September 30, 2025 • 42 mins
In this episode, we welcome Josh Lewis, a CPA from Tulsa and former candidate for City Auditor. With more than a decade of experience auditing governments, Josh brings a practical, grounded perspective to politics and public life.
A graduate of College of the Ozarks—famously known as “Hard Work U”—Josh majored in accounting with a minor in Speech Communications, serving as president of the College Republicans. Inspired by thinkers like Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, and Thomas Sowell, he is deeply committed to exploring how conservatism can not only survive but thrive in the 21st century.
Josh shares how the conservative worldview offers solutions to challenges facing Millennials and the nation as a whole—revitalizing diverse subcultures, restoring civil society and institutions that give life meaning, and balancing liberty with order in both the individual and the community.
Together, we dive into classical conservatism, the radicalization of both political parties, and what it might take to move forward as a nation.
You can find out more about Josh Lewis on his website https://www.savingelephantsblog.com/
Josh Lewis on X https://x.com/svngelephants
Billy Dees on X https://x.com/BillyDees
A graduate of College of the Ozarks—famously known as “Hard Work U”—Josh majored in accounting with a minor in Speech Communications, serving as president of the College Republicans. Inspired by thinkers like Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, and Thomas Sowell, he is deeply committed to exploring how conservatism can not only survive but thrive in the 21st century.
Josh shares how the conservative worldview offers solutions to challenges facing Millennials and the nation as a whole—revitalizing diverse subcultures, restoring civil society and institutions that give life meaning, and balancing liberty with order in both the individual and the community.
Together, we dive into classical conservatism, the radicalization of both political parties, and what it might take to move forward as a nation.
You can find out more about Josh Lewis on his website https://www.savingelephantsblog.com/
Josh Lewis on X https://x.com/svngelephants
Billy Dees on X https://x.com/BillyDees
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You are listening to The Billy D's Podcast. All right, Well,
hello everyone, and welcome to The Billy D's Podcast. As always,
I am absolutely thrilled that you are here. If you've
never checked us out before, we are primarily an interview
(00:23):
and a commentary podcast with me on the studio line
is Josh Lewis. Josh, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Billy. It's good to be with you.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
It's a pleasure. And what we're going to talk about
today in a nutshell is conservatism, as in the political sense.
Josh has a podcast called The Saving Elephants. Just very
briefly tell us about that podcast. That show. It's primarily
to extol the virtues of being a conservative. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
In effect, as the name implies, I'm not referring to
actual elephants, I'm referring to the Republican Party. I'm trying
to tout the virtues of classical conservatism and hopes to
calling the party back to his classical roots.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Classical roots. That's a that's a good place to go.
The uh. I kind of feel that the term conservative
and and as far as liberals in the classic sense
by today's standards, has really changed into something that they're not.
Kennedy in the classic sense as a progressive, Ronald Reagan
(01:30):
in the classic case as a conservative. Neither one of
them would qualify for their parties today. That's just that's
just the truth. You have to be crazy, I guess,
for lack of a better term, to win votes. And
that's something that really concerns me. And I'll get into
that with you. Let's set the baseline here, what is
(01:54):
conservatism in a nutshell? What are what are the core principles?
And you you may some of the patron saints of
conservatism here, you know, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, Frank Meyer,
all those people. What's the baseline of principles that you're
shooting for with classic conservatism.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
That's an excellent question, one that's very difficult to summarize.
People far smarter than I have have attempted, and my
view failed to come up with a definition everyone can
agree on. But I'm going to pull from a couple
of those individuals. Russell Kirk, you remember, says that conservatism
begins with a disposition, it's not a political ideology. And
others such as Roger Scrutin have fleshed that out. Abraham
Lincoln even said it's the trusting the devil you know
(02:34):
to the devil you don't know. Roger Scruton talks about
it being this feeling most people have, which is that
the good things we're given in life can easily be
taken from us, and so we need to preserve them.
We need to be careful, we need to conserve them
if you will. That is a sentiment. It's not a
political system. It starts with this notion of gratitude, starts
with the notion that things are fragile. It starts with
(02:56):
the idea that maybe life doesn't have solutions but has
trade offs, so maybe we need to be considering all
angles and not reduce everything to a political program. From that,
of course, you can build a very complex program of safe,
free enterprise, of foreign policy, of domestic policy. But it
begins with that sentiment. It's not the same as liberalism
(03:16):
or socialism or Marxism that has some sort of universal
higher principles. It's rather one that says, maybe our politics
can't be just written down in some book and we
completely understand it. Maybe we're kind of searching in the
dark for things and what we ought to do is
approach life with humility, with gratitude, with caution, and from
(03:36):
that we can develop a working political solution.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Very good, that's excellent what I talked about earlier, reaching people.
What you just described to me as a very reasonable
we'd call it philosophy, not necessarily a political ideology, but
it's just a good way to go about life in general.
And that's not to say you don't take on progress
ideas and things like that. That's all part of how
(04:02):
we evaluate things. Sometimes you need change, right, But I
do feel that in the last five years in particular,
like you're I'm going to go out on a limb
here and say, you're pretty young compared to me. I
can remember. I can remember, okay, when Ronald Reagan was
you know, he won in the Landside in nineteen eighty four.
(04:24):
I think every state was redd except one. And the
prevailing wisdom was that you had a conservative ideal, and
then you had Tip O'Neil in Congress, and those two
guys butted out things, and by contrasting ideas, by working
(04:44):
things out, they came up with a better solution than
neither than either of them would have had on their own.
And really to an extent that was still alive in
the nineteen nineties with Bill Clinton and Nuke Gangridge, that
there was still people who agreed that up was up,
down was and they lived in the same universe, playing
(05:04):
by the same rules of how things work. Now, I
feel and it's in the public, and it's in the
politics as well, it's in the politicians. Everybody now not
only has a right to their own opinion, but they
have a right to their own reality. There is no
debate now you I've I've tried, and I'm going to
(05:27):
say that the need of the crazy meter, the needle
goes in the red more on the left than it
does on the right. Now, that's not to say there's
some there isn't some fart right up people out there.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
There are plenty of nuts on both sides.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, there's plenty of nuts on both sides that neither
one of them have a corner in the market there.
But it's impossible to reason with them because you can't
even agree agree on the most basic things. And I
you know, the founding fathers, you talk about them a lot,
A lot of the safeguards that we have without getting
(05:59):
into ida, I don't want to go on here, But
just to set the premise for what I'm about to say.
The electoral college, for example, you know, a lot of
people feel that that gives small areas, you know, better
representation as opposed to a densely populated area, and that
is true, that does work that way, but it's really
a safeguard, you know. The idea was is that the
(06:20):
founding fathers knew that the collective wisdom of the country
couldn't be trusted, not throughout the centuries. Sooner or later
you were going to have a collective wisdom problem. And
that's the problem with a pure democracy, quite frankly, is
the lines between a democracy and mob rule are very thin.
And they always said that the wisdom of the people,
an educated populace, and that means people that know what
(06:44):
going on and know what's going on, isn't a starting school,
is the most valuable safeguard to democracy. For the first
time in my life, and I was around when everybody
was worried about Reagan starting World War three and all that,
and I just kind of knew it wasn't going to happen.
But the first time in my life, I kind of
feel that the collective wisdom of the country is on
(07:05):
shaky ground. How do you feel about that.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
I feel like it's difficult to measure. It's hard to
know what moment are you in now. I think the
way you've laid this out, as far as like the
ability to work across party lines during the Reagan administration,
even during the Clinton administration, obviously something is substantially different
today than what it used to be. Thank god, most
people don't seem to actually believe their own rhetoric. If
(07:31):
they did, I think we'd be at a civil war
at this point if they If you have all these
ideas in a natural conclusion, so it's almost like there
was this anger and vitriol, but it's I don't want
to say limited to, but largely limited to the keyboard
rather than our real day to day lives. Although we
do see that hatred and violence can't spill over. You
made an interesting statement there where you talk about shared reality,
(07:53):
right that maybe that's part of the route, And I
do think that's part of the root of the problem,
is do we have a shared reality. Our founding fathers,
in my opinion, were of the belief that what they've
given us is a very difficult project to hold together
the American Republic. It's not impossible. It just requires some work.
As you mentioned, an educated public, those who take the
(08:13):
time to educate themselves. I would even say, if you're
going to have a system of self government, the first
requirement is that the self governs themselves. Right, we have
to have a group of people out there willing to
govern themselves. It's not just education, it's also those small
are republican virtues. I think part of what we are
seeing here is the very natural course of human nature.
(08:34):
If you give freedom to most people, Unfortunately, they don't
hold together very well. They tend to fall back on
the old rules of tribal politics, of well, my side
needs to get its side or your side needs to
get its crumuppins in this sort of brinksmanship. We're not
completely there, we haven't fallen apart, but we're seeing that
ugliness emerge more so than maybe we had in the past.
