Conservative Civil War & the Future of the Right

On the Conversations That Matter podcast, I'm your host, John Harris. Happy Veterans Day to everyone out there. I hope if you were able to, if you weren't working today or you had a break from work, that you were able to attend a Veterans Day ceremony.

This has become more important to me as my child grows up because I know as a child, I went to these into my teens. And I think it's encouraging for older veterans, especially Vietnam era veterans, but I think any veteran to see young children attend these things.

I know that's part of the reason my parents took me when I was younger, but also for children to understand they're part of something bigger than themselves. They're part of a community. And that community includes men and women who have sacrificed a great deal to keep this community going that they live in.

And it was a good time in a way, also a sobering time, even though it was only a 20 minute, 25 minute ceremony, maybe 30, I don't know. It was pretty short, but I realized something. I haven't been to a Veterans Day event in quite some time.

And I was trying to remember why that was. How come, I think the last time I went was in my twenties. And I think there's a combination of things being disconnected to some extent, being in communities where I'm there for school and normally busy up to my eyeballs in various things, work-related things.

I don't know, it just, I don't think I've been to one in a long time. And there's no excuse for this. It's just Veterans Day comes and goes. And if I see veterans out in public, I tend to try to say thank you.

And it means a great deal to me to honor the country. In Memorial Day, I know my wife and I went out and I wore my grandpa's World War II cap and stuff, but it used to be more of a habit. And I remember it used to be that the whole community seemed to come out.

It was huge, at least where I lived for both Memorial Day and Veterans Day. I think bigger on Memorial Day because people get off for that and it's warmer. But there were still World War II vets when I remember going out to these things.

They were older.

They were fading fast, but there were still some World War II vets. And there was a big switch in just the whole feel of it from what I remember with World War II vets. I mean, my memory goes back as far as there were Gold Star mothers for World War II vets.

I do, I remember, I don't know, people are gonna say I'm really old, but they were really old. But now going and seeing that the older ones are the Vietnam vets, there's a different feel to it. And I'm still trying to digest this.

I heard about veterans committing suicide from two speakers and they only had two speakers. And the term suicide must have been mentioned about three or four times. And the call to action was to get involved with the veterans in your community to prevent them from essentially killing themselves.

And that's just a sobering thing to think about. And I think that colors maybe what I'm gonna say on the podcast today to some extent. I really love this country. I'm not gonna play it here, but you can go on my social media channels and I put a video of me playing a song I wrote two weeks ago that's gonna be for the album that I put out next year.

So this isn't studio quality. I already recorded it in the studio, but this is just me on my guitar and it's about American heritage. And I just feel like something that I had, something that was even slipping away perhaps, well, I know it was, when I was growing up has left the building.

It's really been slipping away. And there's remnants of it. There's memories, there's a shell of it. There's maybe in some places the real substance of it still exists, but it's in pockets. And I wanna do everything I can to preserve those pockets.

I'm gonna do everything I can for my children so that they have at least something of the United States I grew up in, something of the honor, understanding the sacrifice and the patriotism, a devotion to their local community, understanding why America is the way it is, why it's been blessed so much, why it's worth defending, understanding some of the mistakes that have been made too, but having an identity, just like a family identity, having an identity in this country.

And a local identity. As many of these events are focused on local veterans. You have volunteer firefighters, local. Actually, I think it's funny. They said Boy Scouts. They said there was a Boy Scout troop there, but of course they don't call themselves Boy Scouts anymore.

They're scouting. And so one of the speakers said Boy Scouts anyway. So, so much for them dumping the one gender and trying to be inclusive. They're still, that's still their reputation, but I didn't see any trail life troop, but I'm sure in other places, in other towns, they probably have trail life involved in these things.

But it's your local civic organizations. It's your American Legion. They were the ones hosting this particular one. It's the police officers from the local community. It's politicians. And it's really something that I think it's important because there's very few times that the community and those who are civic leaders and involved in voluntary associations get together to reaffirm the fact that they love their community, that they're involved in it.

And that's one of them. So, I mean, you have Memorial Day, you have July 4th, you have Veterans Day, you might have a Christmas function or maybe a Thanksgiving function. Every town's different. Some towns have a pie baking contest and even local county fairs and stuff can function in these ways.

But it's important for communities to get together. So I was really grateful that my daughter was able to experience that for the first time and hopefully encourage some of the older folks that were there.

