Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

What is the single most important virtue for a leader to possess?   What quality can make the run-of-the-mill politician into a statesman?   Is it integrity, communication skills, resilience, courage, empathy, or wisdom?   All of these things are important, of course, and if any are sufficiently lacking we wouldn't call that a good leader.   But what would you say is the chief virtue?   Conservati...

What is the purpose of higher education?   Is it primarily to prepare us for the jobs of the future?   Is it to ensure the leaders of tomorrow hold the right opinions on important issues?   Is it to provide a safe haven for the pursuit of Truth?   Thinkers on the Right have held differing—sometimes incompatible—views on the purpose of higher education.   Joining Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is...

Having published more than forty books on an astoundingly wide range of topics and holding noteworthy positions at the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, the University of Oxford, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the University of Buckingham, Sir Roger Scruton was the quintessential British gentleman and scholar.   He was also one of the greatest conservative intellectual...

The Saving Elephants podcast has welcomed a wide array of incredible guests who are on forefront of the conservative political movement.   But most of the guests discuss conservatism from the perspective of a theory or set of principles or idea.   Few have had the opportunity to enact political conservatism as a practice .   And few ex-politicians have been as successful as former Indiana Governor...

One of the strangest political developments over the past several decades has been the devolution of the Religious Right and large swaths of politically active Evangelicals as they morphed from character counts moralists of the 1990s to MAGA Trumplicans.   Regardless of the merits of where the Religious Right stands today, one could be forgiven for being perplexed at how they arrived here at all....

What does is mean to be an American?   And why do we Americans obsess so much over the question of what it means to be an American?   This nagging question has plagued our nation since its birth and various national "myths" have been advanced to offer some form of national identity and cohesion.   At times one myth has proven stronger than the others, only to be overshadowed as historical events c...

In 2021, Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis joined three other veteran podcasters on a new podcast endeavor: Are We Right?  Cal Davenport, Brooke Medina, and Calvin Moore, and Josh debated a wide range of topics from politics to religion to culture and invited the audience to weigh in on whether or not they're right. While the show was tragically short-lived, a number of excellent episodes were prod...

Earlier this year Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis was on AD Tippet's podcast, Conservative Historian .   This episode is a re-podcast of that conversation that covered a wide variety of conservative topics from both the past and today.   About AD Tippet   AD Tippet (the podcast formerly known as Belisarius Aves) is the founder and publisher of the Conservative Historian YouTube channel and podcas...

In 1953 a little-known political theorist Russell Kirk repurposed his doctoral dissertation as a book for publication.   His book, The Conservative Mind , would quickly become a bestseller, give the nascent conservative movement its name and intellectual moorings, be reviewed and debated in respectable publications across the country, and launch its author to international fame.   Seventy years la...

While Leo Strauss was famous for influencing men and women who became intellectual heavyweights in the conservative movement—names like Allan Bloom, Irving Kristol, Harvey Mansfield, Thomas Pangle barely scratch the surface—few stand as tall as Harry Jaffa.   A cantankerous and quarrelsome debater to some and a beloved architect of restoring conservatism to a more American-focused and principled-b...

Everyone supports civility, in theory, when the "other side" is behaving themselves.   But what is the role of civility in an era of growing political division?   Is civility a weakness that can be exploited by our political opponents?   Is it simply being well-mannered and exceedingly nice, or is there more to it?   Those are the very questions Alexandra Hudson set out to answer in her new book,...

The name Edmund Burke is used quite liberally on the Saving Elephants podcast as host Josh Lewis makes no bones about being a "Burkean" conservative.   But who was this Irish statesman, economist, and philosopher?   What were his contributions to conservative thought?   Why does Josh hold him in such high regard?   And why do some conservatives argue there's no place for Burke in conservatism?   R...

