 14 books that you've written as well as scholarly articles.

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There's an anthology coming out. You can find all this on Amazon if anyone wants to go check out your work. You are still the editor -in -chief of Chronicles magazine, which is probably the only magazine that I recommend people subscribe to.

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Not a lot of people get magazines anymore. That's, I think, the only one I get, and I look forward to it.

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Thank you for joining us. The question today after the

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Trump victory is, what is conservatism? What does it mean? This was a question before Trump's victory, but Trump has an opportunity to,

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I think, give his version of whatever the answer to that question is now that he's in power, essentially, on the

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Republican Party. Maybe the first thing, before we even get there, maybe your impressions of the election might just be good, and what you think this means for the future, and then we can get into that.

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Well, my wife predicted that Trump would win despite the polls. I think

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Trafalgar Square, was it Trafalgar polling, and that the person who leads it,

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Robert D 'Ahili, pointed out that very often polls are used not to reflect popular opinion but to affect popular opinion, and I think this is certainly true.

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And I think that, you know, Trump's victory did not surprise me all that much.

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I was happy that he was able to pull in the Senate with him. He should have 53 seats if the

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Democrats don't manage to defraud John McCormick of his seat that he won.

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They're visibly engaging in election denial in our state, which is something the

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Democrats do quite often, which the Republicans are doing. But he should have 53 seats.

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I hope that all of his cabinet picks get confirmed, but I doubt that Matt Gaetz will, and I suspect that Tulsi Gabbard may have problems.

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And the reason I say this is that my wife was watching the Legacy Media report this morning, and I learned that Tulsi Gabbard is a very dangerous extremist, and good

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Republicans like Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins of Maine will try to keep from destroying

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American intelligence. And, of course, in the case of Matt Gaetz, apparently he's a child molester and has done all kinds of other things and is probably a fascist.

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In fact, the media will keep going after anyone who occupies the attorney general's office until they get somebody who looks or acts a bit like Merrick Garland.

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They certainly don't want anybody who's going to clean up that Department of Government, which was basically reconstructed under Obama, just as he filled other government agencies with woke leftists.

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So we're going to have problems, I think, with some of the confirmations, even if they get 53 votes in the

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Senate, because some of those Republican votes I wouldn't trust. I wouldn't trust

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Romney. I wouldn't trust Collins, Murkowski. There are probably a few others that are sort of leaning in the right direction.

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But, you know, I think it is a welcome development that Trump won. I would not rule out the left coming back, as I indicated in a column for The Chronicles yesterday for our website, because they do control all the important social, cultural institutions in the

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United States and throughout the Western world. So, you know, this is a minor setback.

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I mean, they'll screen bloody murder. They're hysterical. They'll remain hysterical.

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They'll try to undermine Trump's administration, but they're hardly down and out.

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And I remind people that, you know, that that almost half the voting population of this country voted for Kamala Harris, who is probably the most extreme radical leftist and the least qualified candidate for the presidency ever nominated by a major party in this country, as far as I can see.

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So there are a lot I know, a lot of people voted for her and they're sort of hard woke leftist.

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And there are millions and millions of Americans. And unfortunately, they are in dominant positions in education and media.

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Yeah, I I've been joking and I've seen other people joking online about we're going to get tired of winning and all the

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Trump rhetoric because it's exciting. And, you know, it's like, hey, we actually won something for once.

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But you are bringing us down to reality. And it sounds like you're not quite as optimistic as some people are with this, that you think this is a bump in the road for the left, that they're just going to continue.

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Yes, I do. You know, having seen the Reagan victory in 1980, it didn't really change very much in this country in terms of domestic policy and the country just continued to move to the left.

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And if you remember, President Reagan gave us that disastrous amnesty bill. Yeah. And he did very little to change the to change the deed or the permanent state of the managerial state, hardly anything.

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And yet he was vehemently, almost hysterically pushed by the left.

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So, you know, I I'm waiting to see. I remain a skeptic.

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I would be delightfully surprised if President Trump does it, does clean out the swamp.

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Yeah, well, I'd love to see that. So coming back to the initial question about conservatism itself,

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I know that there's a lot of dissatisfaction today and questions about what is conservatism actually conserve.

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It doesn't seem like we're conserving anything. And I know you've had well, we were talking about this before we started recording.

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You've had a life of writing on this issue and politics in general.

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And you're not respected on the right as a political theorist, not in the gatekeeping institutions, at least the the prominent legacy institutions.

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So maybe we can start there. Why is it that people like yourself and others who write for Chronicles and outlets like that, why are they so feared and so ignored?

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Yeah, I think ignored and despised. I think might might fit the situation better.

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Yeah, in my case, I mean, it's been like over 40 years, during which time the conservative movement has not only tried to marginalize me, it has taken active steps in some cases to keep universities from hiring me, to keep my books from being published.

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I've been smeared as a white nationalist, smeared probably as other things, too. And I think this is typical of the way the conservative movement has operated, at least since the 1980s and probably since the 1950s, when it went after people who were not sufficiently hardline on the

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Cold War. And I tell people the conservative movement is no more tolerant on the left than it attacks.

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And I always cite myself as an example. And they've done everything they can. They not only they not only have kept my works from being known, but they've done everything they can for that, even for even for publishers.

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Their presses have never been willing to give me a contract. I was turned down by Regnery. I've been turned down by by other conservative presses that won't touch anything, counter books, which won't touch anything that I write.

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However, the books they get turned down will end up being published by Princeton, Cambridge.

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Cornell University is a regular publisher of mine. But the conservative movement will not publish me.

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And I'm kept out of just about all of their magazines. I am never invited to speak at most of their institutes, with the exception of the

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National Conservatives, who were very definitely invited me in the Mises Institute, which is libertarian, although I'm not a libertarian.

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And I don't think my experience is unusual. The conservative movement has been doing this, has been outlawing people for a long time.

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And even if positions that I took in the past, which were critical of neoconservatives, become prevalent among conservatives in a later point,

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I'm still I still remain persona non grata because I did not take the party line at the time that the opposite position was the party line.

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So, I mean, their gatekeeping is almost pathological and it just it just continues.

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Now, there is, of course, the larger question, do I think what calls itself the conservative movement, which is not really conservative and is only, you know, intermittently on the right, do

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I think this conservative movement could have held back the left if it were more principled and if it engaged less in this sort of gatekeeping, basically to please the left, which is always trying to cut a deal, the center left and sort of try to absorb these people and be friendly with them and so forth?

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I don't know. I mean, having written books on act of liberalism, the managerial step books and the managerial state and the post -Marxist left and so forth, these forces have become so powerful throughout the

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Western world. And I show my book on anti -fascism, even, you know, during the

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Second World War, after the the struggle against communism is almost an interlude, you know, in the the triumph, the triumph of various lefts.

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I mean, you had the pro -communist left. Now you have the woke left. Yeah. And I'm not sure that a powerful, conservative movement or movement of the right could have could have controlled them.

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And I say this with deep regret, having studied this subject for many years, because I think

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I think the conservative movement has been totally inadequate and often despicable. But I don't

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I don't believe that a stronger conservative movement might have been able to prevail against the left just took over so many institutions at the same time.

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And I could see that even as a graduate student at Yale in the 1960s. I mean, they the way they took over whole departments.

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I remember when Charles Moser, who was a famous Soviet historian and was was was pushed out of the

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Yale, I think it was out of the history of the Russian department because he had been too critical of the

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Soviet Union. And that was the kind of thing that that's when the anti -anti -communism was the hallmark of the left, being soft on the communists.

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Once the communists went away, it became that you've got the woke stuff, gay, transgender, anti -white racism and so forth, anti -male, anti -white male

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Christian, I say, demonology, which is what we have now. If you could boil down what you think the reason for the gatekeeping against you is, what would you say?

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What are they seeing in you that they it sounds like you didn't take some positions that you should have.

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Is that really all that it is or. Yeah, I mean, they decide that they're going to move, you know, toward in a certain direction.

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And if you don't go along with that, I remember in the 1980s when the neocon and everybody became pro neocon in the conservative movement, except for me of a handful of dissenters whom

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I knew who became paleoconservatives. These people are profoundly conformist and careerist.