(08:55):
And part of that is this notion that we don't
share reality. Now. I know that they are very forms,
mostly on the left, that actually tout this as a
good thing, moral relativism. Who is the speak my truth
as if I get a monopoly on my truth and
you have your own truth. But to be honest, this
is something that I think goes far beyond the left,
(09:17):
and it's almost all of us. It's not as common
on the right for you to hear people talk about
moral relativism or these views. But what you will hear
is individuals who say, look, I can't trust your sources
of information. I have to trust my sources of information.
So what do you do in a world in which
part of the country listens to Fox News, the other
on MSNBC. Part of them are listening to a radical
(09:40):
version of the left or the right, or some moderated one.
What do you do in a world in which no
one can we can no longer agree on It's not
that we think reality is up for grabs, it's that
we don't trust those sharing say reality with us. This
is human nature, This is common and it's something that
I think you have to go back to the founding
f formulas. Unfortunately, of as John Adams said, and I'm
(10:03):
not going to say nearly as adequately or eloquently say
that it requires a moral and a just citizenry. That
is not something you solve via politics. Unfortunately, there is
no program, there's no bill we can pass to fix that.
That is a problem of the soul. That's a problem
of the breakdown of community. There are things that can
(10:23):
be done about it. It's not hopeless, but I think
it is needful. We recognize if we're going to live
in a republic, it requires a certain amount of responsibility
of us educating ourselves, of us exercising restraint where we
need to have us investing time in what does this
great project mean. It's not hopeless. It can be done.
(10:45):
And I don't want to stray too far from your question,
but I guess that's where my mind goes when you ask, yeah,
things are bad. I do think they're bad. I don't
yet know that they're hopeless.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah, I wouldn't say hopeless, but let's just say there's
an area of concern on my part. Sure, I was
always pretty confident that you know, through the years. I
got to say, historically, if you look at what you know,
especially from World War Two up to now, this country
has been through a lot, but there's always been a
sense of stability. There's always been a common sense foundation
(11:19):
that everybody kind of sat on. And here again, the
bending of reality is is what concerns me. I mean,
even during almost trouble times during the nineteen sixties, we
all agreed that we were in the same universe, playing
by the same rules of physics, so to speak. And
I'm not sure that's the case anymore. And a good
case in point is this Charter Kirk, that horrible assassination.
(11:43):
And I'm not particularly a religious person. I didn't follow
him that closely. I would monitor him when a big
news event broke and he would be giving his opinion
or something. He is I kind of follow like Matt
tyeebe people like that. I don't really Charlie Kirk, quite frankly,
came with a lot of preaching that I just didn't
resonate with me. However, I was shocked.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Also, as we might have established earlier in the wrong
age of bracket, to be following Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Well, it depends. It depends he.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Had his older crowd, but I'm saying he was predominantly
it had. It was impact on young Americans.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Yes, absolutely, and I think a lot of that was because,
quite frankly, a lot of college students in this day
these days, and I work with a lot of them,
simply are not exposed to those ideas, okay, And because
the college campuses have become I don't want to say censored,
but they've been controlled environments. They've become controlled environments, and
there's there's one point of view that generally prevails. And
(12:41):
it wasn't like that when I went to school. It
wasn't like that. But getting back to the to what
happened with Charlie Kirk, I think that the assassination shocked me.
It's sad in me. Uh, that one hit me. And
I've heard a lot of people say that for whatever reason,
that one, that one, that one really bothered me. Uh,
But there was more than a few. I've heard people
(13:03):
dismiss this as saying, well, it wasn't as many as
you think. There were a lot of people who celebrated
online and very publicly too. A lot of them were
out in public areas. A lot of the vigils that
were held for Charlie Kirk were disturbed. You know. Here again,
I'm of a certain age. I remember when Reagan was shot,
(13:25):
and when I went to high school, I didn't really
hear any horribly disparaging comments like I'm glad it happened
or anything like I really didn't hear it. I was
way too small for Martin Luther King. I was probably
just a couple of years old. I'm sure that it happened,
and it probably happened in quiet bars, behind the closed doors,
(13:46):
where people said yeah great, but it wasn't so public.
Same with JFK. I'm sure he had his detractors. I'm
sure a lot of people really didn't cry for him,
but the shameless public display. I did a real of
it on my last podcast where one guy was actually
talking to the family and said, hey, how was it
(14:06):
watching him with his blood squirting out? And he had
this real maniacal laugh. I'm going to say thousands, certainly
thousands upon thousands of these, and I would be I
would venture to say that if nine to eleven happened today,
there would probably be people celebrating it or saying we
deserved it or whatever. Just to some degree. That kind
(14:31):
of disregard for human life, the idea that someone who
speaks against your beliefs should be celebrated when they pass
this is new, I don't I know. People say, well,
people always did that before, they just didn't have social media,
know they didn't. I was around here again in high school.
(14:54):
I didn't hear that when Reagan got shot. It just
didn't I'm here again. I'm sure there was somebody somewhere,
but there weren't people while we were in gym Glass
laughing about it or saying I'm glad it happened. It
just didn't happen. What's your take from a conservative standpoint? What?
I'm sure social media is a factor. Break down to
(15:15):
the family's a factor, But I don't know that that
explains the bloodlust that I was seeing. It was a bloodlust,
is the best way I can describe it. Does that
disturb you at all? Do you have an opinion about it?
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, I would hope it would disturb us all. Obviously
doesn't disturb everyone because some people are celebrating it. Look,
let me just lay my cards on the table and
say up front, I was not a fan of Charlie Kirk.
That is not the same saying I celebrated in any
way the fact he was shot, and a lot of
people have pointed out some things I think is entirely true,
(15:51):
which was good on Charlie Kirk for consistently standing up
and trying to have arguments with people. I mean, and
that's a wonderful thing to do. Now, when I say
it wasn't fan of is he did so in a
way that, in my view, was less about trying to
win converts or at least speak directly to those individuals,
and tended to antagonize more. And it was good for
getting clickbaits on YouTube, and he did very well. And
(16:13):
you are correct, I think in so doing, I think
he did help a certain amount of a young Americans
who felt alienated from the predominance, say liberal culture, feel like, well, hey,
here's somebody standing up for me. So that's not of
no value. I don't mean to apply that at all,
I guess I simply mean I would prefer he had
found a different method, or that we lived in a
world in which someone doing that would not have to
be so successful, because you know, there weren't that many
(16:35):
on the right austracized. But all that being said, yes,
from top to bottom, everything about this was disturbing. Doesn't
begin to cover it. I mean, he was murdered. Not
that this makes it okay, but it We're used to
seeing these happen with politicians or with individuals who the
(16:55):
murderer themselves are just mentally deranged. And maybe Charlie's murder
was in a certain sense. This is the closest though,
in my opinion, we've seen an actual politically motivated murder
that this individual does not seem to have had a
you know, have fallen down some vast radicalized hole. But
just as he said himself, he couldn't stand the hate anymore.
And in terms of you know, the person that murdered
(17:16):
Charlie Kirk is one person. What you're asking about, which
is something I'm far more concerned about, is how many
out there who would never pull the trigger have in
their heart this was a good thing. I celebrate this,
even if they don't say it. How many people are like, yeah,
but I'm glad he's dead and one thing that and
I know where people are coming from when they say this,
but I feel like I need to push back. It
(17:37):
is good to point out that Charlie Kirk left behind
a wife and kids, but I desire to live in
a world that even if Charlie Kirk was an orphan,
had no wife, had no kids, we would still say
what a horrible thing that someone was murdered publicly just
for voicing his opinion. Even if I didn't have to
agree with it, and I think Kirk has become an
avatar for sort of this moment that we're in in
(17:58):
which everything gets reduced to red versus blue, left versus right,
and we hear this, look I'm by no, don't get
me wrong. I'm not trying to equate what happened to
Kirk to other rhetoric we hear from some other people.
But just to give you an example, Donald Trump himself,
when running for office, made comments to the effect of, look,
they're coming after me via law fair because I'm standing
(18:19):
in the way. If they weren't coming after me, they
would come after you. Well that may be true in
some sort of a sense, but I don't think most
of the left has in their heart we need to
just lock up everyone on the right. There is a
difference of kind between Trump. We hear this same rhetoric
from the left that it says Charlie Kirk became an
avatar of someone who is racist. That's the excuse, right,
(18:41):
because he held racist believes in his heart, which incidentally,
I don't think is true. We could talk about that
for an hour, but let's just assume it was true.