But a sobering reminder that the country that I remember, even though I'm not that old, is not the country that even exists now. And I did a study or I read a study years ago when I was in World War II class in grad school that the percentage, this is by percentage, not by numbers, but the percentage of soldiers that suffered from PTSD was actually greater in World War II than it was in Vietnam.

Which you would never know, right? You wouldn't think that. And the Vietnam soldiers are known for suffering from all kinds of traumatic things, which many of them did legitimately. I have an uncle who did.

And getting hooked on drugs, these kinds of things. But World War II veterans had that too. But there was something about the World War II veteran that seemed more positive in a way, less dark, even though they went through horrible situations.

And I think it was the fact that they were coming from a thicker society where the people around them really did value their sacrifice and really did come together to show them encouragement, more so at least.

That they really did take time to honor them and that kind of thing. And that's been slowly eroding over the course of years. And every community is different, but it's time to get that back. I think that's the only answer, to be quite honest with you.

It's not like I'm even recommending this as the only answer. I actually think that it legitimately is the only answer because it's the only answer. It's just a fact. If you want to preserve the way of life that has been passed down to you and expand on it and return to maybe things that even preceded your own birth, then you're gonna have to get involved in local associations.

That's where the community actually lives, breathes, exists. If you look at a country or a community, any civic body as a living, breathing organism, the vital parts of that organism, the places where the lifeblood is pumping through are on the molecular level, right?

If you have a cancer go through and it destroys the body, it's going to also start on the molecular level. And I think that's what we've been experiencing. The United States has had a cancer. We've been dying a slow death and it's been very hard to watch.

And there's many of us who are patriots who want to do something and many of us have done things to slow it down. I think Trump was perceived as a chemotherapy to this, that he would maybe do some bad things.

I know that's how I viewed him, that he might bring in some things to the Republican Party, which we didn't want, maybe soft peddling some social issues, bringing in some course language and things like this, but it was necessary because we didn't have another option at that point.

And he was going to do some good things that needed to be done. And to be downstream from that 2016 election and to now be in 2025 and to see what's happened and to see how Pandora's box has been open and to see post 2020, the lack of confidence in our institutions on just about every level.

The only place that we have, the only tool available to restore any semblance of stability exists on the local level. And maybe that's always been where it's at. And we had too much confidence in these larger institutions anyway.

But if you're not involved somewhere, it's time to be involved. Maybe you're involved in church. That is a local civic organization as well. Obviously with a function that exists past the civic and past the temporal, it is pointing towards an eternal focus, but it is a civic organization as well.

It has a social function that cannot be replaced. If you're involved in the fire department, if you're involved in other volunteer organizations, veterans organizations, historical organizations, organizations to help children become men and women, a rite of passage of some kind.

I mean, these are all very, very important. And if our young people don't have authority figures to look up to and respect on the local level, they will find them somewhere else. Even if it's charlatans and posers and grifters, which is what we're gonna talk about also a little bit today.

They're gonna find it in the digital fantasy world. That's already a draw. But the only way you can stave that off, I think, is on the real local level. Localism is not really an ism. It's just a natural ordered way of life.

And it's the way of life we must continue in this country if we're gonna keep it. So that's my opening monologue. I wasn't planning on saying all that, but because I went to this Veterans Day event, I've been marinating on some of this.

And I think it will factor into some of the other things that I wanna say today. So I will get to some of the comments and questions. I can already see them coming in. And I will get to them later on in the podcast.

If you put a question mark by the comment, it'll help me understand better which ones to focus on and which ones not to. But we're gonna talk about the Civil War on the right today. And I'm gonna just put off some of the evangelical stuff.

I know J .D. Greer was on this podcast. People are talking about that. Is he being normalized and rehabbed? And I actually haven't listened to it yet. All I've heard is people's reactions. So I'm gonna try to.

And if we have time, I'll try to get to that tomorrow. By the way, I am gonna be taking a trip in the next few days. And so I won't be around to do as many podcasts this week as I'd like to anyway. I do appreciate your prayers.

This is not a pleasure trip. This is related to the work that I do here. And I just came back from a trip, obviously, over the weekend. Thank you for your prayers on that as well. It was, I think, a very successful time.

I had a great time with everyone down there in the Tampa region of Florida. I enjoyed your company, the food. The only thing I didn't enjoy were the flights. And it's because of the shutdown in part. It's also in part because of my own negligence.

I've never done this before. I have never done this. But I actually, I have so many things on my mind. I went to the airport and I forgot my luggage. And I had to turn around, try to get a later flight.