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And, you know, if I remember being shocked when Martin Luther King, whom

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I never really hated, but I was in a great admirer of his, how he went from being demonized and into into a

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God figure. Like, oh, my God, just change Joe McCarthy went from being a God figure to a to a demonic figure overnight.

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And everybody, you know, you go along with this and anyone writing anything critical of the civil rights movement before affirmative action was introduced and allowed or before it became anti -Israeli, you know, was also pushed to the side.

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But I mean, there's all these party lines you expect to accept. And by then I was sort of like in my mid to late 40s.

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And I, you know, I wasn't going to go along with this with this stuff. And I thought the neocons were crazy on foreign affairs, but every oh, we have to have global democracy and our way of life and human rights and so forth.

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I thought this was all nonsense. And I said it too loudly. Now, I think you're allowed to say that today.

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I'm not sure. Maybe the party line has has changed again. But for you, it's too late because you.

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Well, no, I mean it that way. I meant like you've deviated in previous issues, and so you're marked, as it were.

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Yeah. The American conservative movement is like the French Communist Party. I always compare them to the

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French Communist Party. But I also find out people in the Communist Party are generally more intelligent than they are.

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But the people who opposed who opposed the

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Nazi German invasion of France in 1941, who were members of the Communist Party, were expelled because the communists were then on the side of Nazi Germany since Stalin was allied to Hitler.

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Right. They took orders from Moscow. Then as soon as Hitler attacked Stalin, they all said, oh, we're all you know, we're all anti -Nazi again.

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So but then after the war, communists who had been prematurely anti -Nazi, that is, you know, during the period of Soviet Nazi cooperation, were expelled from the party.

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They were never mentioned as in the resistance and so forth because they'd taken the wrong position at the wrong time.

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And the conservative movement is exactly like the French communist movement. You know, on the wrong side on some issue back then, they'll never accept you afterwards.

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Now, obviously, you've been immersed in this battle and you know it up and down. I've not been as experienced, but I've noticed the same thing you're talking about.

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And I was naive when I graduated from college and thought, hey, if you have good reasoning and you are articulate that you get platforming, that's just how it works.

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And I was in for a very rude awakening. And I remember going to CPAC 2020 and just thinking, where's the conservatives?

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I was looking for them. I couldn't find them. I saw trannies for Trump. I saw atheists for liberty.

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I saw, you know, guys, I remember the Turning Point USA booth had a rainbow flag and, you know, but I didn't find anything on the founding.

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I didn't find anything from a more Christian Western standpoint.

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It was all it just it took the wind out of my sails. And I've noticed even though I've written a few books, you reviewed one of them actually for Chronicles on Christianity and the social justice movement, because the evangelical base is so important in this country.

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I have not like the platforming I get is from independence personalities online.

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It's not from these legacy institutions. And I talk to people in those institutions. I have friends. I'll find out that there's guys, you know, working as editors or working in different various capacities who love what

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I put out there. But I would never get a publishing deal or a I haven't yet, at least, you know, the platforming.

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And I see other guys and this is not spoken from jealousy or anything. It's just more of a why is this the case who, you know, have gone halfway left, who have capitulated on some of these questions, who

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I think of even recently and most people probably don't know who this guy is because he's you know, but this is in the evangelical world.

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There's a guy named Neil Shenvey who he's he's capitulated for years and but like and people don't really care for him.

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It seems like online in general rank and file conservatives, but he's the kind of guy that the institutions like that, you know, the

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PragerU and Daily Wire and The Blaze, like they want to promote this kind of guy who's, you know, kind of went halfway left during the 2020 stuff.

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And and this is a curious dynamic. I could probably, you know, you could probably even give me hundreds of examples of similar dynamics where the elevated ones are the ones who are coming from the left.

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And then or they're they're liberal in some way and they don't want the pure, more conservative mind.

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So with that dynamic in place, are you positive or optimistic about maybe what the

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Internet could do with growing platforms that can go around these legacy institutions?

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Yeah, I am. I think there's just too many podcasters out there, you know, who are on the traditional right, who are

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Bible -believing Christians and so on. And it's just, you know, they're not conservative, will not accept that, you know, we're talking about people who were accepted.

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David French comes to mind because he was a hero, a National Review, ran for president, let him be president, but let him run against against Trump.

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And he was a lawyer and military and so forth. As far as I can tell, he's always been on the left, you know, so he's an evangelical, but he's always been on the left.

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And the only way that these people leave the conservative movement is by saying,

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I'm no longer conservative. I'm now going to go with the left because they're not going to throw them out. You know, they could stay as long as Bill Kristol, you know, could have could have died a leader of the conservative movement, even holding leftist views.

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It was the fact that he got up with the order of David Flynn. These people just leave the conservative will cling to them.

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They're perfect. Right. You know, as long as they say they're conservative and they have lots of liberal friends and a liberal exposure, they're great.

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And, you know, I think that French is typical. Of course, now he's for drag queens and loves

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Kamala Harris and this. So, you know, the conservative movement will sort of wash their hands of him.

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But, you know, as I say, if he decides to come back, OK, there's no problem. Yeah, because he has acceptability on the left.

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Yeah, and he's made it a mission to get into evangelical churches. He even is part of this curriculum with Russell Moore and Curtis Chang.

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But it's like a Bible study, but it's not. It's trying to turn these red churches into bluer churches.

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And I've noticed this dynamic. I mean, this is why I have the platform I have in the evangelical world that, you know, evangelical intellectuals, if you want to even call them that, aren't generally that impressive, unfortunately.

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But the institutions, the few ones they do have are run by basically leftists there or liberals at the very least.

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Gospel Coalition Christianity Today, the big major seminaries. And it's a curious thing, because 81 percent of their followers vote for Trump in this dynamic.

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I don't understand it completely. It's a I know. Mere Nigeria elitism is the explanation generally given.

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But how is it possible that the leaders of a movement are so out of step with the people in the movement?

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I don't know. Has this happened before in human history like this? It's very odd to me. Yeah. But, you know, if you look at the

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American conservative movement or people who identify as conservatives, and I know that our executive editor,

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Ed Welch, gives a lot of talks in Minnesota to conservative groups, Christian groups and so forth.

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Most of them are more conservative than what you hear on Fox News. The I remember the late

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Sam Francis used to say that Republicans are usually well to the left, the rank and file, well to the left of the

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Republican Party. In the case of the Democrats, the the party is very often well to the left of those who vote for it.

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And I think, you know, I think Sam would have argued that part of the restraining force is the conservative movement, which, you know, it tells you what you're allowed to believe.

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You know, you see a transgendered Republican, Caitlyn Jenner, on key. Well, this is fine.

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You know, we're all for transgender. We just don't like transgender children. It's a little messy having these transgendered boys and girls lockers.

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We don't want that. But all the rest is OK. Now, my question is, why is gay marriage OK? Yeah, it's, you know, a game.

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And I think it was Mike Johnson, who claims to be an evangelical Christian, said that, you know, he's fine with gay marriage because, you know, it's now the law of the land.

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No, it wasn't. It was it was an aberrant, lunatic decision by the Supreme Court, which is even less, even less justifiable than Obie Wade.

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Why are we not allowed to talk about this anymore? It's crazy. Yeah. What happens if the

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Supreme Court says that I'm allowed to marry my dog? Is that OK? What about men marrying two women?

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I mean, this doesn't go on. I mean, marriage is between men and women. Period. That's the end of it.

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Yeah, we're not reflecting. Yeah, it's insane. We're not reflecting basic common sense and what we see in creation.

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I'm I'm trying to remember. I don't know why it's slipping my mind. The gentleman in Florida who's trying to reform education and expose.

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Oh, Christopher Rufo. That's that guy. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. I don't know why I couldn't remember his name. But Christopher Rufo is a lot of people really admire what he's doing.

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He's got he's doing something. But he just came to mind because of what you said.

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I remember he congratulated, you know, a gentleman online who had was engaging in surrogacy because he had he was in a homosexual relationship and couldn't have a child naturally.

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You know, this was a few years ago. And then recently he just hired he was a porn ex -pornographic actress who was on the left, you know, and had to be an editor.