Let's assume the guy was a complete racist that somehow
his existence that eliminating Charlie Kirk is in some way
making this world a better place. I do hope that
some of this is the stupidity of social media. You know,
(19:01):
I'm looking at you as you're a screen. To me,
there's something about the human brain that makes me forget occasionally. Wait,
Billy Deese is a human. You're not just some picture
on a screen. There's something I do hope that part
of this is a matter if people just have lost
their ability to adapt to the humanity situation just because
we're screens. But even I agree with you, even if
(19:23):
you take that away, there's just something fundamentally wrong with
a culture that has a I will call it a
sizeable minority that vocally celebrates this sort of thing. Every
time there's been a tragedy, some idiot has celebrated it.
But this just seems so we've crossed a line somehow.
(19:45):
And granted, you know, most elected Democrats say have rightly
condemned it. Maybe they'll do so in words that I
don't particularly appreciate. But you don't have too many true
thought leaders. But you have some sort of critical mass
that it looks like we're moving in a direction that
I don't like. It looks like, you know, we keep
talking about this, how many more school shootings? You know,
how much more of this can we tolerate? And some
(20:07):
other threshold we could cross is that we may be
moving into a world where we're just having to tolerate
the fact that a sizeable number of Americans celebrate when
you know air quotes, the other side is mercilessly murdered. Yep.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Here again. That was that was what shocked me. The
assassination was bad enough, but the to me sizeable negative
and not just negative, but I mean celebratory bloodlust was
pretty shaking for me. Okay, we talk about the founding
fathers and you know, Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley, these
(20:45):
are the pillars of conservatism today. I'm going to say,
let's say with the Democrats, one of the things one
of my biggest episodes last year from a marketing standpoint
out why the Democrats were destined to lose. That's the
one that Keith Olberman blocked me on. I got some
(21:09):
national tension and I drew the ire of some well
known figures, and he was one. Okay, I wasn't being mean.
They didn't have a candidate and they didn't have a message.
And that's still the case for the Democrats right now.
Right now the Republicans, they you know, obviously Trump has
a personality. For sure, there's the MAGA message. I don't
(21:33):
know that a lot of the things that are going
on are necessarily conservative. For example, sending troops into states.
My opinion, I can understand sending troops into Washington, d C.
That's not a state. If you're a true conservative, I'm
going to say states rights are pretty important to you.
I don't know that sending the troops in when they're
not wanted to a state is a conservative ideal. That's
(21:54):
my opinion. Are there conservative figure years out there that
you would look to as the modern pillars of conservatism.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
There's not a lot in elected office, and that's very discouraging.
We live in a time that for reasons that we
get to spend a long time talking about, so I
won't dive into that right now. Our system does not
seem to reward and I don't want to say conservative,
I'm going to call it prudential leadership those who approach
it as or rather, it seems to award those who
(22:32):
vest more money in their comms team and owning the
other side rather than actually trying to resolve real issues.
Those people do exist, though, and one of the things
I love about my podcast and that does continue to
give me hope, is I have had the great joy
and pleasure of having my heroes on here. You've all
of them who I personally consider to be the greatest
(22:54):
conservative intellectual alive today, unless maybe we could count Thomas
soul He's in his nineties, but he's still trucking. Joanah Goldberg,
who's a great communicator. Mitch Daniels, former governor of Indiana,
who I wished had been president, we would be on
a better course. These are incredible individuals. I've also had
on here people that if I cited their names, I
(23:16):
guarantee you would have never heard of them. They're nobody special,
but they are some of the most erudite and brilliant
and thoughtful and carrying people you have ever met. And
they're out there, and so I think it's While I
do think it's important to answer your question, I also
think it's important I set that base that, look, this
country is not short on individuals who are behaving themselves
(23:39):
in an appropriate manner. Just the system isn't such that
we're rising to the four. But yeah, I think I
like former Senator Ben Sas, I like Mitch Daniels, neither
of which seem to be viable candidates at the moment.
There's a long list of people I could tolerate, you know,
say that I would say, I think they would make
a decent leader, even though I have some things against them.
But to me, those are sort of of the it's unfortunate,
(24:01):
those are sort of the leaders of yesterday, if you will,
that are still there, but not really at the four.
Within the Republican Party, in the conservative movement.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
You mentioned that you kind of had an echo of
what Nixon referred to as the silent majority. Yeah, I
know you have a lot of faith in the people
that aren't seen, you know, the people that aren't protesting
or raising a ruckus or saying all kinds of crazy
things online. How confident are you in that that there
(24:32):
there's there's a there's a good baseline of people that
there that have common sense, that have basic values. And
we're not talking about real crazy, high moralistic people, just
people that have common sense, you know, appreciate the dignity
and safety and respect other people, you know, those kind
of things. Are you pretty confident that we're that there's
a lot of people out there that were still the
(24:53):
silent majority.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
I think that's a fair way to summarize it. I mean, again,
this is one of those you're asking me really good
questions that I don't know that I have like a
you know, eighty percent confidence right in if you will,
it's I think, Well, I'll put it this way. I
think there is the potential for latent moral civic behavior
(25:15):
within the American people always has been. I think we
have always shown the capacity to rise up to the occasion. Now,
maybe someday we won't, God forbid, but you know it,
who knew that the generations went through World War Two,
or the Great Depression of the First World War or
the Civil War were capable of doing what they did.
They probably didn't know they were capable of that until
put to the test. And so I don't want to
(25:37):
discount the American people in a sense that a nation
state such as ours has been gifted with this much
liberty and has shown this much capacity to do so
many creative good things with it, is capable, you know,
I think it takes a Reagan type figure sometimes to
call us out as the city on a hill who
to unleash the ingenuity to give us almost permission to
(26:02):
rise to our better angels. Calvin Coolidge, maybe a greater
conservative president, lived in an age of excess and was
consistently calling Americans to rise above, you know, to embrace
their better angels. If you will, I do think that
and direct answer your question, Yes, those people are out there,
but my greater hope is not so much on there
are certain percentage of the population, but rather we have
(26:23):
the capacity as free individuals to behave seemly. You know,
we ought to be challenged to do so, because that
that is a better way to live.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Yes, I'll ask you just one more.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Maybe.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
I know there's no right or wrong answer. This is
just probing for a perspective. There's no way to test
for this. In the past, years ago, I was a
lot more critical of the religious right than I am now.
And you know, the idea of imposing morals on voting.
I was always very kind, very weary of politicians who
(27:00):
stood up and said after they won an election that
God has just spoken. You know, that's that's getting into
territory there where, you know, insinuating that there was divine
providence in an election is kind of why the founding
father said, don't do that. But I got to tell
you I've softened my tone a little bit on it.
(27:21):
I'll tell you why with the anti religious sentiment that
has been prevalent. For example, you can talk about any
number of sexual proclivities in a schoolroom, but you don't
dare mention Jesus as even a historical figure. And here again,
(27:41):
I'm not a religious person. That's not where I'm going
at with this. But I actually went to Catholic school
grade school. I went to public school for high school,
and that was back in the nineteen seventies. And there
were parishes. You know, there was like the you know,
Saint Joseph's and all those kind of things were, you know,
(28:02):
the the Italian parish, and there was the Polish and
the Slovakian one, and then there was you know, the
Cubans and so on and so forth. And they when
somebody died or there was a death in the family
or tragedy, everybody pulled together, you know, they brought food over,
and there was this and that, and I with the
(28:25):
disappearance of that, with the disappearance of the churches, with
the disappearance of those values, I'm starting to notice now
that it hasn't been replaced with anything. We are in
a lot of ways morally devoid. The celebrations of the
(28:45):
online assassination is an example, but that's most of the
things that come to mind for me are more subtle
than that. There is no clear right or wrong anymore.
It really depends on what the circumstances were, what happened
to him during your childhood. There's all kinds of excuses
(29:07):
about how society may have influenced this person. There's never
I never hear a democrat say criminals are bad, they
cannot stay it imp from your I know your younger
person than I. You probably didn't see this evolve. But
we're in a situation now where people have a hard
(29:29):
time determining what right and wrong is without a bunch
of other factors thrown in. It's who done what to whom.
For me, a given action is either right or wrong.
It doesn't matter who the participants are, who the perpetrator is,
who the victim is. The action is either right or wrong.
From a conservative standpoint, which does rely a certain amount
(29:51):
of faith. That's not necessarily a rule to be a
conservative that you have to be religious. But I think
there is a principled set of values that are very
traditional in conservatism. Those values have erote it, family structure,
so on and so forth. Is there a way that
politically you can even correct that. I don't know that
(30:12):
you can.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
I don't know. My suspicion is because I'm I'm I'm
not a hard no say libertarian some of these respects.
