Conservative Conversations with ISI

In this episode:

• Archduke Eduard Habsburg joins the podcast to discuss his new book, “The Habsburg Way,” about his family, their values, and character
• how marriage and family were both central to the Habsburg’s personal and political success and longevity
• why nationalism and imperialism are not necessarily opposing political philosophies, and how there can be an integration of nations within “supranational organizations”

Texts Mentioned:

• The Habsburg Way: Seven Rules for Turbulent Times by Archduke Eduard Habsburg
• 1984 by George Orwell
• The Education of Cyrus by Xenophon
• On Kingship by Saint Thomas Aquinas
• Utopia by Saint Thomas More
• The Virtue of Nationalism by Yoram Hazony
• “The Nationalist Mistake” by Phillip Blond

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In this episode:

• Hadley Arkes, founder and director of the James Wilson Institute, joins the podcast to discuss his newest book, Mere Natural Law
•  how the Dobbs ruling dodged the essential moral questions at the heart of abortion, and why conservative jurisprudence has failed to do so
• how principles of natural law are so suffused into America’s law and the American regime that they are inseparable from any judgments about law in the judiciary

Texts Mentioned:

• Mere Natural Law: Originalism and the Anchoring Truths of the Constitution by Hadley Arkes
• First Things  by Hadley Arkes
• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
• The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant
• Roe v. Wade
• Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization
• The Federalist Papers by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay
• Lectures on Law by James Wilson
• Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths by Hadley Arkes
• Natural Rights and the Right to Choose by Hadley Arkes
• ISI Homecoming, June 2-3, 2023

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In this episode:

• Enrique Pallares joins the podcast to discuss conservatism and liberalism in the Spanish tradition, and how it is influenced by and departs from other European political traditions
• a deep dive into the life and thought of Miguel de Unamuno, a Spanish thinker who opposed ideology and stressed the centrality of the person
• how ideology subjugates the human person and closes us off to living a truly human life

Texts Mentioned:

• The Roots of American Order by Russell Kirk
• Intelligible Spain by Julian Marias
• Cadiz Constitution of 1812
• Unam Sanctam by Pope Boniface VIII
• En Torno al Casticismo by Miguel de Unamuno (in English and Spanish)
• “What is Ideology?” by Mark Shiffman
• Gorgias by Plato
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• casacarmenwines.com

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 In this episode:

• Brad Birzer, professor of history at Hillsdale College, joins the podcast to discuss his new book, Mythic Realms: The Moral Imagination in Literature and Film
• a crash course in all the must-see movies and TV series that teach about justice, charity, and finding one’s place in the moral order
• how the frontier, captured in Western film and movies, represents the possibilities that have embodied the American spirit

Texts Mentioned:

• Mythic Realms: The Moral Imagination in Literature and Film by Brad Birzer
• The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk
• Beyond Tenebrae  by Brad Birzer
• Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke
• Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
• Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
• Democracy and Leadership by Irving Babbitt
• Enemies of the Permanent Things by Russell Kirk
• The Batman Trilogy
• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
• “Friday Night Lights Fight (Revised)” by Peter Lawler
• Stranger Things
• The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
• The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
• Watchmen by Alan Moore
• V for Vendetta by Alan Moore
• Tenet
• Interstellar

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In this episode:

• The Hon. Paul J. Ray, former head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), joins the podcast to give a primer on the administrative state and how it works
• how the administrative state cuts against the American tradition of self-government and each citizen’s ability to exercise practical reason
• how the federal system of American government serves as an application of subsidiarity in our political regime

Texts Mentioned:

• Summa Theologiae by St. Thomas Aquinas
• Rerum Novarum  by Pope Leo XIII
• Nicomachean Ethics  by Aristotle
• Bureaucracy by James Q. Wilson

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In this episode:

• Julius Krein, founder and editor of American Affairs journal, joins the podcast to talk about problems in America’s advanced post-industrial economy, and how we can address issues like family policy, debt, innovation, taxation, and labor markets
• how Americans should really think about capitalism as “private wealth accumulation,” and break out of the “textbook economics” bookish view of  market systems, important as they might be
• what listeners need to know about the landscape of the political and social realignment in recent American history, and where the Right needs to continue moving to create a new “inside consensus” on various policy fronts