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And so something like that, a journalist. And he's not alone in that. That's just kind of par for the course.

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And with leaders like that, I just don't know how you really progress. It's hard. I know there's good people that are in, you know, in Florida trying to reform the education system, doing good work.

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I know that's happening. But when you're so hampered at the top and the vision is so murky, as you said, it should be easy to say gay marriage is wrong.

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This is ridiculous. But we can't even say that. So I guess where the where's the hope in all of this is the question.

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Where's the way the path forward for people who are concerned? Yeah, I think that the the path forward,

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I think, lies with the younger generation and people who are listening to podcasts like this podcast will not come from the conservative movement, obviously, which is, you know, compromised itself and sort of trying to keep out of existence to write anything to the right of itself.

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But by the way, I also wouldn't beat up necessarily on these people who seem pro -fascist.

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I think you need as many people as you can on the right. I mean, there's some people who think

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Hitler's a great guy. I wouldn't want to deal with them. But, you know, there are many people,

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I don't know, who read Curtis Yarvin, who might not be a fan of, you know, but, you know, if they're on our side on issues, fine.

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And, you know, you look for as many allies as you can. I know Christopher Rufo and I like his book very much.

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I've reviewed it in several places and which which he discusses the cultural radicalization of America, which

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I think represents a change from the old pro communist left in the United States.

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I think it's much more, much more destructive and nihilistic.

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And, you know, I think his analysis of it is very good. And I think he has tried to clean up the university system in Florida.

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The problem is that just about everybody you're dealing with there is to the left of you, anyone in education, anyone in popular culture and so forth.

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And, you know, you try to keep people on your side on some issues, even if they're crazy and most other issues.

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Unfortunately, the right has a very, very bad hand right now. And even if Trump has won and you have the legacy media,

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I mean, through TV on and you're getting pure woke leftist propaganda 24 seven advertisements on television, everything is everything.

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There's no more movies. I mean, movies now are like movies that were produced by the

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Nazi Ministry of Propaganda or something that is always made up social engineering and so forth.

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And you don't even know where to begin because the left continues to advance. As you say,

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I'm going to get out. But what the conservative movement has been doing for the last, you know, sixty seventy expelling people and gatekeeping, this is insane.

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I mean, this is not about the right at all. I mean, you know, there's certain people you don't want to deal with, like people wearing swastikas or something.

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But, you know, most most of the people they've kicked out are like me as far as as far as as far as I can

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I can see. And what they've done is they've weakened their side and they have run even when it was not necessary to make concessions to the left, you know, like having

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Caitlyn Jenner on TV and talking about transgendered Republicans. Oh, it's ridiculous. Yeah.

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Yeah. And I don't mean to put you in an awkward spot with Rufo. I think he's an ally, just like I think Trump is a positive ally pushing things in the right direction.

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But Trump is also pro gay marriage. And some of this,

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I guess I think he he probably rightly believes public opinion is here. So I need to be here and I can't win unless I side with that to some extent.

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So I I understand there's these constraints people are trying to deal with. I just I'm more using it as a example of like, hey, look, even our best leaders, even the people in these more legacy institutions who are platform there, even they are the best ones we can pick are somehow saying insane things like they're like they have to they're living by lies on some front somewhere just to survive in that position.

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So so anyway, I'd like to maybe take a philosophical step back. You said some things about, you know, the younger younger people and understanding that even some of these guys who think of themselves as fascists, you said maybe at the very least, co -belligerents, if not allies on some issues.

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And then, of course, you want to distance yourself from Nazis and Hitler enjoyers and swastika.

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But this is becoming, I think, a delicate balance because there there's so many different versions, competing versions now, especially as the

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Internet's open things up for people to say, I'm the conservative, I'm the conservative, I'm on the right, I'm the true right.

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Right. So maybe we should take a step back and just hear from you. I know you wrote an article a while ago for Chronicles on the three different metrics people use to define the right or conservatism,

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I think, is is what you were talking about. What what is the right or what is conservatism?

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I know those are actually two different questions. So let's start with conservatism. What is conservatism in the Anglo -American tradition?

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Yeah, I think that anyone who read that article has read my books on conservatism know that I make a distinction between conservatism and the right.

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And it is it is typical of people, you know, in the American consumer, the followers of Russell Kirk, for instance, to say we're not the right.

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We are conservatives. And I remember a dispute that took place between the late

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Sam Francis and Annette Kirk, the wife of Russell Kirk, in the home of Pat Buchanan when he was running for president.

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I was invited to that. And Sam Francis said, let's get rid of the word conservative because it doesn't mean anything anymore.

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Let's describe ourselves as the right. And Annette Kirk got very angry. I think she actually attributed that position to me, although at the time was taken by Sam Francis.

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Now I take that position quite openly in my books. What I'm saying is conservatism is a way of looking at the world that is related to a particular social order that existed in the past.

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You know, when you do find conservatives in early America, like high federalists, the southern landed class, the planter of aristocracy had some conservative elements, although, you know, they also had slavery and other things which were not characteristic of European conservatism even then.

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But, you know, you do find conservative traditions in small towns. You have traditional hierarchies governing them and so forth.

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But I think we have moved beyond conservatism to what

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I call the right, which is really post conservative. And the right are the right consist of those who are reacting to the left.

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And I think I think in the American context, it's entirely proper that Bible believing

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Christians form the right, because that is Protestant Christianity, you know, is really the essence of American identity when the country is founded.

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Also, people who are defending constitutionalism or fighting back against the managerial stoic state and wokeness in all of its forms.

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These people are welcome as the right and the right by its very nature is a reaction against the left and the inroads of the left and the destructive effects of the left.

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And in a deeper philosophical sense, you know, I say that that the right to whatever extent it does hold to eternal principles, believes in traditional hierarchy, an ordered society, the order of the family, the also with the defending particularity, it is not defending universalism, it is defending a particular community and a particular way of life.

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So these are all characteristics of the right. And I think those ideas become more and more explicit as the right reacts against the left.

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But I really see it sort of as actionable. I suppose this is my fascist side, because fascism is a movement based on action or actionism.

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And the right by its very nature is actionist. It is reacting against the left.

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It does so in the name of principle. And it becomes more and more aware of these principles in the process of fighting against the left and its destruction of society.

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And I think in the case of the left that we face today, it is the ultimate left. It is the left in all of its ugliest characteristics, the destruction of gender identity, the destruction of the family, the war against white people, the war against masculinity.

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It is doing all these things at the same time. And this war is going on not only in the

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United States, but in every Western country and in every country influenced by the United States simultaneously.

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Yeah. You know, if you watch an old movie like It's a Wonderful Life or, you know, any of these picturesque small town

33:28

America places, I know there are people now, especially younger people who never actually experienced that, who look at that and they'll say,

33:37

I want to go back to Bedford Falls. I don't understand what happened.

33:42

This looked like a great place to live. And you're only I mean, my goodness, if the only threat was

33:47

Potter, right, that would be great. There's a way to actually fight him through the neighbors you have.

33:54

And so that was an organic community, though, that took centuries to develop and in Anglo -American spheres.

34:02

And it's not something that you just can instantly recreate necessarily.

34:08

I mean, that's what that was. Right. So when we look back at these older vestiges of what

34:13

America used to be, we're looking at something that took time to develop. And I think it was Roger Scruton who said it's very easy to destroy things, but it's very hard to create good things.

34:24

And and that's the difficulty I see now with and this is my question with fascism, which and maybe you could define that further, because I know there's different flavors of that and you have

34:37

Franco and you have, you know, it's also perhaps a product of modernity. I don't know if you would agree with that, but it is.

34:43

OK. All right. So is I mean, fascism can't come in and just create

34:48

Bedford Falls. It can maybe stop it can put Potter in jail. But like so this is the question

34:55

I guess I have. And a lot of people are asking is we all want a more muscular conservatism that fights the left.

35:02

All of us want that on the right, as it were. Some guys are looking to even

35:08

Hitler for this. Some guys are looking to Southern agrarians, some guy like there's all these different places people are looking to find what is it that we need to.

35:17

And the instant fixes are far more appealing. I don't know that they're realistic, but maybe lay out for us what it should look like a muscular conservatism.