I think that certain policies can be done to where
at the margin will in fact have some sort of
a positive benefit on our moral fibers. Say, I just
think that it's it would be nuts to suggest that's
(30:38):
the solution for get us out of this mess. So sure,
let's have those conversations with the margin. But I think
we need to recognize if we're talking about moral rot,
that's not a policy issue, that's not a that's not
something that we can devise a And the reason I
say it's not a policy issue, it's not a collectivist problem.
It's an individual problem. We have to minister to the
(30:59):
end visual human For the sake of putting my cards
on the table, I am religious. I am a Christian,
I too, incidentally fear as you sort of opened up
there saying those who pronounce some sort of divine message
from God as not only being not necessarily trustworthy, but
certainly no one I want anywhere near the intellected office.
(31:23):
Maybe some of them could do some good. I don't know,
but I would say, and I think sometimes the way
we get tangled up here is I am a social
conservative too, which means I very much think it's necessary
for there to be a cohesive social structure within society.
I'm just a little wary that the government can get
us there and so things. As you had mentioned, the church, yes,
is necessary, It's conceivably possible it something other than just
(31:47):
religion can knit communities together. But my take is, if
we're going to hold together as a free people, let's
throw everything we can at the wall. Or you know,
we need our religion. We need, as Robert Putnam put it,
we you know this is his a direct quote, but
we need bowling leagues. We need people to be parts
(32:08):
of communities and institutions and groups that give them not
only a sense of valiant purpose, but also a sense
of responsibilities. And you know that they they have others
looking up to them and people expecting things of them.
Certainly religion does a good job of that. As you
mentioned your community, you know it has a sense of
let's come together here. Here's part of the problem here
is we human beings can only have so many true friends.
(32:31):
I don't know you personally, but maybe we could find
something we connect on, some ideology, some religion, some philosophy,
some certain way of looking at the world. Well, now
I'm connected to you. Now, now I can feel some
sort of a you know, a positivity to you that
maybe I couldn't of earlier. And the more of those
things we have, the more we can behave with virtue.
I don't again, to be clear, I speaking as a Christian,
(32:54):
I don't think that the Christian there's a certain level
of say, Christian nationalism that I I the test these days,
because I don't think it is Christian or American. But
I understand where they're coming from. I get the idea
that you look around you and you see, hey, the
world's falling apart. People are celebrating Charlie kirkut shot in
the neck. Maybe we need a more strong hand of
the state to put things back together, and I just
(33:16):
doubt that the state itself could do that, even though
I'm open to again on the margins, maybe we could
make some progress.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Sure, I'll wrap things up with this. You're a young guy,
extremely intelligent. I'm not trying to compliment you. Very well spoken.
You know, I don't doubt you have a bright future
ahead of you. What would be your message of hope
for the future moving forward, not only to young people
but to people in general. I know a lot of
(33:43):
people are really scared about the future. They're worried about war,
They're worried about the unspeakable acts of violence which seem
to happen almost every day now. I can remember back
in the nineteen eighties. Again, there was a horrible shooting
at a McDonald's in the nineteen eighties, and that shocked
the nation. Some guy came and there was one photograph
(34:03):
in particular of a child draped over a bicycle that
was just absolutely shocking at the time. Now it seems
it's a daily occurrence, and I've had here again. I've
had people tell me what that always happened. We just
didn't know about it, No, it didn't. I was around
back then, we didn't have to have security guards at
the door of every school. We didn't have that. It
(34:27):
just I mean, I'm sure there was violence, but nothing
like it is today. Do you have a hopeful outlook
for the future in our society.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
I do, and I think and hope is not, in
my view, optimism necessarily. I don't believe as a matter
of faith, things are going to get better. I just
hope that they do. And I think it's entirely possible.
And I think we have a matter a sense of
agency in that we have something we can contribute to
that great project. I also think, and again here speaking
as a Christian, that within God's providence, even if we
(35:00):
live through one of those very difficult times, there is
still purpose and meaning and we can ote for a
brighter future, and even if we aren't here alive to
see it. But I think all of reality is so
difficult to fit into your head. I agree with everything
you just said about the rise of violence. There is
a certain hopelessness, a certain malaise understandably that is come
(35:20):
into the nation. That being said, there's also other ways
of looking at things to where if we could somehow,
you know, resurrect from the grave our ancestors from hundreds
of years ago, thousands of years ago. I suspect there
are certain ways in which they would look around and say,
why would you not be hopeful? Just bear in mind
(35:41):
certain things such as we have come closer to eliminating
poverty on this planet than any other time, and the
entire human race, the degree of material gain, the ability
to reduce disease, to spread, the ability to freedom has
spread to a larger degree than any any other time
in human race. Now I know it's dipped wax and Wayne,
(36:02):
I'm not saying things are perfect, certainly not saying they're
look like they're heading in a good direction. But we
have in a sense hit the pinnacle of human experience
in terms of again speaking as a species, as human beings,
material wealth, of reducing poverty, of reducing infant mortality, of disease.
My god, what wonderful things to hope for. Look what
(36:25):
life we have that what era would we have preferred
to have been born into? Hundreds of years or if
you've got to cut, you could be dead within a week.
And so I think there is a need for that
sort of perspective that yes, there are bad things, and
there is reason that things think, could you know, there's
reason to believe things can get worse. But on a
(36:46):
whole we have been given such a wonderful opportunity that
most humans never have, and for that reason alone, I
think we are obliged to be hopeful.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yes, are you as a Christian and a can conservative?
Again in personal opinion, no right or wrong answer? Is
AI going to help us or hurt us? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (37:11):
No, I think the answer to that question is yes,
And I think that AI is. It's we don't really
know how seismic this is going to be. I mean,
it's probably it's obviously going to be seismic, we just
don't know to what degree. I suspect it's going to
be the same as almost any other invention, which is
that we're going to radically over predict the ways in
(37:32):
which is going to change everything and then completely miss
the ways in which it does in fact change everything.
And if you asked as a Christian a conservative, I
love you phrased it that way. O. C. S. Lewis
in his book The Abolish and the Man that points
out that bottom line is we're still stuck in human nature.
Every invention we ever come up with is some attempt
(37:53):
to exert power over nature. We can't fly, so let's
build an airplane. Right, we have kids, when we have sex,
let's invent contraceptions to kind of control. We're always trying
to control nature. But we are part of nature. I
have a human nature. I have base desires that are
not good for me and not good for you that
I'm always warring against. And no matter how clever we
get with our inventions, it doesn't change that basic fact.
(38:14):
So everything is going to be at some simultaneous level
good and bad for us.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Yes, I'm with you on that. I think that's a
great point. I know a lot of the science fiction
stories where a computer is going to take over the earth.
I'm going to say that that's pretty far reaching. I
don't believe that's going to happen. However, not impossible, but
I don't believe it's going to happen. I think it's
going to be more subtle, and it's already started. You know,
something as simple as asking chat GPT to help you
(38:42):
edit a letter or something like that is fine. But
it's growing and people are asking it about health problems,
they're asking it about relationship problems, they're asking it about
things like this, and you know, getting back to getting
back to the absence of faith, the people relying on
artificial means, and I think their behavior is going to
(39:03):
be guided by artificial intelligence, and consequently their behavior is
going to become artificial. And that's something that doesn't happen
in one day. That this is like the old analogy
of sitting in hot water. You don't realize it's getting hot.
And I think it's going to come to a boil
in a couple of years and we're already going to
be sitting in it. That is that is my fear.
(39:25):
It's going to be just subtle adaptation of technology to
make your decisions in your life.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
I think the speaking as both a Christian and Conservative, well,
I got to say in this sense as a Conservative,
that is the value I think conservatism really brings to
us is it is, in a sense, a continuous project
to try to find the eternal in a sea of change.
And what a world of change we live in. And
change is good changes, innovative change brings all kinds of prosperity.
(39:55):
But coupled with change, we've got to find a way
to say, but what is eternal? And if you can
do those two things, I think, come what may, when
something like AI comes up, it will end up being
more of benefit than a detriment.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Well, let's hope that's a good that's a good note
to end on. We're talking to Josh Lewis. The podcast
he has is called Saving Elephants, a reference to the
Republican Party. Where can people find your podcast? And where
can they find you online?
Speaker 2 (40:24):
If you look at a podcast platform, you could probably
find me, just with Saving Elephants. If you google me,
there's too many people trying to save elephants, so you're
gonna have to uh the website of Saving Elephants blog
dot com, or if you google Saving Elephants Josh Lewis
or Saving Elephants Conservatism, you could probably find me.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Awesome. That is fantastic, Josh. Absolute pleasure talking to you.
You enjoy I could listen to you for a long time.
You're gonna I can understand why why you're a podcaster,
because you're just fantastic speaker. It's been a joy to
listen to you. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
No Billy Pleasures online.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Okay, I'm Billy D's UH podcast has been around over
ten years now in its current form, really easy to
find the abilities podcasts. You can find us on any
major podcast platform. We are on all of them. As
far as social media goes, kind of my social media
home is still X, which is the old Twitter. There's
the trending aspect, the real time aspect of it is
(41:19):
just something that goes together with podcasting hand in hand.