But then every situation after that, every flight after that was delayed. It was just, it was a mess. And I was meeting people who had eight hour, nine hour delays and just, it's crazy at the airport.

So if you're gonna travel, you might wanna take a car. But I had a great time. And so thank you for your prayers. That's a big part of what I do is speaking to churches, encouraging churches, speaking to civic organizations.

And I hesitate to say no to those things because like I said in the opening monologue, I believe that is where the real battle is. And I wanna shore up those local institutions as much as I possibly can if the Lord will use me in that effort.

So thank you for that. Okay, well, since we're talking about red pills and all kinds of things in the chat, I think I'll start here. This podcast is not going to be as in depth as I would like a podcast about this topic to be because there's so much to talk about.

I can't cover a hundred years of history in one short podcast. I could do a series of podcasts on what I'm about to talk about. And maybe I will, but I think what we are doing on the Conversations That Matter podcast, what we are doing with the patrons, walking through the Anglo conservative tradition in literature is going to cover much of this.

We are going to get here. And it's part of rebuilding an understanding of what it is to be an American, what it is to be involved in a local community. So there will be more extended in-depth explanations for many of the things I'm going to share with you, but it is necessary for me to give a crash course in what it means to be an American conservative and specifically to focus on why it is that American conservatives have had points of division and are now fracturing.

And maybe a more accurate way to put that isn't even the way I just put it. I think that's how it's normally framed. I actually look at it this way. It's how conservatives have been diluted, have been gatekept, have been prevented from gaining access to the mechanisms of power in the institutions that they are presumed to control.

And I think there's a lot of frustration over that. And there has been for a long time. And there's some hope right now among some that maybe this is changing. And leave me to be the bearer of bad news.

I have a very cautious optimism, but the caution is outweighing the optimism right now. I'm gonna be honest with you. We're gonna have to get our act together and we're gonna have to get it together very fast because we have midterms coming up and we have another presidential election coming up.

And we are nowhere near where we need to be to gain the victories necessary to continue the progress that we've been making and to expand on it. Now, some of you are so blackmailed right now, you're probably wondering what progress am I even talking about?

And we're gonna get into that in the podcast. I'm also wanna say one last thing before I start to go through my survey here and give you my thoughts on this civil war. I was thinking about this today.

I think I heard about suicide so much from the Veterans Day celebration or remembrance that I started thinking back to a few years ago, I've told this story before on the podcast, but I think about it every so often.

I was hiking, well, I was actually camping, went on a little hike, but it was more of a camp out with some friends in 2021. It was in the fall, so it was this time of year. And it was late summer, actually, it was late summer, kind of early fall.

And there was a car that pulled up to the parking lot right near where we were camping. It was in the Catskill Mountains. It was a pretty secluded place. And I said to the other two people I was with, maybe we should go talk to whoever that is.

It's 11 p .m., whatever it was, between 11 and midnight. It's kind of late for someone to be pulling up. And maybe this is someone who's a threat, I don't know. Maybe we should just go check it out. Long story short, we discussed the issue and determined that one of the guys who was with us, who was at that point in the military, was going to go and just kind of scope it out, but not engage the person.

And so they did and said, it's harmless. It's just a young man who's going for a walk. And you could hear him, we could hear him on his cell phone. You may be wondering where this is all going. And trust me, it does relate to what I'm going to talk about here.

So we wait, we hear the guy go off into the woods on a trail. And about, I don't know, half an hour later or so, a fire truck shows up. Now, this is a rough path to get down. This is like four-wheel drive stuff.

This fire truck is going as fast as it can on this. Lights everywhere, stops in the middle of the woods. And a frantic fire chief gets out, and it's just him. And we walk over to where this fire truck is.

And he's just, he's on the phone. He's walking, pacing all around his truck. And he says, he looks at us and he said, points at us, points at me. And he says, gunshot wound to the head. I didn't know what he was talking about.

I said, no, we're just camping here. Well, within the next 10 minutes, police cars, fire trucks, everyone arrives. And we didn't get much sleep. The lights were reflecting off the trees until three in the morning, at least.

What happened? Well, I found out the next day what happened. The fire chief was the father of that 19 year old who had parked in the woods there and had taken his own life with a pistol. We were the last people on earth to be near him.

And it's bothered me ever. I mean, I talked to the Lord about it. I don't think I'll ever make the same mistake again. I will go and talk to a person if they show up 11 o 'clock, 12 o 'clock at night in a secluded area.