35:29

Is that fascism? Why? Like what elements of the right would you consider odious that need to be rejected or maybe they pose as being the right, but they're not.

35:38

But they still have this muscular element. Yeah. First, if you read my book on fascism, which is one of the best books that's been written on fascism, according to experts on the subject, although the conservative movement has generally stayed away from it, but it has been favorably mainstream academic publications.

35:59

The argument that I'm making is that fascism is historically situated. And not every movement which features a nationalist leader is a fascist movement.

36:11

And not every movement that claims to have a corporate economy is a fascist movement. But it is based on a certain configuration of circumstances that you find in interwar

36:21

Europe among those returning from World War One who are mobilized and want a political movement based on action, who reject liberal parliamentarianism.

36:34

And it is a revolutionary nationalist movement. It is both nationalist and revolutionary, claims to be revolutionary because it's going to reconstruct society around the principle of unity embodied by a leader.

36:51

I argue that generic fascism is very different from Nazism, and Nazism is influenced obviously by the peculiar hates of Hitler, who takes over, and also by Stalinism, incorporates a lot of Stalinism, concentration camps, use of terror.

37:08

Fascism, I identify mostly with the Latin Catholic world in the interwar period.

37:14

They tried to export it to England, but it's not very successful, but does very, very well in Eastern and Central Europe and in France.

37:26

And there is a fascist movement in Spain, the Falange, but they are not,

37:31

Franco is not really a fascist. He's a very, very conservative military dictator, conservative

37:38

Catholic military dictator, but he's not a fascist. But he tries to absorb what is left of Spanish fascism into sort of a kind of large, integral movement of the right after he wins.

37:53

I don't think fascism is something that we're going to revive. As I say, it's an artifact.

37:59

It has to do with interwar Europe. But what I find relevant about it is it's an attempt by a post -conservative right to create a movement to take power.

38:11

And it claims to be restoring some kind of historical antiquity. So in all these respects,

38:18

I argue fascism is a failed movement of the right, but one that we could look back at and see why it failed and what we must do to create a movement of the right that can succeed.

38:31

And that, I think, is at least implicit in my work on fascism and my work on anti -fascism.

38:37

I need to read that. Would this be accurate then? Because I'm trying to simplify things for everyone listening and really grasp what you're saying here.

38:46

So conservatism, it sounds like is more of a defensive posture when you have something valuable that is trying to be taken from you.

38:54

So Bedford Falls is great. We don't want you to change Bedford Falls into Pottersville. That's a conservative instinct.

39:00

Right. But once it's Pottersville, then you can't conserve what you don't have.

39:06

And so that's where there's a counter -revolutionary kind of like we're going to come in and create the conditions for Bedford Falls in three generations to exist again.

39:15

But we know in our lifetime, we're probably not going to see it, but we need to defeat these people who ruined it.

39:22

And is that more the fascistic instinct of this counter -revolutionary, maybe defining themselves by their enemies somewhat, but just we're going to beat them?

39:34

Like, how would you differentiate conservatism from fascism? And it's interesting you said Franco is not a fascist.

39:41

Right. Or a viable right, a right that will work for us from the failed fascist experiment.

39:46

And it's failed. For one thing, we're not revolutionary nationalists. We're trying to preserve the civilization rather than, you know, the

39:55

Italian nation or something like that. I don't think nationalism even works in the

40:00

United States because the country is so diverse. We're an empire. Right. That's an empire. Right. But we do want to but we do want to make it possible for people to live in traditional communities again.

40:11

And in order to do this, the left has to be totally defeated. The idea of finding common ground is ridiculous, although I don't think he's confirmable.

40:22

I certainly like Matt Gaetz's attitude. Yes. Exactly. Whereas, you know,

40:29

I'm quite happy to throw all the Susan Collins of this world. I mean, because they're facing a relentless, pernicious enemy that wants to destroy all human decency, as far as I can see.

40:42

So, you know, you need people who go after them and people who use whatever legal resources are available to to marginalize this left and make their lives uncomfortable.

40:53

Like, you know, I'm reading about FEMA. They say they should let all these house Trump signs, they can all, you know, die.

41:00

Yes. And what is the reason? Well, you know, these people have social concern and do we have to keep blaming somebody else in the bureaucracy?

41:10

I think people should be put in jail for what they did. I mean, that's a criminal offense and lives were lost.

41:17

The media, of course, doesn't see anything. If you kill people on the other side, that's fine. They don't care.

41:24

But, you know, I think I think the right has to be as ferocious as the left do exactly what they're doing.

41:34

And I hope that Trump does everything he can to take away any financial advantage enjoyed by the leftist media is also ignore them.

41:44

Yeah. Actors, they do not even exist. And, you know, putting people in high positions who are going to clean out all the leftists in the bureaucracy were put there by Obama.

41:57

I mean, that's the first order of business. He didn't do this the last time. And don't give any positions to neoconservatives.

42:04

Keep them in. He's already started doing that a little. That's good. That's good. And you let it be known that these are not.

42:11

No, no. I meant like. Well, I mean, I don't know where you put Christie Noem, but I would say she's probably more neocon.

42:17

But yeah, I don't know. I don't think she's a deeply principled individual. OK, well, that's comforting, I guess.

42:23

Yeah. And, you know, I don't entirely trust Waltz and Rubio, who

42:29

I think that have historical Rubio. Right. Right. Connections. But I do like tell

42:35

Tulsi Gabbard, you know, I like I don't necessarily agree with her on moral issues, but I'm sure she'll be perfect.

42:41

She's perfect in that job, you know, and she will go after some of these rogue intelligence people who were used against against the

42:50

Republicans. Well, it does seem like Trump. Yeah. And now we'll move back to the conservatism talking a bit.

42:55

But it does seem like Trump is using people's strengths in like putting RFK in the role he put

43:03

RK in and Elon Musk in a certain like these guys all have disagreements with him, but he's using them for the things that they do agree on, which

43:11

I think is brilliant. No, I agree. I agree. I'm happy with most of these choices. Yeah.

43:18

So. All right. So so I've been or just to give you a little biography of me,

43:23

I think what I how I've come to these questions is very similar to many in the audience here who grew up in evangelical households.

43:32

My dad was actually a pastor. But, you know, we were Bush conservatives. We we respected

43:37

Reagan and my family's from California originally. So you have to respect Reagan. Right. But, you know, when

43:44

I started getting older, I started realizing some things and realizing, hey, maybe Bush wasn't actually everything

43:51

I thought he was. And you start questioning and that put me down a path. I went through the

43:58

Southern Agrarians, actually. So I don't know if everyone that I'm talking to went through this path. But I started reading

44:03

Richard Weaver and, you know, the twelve agrarians.

44:09

And, you know, I'll take my stand. And I was reading all of that kind of stuff, Mel Bradford. And then that took me to the the

44:18

Burkean tradition. So I read Russell Kirk and Roger Scruton, even some of the British conservatives.

44:24

And and I feel so much richer for that because it's not just, you know, free markets plus some moral positions that we

44:32

Christians hold, which is it is what it was before. Now I realize, wow, this is this is a this beautiful painting.

44:37

This is this story that's been unraveling over centuries that I am now.

44:43

It's been passed down to me. I need to take care of it. That's how I view what I have. And I want my daughter to also have that.

44:49

Right. This is conservatism to me. This is the Burkean kind of conservative tradition that I love.

44:55

And and so this I wanted to just see this be muscular and ascendant.

45:02

And, you know, let's take it away from the neocons. And that's where I've more or less, at least at this point, landed.

45:08

That that's what I want to see. Now, I can't point you to many identifiable people who are advocating that.

45:14

You're one of them, I think, at least like you're. But I'm also willing to work with anyone else who's going to smash the left as far as like I can be cobelligerent with anyone who's going to destroy the main threat.

45:26

That's the neoter principle that Charles Haywood talks about. So all right. So so here's the question, though.

45:33

What I'm describing that that Burkean or paleo, you know, you coined that term is that that movement, that position.

45:42

Is that enough? Is that what I should be steering people towards?

45:48

Or is there something that's better, more like I don't want to be ideological about this and say there's the one formula, but.