You can always find me there and there's links in
the bio if you want to find me elsewhere, Facebook,
what have you. But X is kind of like my
social media home. Thank you very much for listening to
our program today. As always you listening is so important
to us and so appreciate it. Thank you so much,
(41:40):
and we will talk to you again very very soon.
I'm Billy D's and host of the self titled podcast,
The Billy d'es Podcast. We are primarily an interview and
a commentary based podcast featuring authors and creators talking about
their advocates for community issues, and myself in an array
(42:04):
of co host discussing current events. There's no partisan renting
and raving going on here, just great content. You can
find The Billy D's Podcast on your favorite platform and
on Twitter at Billy d's thank you, and I hope
you listen in
You are listening to The Billy D's Podcast. All right, Well,
hello everyone, and welcome to The Billy D's Podcast. As always,
I am absolutely thrilled that you are here. If you've
never checked us out before, we are primarily an interview
(00:23):
and a commentary podcast with me on the studio line
is Josh Lewis. Josh, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Billy. It's good to be with you.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
It's a pleasure. And what we're going to talk about
today in a nutshell is conservatism, as in the political sense.
Josh has a podcast called The Saving Elephants. Just very
briefly tell us about that podcast. That show. It's primarily
to extol the virtues of being a conservative. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
In effect, as the name implies, I'm not referring to
actual elephants, I'm referring to the Republican Party. I'm trying
to tout the virtues of classical conservatism and hopes to
calling the party back to his classical roots.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Classical roots. That's a that's a good place to go.
The uh. I kind of feel that the term conservative
and and as far as liberals in the classic sense
by today's standards, has really changed into something that they're not.
Kennedy in the classic sense as a progressive, Ronald Reagan
(01:30):
in the classic case as a conservative. Neither one of
them would qualify for their parties today. That's just that's
just the truth. You have to be crazy, I guess,
for lack of a better term, to win votes. And
that's something that really concerns me. And I'll get into
that with you. Let's set the baseline here, what is
(01:54):
conservatism in a nutshell? What are what are the core principles?
And you you may some of the patron saints of
conservatism here, you know, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, Frank Meyer,
all those people. What's the baseline of principles that you're
shooting for with classic conservatism.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
That's an excellent question, one that's very difficult to summarize.
People far smarter than I have have attempted, and my
view failed to come up with a definition everyone can
agree on. But I'm going to pull from a couple
of those individuals. Russell Kirk, you remember, says that conservatism
begins with a disposition, it's not a political ideology. And
others such as Roger Scrutin have fleshed that out. Abraham
Lincoln even said it's the trusting the devil you know
(02:34):
to the devil you don't know. Roger Scruton talks about
it being this feeling most people have, which is that
the good things we're given in life can easily be
taken from us, and so we need to preserve them.
We need to be careful, we need to conserve them
if you will. That is a sentiment. It's not a
political system. It starts with this notion of gratitude, starts
with the notion that things are fragile. It starts with
(02:56):
the idea that maybe life doesn't have solutions but has
trade offs, so maybe we need to be considering all
angles and not reduce everything to a political program. From that,
of course, you can build a very complex program of safe,
free enterprise, of foreign policy, of domestic policy. But it
begins with that sentiment. It's not the same as liberalism
(03:16):
or socialism or Marxism that has some sort of universal
higher principles. It's rather one that says, maybe our politics
can't be just written down in some book and we
completely understand it. Maybe we're kind of searching in the
dark for things and what we ought to do is
approach life with humility, with gratitude, with caution, and from
(03:36):
that we can develop a working political solution.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Very good, that's excellent what I talked about earlier, reaching people.
What you just described to me as a very reasonable
we'd call it philosophy, not necessarily a political ideology, but
it's just a good way to go about life in general.
And that's not to say you don't take on progress
ideas and things like that. That's all part of how
(04:02):
we evaluate things. Sometimes you need change, right, But I
do feel that in the last five years in particular,
like you're I'm going to go out on a limb
here and say, you're pretty young compared to me. I
can remember. I can remember, okay, when Ronald Reagan was
you know, he won in the Landside in nineteen eighty four.
(04:24):
I think every state was redd except one. And the
prevailing wisdom was that you had a conservative ideal, and
then you had Tip O'Neil in Congress, and those two
guys butted out things, and by contrasting ideas, by working
(04:44):
things out, they came up with a better solution than
neither than either of them would have had on their own.
And really to an extent that was still alive in
the nineteen nineties with Bill Clinton and Nuke Gangridge, that
there was still people who agreed that up was up,
down was and they lived in the same universe, playing
(05:04):
by the same rules of how things work. Now, I
feel and it's in the public, and it's in the
politics as well, it's in the politicians. Everybody now not
only has a right to their own opinion, but they
have a right to their own reality. There is no
debate now you I've I've tried, and I'm going to
(05:27):
say that the need of the crazy meter, the needle
goes in the red more on the left than it
does on the right. Now, that's not to say there's
some there isn't some fart right up people out there.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
There are plenty of nuts on both sides.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, there's plenty of nuts on both sides that neither
one of them have a corner in the market there.
But it's impossible to reason with them because you can't
even agree agree on the most basic things. And I
you know, the founding fathers, you talk about them a lot,
A lot of the safeguards that we have without getting
(05:59):
into ida, I don't want to go on here, But
just to set the premise for what I'm about to say.
The electoral college, for example, you know, a lot of
people feel that that gives small areas, you know, better
representation as opposed to a densely populated area, and that
is true, that does work that way, but it's really
a safeguard, you know. The idea was is that the
(06:20):
founding fathers knew that the collective wisdom of the country
couldn't be trusted, not throughout the centuries. Sooner or later
you were going to have a collective wisdom problem. And
that's the problem with a pure democracy, quite frankly, is
the lines between a democracy and mob rule are very thin.
And they always said that the wisdom of the people,
an educated populace, and that means people that know what
(06:44):
going on and know what's going on, isn't a starting school,
is the most valuable safeguard to democracy. For the first
time in my life, and I was around when everybody
was worried about Reagan starting World War three and all that,
and I just kind of knew it wasn't going to happen.
But the first time in my life, I kind of
feel that the collective wisdom of the country is on
(07:05):
shaky ground. How do you feel about that.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
I feel like it's difficult to measure. It's hard to
know what moment are you in now. I think the
way you've laid this out, as far as like the
ability to work across party lines during the Reagan administration,
even during the Clinton administration, obviously something is substantially different
today than what it used to be. Thank god, most
people don't seem to actually believe their own rhetoric. If
(07:31):
they did, I think we'd be at a civil war
at this point if they If you have all these
ideas in a natural conclusion, so it's almost like there
was this anger and vitriol, but it's I don't want
to say limited to, but largely limited to the keyboard
rather than our real day to day lives. Although we
do see that hatred and violence can't spill over. You
made an interesting statement there where you talk about shared reality,
(07:53):
right that maybe that's part of the route, And I
do think that's part of the root of the problem,
is do we have a shared reality. Our founding fathers,
in my opinion, were of the belief that what they've
given us is a very difficult project to hold together
the American Republic. It's not impossible. It just requires some work.
As you mentioned, an educated public, those who take the
(08:13):
time to educate themselves. I would even say, if you're
going to have a system of self government, the first
requirement is that the self governs themselves. Right, we have
to have a group of people out there willing to
govern themselves. It's not just education, it's also those small
are republican virtues. I think part of what we are
seeing here is the very natural course of human nature.
(08:34):
If you give freedom to most people, Unfortunately, they don't
hold together very well. They tend to fall back on
the old rules of tribal politics, of well, my side
needs to get its side or your side needs to
get its crumuppins in this sort of brinksmanship. We're not
completely there, we haven't fallen apart, but we're seeing that
ugliness emerge more so than maybe we had in the past.
(08:55):
And part of that is this notion that we don't
share reality. Now. I know that they are very forms,
mostly on the left, that actually tout this as a
good thing, moral relativism. Who is the speak my truth
as if I get a monopoly on my truth and
you have your own truth. But to be honest, this
is something that I think goes far beyond the left,
(09:17):
and it's almost all of us. It's not as common
on the right for you to hear people talk about
moral relativism or these views. But what you will hear
is individuals who say, look, I can't trust your sources
of information. I have to trust my sources of information.
So what do you do in a world in which
part of the country listens to Fox News, the other
on MSNBC. Part of them are listening to a radical
(09:40):
version of the left or the right, or some moderated one.