Texts Mentioned:

• “America Pulls Back from Values that Once Defined It” by Aaron Zitner
• “The Last Gasp of an Ideology” by Julius Krein
• The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order by Gary Gerstle
• “The Digital Age Produces Binary Outcomes” by David Goldman
• America, Inc.? Innovation and Enterprise in the National Security State by Linda Weiss
• “The Long, Slow Death of Global Development” by David Oks and Henry Williams
• Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future by Patrick J. Deneen

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In This Episode:

• Joseph T. Salerno, Academic Vice President of the Mises Institute, joins the podcast to talk about Murray Rothbard’s political and economic thought
• why a demagogue is necessary for the masses to re-establish control over their government in the age of social democracy
• a primer on the economic theory of the Austrian economists, as well as their underlying anthropology and praxeology

Texts Mentioned:

• “Education in Economic Liberty” by Wilhelm Röpke in What is Conservatism? edited by Frank S. Meyer
• “Why I am Not a Conservative” by F.A. Hayek
• “The Use of Knowledge in Society” by F.A. Hayek
• America’s Great Depression by Murray Rothbard
• Human Action by Ludwig von Mises
• “Murray Rothbard versus the Progressives” by Joseph T. Salerno
• “In Defense of Demagogues” by Murray Rothbard
• Rothbard versus the Philosophers edited by Roberta Modugno
• “Why a Socialist Economy is Impossible” by Joseph T. Salerno
• “The End of Socialism and the Calculation Debate Revisited” by Murray Rothbard
• The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek
• The Constitution of Liberty by F.A. Hayek
• “Joe Salerno on His Career as an Heir to Rothbard” by Joseph T. Salerno
• “A Radical Right-wing Alternative” in the New York Times, 1971
• Dan McCarthy “Conservative Conversations” special lecture
• Mises Institute
• Money: Sound and Unsound  by Joseph T. Salerno

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In this episode:

• Johnny interviews Henry Mack, Senior Chancellor of Higher Education at the Florida Department of Education, live from ISI’s inaugural American Politics and Governance Summit, an academic conference for faculty and graduate students
• how Florida has been a leader in conservative education reform in promoting the Great Books and “educating for democratic citizenship”

Texts Mentioned:

• “Florida’s Higher Education Reforms” by Henry Mack and Daniel Kennelly
• The University in Ruins by Bill Readings
• Common Good Constitutionalism by Adrian Vermeule

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In This Episode:

• Timothy Goeglein joins the podcast to talk about his new book, Toward a More Perfect Union, about the failures of civics and history education in America, and what we can do to teach students about the Great American Story
• how Howard Zinn, the 1619 Project and other progressives purposely sought to erase American history and miseducate millions of American students through a neo-Marxist lens
• what parents, teachers, and communities can do to help recover a sense of the Great American Story, and revitalize the civic culture that has built and sustained America

Texts Mentioned:

• Toward a More Perfect Union by Timothy S. Goeglein
• U.S. Citizenship Test
• The Shaping of the American Mind ISI study on civic knowledge
• The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones
• The 1776 Report
• Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
• Cyropaedia: The Education of Cyrus by Xenophon
• Gettsyburg movie
• Gods and Generals movie
• John Adams mini-series
• “The End of the English Major” in New Yorker

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In This Episode:

• Kevin Gutzman, professor of History at Western Connecticut State University, joins the podcast to discuss the presidencies of Democratic-Republican presidents Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe
• how the states and sectionalism played an important role in the Early Republic, and why Jefferson and his successors emphasized the importance of state’s rights and decentralized power
• the key events during the presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe that kick off Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny

Texts Mentioned:

• The Jeffersonians: The Visionary Presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe by Kevin Gutzman
• James Madison and the Making of America by Kevin Gutzman
• First Inaugural Address by Thomas Jefferson
• Letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 15 February, 1791
• “Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank” by Alexander Hamilton
• “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” pamphlet by Thomas Jefferson
• James Madison’s Notes of the Constitutional Convention from June 18, 1787
• Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Robert Livingston, 18 April, 1802
• Letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Dickinson, 9 August, 1803
• Proposed Amendment to the Constitution Regarding Louisiana by James Madison
• Trans-Continental Treaty of 1819 
• Monroe Doctrine
• Calhoun: American Heretic by Robert Elder
• Diary of John Quincy Adams