45:57

What should people be reading? What should people be doing? Like we don't you don't want them to be

46:03

Nazis, you just said. You don't want there's certain elements of the right, as it's called, that you see as nefarious.

46:09

So where should people be going? That's a very good question. I have to say that, you know,

46:15

I sort of broke my tooth, my teeth on some of the same the same sources that you did, although I think my education was more continental

46:23

European. I read, you know, French, German, Italian conservatives and so forth in the original languages since, you know,

46:32

I'm a continental European historian. But, you know, I then came to these English where I thought they were fine.

46:38

And I greatly admire Burke's reflections. I think they contain lots of wisdom.

46:46

The question is, how relevant are they to our historical experience? I'm always coming back to this question.

46:51

And I think this is sort of my German historicist upbringing that things have to be seen within historical context.

46:59

And one could always, you know, look to Burke or look to the Bible for the vision. The question is, what do you do, practically speaking, in trying to push back the left?

47:08

Because they're going to keep coming after you. They're not through. They want to destroy society. I was just reading in a

47:15

German conservative journal about in Berlin, children are like taken away from parents.

47:21

They don't agree to sex operations on minors. I mean, the government of someone's describing is the member of the

47:29

AfD, which is the only non leftist party. And he says, you want it, that the streets are covered with junk.

47:35

The place is being overrun by Muslims. And what are left of former former

47:41

Christians is, you know, pushing your kids into transgender surgery. Well, this is exactly what the left is going to do here if given the opportunity.

47:50

Right. Because as I argue, Germany is the test case for this. After the Second World War, we imposed this anti -fascist template on the

48:00

Germans. This is what we got out of it, because I had to in my books. And now it's coming here and in France and Canada, England and so forth.

48:08

What are you going to do to control these people? Because they're not finished with us. And, you know,

48:15

Burke, again, is good for the vision, but it's a vision of an ordered organic society.

48:20

We don't have that anymore. You know, we might have to rebuild one. In small pockets, there's vestiges.

48:27

Pockets is vestiges. Right. So where I live, you sort of vestiges, too. I mean, Pennsylvania Dutch settled here and they all vote like 99 percent for Trump and so forth.

48:39

And there are very few divorces. And, you know, families seem intact. I don't see except for the college across the street where I taught.

48:47

You don't see people, men looking like women. Are you near Lancaster?

48:53

Yes, I am. I'm just west of Lancaster. I was just by your area a few weeks ago. And so there's a group of Christians there and they

49:01

I didn't I wasn't familiar with this, but they have a view. I think it's called non -legislative theonomy.

49:06

But long story short, they have this position that you don't really need legislatures like we basically we kind of take care of ourselves.

49:15

And I was thinking I was listening to a guy talk about it. I was thinking, well, that makes a lot of sense in Amish country. But outside of that, like that wouldn't make sense where I live.

49:25

Now, you have low crime, high trust society. Great. That's what we all want, though.

49:30

The question is how to get back to that. And, you know, I mean, people say, do you like living where you do?

49:36

Yes, I can leave my door open at night, you know, and I can leave my little dachshund on the street knowing people will turn into my house.

49:45

You know, it's fine. The problem is that where you live is not like that.

49:51

And, you know, if we have a few more Democratic governors and senators and others, our state may start looking like yours.

50:02

Yeah. Yeah. My state's not exactly in a good position where we've actually I mean, the main discussion you have here with Christians and and anyone who's on the right at all is when are you leaving?

50:13

When are you getting out of New York? I mean, I'm serious. Like that is and that's been that way for since 2016,

50:18

I would say. I mean, it's just like so. Which state are you going to Tennessee, North Carolina? Where are you going? And so.

50:25

All right. So this is the situation. United States is somewhat complicated in that we are an empire.

50:30

We do have these vestiges of communities like where you live. I was just in Gainesboro and what they're doing there looks phenomenal.

50:37

They're taking this traditional community and they want to bring in guys who are going to be sort of as the elite class and reinforce what's already there.

50:47

So that is an organic, like conservative approach, but on the national level or the the general government,

50:57

D .C. and these state capitals and so forth, they like,

51:04

I don't know if you can take the strong approach. You're not going to overwhelm D .C. with a bunch of traditional people.

51:09

Those people, when they come to D .C., seem to be changed by it. They become right. Right. So so it would take more force.

51:16

And so the question I have is like, what's what's wrong with just, hey,

51:21

I'm these are my principles. I'm a paleo conservative or, you know, I I'm a Christian. I believe there's an order to the universe.

51:28

And I think we should reinforce that and abide by it and reflect it in our social institutions.

51:38

And and now living in twenty twenty four, I want to be more aggressive about it. Like I just we should just push it and not care what the left thinks like that.

51:47

That seems to be a viable option to me. But that's called fascism. That's called Christian nationalism. That's called all these smear words.

51:55

So what do you do then? Do you just not care about that or like you don't care?

52:01

You ignore them. These people are maniacs. Totalitarian maniacs on the other side.

52:06

Just let them rave. My wife turns on this TV thing at six thirty or seven in the morning and I'm sitting there and it's, you know,

52:14

Matt Gaetz is a child molester and Tulsi Gabbard is a terrorist and there's some listening to this stuff.

52:21

And I can't let this is these people are insane. I'm not going to sit here and listen to this stuff.

52:27

You just ignore them. You tune them out. One of the one of the proposals that I think

52:33

Vivek or one of these people made is to move government agencies out of Washington.

52:39

You know, there's a lot of places in Kansas, Eastern Colorado, other places where you can move them. And people like living in Washington.

52:46

I live outside of Washington for a few years. It was it was, you know, it was a foretaste of hell.

52:52

But a lot of people like being there. You know, we move them out. If you want to work in this, you know, department of multiculturalism or whatever they call it or something, fine.

53:03

You have to live somewhere in, you know, on the plains of Wyoming or something.

53:09

Like we're not going to let you stay in Washington. Oh, that would be great. That would be great.

53:15

Yeah, you got to be on the Dutton Ranch if you're going to clean them out. Yeah, you don't have to kill them.

53:20

You just have to move. They don't want to move. Well, what do they say? Washington's for like Hollywood for ugly people.

53:26

So I'm just amazed. I don't go there much, but I'm amazed at the few times

53:31

I've gone there for political events. The amount of desperate, insecure loser people who are attracted to that and like the successful people, the people who are smart seem to be more in the business world or in.

53:45

I'm not saying there's not smart political people, but the staffers and stuff like they're mostly not impressive people.

53:51

Media people are not impressive people. Well, the politicians are not impressive. No. I mean, look at somebody like Kamala Harris.

54:01

You think she ever read Plato or Blackstone or the Bible? Nothing.

54:08

You know, she has the intelligence level of a second grader or something. I mean, you know, and I thought it was like a law school, even if she had, she would have been required to just absorb the leftist party line in law.

54:23

But, you know, she's very unimpressive. Joe Biden, I mean, he's, you know, at best somebody with, you know, sort of low middling intelligence.

54:32

Most of these people are not very bright and nor are the bureaucrats. And the, you know, another thing that I've noticed, you can't watch movies anymore.

54:43

I mean, they're all a war propaganda. Very few. Yeah, there's been a few like The Boys in the

54:49

Boat was a good one that I saw recently. I don't know if you saw that. But it's rare. It's a gem. It's like,

54:54

I felt like I was watching a movie from 1950. Right. Right. And the advertisements, you know, you have like two gays married to each other or you have a white woman who was married to a black man or something like that.

55:07

Yeah, it's all interracial marriages. Yeah. You know, I mean, they happen, but not 99 % of the time.

55:15

Yeah. And for anything like, you know, a local used car dealer has these like interracial marriages, gays and so forth.

55:25

Well, I think black people are what, you know, 15 % of the population. Not even that much.

55:31

And intermarriage between whites and blacks is not that widespread. I mean, occasionally you see it.

55:37

Yeah. Mostly, mostly, I think probably among the elites. But it's like every time you turn on the

55:42

TV, you see it. They're pushing it. They want that. They really want that. Yeah. So. And the question will be, if you have children of mixed racial background, which one would be the victim and which one would be the victimizer?

55:55

You have to divide them up. Right. Yeah. They're both a victim and one person.