What do you do in a world in which no
one can we can no longer agree on It's not
that we think reality is up for grabs, it's that
we don't trust those sharing say reality with us. This
is human nature, This is common and it's something that
I think you have to go back to the founding
f formulas. Unfortunately, of as John Adams said, and I'm
(10:03):
not going to say nearly as adequately or eloquently say
that it requires a moral and a just citizenry. That
is not something you solve via politics. Unfortunately, there is
no program, there's no bill we can pass to fix that.
That is a problem of the soul. That's a problem
of the breakdown of community. There are things that can
(10:23):
be done about it. It's not hopeless, but I think
it is needful. We recognize if we're going to live
in a republic, it requires a certain amount of responsibility
of us educating ourselves, of us exercising restraint where we
need to have us investing time in what does this
great project mean. It's not hopeless. It can be done.
(10:45):
And I don't want to stray too far from your question,
but I guess that's where my mind goes when you ask, yeah,
things are bad. I do think they're bad. I don't
yet know that they're hopeless.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah, I wouldn't say hopeless, but let's just say there's
an area of concern on my part. Sure, I was
always pretty confident that you know, through the years. I
got to say, historically, if you look at what you know,
especially from World War Two up to now, this country
has been through a lot, but there's always been a
sense of stability. There's always been a common sense foundation
(11:19):
that everybody kind of sat on. And here again, the
bending of reality is is what concerns me. I mean,
even during almost trouble times during the nineteen sixties, we
all agreed that we were in the same universe, playing
by the same rules of physics, so to speak. And
I'm not sure that's the case anymore. And a good
case in point is this Charter Kirk, that horrible assassination.
(11:43):
And I'm not particularly a religious person. I didn't follow
him that closely. I would monitor him when a big
news event broke and he would be giving his opinion
or something. He is I kind of follow like Matt
tyeebe people like that. I don't really Charlie Kirk, quite frankly,
came with a lot of preaching that I just didn't
resonate with me. However, I was shocked.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Also, as we might have established earlier in the wrong
age of bracket, to be following Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Well, it depends. It depends he.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Had his older crowd, but I'm saying he was predominantly
it had. It was impact on young Americans.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Yes, absolutely, and I think a lot of that was because,
quite frankly, a lot of college students in this day
these days, and I work with a lot of them,
simply are not exposed to those ideas, okay, And because
the college campuses have become I don't want to say censored,
but they've been controlled environments. They've become controlled environments, and
there's there's one point of view that generally prevails. And
(12:41):
it wasn't like that when I went to school. It
wasn't like that. But getting back to the to what
happened with Charlie Kirk, I think that the assassination shocked me.
It's sad in me. Uh, that one hit me. And
I've heard a lot of people say that for whatever reason,
that one, that one, that one really bothered me. Uh,
But there was more than a few. I've heard people
(13:03):
dismiss this as saying, well, it wasn't as many as
you think. There were a lot of people who celebrated
online and very publicly too. A lot of them were
out in public areas. A lot of the vigils that
were held for Charlie Kirk were disturbed. You know. Here again,
I'm of a certain age. I remember when Reagan was shot,
(13:25):
and when I went to high school, I didn't really
hear any horribly disparaging comments like I'm glad it happened
or anything like I really didn't hear it. I was
way too small for Martin Luther King. I was probably
just a couple of years old. I'm sure that it happened,
and it probably happened in quiet bars, behind the closed doors,
(13:46):
where people said yeah great, but it wasn't so public.
Same with JFK. I'm sure he had his detractors. I'm
sure a lot of people really didn't cry for him,
but the shameless public display. I did a real of
it on my last podcast where one guy was actually
talking to the family and said, hey, how was it
(14:06):
watching him with his blood squirting out? And he had
this real maniacal laugh. I'm going to say thousands, certainly
thousands upon thousands of these, and I would be I
would venture to say that if nine to eleven happened today,
there would probably be people celebrating it or saying we
deserved it or whatever. Just to some degree. That kind
(14:31):
of disregard for human life, the idea that someone who
speaks against your beliefs should be celebrated when they pass
this is new, I don't I know. People say, well,
people always did that before, they just didn't have social media,
know they didn't. I was around here again in high school.
(14:54):
I didn't hear that when Reagan got shot. It just
didn't I'm here again. I'm sure there was somebody somewhere,
but there weren't people while we were in gym Glass
laughing about it or saying I'm glad it happened. It
just didn't happen. What's your take from a conservative standpoint? What?
I'm sure social media is a factor. Break down to
(15:15):
the family's a factor, But I don't know that that
explains the bloodlust that I was seeing. It was a bloodlust,
is the best way I can describe it. Does that
disturb you at all? Do you have an opinion about it?
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, I would hope it would disturb us all. Obviously
doesn't disturb everyone because some people are celebrating it. Look,
let me just lay my cards on the table and
say up front, I was not a fan of Charlie Kirk.
That is not the same saying I celebrated in any
way the fact he was shot, and a lot of
people have pointed out some things I think is entirely true,
(15:51):
which was good on Charlie Kirk for consistently standing up
and trying to have arguments with people. I mean, and
that's a wonderful thing to do. Now, when I say
it wasn't fan of is he did so in a
way that, in my view, was less about trying to
win converts or at least speak directly to those individuals,
and tended to antagonize more. And it was good for
getting clickbaits on YouTube, and he did very well. And
(16:13):
you are correct, I think in so doing, I think
he did help a certain amount of a young Americans
who felt alienated from the predominance, say liberal culture, feel like, well, hey,
here's somebody standing up for me. So that's not of
no value. I don't mean to apply that at all,
I guess I simply mean I would prefer he had
found a different method, or that we lived in a
world in which someone doing that would not have to
be so successful, because you know, there weren't that many
(16:35):
on the right austracized. But all that being said, yes,
from top to bottom, everything about this was disturbing. Doesn't
begin to cover it. I mean, he was murdered. Not
that this makes it okay, but it We're used to
seeing these happen with politicians or with individuals who the
(16:55):
murderer themselves are just mentally deranged. And maybe Charlie's murder
was in a certain sense. This is the closest though,
in my opinion, we've seen an actual politically motivated murder
that this individual does not seem to have had a
you know, have fallen down some vast radicalized hole. But
just as he said himself, he couldn't stand the hate anymore.
And in terms of you know, the person that murdered
(17:16):
Charlie Kirk is one person. What you're asking about, which
is something I'm far more concerned about, is how many
out there who would never pull the trigger have in
their heart this was a good thing. I celebrate this,
even if they don't say it. How many people are like, yeah,
but I'm glad he's dead and one thing that and
I know where people are coming from when they say this,
but I feel like I need to push back. It
(17:37):
is good to point out that Charlie Kirk left behind
a wife and kids, but I desire to live in
a world that even if Charlie Kirk was an orphan,
had no wife, had no kids, we would still say
what a horrible thing that someone was murdered publicly just
for voicing his opinion. Even if I didn't have to
agree with it, and I think Kirk has become an
avatar for sort of this moment that we're in in
(17:58):
which everything gets reduced to red versus blue, left versus right,
and we hear this, look I'm by no, don't get
me wrong. I'm not trying to equate what happened to
Kirk to other rhetoric we hear from some other people.
But just to give you an example, Donald Trump himself,
when running for office, made comments to the effect of, look,
they're coming after me via law fair because I'm standing
(18:19):
in the way. If they weren't coming after me, they
would come after you. Well that may be true in
some sort of a sense, but I don't think most
of the left has in their heart we need to
just lock up everyone on the right. There is a
difference of kind between Trump. We hear this same rhetoric
from the left that it says Charlie Kirk became an
avatar of someone who is racist. That's the excuse, right,
(18:41):
because he held racist believes in his heart, which incidentally,
I don't think is true. We could talk about that
for an hour, but let's just assume it was true.
Let's assume the guy was a complete racist that somehow
his existence that eliminating Charlie Kirk is in some way
making this world a better place. I do hope that
some of this is the stupidity of social media. You know,
(19:01):
I'm looking at you as you're a screen. To me,
there's something about the human brain that makes me forget occasionally. Wait,
Billy Deese is a human. You're not just some picture
on a screen. There's something I do hope that part
of this is a matter if people just have lost
their ability to adapt to the humanity situation just because
we're screens. But even I agree with you, even if
(19:23):
you take that away, there's just something fundamentally wrong with
a culture that has a I will call it a
sizeable minority that vocally celebrates this sort of thing. Every
time there's been a tragedy, some idiot has celebrated it.
But this just seems so we've crossed a line somehow.