And if it's a similar scenario, I'm gonna talk to them. But we went the next morning to the spot where it happened. We saw evidence of this. I looked online, this kid was a involved member of the community, volunteer, fireman, paramedic.

It appeared pretty conservative politically. I think I saw some Trump stuff. And he was going through a depressing time. I was able to pick up that his girlfriend had broken up with him or something. It sounded like he was on the phone with the girlfriend when he had pulled up.

And I just remember weeping about this and just thinking, and right after that, this was in 2021, I remember a military veteran from, I believe it was the Iraq war, had just lost a local political position in the election.

It was right after this and he shot himself. And I just remember thinking how many guys, especially young white guys, are just killing themselves because they're depressed, because they don't see a way out.

This was right after the loss of Donald Trump at the national level. There didn't seem to be a hope. We had just lived through a horrible ordeal and there was nothing to hope in on a political level. And if you didn't have a strong family, if you didn't have especially a faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, what were you gonna do?

What was there left to do? Where could you even throw your support if you wanted to preserve something for a potential family? I think a lot of us felt rejected by so many institutions that we came to trust in.

And I think there's a deep jadedness there for many. It's still there. And there are two things that you can do with that. One is you can receive the explanations that scripture has for these things. And you can look back in the pages of history for similar scenarios and follow the model of great men who navigated them for the good of their own people, even sacrificing themselves.

For me, I don't have to go back far. I don't have to go back farther than even my own grandparents' generation. They lived through horrible things in the Great Depression and World War II and the Dust Bowl.

And my grandmother's still alive. She's in her 90s. I just saw her recently. She is very healthy for a woman of her age, still working in the garden. But she, like many in her generation, saves everything because you never know when you might need it.

Because when you've experienced real poverty, real struggle, you don't forget that. And I think there's a generation right now that have been sold a lot of lies about what their future should look like if they just follow the formula.

If they just do the very things that previous generations have done from the boomers on, they will be successful. And then they grow up in a world where DEI holds them back, where it seems like it's much more of a challenge to find a girlfriend.

And when they do find a girlfriend, and I'm talking about men here, it's rare to find one that has the quality and has the devotion to them like previous generations. Now, quality girls aren't in much of a better scenario.

They also are contending with men who are very broken, who have been hooked on video games, drugs, pornography, all of these things at greater levels. And there is, I think, an overall kind of depression and malaise about these things.

And some people just give up, whether it's giving up on marriage, whether it's giving up on, I'll never buy a house, I'll never have that. Or if it's just giving up on life, they give up on the dreams that they had, the dreams that they thought would come true if they just followed the formula.

I'm talking about the ones who actually are responsible. I'm not talking about those who have shirked their responsibilities completely. I'm talking about the ones who have made an effort. It's very difficult.

And I think I need to acknowledge this. I've said, what I just said to you, I have said this kind of thing over and over, over the years on this podcast. And I think it's important for you to hear it from me once again, because what I'm gonna share with you on the podcast today, what I already am sharing with you is not intended in any way, shape or form to throw all kinds of cold water on people who are really trying to make a difference and struggling to just live life.

I wanna encourage you, you're doing the right thing. You need to keep doing the right thing. Don't give up doing the right thing. If your reward's not on this earth, it's in heaven. But don't ever give up.

If you're not married and you wanna be married, don't give up on that. If you're wanting to have kids, don't give up on that. If you wanna have a house and it's been difficult, don't give up on that. Circumstances change.

You don't know what's right around the corner. Ultimately, it's your faith in Christ that's gonna get you through any of these things. It's not Christianity as a system, by the way. It's not some Christian identity that's gonna get you through it.

It's the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what actual Christianity is. Listen to voices that will encourage you, that'll help you. Do not listen to voices that will black pill you, that will justify anger and rage that's misdirected and sinful.

Don't listen to voices that are going to take advantage of even legitimate anger and rage for the building up of their own platforms without giving you any kind of constructive advice, reminding you of the providence of God, reminding you of the things you really do have, making it sound even worse than it is.

Those voices are the path to death. We need encouragement right now. We need to acknowledge where we're at. We need encouragement right now. Circumstances do change. God does exist. He has put you here for such a time as this.

You are within his providence. You have meaning and purpose, and there is fulfillment in following his plan, no matter where it takes you. So I need to say that for young men, for veterans, for anyone who's listening within the earshot of this voice, do not take the black pill.