56:01

Yeah. All right. So, I mean, the left is obviously pushing an egalitarian agenda and they want to, the white, the

56:09

Western white Christian male, especially if you're from the South. I mean, that's like the worst thing you can imagine.

56:16

And when we see that, I mean, it's very obvious when you see the exit polling that those are the people who vote for Trump.

56:23

Those are the people who are their political enemies. They have no problem identifying them, vilifying them, trying to water down their influence with bringing in migrants and all of that.

56:32

We have a problem like the right seems to have an issue identifying leftist demographics and saying, hey, these people seem to be hurting us.

56:42

Like that's there's an inhibition there, which maybe we should just get over.

56:49

I mean, I think, you know, black people as a group, so not talking about individuals, but as a group, they tend to vote for these very destructive policies, even if they go to church, even if they're, you know, moral in their spiritual lives, they still vote for Kamala Harris.

57:05

They're like, this is a problem. We shouldn't have to be shy away from saying that. And I know you're

57:11

I think you're ethnically Jewish, right? But like I saw the exit polls. I don't know how they do this, by the way. I don't know if it's ethnic or religious, but it

57:18

Jews. I don't know how that's defined. Eighty percent for Kamala Harris. No, no.

57:24

OK, correct me. Reliable polls. This is interesting. OK, so I'm being persuaded by the left.

57:30

Ah, what they what they did was they had leftist polls. Some of them were Israeli leftist newspapers like the

57:36

Times of Israel. And I looked at that. They had only 21 percent of Jews voted for Trump.

57:44

Then they later had figures showing that at least 45 percent voted for Trump.

57:50

And are you serious? Absolutely. I'm absolutely serious. I usually you can divide the

57:57

Jewish vote. Jews of Eastern European descent, which probably accounts for about 90 or 95 percent, except for the

58:05

Orthodox, are on the left. Central European Jews, like my ancestors, tend to be on the right or the right center.

58:15

Non -European Jews like Moroccans, Persian, tend to vote conservatively.

58:22

So yeah, so it's the non -Orthodox Eastern European Jewish vote, which votes about, you know, 80 percent or more for the left.

58:32

But Shapiro's and Schumer are totally representative of that group.

58:38

So but but this time there was an enormous crossover and it was at least 45 percent, maybe more of the

58:46

Jewish part. And I think a lot of it was the result of the Democratic Party being associated with Hamas.

58:54

That's interesting. So Trump made large inroads then there. I didn't realize that.

59:00

Absolutely. And also with Latinos, he made large inroads. Yeah, especially in Florida.

59:05

It probably made even larger inroads with Jews, which surprised me because I saw the 21 percent.

59:11

So we need to encourage that. We need more of that and more

59:17

Latinos and more of every group. And but there are demographics, there are groups that just, you know, you can hand them anything.

59:26

They're still going to vote for the left. Yeah. Black women. Black women.

59:31

Well, yeah. Single women in general. College, college educated. Yeah.

59:37

Women, particularly. And I look at this, I don't know if you look at this the same way, but, you know, through the conservative lens of organic community and stability and order that, you know, these are severely these groups afflicted with severe disorder are the ones that tend towards the left.

59:55

It's the people that have neurotic tendencies, that have mental issues, that like those are the groups that have the largest numbers for the left.

01:00:05

And I know that's you shouldn't you can't say that. That's terrible. But I look at the black community in general.

01:00:11

There is unstable houses. There's there's a fatherlessness epidemic. There's these are people that tend to be as a group.

01:00:19

Generally, they're not living in order in their own lives, and they vote for disorder on the national level. I know

01:00:25

I'm getting into terribly politically incorrect territory here, which I and I understand that. But you're not politically incorrect enough because you go beyond that.

01:00:36

I think what drives the people to support the left is the demonization of the right.

01:00:44

And, you know, you look at Jewish liberals in the United States, mostly of Eastern European origin, like Dan Daniel Goldman, Schumer, Mark Elias and so forth.

01:00:55

They really don't like white Christians very much. They see them as enemies. Because in Russia or Poland 100 or 150 years ago, their ancestors were persecuted by other

01:01:06

Christians, members of the Russian Orthodox or the Catholic Church or something. So they simply project this onto American Christians, particularly in the

01:01:13

South, because they're rural. And it is demonology that drives this.

01:01:19

In the case of blacks, it is whites, you know, who are racist, even if they happen to be

01:01:25

Christians, but they're white. And, you know, someone like James Clyburn in South Carolina is always playing the race card.

01:01:32

All these black politicians do. And, you know, if you run a black Republican that, you know, is a self -hating black or a

01:01:41

Jewish Republican is a self -hating Jew. I mean, you get this again and again. That's it's based on what they just like.

01:01:49

One of the reasons that I was very critical of the Voting Rights Act, which is another reason, I suppose, which is a good and correct position.

01:01:56

Is that what it does is it really inflates the black vote. I mean, it is necessary to have votes voting, blacks voting in certain numbers and proportions in every district.

01:02:08

Not whites, but blacks. And this, of course, comes at a time when the black vote is moving to the left.

01:02:14

Pretty clear, you know, like in the 1960s, because, you know, up until 1936, most blacks were

01:02:20

Republican. About 75 percent of them voted for for Hoover in 1931.

01:02:27

Right. So it's when it's when they start moving. I'm sorry.

01:02:33

When was the election? 1932. Yeah. So it's when by the 1960s, the blacks are pretty much identified with the left wing of the

01:02:43

Democratic Party. So you could imagine you could imagine what the left would do about civil, about Voting Rights Act if they knew most of those blacks were going to vote.

01:02:53

We're going to vote for Barry Goldwater or somebody. I mean, it was FDR in the mythology.

01:02:58

I started to stop you. But in the mythology, at least FDR is the one that got attracted black people and rural southern whites also to the

01:03:08

Democrat ticket there. So was that is that not accurate that blacks? No, the whites.

01:03:15

He always had the white southerners. But the blacks he picked up a night in his 1936 from the rank and file landing.

01:03:22

OK, the majority vote voted for FDR and they continue to vote Democratic. Yeah, it was like that was the end of it had nothing to do with race issues, by the way, because blacks voted for a segregationist

01:03:35

Democrats. The race on Sparkman in 1930, the vice presidential candidate, Andrew Stevenson, he was an out now segregationist, you know, and the

01:03:43

Republicans took a much more of a civil rights position. It makes no difference.

01:03:48

It was an economic thing. That's what they wrote. They voted for. Did they vote for Wallace after the fact, like when he was running for governor?

01:03:56

Yeah, yeah. He ran as a Democrat. Right, right. So all this, this is

01:04:03

I'm sorry, I actually cut off. You were saying something. I don't know if you remember what you were saying. I cut you off there, though. No, go ahead.

01:04:08

OK, all right. So here's the question I have about all this. We're getting into I have two final questions before we end the podcast.

01:04:13

So this question is conservatism, if you want to. I don't even like the ism part, but but the conservative tradition will say tends to be adverse to modernity and to ideology, right?

01:04:27

Because ideologies are basically products of modernity. And I do see like Nazism, I think, would be a product of modernity.

01:04:35

So would communism. So would the woke left is a product of modernity. Liberalism is a product of modernity.

01:04:41

Right. And these are all these very simplistic ways of looking at the world and just forcing these innovations, these abstractions on the people.

01:04:50

Right. And so I want to be resistant to those things. That's kind of where I've come down is. And one of the things as we're talking about these different makeups demographically is

01:05:00

I've noticed some guys on the right now. They don't have any influence. They don't have any power. I don't know if anything will come of it, but there are some younger guys.

01:05:08

And if the future is with the next generation, they they are, I think, being attracted, some of them to ideological explanations for things.

01:05:16

Right. So they look at the numbers. Now that I know that they were false, I'll have to remember that.

01:05:21

But they'll they think that, OK, so if 80 percent, I guess it was more like fifty five percent of Jews voted with Harris.

01:05:30

That, you know, this plays into a theory of the world that everything's related back to its

01:05:36

Jews. Jews are just the problem. They're controlling everything. The reason black people vote the way they do is because Jews are controlling them.

01:05:42

They're like every explanation routes back into it's the Jews. High achieving people, strong in group preference.