(19:45):
And granted, you know, most elected Democrats say have rightly
condemned it. Maybe they'll do so in words that I
don't particularly appreciate. But you don't have too many true
thought leaders. But you have some sort of critical mass
that it looks like we're moving in a direction that
I don't like. It looks like, you know, we keep
talking about this, how many more school shootings? You know,
how much more of this can we tolerate? And some
(20:07):
other threshold we could cross is that we may be
moving into a world where we're just having to tolerate
the fact that a sizeable number of Americans celebrate when
you know air quotes, the other side is mercilessly murdered. Yep.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Here again. That was that was what shocked me. The
assassination was bad enough, but the to me sizeable negative
and not just negative, but I mean celebratory bloodlust was
pretty shaking for me. Okay, we talk about the founding
fathers and you know, Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley, these
(20:45):
are the pillars of conservatism today. I'm going to say,
let's say with the Democrats, one of the things one
of my biggest episodes last year from a marketing standpoint
out why the Democrats were destined to lose. That's the
one that Keith Olberman blocked me on. I got some
(21:09):
national tension and I drew the ire of some well
known figures, and he was one. Okay, I wasn't being mean.
They didn't have a candidate and they didn't have a message.
And that's still the case for the Democrats right now.
Right now the Republicans, they you know, obviously Trump has
a personality. For sure, there's the MAGA message. I don't
(21:33):
know that a lot of the things that are going
on are necessarily conservative. For example, sending troops into states.
My opinion, I can understand sending troops into Washington, d C.
That's not a state. If you're a true conservative, I'm
going to say states rights are pretty important to you.
I don't know that sending the troops in when they're
not wanted to a state is a conservative ideal. That's
(21:54):
my opinion. Are there conservative figure years out there that
you would look to as the modern pillars of conservatism.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
There's not a lot in elected office, and that's very discouraging.
We live in a time that for reasons that we
get to spend a long time talking about, so I
won't dive into that right now. Our system does not
seem to reward and I don't want to say conservative,
I'm going to call it prudential leadership those who approach
it as or rather, it seems to award those who
(22:32):
vest more money in their comms team and owning the
other side rather than actually trying to resolve real issues.
Those people do exist, though, and one of the things
I love about my podcast and that does continue to
give me hope, is I have had the great joy
and pleasure of having my heroes on here. You've all
of them who I personally consider to be the greatest
(22:54):
conservative intellectual alive today, unless maybe we could count Thomas
soul He's in his nineties, but he's still trucking. Joanah Goldberg,
who's a great communicator. Mitch Daniels, former governor of Indiana,
who I wished had been president, we would be on
a better course. These are incredible individuals. I've also had
on here people that if I cited their names, I
(23:16):
guarantee you would have never heard of them. They're nobody special,
but they are some of the most erudite and brilliant
and thoughtful and carrying people you have ever met. And
they're out there, and so I think it's While I
do think it's important to answer your question, I also
think it's important I set that base that, look, this
country is not short on individuals who are behaving themselves
(23:39):
in an appropriate manner. Just the system isn't such that
we're rising to the four. But yeah, I think I
like former Senator Ben Sas, I like Mitch Daniels, neither
of which seem to be viable candidates at the moment.
There's a long list of people I could tolerate, you know,
say that I would say, I think they would make
a decent leader, even though I have some things against them.
But to me, those are sort of of the it's unfortunate,
(24:01):
those are sort of the leaders of yesterday, if you will,
that are still there, but not really at the four.
Within the Republican Party, in the conservative movement.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
You mentioned that you kind of had an echo of
what Nixon referred to as the silent majority. Yeah, I
know you have a lot of faith in the people
that aren't seen, you know, the people that aren't protesting
or raising a ruckus or saying all kinds of crazy
things online. How confident are you in that that there
(24:32):
there's there's a there's a good baseline of people that
there that have common sense, that have basic values. And
we're not talking about real crazy, high moralistic people, just
people that have common sense, you know, appreciate the dignity
and safety and respect other people, you know, those kind
of things. Are you pretty confident that we're that there's
a lot of people out there that were still the
(24:53):
silent majority.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
I think that's a fair way to summarize it. I mean, again,
this is one of those you're asking me really good
questions that I don't know that I have like a
you know, eighty percent confidence right in if you will,
it's I think, Well, I'll put it this way. I
think there is the potential for latent moral civic behavior
(25:15):
within the American people always has been. I think we
have always shown the capacity to rise up to the occasion. Now,
maybe someday we won't, God forbid, but you know it,
who knew that the generations went through World War Two,
or the Great Depression of the First World War or
the Civil War were capable of doing what they did.
They probably didn't know they were capable of that until
put to the test. And so I don't want to
(25:37):
discount the American people in a sense that a nation
state such as ours has been gifted with this much
liberty and has shown this much capacity to do so
many creative good things with it, is capable, you know,
I think it takes a Reagan type figure sometimes to
call us out as the city on a hill who
to unleash the ingenuity to give us almost permission to
(26:02):
rise to our better angels. Calvin Coolidge, maybe a greater
conservative president, lived in an age of excess and was
consistently calling Americans to rise above, you know, to embrace
their better angels. If you will, I do think that
and direct answer your question, Yes, those people are out there,
but my greater hope is not so much on there
are certain percentage of the population, but rather we have
(26:23):
the capacity as free individuals to behave seemly. You know,
we ought to be challenged to do so, because that
that is a better way to live.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Yes, I'll ask you just one more.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Maybe.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
I know there's no right or wrong answer. This is
just probing for a perspective. There's no way to test
for this. In the past, years ago, I was a
lot more critical of the religious right than I am now.
And you know, the idea of imposing morals on voting.
I was always very kind, very weary of politicians who
(27:00):
stood up and said after they won an election that
God has just spoken. You know, that's that's getting into
territory there where, you know, insinuating that there was divine
providence in an election is kind of why the founding
father said, don't do that. But I got to tell
you I've softened my tone a little bit on it.
(27:21):
I'll tell you why with the anti religious sentiment that
has been prevalent. For example, you can talk about any
number of sexual proclivities in a schoolroom, but you don't
dare mention Jesus as even a historical figure. And here again,
(27:41):
I'm not a religious person. That's not where I'm going
at with this. But I actually went to Catholic school
grade school. I went to public school for high school,
and that was back in the nineteen seventies. And there
were parishes. You know, there was like the you know,
Saint Joseph's and all those kind of things were, you know,
(28:02):
the the Italian parish, and there was the Polish and
the Slovakian one, and then there was you know, the
Cubans and so on and so forth. And they when
somebody died or there was a death in the family
or tragedy, everybody pulled together, you know, they brought food over,
and there was this and that, and I with the
(28:25):
disappearance of that, with the disappearance of the churches, with
the disappearance of those values, I'm starting to notice now
that it hasn't been replaced with anything. We are in
a lot of ways morally devoid. The celebrations of the
(28:45):
online assassination is an example, but that's most of the
things that come to mind for me are more subtle
than that. There is no clear right or wrong anymore.
It really depends on what the circumstances were, what happened
to him during your childhood. There's all kinds of excuses
(29:07):
about how society may have influenced this person. There's never
I never hear a democrat say criminals are bad, they
cannot stay it imp from your I know your younger
person than I. You probably didn't see this evolve. But
we're in a situation now where people have a hard
(29:29):
time determining what right and wrong is without a bunch
of other factors thrown in. It's who done what to whom.
For me, a given action is either right or wrong.
It doesn't matter who the participants are, who the perpetrator is,
who the victim is. The action is either right or wrong.
From a conservative standpoint, which does rely a certain amount
(29:51):
of faith. That's not necessarily a rule to be a
conservative that you have to be religious. But I think
there is a principled set of values that are very
traditional in conservatism. Those values have erote it, family structure,
so on and so forth. Is there a way that
politically you can even correct that. I don't know that
(30:12):
you can.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
I don't know. My suspicion is because I'm I'm I'm
not a hard no say libertarian some of these respects.
I think that certain policies can be done to where
at the margin will in fact have some sort of
a positive benefit on our moral fibers. Say, I just
think that it's it would be nuts to suggest that's
(30:38):
the solution for get us out of this mess. So sure,
let's have those conversations with the margin. But I think
we need to recognize if we're talking about moral rot,
that's not a policy issue, that's not a that's not
something that we can devise a And the reason I
say it's not a policy issue, it's not a collectivist problem.
It's an individual problem. We have to minister to the
(30:59):
end visual human For the sake of putting my cards
on the table, I am religious. I am a Christian,
I too, incidentally fear as you sort of opened up
there saying those who pronounce some sort of divine message
from God as not only being not necessarily trustworthy, but
certainly no one I want anywhere near the intellected office.
(31:23):
Maybe some of them could do some good. I don't know,
but I would say, and I think sometimes the way
we get tangled up here is I am a social
conservative too, which means I very much think it's necessary
for there to be a cohesive social structure within society.