The United States and United Kingdom have enjoyed and, at times, endured a symbiotic history, culture, politics, and global relationship.   Often understanding the quirks of one nation helps us better understand our own.   Sarah Stook, journalist of American politics and history, joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to discuss what Americans and Brits can learn from one another, what unique chal...

"History offers not simply a chronicle of events but, more importantly, opportunities to gain insights about the human condition from the experience of other times and places," writes Thomas Sowell in his provocatively titled book Black Rednecks and White Liberals .   "That is, it offers not merely facts but explanations."   Yet history's capacity to benefit us is naturally limited by our natural...

Christian or not, it's undeniable that Western civilization, and the United States in particular, has deep historical roots in Judeo-Christian teachings.   Scripture has shaped much of our culture, thought, values, and politics.   But while plenty of Biblical passages appear to have political implications, there's little consensus among the general population—to say nothing of the religiously devo...

"I never discuss anything else except politics and religion," English writer, philosopher, and Christian apologist G. K. Chesterton once quipped.   "There is nothing else to discuss."   For some sensible, genteel Americans, politics and religion are precisely what you don't discuss in public and—perhaps even—in private company.   Others discuss both with ease yet may have trouble thinking through...

Modern views on how future technology is likely to change our lives range from bloviatingly aspirational visions of utopia to musings on whether the latest advancement in AI will destroy humankind in our lifetime or merely enslave us all in Matrix-style battery capillaries.   Yet debates on whether technology is a neutral tool for our benefit or a near-unstoppable force leading us to a particular...

In the aftermath of the Civil War and prior to the first World War lies an often overlooked era in American history known as the Gilded Age.   This was an extraordinarily "messy" period where it's often difficult to identify the heroes to extol or villains to condemn.   But it is also a period that has unusually similar parallels to our own times from rapid technological advancements, growing part...

In this brave new digital world, opportunities for hate speech seem ubiquitous and increasingly dangerous.   How should a conservative balance their values of limited-government and protection of the vulnerable in social media?   How do we answer the charges of "silence is violence", or that speech and equal violence from a legal, cultural, and moral framework?   Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis i...

Among the very-online, relatively young, and mostly male cohorts of the Right is a movement growing in popularity and intensity that valorizes the very excesses the Left criticizes as toxic masculinity.   This movement, promulgated by the likes of Bronze Age Pervert and Mencius Moldbug and defended or even praised by a surprising array of mainstream conservative outlets, has captured the attention...

In 1948 Whittaker Chambers shocked the nation when, while testifying before Congress, he gave the names of individuals he claimed were working within the United States government as Communist spies for the Soviet Union.   Among those named was Alger Hiss, Chamber's close friend and former Communist comrade.   The ensuing trial quickly divided the nation into competing narratives.   Who was lying a...

Perhaps no other individual (or person, for the benefit of the Kirkian insider) was more responsible for resuscitating intellectual conservatism back to life in the mid Twentieth century than Russell Kirk.   Today, Kirk's efforts to recover and conserve the "Permanent Things" lives on at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal .   Co-founder and Vice Chair of the Russell Kirk Center, Jeff Nel...

Our digital world is saturated in "facts" but there's little agreement on what constitutes "truth".   If we can no longer agree on what sources of information can be reliable, is civil debate even possible?   To what degree is the problem exacerbated by social media?   To what degree is this simply a problem of human nature?   Bonnie Kristian joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to discuss the k...

What do Russell Kirk and Martin Luther King Jr. have in common?   Though they're traditionally depicted as coming from opposing political orientations, National Ambassador for Braver Angels John Wood Jr. believes a deeper understanding of their religious convictions and societal aspirations reveals an important commonality between these two men.   And this commonality points us to the restoration...

The conservative tradition embodies centuries of accumulated wisdom from some of the brightest and most inspiring thinkers you'll find.   Yet for the young conservative eager to learn more about this tradition, choosing which books to read can be a daunting task.   Most online lists of top conservative books contain familiar titles of classic tomes that inspire and challenge readers to this day.  ...