01:05:51

You're going to they're going to just run. And so until we talk about that, until we do something about that, then everything we do is a failure.

01:06:00

I think this is a black pill. I think that there's a lot of things that we should be doing. And to say that, you know, until you solve this,

01:06:08

I think that's terrible. But I want to hear you respond to that from a conservative and right leaning perspective, since you're you're very prominent in that very, very well read and written on this subject.

01:06:23

What do you do with ideologues like that on on the the right who are trying to at least ascend on the right who want to make it all about this one thing or and it doesn't have to be that I'm sure there's other people who say it's this thing or it's that thing, but they reduce it all down.

01:06:37

Right. Yeah. It's probably reductionism, an international Jewish conspiracy, simply one form of the reductionism.

01:06:44

But, you know, there are other forms of reductionism. I remember when Thomas Sowell, the black social economist who is sort of a fixture of the conservative movement for about the last,

01:06:56

I don't know, 80 years or something. But he said that, you know, the problem are Scotch Irish who settled in the

01:07:04

South and blacks, you know, why is this any better? I thought black liberals or was that black rednecks?

01:07:14

I thought that was a terrible argument, by the way. But anyway, I think it's ridiculous. But, you know, at least the

01:07:19

Jews, you see a disproportionate influence coming out of one group. The Scotch Irish thing

01:07:26

I found entirely unconvincing. Yeah, one of the questions is should the right or the conservative movement have an ideology?

01:07:35

It depends how you define the term ideology. Remember the late Austrian aristocrat,

01:07:40

Penelope Dean, I think argued with Russell Kirk over this. And I think Irving Kristol and Penelope Dean were on the same side that we have to have an ideology of the right.

01:07:49

Well, it always turns out badly. I mean, it became neoconservatism at one point. And I would much prefer using the term ideology to refer to a kind of these

01:08:00

Marxist terms, a kind of false consciousness or a simplistic, you know, collection of goals that are, you know, given a kind of false ontological or moral grounding or something.

01:08:19

I really don't like the word ideology myself. I would agree with Kirk. I think it has a kind of negative meaning.

01:08:26

But I think conservatives do have to have principles. And I think Kirk did try to enunciate six principles.

01:08:32

He may have changed them or his wife may have changed them after he died. But there are principles there.

01:08:38

And I think conservatives have to be bound by principles. So people on the right, I don't want to use the word conservative, except in the sense that people are social traditionalists.

01:08:48

But I think that people on the right should have principle. They can agree on principle, even if they no longer have an organic society that conservatives were defending.

01:09:00

So that's good. I think the tendency to see things in a conspiratorial way is almost universal.

01:09:11

And I think some of the people who blame, you know, blame the left on Jews, I think what they do is they exaggerate

01:09:18

Jewish influence. But, you know, it does make more sense to me than blaming it on Black people, who really don't have that much influence.

01:09:25

You know, I mean, they may have a disproportionately high crime rate, a disordered society. But, you know,

01:09:32

I don't think they're controlling the United States. And most of the attempt to sort of push Black nationalism is coming from white liberals.

01:09:40

I mean, you can make a pretty good argument that it's Yankees, too, if you wanted to. I mean, like, yeah, I don't know if Southerners now, too.

01:09:47

Right, right. I mean, I'm just saying there's always a group you can say. The Yankee stuff doesn't make any sense to me.

01:09:53

I mean, I'm looking for Yankees. Where are they? I mean, I suppose what they mean are New England Congregationalists or something, which hardly exist.

01:10:01

The descendants of the Puritans who have retained that mindset of purifying everything. That kind of.

01:10:08

It always bothers me because I find the Puritans immensely admirable people. I like the civilization that they created.

01:10:15

They're very, you know, they were they raised their children well. They were well educated.

01:10:21

They were literate, you know, and they were very decent leaders.

01:10:26

And, you know, they they did create Republican governments, constitutional governments.

01:10:32

I've never shared the Confederate dislike for Yankees. If we mean if we mean the

01:10:38

Puritans, the descendants. Yeah, well, I mean, being someone who started down the pathway, you know, towards paleoconcern and through the

01:10:47

Mel Bradford, Richard Weaver lens, I have and I live around them. So, you know, I see them and I know what they're talking about with the perfectionistic kind of imperialistic mindset.

01:10:58

And that's and I think that's all that's been retained because you're absolutely right. The Puritans did have an immense society, but a society that's forgotten by their ancestors.

01:11:08

And and the Southerners, for some reason, have tended until very recently have maintained a respect for the ancestors and the ways like that, more traditional.

01:11:18

So and hierarchical as well ways of living. But but yeah,

01:11:24

I don't buy that like there's a single explanation. I don't think like you do have to admire the

01:11:30

Puritans as as a group, at least like it was a brave thing to travel across the ocean, you know, into a hostile environment.

01:11:40

I mean, this is part of our American character is we have Cavaliers, we Puritans, we have Scots -Irish, we have all these other immigrant groups who have come.

01:11:48

And and so anyway, yeah, like rejecting that that one thing, but holding to principle, I guess that's what you're saying is like, don't don't reduce it down to if we just got rid of these people, everything would be good.

01:12:00

We have to we have to have a positive vision. So what are some of these principles that maybe would be the next good question that younger conservatives should be.

01:12:10

You know, gravitating towards and preserving. Yeah, but one of the things I would emphasize is this,

01:12:15

I suppose, doesn't amount to a principle is that respecting the Cavaliers and even having a certain sympathy, the

01:12:22

Confederate side in the Civil War, which I admit to having, does not keep me from admiring the

01:12:28

Puritans. I can admire both. I mean, they're both settling populations of the United States who achieve great things, who produce very admirable people.

01:12:37

You know, so I can admire the Adams family. I can admire Robert E. Lee. I mean, I don't see why one, you know, by having one object of admiration,

01:12:46

I cannot admire the other side. And I mean, I look at the

01:12:51

English Civil War, though, it's very hard for me to admire Charles the first, I have to say. And I do lean strongly toward Cromwell.

01:12:59

Really? Yes, absolutely. Oh, I'm actually surprised a little bit at that. I thought you would be maybe critical of Cromwell.

01:13:05

No, no, I was critical. I went to the bar. He wiped out all these Irish, like my wife's family.

01:13:12

Yeah, well, he was also like he what did he make? He made the was it

01:13:18

Westminster Abbey or something? He like made it a horse stable or something like there are some weird things he did. I don't think he ever did that.

01:13:24

Oh, you think that's all propaganda? Yes. No, he is the Lord Protector and he does preserve England, you know, in a tumultuous time.

01:13:33

He does build up the country. England becomes a major naval power under him. And he is, you know, he is a he is a true

01:13:40

Calvinist. He's very, very strong religious. Oh, yeah.

01:13:45

Very manly religion. So I find much to admire about Cromwell, although he also did some pretty awful things.

01:13:53

But, you know, as I said, I admire both Puritans and Southern the Southern plantar class.

01:13:59

I see I don't see any reason why I must reject one if I admire the other. And when your ancestors are burned out of their homes,

01:14:06

I think that's more the motivating factor. You know, I also cannot justify the

01:14:12

American Revolution in my mind, just I do not consider George III to be a tyrant of any kind.

01:14:18

However, I do admire Washington and I do admire the American founding. I'm trying to end this podcast and you're opening all these things that now require their own podcast.

01:14:27

I know I'm a very, very ecumenical right winger. OK, so now that we're all on a search for heroes and principles, give us some give us some heroes and principles for young guys who want to get they want to smash the left and they need some direction.

01:14:42

Yeah, there's just so many great people who live in the past. I can't think of any around today, but, you know,

01:14:47

I admire Washington. I admire Robert E. Lee. I admire Cromwell.

01:14:52

I admire some on the Cavalier side of the English Civil War. The problem is there just aren't that many heroes around and any more, although I do respect the tenacity of President Trump, because he really they really were doing everything to destroy him, you know, including killing him, you know, and he came back to win that election.

01:15:17

And whatever moral reservations I have about him and aesthetic reservations about his speeches, he behaved heroically.