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In this episode:

•  Dan McCarthy gives a lecture on the various elements of the conservative movement to ISI’s staff at our campus in Wilmington, DE
• a historical account of the American revolution and its implications for American conservatism
• why conservatives need to see through “both eyes” of history and ideas

Texts Mentioned:

• Second Treatise of Government by John Locke
• Natural Right and History by Leo Strauss
• The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk
• The Quest for Community by Robert Nisbet
• Crisis of the House Divided by Harry V. Jaffa
• “Is Liberalism Worth Saving?” symposium in Harper’s Magazine
• Roots of American Order by Russell Kirk
• Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
• The Superfluous Men by Robert Crunden
• The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams
• The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
• Memoirs of A Superfluous Man by Alfred Jay Nock
• The Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset
• The Liberal Tradition in America by Louis Hartz
• The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 by George Nash
• The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek
• The Constitution of Liberty by Friedrich Hayek
• Witness by Whittaker Chambers
• Containment or Liberation?  by James Burnham
• The Emerging Republican Majority by Kevin Phillips
• The Virtue of Nationalism by Yoram Hazony

In This Episode:

• Adam Hoffman, a writer for the Princeton Tory, joins the podcast to discuss his recent piece in the New York Times about how the leftist political culture on college campuses has sparked a reactionary shift for conservative students
• how college administrations are not only actively pushing a progressive social agenda, but also seeking to exclude conservative counter-opinions in the classroom and through student life programs
• how the size of university endowments has untethered the universities from traditional channels of accountability, and what can be done to rein in woke campus culture 

Texts Mentioned:

• “My Liberal Campus is Pushing Freethinkers to the Right” by Adam Hoffman
• “Boston College professor assigns students to make their own 'fursonas,' has furries come to class” by Kassy Dillon
• “Toward a Party of the State” by Gladden Pappin
• “The End of the English Major” by Nathan Heller
• “Do Ideas Have Consequences? Intellectual History and Conservative Strategy" video by Sam Goldman
• “Princeton University is the World’s First Perpetual Motion Machine” by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Princeton Tory, an ISI-sponsored Collegiate Network newspaper
• The Kalven Report

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In This Episode:

• William Ruger joins the podcast to discuss the war between Russia and Ukraine, how it came to be, and how America should respond
• why conservatives should take a “grand strategy” approach to foreign policy, global affairs, and the national interest
• how George Washington’s “Farewell Address” strikes the right balance for American foreign policy, and where we have departed from it today

Texts Mentioned:

• “Farewell Address" by George Washington
• Jay’s Treaty
• “The Conquest of the United States by Spain” by William Graham Sumner
• Madeleine Albright Interview with Matt Lauer
• “How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline” by Seymour Hersh
• A Student’s Guide to International Relations by Angelo Codevilla
• Monroe Doctrine
• The Tragedy of US Foreign Policy by Walter McDougall
• The Tragedy of Great Power Politics by John Mearsheimer
• Responsible Statecraft magazine

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In This Episode:

• Mark Tooley, President of the Institute for Religion and Democracy, joins the podcast to discuss “The New Whiggery,” the IRD’s new fellowship on the principles of classical liberalism and the American Founding
• what a Christian realism approach to foreign policy looks like
• how classical liberalism differs from conservatism, and why some right-leaning thinkers like Hayek wanted to eschew the term “conservative”

Texts Mentioned:

• Providence Magazine
• Plough Magazine
• The New Whiggery Fellowship
• “Thomas Aquinas, The First Whig” by Michael Novak
• The Englishman and His History by Herbert Butterfield
• “Why I Am Not a Conservative” by F.A. Hayek
• The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism by Michael Novak
• God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of Academic Freedom by William F. Buckley, Jr.
• “The New Whiggery” by Mark Tooley
• The Roots of American Order by Russell Kirk

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In This Episode:

• Chris Buskirk joins the podcast to talk about his new book, America and the Art of the Possible, about restoring “national vitality” and re-sparking the risk-taking, adventurous spirit that built America
• how financialization operates in the modern American economy and creates mismatched incentives that undermine widespread American prosperity
• why conservatism should focus less on ideological constructs and more on being practical and getting conservative outcomes like stronger family formation, higher life expectancy, and increasing total factor productivity

Texts Mentioned:

• America and the Art of the Possible: Restoring National Vitality in an Age of Decay by Chris Buskirk
• American Greatness: How Conservatism, Inc. Missed the 2016 Election and What the Establishment Needs to Learn by Chris Buskirk
• “Our Mission Statement” by William F. Buckley Jr.
• “I Had to Guard an Empty Room: The Rise of the Pointless Job” by David Graeber
• Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber

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In This Episode:

• Thomas West joins the podcast to discuss the political theory of the American Founding and its reliance on natural law and natural rights
• why students of the American Founding must read more public laws and state laws and constitutions to fully understand the Founding era
• how the Founders fit liberty and equality together in a truly coherent way 

Texts Mentioned:

• The Political Theory of the American Founding  by Thomas West
• The Declaration of Independence
• Virginia Declaration of Rights
• Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class and Justice in the Origins of America by Thomas West
• The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay
• The Constitution
• The Real American Founding: A Conversation course with David Azerrad and Thomas West

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 In This Episode:

• Gladden Pappin joins the podcast to discuss the conditions in modern Western political culture that have given rise to post-liberalism on the Right
• how Hungary draws on often-neglected parts of the Western political tradition as inspiration for their political order
• why the conservative movement needs to focus on family policy as a political lodestar in the post-Roe era

Texts Mentioned:

• Postliberal Order substack
• “Return to Normalcy” by Gladden Pappin
• “Make Birth Free” by Catherine Glenn Foster and Kristen Day
• Make Birth Free  white paper by Americans United for Life
• “Affirming the American Family” by Gladden Pappin and Maria Molla
• American Affairs journal
• Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered by Russell Kirk
• What is Conservatism? edited by Frank Meyer

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In This Episode:

• Fr. Ben Kiely joins the podcast to discuss his ministry of helping persecuted Christians in the Middle East with Nasarean.org 
• why social conservatism is an essential facet of any conservative worldview
• how nationalist politics is compatible with Catholicism and Catholicism’s approach to politics

Texts Mentioned:

• https://nasarean.org/
• Fr. Kiely’s speech at NatCon 3

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In This Episode:

• Paul Kengor joins the podcast to discuss the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and his contributions to philosophy and the Church in the Western world

Texts Mentioned:

• Dupes by Paul Kengor
• The Pope and the President by Paul Kengor
• The Divine Plan by Paul Kengor and Robert Orlando
• ISI Debate on Transgenderism and Womanhood - SIGN UP TODAY!
• Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI
• Catechism of the Catholic Church
• Fides et Ratio by St. Pope John Paul II
• Confessionsby St. Augustine
• Humanae Vitae by Pope Paul VI
• Evangelium Vitae by St. Pope John Paul II
• Veritatis Splendor by St. Pope John Paul II
• Commentary on the Third Secret of Fatima by Pope Benedict XVI
• “Vatican Preps for Conclave as ‘Pope is Dying’” by John Gizzi
• “Reversing the Dictatorship of Relativism: Remembering Pope Benedict XVI” by Paul Kengor
• “The Politically Incorrect Pope Francis — 14 Shocking Statements” by Paul Kengor
• Traditionis Custodes by Pope Francis
• Institute for Faith and Freedom

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In This Episode:

• Jon Askonas joins the podcast to discuss how a technological age makes conservative and traditional values obsolete, and how to overcome this problem
• why Karl Marx has to teach conservatives about analyzing and understanding “historical materialism,“ the fundamental material elements of society
• what really drove the disintegration of a shared conception of reality, and how to navigate the “post-real” world

Texts Mentioned:

• “Why Conservatism Failed” by Jon Askonas
• The Market and Other Orders by F.A. Hayek
• Ideas Have Consequences by Richard Weaver
• Revolt of the Public by Martin Gurri 
• “Reality: A Post-Mortem” by Jon Askonas

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