And there are many that wanna market the black pill to you right now. And they wanna make every excuse for the disappointments that you've encounters that none of it has anything to do with you, really.

And in none of it, and this is the worst part, none of it's really within your control at all. You can't do anything. You are helpless because all of these other forces need to be changed first. And then once we remake all of society in a revolutionary way, then and only then will you have a shot.

Well, we need to do things to help society change, but it's going to be a battle, and we're gonna need you for the battle. And it's going to take place on multiple levels, the local level being one of them.

And we need your sword. I don't need your viewership. I'm here for you, okay? That's why I make these videos. If you don't need this voice, then don't listen to it. Do whatever constructive things you need to do.

I mean, that's not something you're gonna hear from those podcasters. They want you, right? They want your money. They want your resources. They want your time. They want your views. They want you to share.

I want you to do whatever God wants you to do in your local area. And if that has anything to do with this podcast and I can encourage you, then great. If not, then great. You do what you know you need to do.

That's the message, okay? We can't waste any time right now. The clock is ticking. We have a different set of circumstances than we did 10 years ago, and certainly than our parents did. And if we're going to save this country, all hands must be on deck.

The civil war on the right that we're seeing right now, which is more of a fracturing on the right, is not a good thing. And we need to do everything we can to take whatever we can of the right and build bridges where it's possible to defeat the left.

Now, I've advocated for Gates. I've advocated for standards. I've talked about those in previous podcasts. I'm not gonna go long into that. But I firmly believe that we are on a razor's edge on a national level.

And we can't afford to blow up coalitions that have given us a winning strategy simply because of secondary differences over things. We have some very primary things. We have a triage, right? And immigration to me is at the top of this because the Democrats get permanent majorities if they get another four years like Biden.

And we haven't made the progress in immigration that we need to so far to really change the direction of things. And there's only one game in town for changing any direction, and that's Donald Trump's administration.

So the civil war on the right is a serious thing. We're gonna talk about that guy in a moment, but I had him on the screen. We're gonna talk about, I'm gonna play you clips from Ben Shapiro, gonna play you clips from Tucker Carlson.

We're gonna talk about a number of things. Let's start here. Conservatives have always won elections based on resistance to leftist innovations and common sense middle-class sentiments, including Christianity, federal arrangements, and limited government.

Whether it's classic liberals who have reached the helm of Republican conservative organizations, or it's actual conservatives, this is the winning formula. And Francis Schaeffer talked about this as middle-class standards and values where religion has been collectively remembered.

Sam Francis talked about this as a revolution from the middle that needed to happen. But even when establishment Republicans win, they have to do so to cater to middle America, to people who want religion, to people who want a localist, federalist kind of arrangement, they want more control over their lives, to people who want limited government.

They have to cater to those people because they can't win without them. The Bible belt still is the anchor for the conservative cause in this country. Now, things have changed in the last 100 years. From the mid 19th century until the early 20th century, the Republican Party was the primary progressive force in American politics.

And I'll say that again, because some of you might've jumped out of your seat. Yes, the Republican Party, not the Democrats, was the primary progressive force in American politics, particularly in foreign policy.

And maybe I want to adjust that. I don't know, particularly might be too strong, but foreign policy was certainly one of those things. Abraham Lincoln, of course, believed in interventionism. Right, that's the Civil War.

William McKinley, Spanish-American War, oversaw US expansion into the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Cuba. And what began to develop was this idea that America was on a global mission, which you can really attach back into a Northeastern kind of city-on-the-hill ethos.

In our generation, I'm a millennial, this has been channeled into, we need to go spread democracy. We need to nation-build. We need to give freedom to people in the Middle East who haven't experienced that.

And it'll just make a world of difference for them. Well, we've learned the lesson of that. That's what that is, though. Post-World War II, a significant philosophical shift occurred. The Democrats became the party of the radicals, including people who were on the wrong side of the Cold War.

There were anti-communist Democrats, but more and more, they didn't really have a place to go. And between Wilson and FDR, the Democrats, obviously Wilson being a main proponent of foreign intervention with the League of Nations, they became the globalist party, more so than the Republicans.

But they also became the party that was winking and nodding at communists during the Cold War. And as this took place, as the Democratic Party changed, many Republicans were welcomed in, just like we were recently welcoming in Elon Musk and Tulsi Gabbard and other former Democrats.

The Republican Party was welcoming in former Democrats who still had some globalist inclinations, who still had some liberal think in them into their own party. But the Republicans themselves also had a history of being interventionists.