I'm just a little wary that the government can get
us there and so things. As you had mentioned, the church, yes,
is necessary, It's conceivably possible it something other than just
(31:47):
religion can knit communities together. But my take is, if
we're going to hold together as a free people, let's
throw everything we can at the wall. Or you know,
we need our religion. We need, as Robert Putnam put it,
we you know this is his a direct quote, but
we need bowling leagues. We need people to be parts
(32:08):
of communities and institutions and groups that give them not
only a sense of valiant purpose, but also a sense
of responsibilities. And you know that they they have others
looking up to them and people expecting things of them.
Certainly religion does a good job of that. As you
mentioned your community, you know it has a sense of
let's come together here. Here's part of the problem here
is we human beings can only have so many true friends.
(32:31):
I don't know you personally, but maybe we could find
something we connect on, some ideology, some religion, some philosophy,
some certain way of looking at the world. Well, now
I'm connected to you. Now, now I can feel some
sort of a you know, a positivity to you that
maybe I couldn't of earlier. And the more of those
things we have, the more we can behave with virtue.
I don't again, to be clear, I speaking as a Christian,
(32:54):
I don't think that the Christian there's a certain level
of say, Christian nationalism that I I the test these days,
because I don't think it is Christian or American. But
I understand where they're coming from. I get the idea
that you look around you and you see, hey, the
world's falling apart. People are celebrating Charlie kirkut shot in
the neck. Maybe we need a more strong hand of
the state to put things back together, and I just
(33:16):
doubt that the state itself could do that, even though
I'm open to again on the margins, maybe we could
make some progress.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Sure, I'll wrap things up with this. You're a young guy,
extremely intelligent. I'm not trying to compliment you. Very well spoken.
You know, I don't doubt you have a bright future
ahead of you. What would be your message of hope
for the future moving forward, not only to young people
but to people in general. I know a lot of
(33:43):
people are really scared about the future. They're worried about war,
They're worried about the unspeakable acts of violence which seem
to happen almost every day now. I can remember back
in the nineteen eighties. Again, there was a horrible shooting
at a McDonald's in the nineteen eighties, and that shocked
the nation. Some guy came and there was one photograph
(34:03):
in particular of a child draped over a bicycle that
was just absolutely shocking at the time. Now it seems
it's a daily occurrence, and I've had here again. I've
had people tell me what that always happened. We just
didn't know about it, No, it didn't. I was around
back then, we didn't have to have security guards at
the door of every school. We didn't have that. It
(34:27):
just I mean, I'm sure there was violence, but nothing
like it is today. Do you have a hopeful outlook
for the future in our society.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
I do, and I think and hope is not, in
my view, optimism necessarily. I don't believe as a matter
of faith, things are going to get better. I just
hope that they do. And I think it's entirely possible.
And I think we have a matter a sense of
agency in that we have something we can contribute to
that great project. I also think, and again here speaking
as a Christian, that within God's providence, even if we
(35:00):
live through one of those very difficult times, there is
still purpose and meaning and we can ote for a
brighter future, and even if we aren't here alive to
see it. But I think all of reality is so
difficult to fit into your head. I agree with everything
you just said about the rise of violence. There is
a certain hopelessness, a certain malaise understandably that is come
(35:20):
into the nation. That being said, there's also other ways
of looking at things to where if we could somehow,
you know, resurrect from the grave our ancestors from hundreds
of years ago, thousands of years ago. I suspect there
are certain ways in which they would look around and say,
why would you not be hopeful? Just bear in mind
(35:41):
certain things such as we have come closer to eliminating
poverty on this planet than any other time, and the
entire human race, the degree of material gain, the ability
to reduce disease, to spread, the ability to freedom has
spread to a larger degree than any any other time
in human race. Now I know it's dipped wax and Wayne,
(36:02):
I'm not saying things are perfect, certainly not saying they're
look like they're heading in a good direction. But we
have in a sense hit the pinnacle of human experience
in terms of again speaking as a species, as human beings,
material wealth, of reducing poverty, of reducing infant mortality, of disease.
My god, what wonderful things to hope for. Look what
(36:25):
life we have that what era would we have preferred
to have been born into? Hundreds of years or if
you've got to cut, you could be dead within a week.
And so I think there is a need for that
sort of perspective that yes, there are bad things, and
there is reason that things think, could you know, there's
reason to believe things can get worse. But on a
(36:46):
whole we have been given such a wonderful opportunity that
most humans never have, and for that reason alone, I
think we are obliged to be hopeful.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yes, are you as a Christian and a can conservative?
Again in personal opinion, no right or wrong answer? Is
AI going to help us or hurt us? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (37:11):
No, I think the answer to that question is yes,
And I think that AI is. It's we don't really
know how seismic this is going to be. I mean,
it's probably it's obviously going to be seismic, we just
don't know to what degree. I suspect it's going to
be the same as almost any other invention, which is
that we're going to radically over predict the ways in
(37:32):
which is going to change everything and then completely miss
the ways in which it does in fact change everything.
And if you asked as a Christian a conservative, I
love you phrased it that way. O. C. S. Lewis
in his book The Abolish and the Man that points
out that bottom line is we're still stuck in human nature.
Every invention we ever come up with is some attempt
(37:53):
to exert power over nature. We can't fly, so let's
build an airplane. Right, we have kids, when we have sex,
let's invent contraceptions to kind of control. We're always trying
to control nature. But we are part of nature. I
have a human nature. I have base desires that are
not good for me and not good for you that
I'm always warring against. And no matter how clever we
get with our inventions, it doesn't change that basic fact.
(38:14):
So everything is going to be at some simultaneous level
good and bad for us.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Yes, I'm with you on that. I think that's a
great point. I know a lot of the science fiction
stories where a computer is going to take over the earth.
I'm going to say that that's pretty far reaching. I
don't believe that's going to happen. However, not impossible, but
I don't believe it's going to happen. I think it's
going to be more subtle, and it's already started. You know,
something as simple as asking chat GPT to help you
(38:42):
edit a letter or something like that is fine. But
it's growing and people are asking it about health problems,
they're asking it about relationship problems, they're asking it about
things like this, and you know, getting back to getting
back to the absence of faith, the people relying on
artificial means, and I think their behavior is going to
(39:03):
be guided by artificial intelligence, and consequently their behavior is
going to become artificial. And that's something that doesn't happen
in one day. That this is like the old analogy
of sitting in hot water. You don't realize it's getting hot.
And I think it's going to come to a boil
in a couple of years and we're already going to
be sitting in it. That is that is my fear.
(39:25):
It's going to be just subtle adaptation of technology to
make your decisions in your life.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
I think the speaking as both a Christian and Conservative, well,
I got to say in this sense as a Conservative,
that is the value I think conservatism really brings to
us is it is, in a sense, a continuous project
to try to find the eternal in a sea of change.
And what a world of change we live in. And
change is good changes, innovative change brings all kinds of prosperity.
(39:55):
But coupled with change, we've got to find a way
to say, but what is eternal? And if you can
do those two things, I think, come what may, when
something like AI comes up, it will end up being
more of benefit than a detriment.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Well, let's hope that's a good that's a good note
to end on. We're talking to Josh Lewis. The podcast
he has is called Saving Elephants, a reference to the
Republican Party. Where can people find your podcast? And where
can they find you online?
Speaker 2 (40:24):
If you look at a podcast platform, you could probably
find me, just with Saving Elephants. If you google me,
there's too many people trying to save elephants, so you're
gonna have to uh the website of Saving Elephants blog
dot com, or if you google Saving Elephants Josh Lewis
or Saving Elephants Conservatism, you could probably find me.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Awesome. That is fantastic, Josh. Absolute pleasure talking to you.
You enjoy I could listen to you for a long time.
You're gonna I can understand why why you're a podcaster,
because you're just fantastic speaker. It's been a joy to
listen to you. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
No Billy Pleasures online.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Okay, I'm Billy D's UH podcast has been around over
ten years now in its current form, really easy to
find the abilities podcasts. You can find us on any
major podcast platform. We are on all of them. As
far as social media goes, kind of my social media
home is still X, which is the old Twitter. There's
the trending aspect, the real time aspect of it is
(41:19):
just something that goes together with podcasting hand in hand.
You can always find me there and there's links in
the bio if you want to find me elsewhere, Facebook,
what have you. But X is kind of like my
social media home. Thank you very much for listening to
our program today. As always you listening is so important
to us and so appreciate it. Thank you so much,
(41:40):
and we will talk to you again very very soon.
I'm Billy D's and host of the self titled podcast,
The Billy d'es Podcast. We are primarily an interview and
a commentary based podcast featuring authors and creators talking about
their advocates for community issues, and myself in an array
(42:04):
of co host discussing current events. There's no partisan renting
and raving going on here, just great content. You can
find The Billy D's Podcast on your favorite platform and
on Twitter at Billy d's thank you, and I hope
you listen in
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Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.