01:15:28

And, you know, he's a man, a man whom I now respect very, very much. Conservative principle,

01:15:34

I think, has to center on organic society. And the good of the whole comes before the good of the individual.

01:15:43

I'm not a big fan of individualism. You don't like Ayn Rand. You don't like libertarianism. Not at all.

01:15:48

Not that individualism stuff. No, I think the community is real. The individual has an integral relationship to a community into which you come and traditional communities are now being destroyed willfully and relentlessly by the media, by the educational establishment and by every

01:16:07

Western manager of state. So I think fighting back in the name of traditional community or trying to preserve or reconstruct organic community is what

01:16:19

I think is the struggle that the right should now be engaged in. What should a young man who admires

01:16:26

Trump, as a lot of Gen Z males do, and wants to get involved, what should they be doing?

01:16:32

What steps should they be taking? Should they be posting memes that will get them disqualified on X?

01:16:40

Should they be disqualified from entering social life and power?

01:16:45

Should they be looking at conservative legacy institutions to ascend to? Where should they go?

01:16:51

What should they do? They're going to have to create their own conservative institutions because the conservative legacy institutions are not going to be open to them.

01:16:58

They're simply part of the Washington establishment. I look at the people who got invited onto Fox News.

01:17:05

There are these ditzy women, people who are just not very bright. And I can think of a whole, I think of lots and lots of young conservative writers that are much brighter, but they're never going to be invited on because they're not as docile.

01:17:19

They will not fit the party line and so forth. I think new conservative institutions will have to be built.

01:17:26

Do you see any that, other than Chronicles and the Charlemagne Institute, do you see anything on the horizon that you say that's a good institution to be involved with?

01:17:36

Be involved with Chronicles magazine. We've been around for like 45 years, but there are other things.

01:17:45

Some of these websites I'm looking at that are put up by conservatives, they're quite good. And podcasts and so forth.

01:17:53

I think there has to be a lot more of this. Some institutions like the

01:18:00

Claremont Institute, which was founded by Harry Jaffa and his followers, seems to be very much open to the independent right right now.

01:18:10

They have not moved the same way as ISI or American Enterprise and so forth.

01:18:18

They're much more independent and they're sort of hardline right wing populist. I see that too.

01:18:25

There is this part of me that's concerned. I'm wondering, is it going to be, is it real?

01:18:33

Some of these guys who are very proposition nation people are now signaling, well, Vance is right. We are an idea.

01:18:39

We're also a people. I'm skeptical, but I see what you're absolutely saying there.

01:18:47

When I was at this National Conservative Conference in July, there was somebody from the

01:18:55

Claremont Institute in Washington who came, I'm sorry, it's not the

01:19:00

Claremont Institute, it's Hillsdale College. It's a Claremont institution, basically saying that I had won and the traditional

01:19:12

West Coast Straussians had lost. And I said, I haven't won. Anywhere.

01:19:18

I think he meant that sort of the paleo -conservative idea had won, which is Berkeley and rooted in history, has an organic vision of society and so forth.

01:19:28

And the idea of equality, equality being a conservative principle doesn't seem to be anymore.

01:19:37

Until you get an invitation to speak at Hillsdale College. That will never happen in my lifetime.

01:19:42

It's only if I'm reborn three times or something.

01:19:48

No, it's not going to happen because they don't move that fast. And also, I think Hillsdale College is the one in Michigan is very much a part of the conservative establishment.

01:19:58

All the people they invite are from the conservative establishment. Right. But the one in Washington, I think, is different.

01:20:04

And certainly the Claremont, what is the American Greatness website is very, very, very paleo -conservative.

01:20:13

I wrote for them for a number of years. Now I'm writing for The Blaze. So I didn't realize you were writing for The Blaze.

01:20:21

Yes, I'm not writing right now because I've had some kind of eye problem. Oh, and I'm waiting for this to be resolved.

01:20:28

But I have been writing for them for like the last year or two. I write every week. Okay. All right.

01:20:34

Well, that is good. That's a great development. And they've opened themselves up to R .N. McIntyre and a bunch of other guys who are not.

01:20:40

McIntyre is certainly a paleo -conservative. Yeah, I love him.

01:20:46

Yeah. Yeah, that's good. So there is some hope on the horizon. I think of what

01:20:53

Nate Fisher is doing with New Founding and the American Reformer. I don't know if you've ever seen that. That's more

01:20:58

Christian. But I think they're doing great work as well. Nate Fisher, by the way, is associated with us.

01:21:05

He writes for us. Yeah. Well, I'm good friends with him. So yeah,

01:21:10

I don't know if I should talk about how closely I am with him because people might use it against him or me.

01:21:16

But yeah, we're definitely tight with each other and know each other pretty well.

01:21:23

And I think what he's doing is phenomenal. And I'm sure we would have disagreements, as many in these orbits would with each other on certain things.

01:21:30

But there's a spirit of working together that I like to see, that I do see emerging.

01:21:37

And for young people, this is my last question, though, to just put a fine point on the previous question

01:21:44

I asked. I see a lot of young conservatives going towards trades, going towards engineering if they're going to go through higher education, hard sciences.

01:21:52

They want to avoid what will get them canceled. Should they do that? Because this becomes a problem when you're trying to fill a cabinet and you don't have qualified people available because the left has dominated those fields.

01:22:06

You know, I think that's correct. There's nothing wrong with these people, you know, going into technical vocations.

01:22:12

They're going to find jobs. I mean, someone like Nate Fisher, who we mentioned is a financier and, you know, is very savvy in business and also, you know, is an evangelical theologian.

01:22:22

He's politically conservative on the right and so forth. You can do all these things.

01:22:28

You know, I think universities are lost. Don't waste your time with them.

01:22:34

I was an academic for over 40 years and it just got worse and worse, the universities.

01:22:42

So, you know, I noticed that conservative, I call it conservatism incorporated, which is the conservative movement that excludes me and a lot of other people, that, you know, it runs after any academic who has second thoughts about something or, you know,

01:22:59

I'm all for gay marriage and transgendered, but I think Hamas has gone too far or something like that.

01:23:05

Immediately, they grab you up, right? So, you know, there are people like Amy Wax.

01:23:13

Amy, I know her well. She's a courageous woman, but she has a very strong position. She has an endowed chair in the law school of the

01:23:21

University of Pennsylvania. Her husband, I think, is a dean of the medical school. So they're very well established people and they're still trying to destroy her, remove her from classes, take her job away.

01:23:33

But I noticed conservatism incorporated has come to Amy's defense, although she is at least as far to the right as I am because she does, you know, she is or she was a powerful figure in the academic world and she's genuinely on the right.

01:23:50

And but, you know, she's she is she seems to be sort of unassailable at this point.

01:23:56

I mean, it might be the right gender, too. She's the right gender. Yeah, that's we got to stop doing that on the right, the mirroring the intersectional identity politics stuff.

01:24:08

But but yeah, I'm glad they're defending her. That's great. Yeah. So, all right, well, cool, though, that's that's good advice for the guys listening.

01:24:16

Most of my audience is men and there are a lot of millennial and some zoomer men. And I think

01:24:22

Dr. Godfrey is someone just speaking to the audience here, someone that you should be reading. And if you don't have a subscription to Chronicles magazine, you can go online.

01:24:32

Chronicles, I think it's .org, if I'm not mistaken. I'm going to make sure that I got that right. Do you have a website, a separate website,

01:24:40

Dr. Godfrey? To send people to? No, I have my own website.

01:24:45

It's not a website because I have an email address, but it's best just to just to look at Chronicles.

01:24:51

OK, yeah, it's Chronicles magazine dot org. So that's where someone would go. We have new stuff there every day.

01:24:57

Yeah, we also the magazine is a magazine is certainly worth subscribing to, but at least parts of that magazine are online.

01:25:05

And you can also take it out an online subscription if you don't want to pay for the for the hard copy.

01:25:12

Excellent. All right. Well, with that, thank you, Dr. Godfrey, for your time and appreciate your work so much.

01:25:18

And hopefully one of these days we can see each other in person. I think we met once, but again, not live that far apart.

01:25:25

That's true. Right. Yeah. Actually, I'm going to be in. We'll talk. I'm going to be in Lancaster next April. So. All right.