Now, this is what's happening in elite circles, okay? So Middle America, primarily their values don't shift as fast. Middle-class standards, Middle American values, Republican Party capitalizes on those things.

And you have the blue dog Democrats coming out and voting for the Republican, and you have Nixon gaining huge majorities and Reagan gaining huge majorities. But during this entire time, the Republicans are keeping a number of things, they're actually expanding even some of the things that Democrats used to be known for.

And one of those things was interventionism. They embraced, they did not just become the conservative party, right? This great switch nonsense that you hear about from the Democrat side is, there's a truth to what they're saying, but it becomes nonsense when they just say, the Republicans became the conservative party.

They actually, during this time, both parties are going in a more progressive direction and the Republicans do so less. That's really the way to look at it. And they embrace interventionism as exemplified in the Marshall Plan.

They think that essentially we need to buy our allies through aid, through intervention and conflicts, we need to spread democracy. And this is rooted in Wilsonian internationalism. This is something that Woodrow Wilson would have been giving a thumbs up for, but the Republicans adopt this.

And this shift marginalizes some important groups. And it's not just in foreign policy. This also was part of the, I would say, would include the civil rights regime. Republicans vote for this. And paleo-conservatives, Southern conservatives and libertarians within the Republican party are essentially given the shaft.

And these groups favor non-interventionism, they favor limited government, cultural traditionism, and they're effectively gatekept by the party establishment. And who are the party establishment? I mean, I look at this as Harry Jaffa, of course you have written against a number of times, being kind of the philosophical godfather on a more political think tank level, I would say William F. Buckley is a good example of this.

I mean, they become the standard bearers for what it means to be the Republican party, National Review, Claremont Institute, which is very influential even now. I think they're changing, but there's still that ghost of Harry Jaffa still there.

Now, as these various more traditional and libertarian groups are gatecapped over time, there's various efforts to try to get them back into positions of leadership and that kind of thing. And one of the biggest ones, I'm gonna give you two of them, was Mel Bradford and then Bork, Robert Bork.

So Mel Bradford, this shift happened, I think this shift was solidified, we'll put it that way, during the Reagan administration. And I am not a hater of Ronald Reagan, I know there's a lot of haters out there, Ronald Reagan now, I see very negative things with Ronald Reagan, I also see very positive things.

As a Californian, I can't really, I still have to have some pride in Reagan, but Reagan made some critical errors. And one of them was this, 1981, he nominates Mel Bradford, who is probably the most prominent Southern conservative scholar and paleoconservative intellectual.

And he nominates him to the chair of the National Endowment of the Humanities. And this had strong support from Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, strong support from Russell Kirk, probably the leading conservative intellectual of the time.

And he ends up getting the shaft because of writings that he made that were critical of Abraham Lincoln in defense of Southern traditions. And the controversy becomes media-driven, fueled by media smears, orchestrated lies, and Reagan, instead of standing up, caved.

And that was a cataclysmic failure. Reagan withdraws the nomination in favor of William Bennett, who is establishment-friendly and a neoconservative. And ever since then, these various elements have not regained any kind of seat at the table.

Libertarians, now libertarians have gone wacko, but the Murray Rothbard-style libertarians, which I would say is exemplified in like the Ron Paul revolution, right? These, those people, the Southern conservatives, they have not been able to get back.

Paleoconservatives.

Robert Bork's another one.

Bork is this traditional, originalist conservative. And he is, he was a D .C. circuit court judge. He was nominated by Reagan to the Supreme Court to replace the retiring Justice Louis Powell, 1987. His confirmation hearings became a battleground with leading Democrats like Senator Ted Kennedy.

And it was a ferocious campaign. In fact, there actually developed a term of getting borked for getting the shaft, essentially, getting abandoned by your own people and voted down. And it was a landslide against him.

I mean, the Senate rejected him by a vote of 58 to 42. Widest margin ever, I think, for a Supreme Court nominee to be rejected. And surprisingly, the opposition also arose from within conservative ranks.

So Harry Jaffa criticizes Bork very strongly. He even writes a whole book against Bork. Guess who wrote the foreword for that book against Bork? Larry Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College. Joins the critique with Harry Jaffa to drum Bork out of respectable society.

And with Bork also went a message saying conservative traditionalists are not welcome here. Now, many of you may never have heard of either of these. Some of you might've heard of both of them, but if you're younger, you might not be aware that this happened during the Reagan administration.