Is Conservatism Still Conservative? A Debate with Josh Lewis

With the Republican Party shifting in new directions, what does it truly mean to be a conservative today? In this episode of Faithful Politics, hosts Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram sit down with returning guest Josh Lewis, host of the Saving Elephants podcast, to discuss the state of conservatism in an ever-evolving political landscape. From Trump’s influence on the GOP to the core principles of conservative ideology, they explore whether the modern Republican Party still aligns with its historical roots. They also tackle pressing topics such as government efficiency, political trade-offs, and the philosophical differences between conservative and progressive worldviews. Whether you lean right, left, or somewhere in between, this conversation is sure to challenge your perspective on what it means to be conservative in America today.

Guest Bio:
Josh Lewis is the host of the Saving Elephants  podcast, a show dedicated to exploring the principles of conservatism in today’s political climate. A self-described "Trump-skeptical Republican," Josh offers in-depth analysis on the ideological shifts within the GOP and the broader conservative movement. Outside of podcasting, he works as an auditor for the state of Oklahoma, bringing an informed perspective on government waste, fraud, and efficiency.

Resources & Links:
Saving Elephants Podcast: savingelephantsblog.com
Follow Josh Lewis on X (Twitter): @svngelephants

Transcript

0:16

Hey, welcome back, Faithful Politics listeners and watchers. I am your political host, Will Wright, and I am joined by your Faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. How's it going, Josh? Hey, and this week we have with us returning guest, Josh Lewis. He is the host of the Saving Elephants podcast, a show dedicated to exploring the principles of conservatism and an ever-changing political landscape. And if there's anybody that I would ever want to talk to to find out the state of conservative Republican politics, it would be this guy. So welcome back to the show, Josh. It's great to be back with you guys. You know, I think we started our podcasts collectively around the same time. I started in 2018, April Fool's Day 2018, about six, seven years ago. So I'm not sure when you guys launched, but we've been on a similar trajectory ever since. Yeah, it's been pretty nice. I like to say like I've been podcasting before podcasting became cool, but that's not true. Here's a trivia question though for you. Do you know the origins of the word podcast? I don't know if this is... I don't know if I do, but I think it's a derivative from the original broadcast, meaning kind of to broadcast out like radio-wise. I can't remember what the pod stood for though, but I know it had to do more directly. iPod! Okay, there you go. All right, well I'm not nearly as cool as I thought I was. No, no, you are still way cool because we are here today to just, I don't know, get a get a temperature check, you know, a pulse on what the heck the Republican Party is up to. You've been a Republican, millennial Republican, if I recall. So. But before we get into that, how's the podcast going? What are you hearing from the folks that you're talking to? Well, and I'm probably admittedly talking to a slice within the Republicans slash conservative movement because I am a proud, I'll call it myself, Trump skeptical or a MAGA skeptical Republican. I don't go all in on the anti-Trumpism, but I have never voted for the guy, I never intend to. From that group, it's a mixed bag, honestly. I think we're in this sort of the haze of a new administration, know, kind of a... a cautious optimism of, maybe some good things can come of this. Let's wait and see. To those who have years ago thrown themselves out, nope, no good is ever going to come of this. I know, I dig your Thanos for 2024 t-shirt. I'm not wearing my sweet meteor of death for, I guess it was 2020 t-shirt. But there has been a sense of in the wilderness, if you will, for the traditional conservative of the past many years. while also coupled with kind of a bizarre, but there are certain policy gains we can have. So it's an uncomfortable position to be in because the temptation I think is to go all in on this is all good, all bad. And instead you kind of have to ride that line of, know, take the good with the bad and sort of differentiate between the two. Yeah, you know, it's been I've been talking about this Latest You know Trump administration so far like a couple things, right? I didn't I didn't vote for Trump in 2024 or in 2020 much to the chagrin of many people I know and People are apparently like, he's not a conservative, he didn't vote for Trump. And yeah, okay, whatever, that's fine. You can think whatever you want. But I feel like a little bit of a whiplash right now with this Trump administration, with everything. And I am honestly, I am honestly, I'm not a never Trumper because I did vote for him in 2016, number one. I wouldn't call myself a never Trumper because if I could be convinced, if someone could show me why, we should vote for him or why these concerns that I've been hearing about are not correct, then like kind of his autocratic tendencies and the way, you know, just this like almost like again breakneck whiplash decisions. then I will be okay with that. I haven't heard that yet. I haven't had anyone really tell me that. I've had the opposite and it's felt more convincing to me. But you know, we have this sense of conservatism of prudence and caution, right? The belief that society, it should change gradually, it should change carefully, rather than through these sweeping revolutions and all the conservatives were up in arms. I can't believe there's George Floyd and what's happening and all these riots and all. it is doge is this is this sweeping or is this slow and gradual and I would just love to hear your thoughts on how are we doing as conservatives with prudence and caution these days Well, I'm going to broaden that out just a hair and saying how are we doing as a nation with prudence and caution? And I would say not very good. This is not a conservative problem. This is a human problem, if you will. Prudence is a difficult virtue to come by in politics and statescraft. One would like to think that conservatism, you know, I take my cues from Edmund Burke, who said prudence was the god of this lower world. Aristotle thought that it was the chief political virtue. So did Russell Kirk. So did I think Irving Kristol said that. A lot of conservative forerunners have said very clearly prudence, caution is the right approach. Now I want to be careful here because when I say prudence and caution, that doesn't mean we cultivate to mind a conservative has to be someone who's taciturn and just never willing to recognize, hey, sometimes haste is necessary. Sometimes it is. I think what it is is a deference to the past traditions trying to understand why were things done the way they were rather than just a presumption that it was all a bunch of racist nonsense in the past and therefore we can ignore everything people before us had to say. Also a recognition that we've kind of we're all in this together by we I mean our ancestors, ourselves, and then those who haven't been born yet and that demands a certain prudence because it's not just a coming upon us to take what's ours but to actually see this project through for future generations. So all that being said because you you raise a number of interesting issues there but if I just focus on Doge for a minute Again, it's a mixed bag. I feel like I'm in this very peculiar position because on the one hand, I think it is undeniable that the federal government is large and bloated and it does need some sort of a, dare I say, hatchet job in order to elicit the sort of changes necessary. That being said, I think what's missing, and you use the word prudence here, it is easy to tear something down and good could come of that. because there are things worth deconstructing. What's difficult is to have a clear-sighted plan as to how we build something back up and how we sustain something over the long term. One of the main things about Doge that you'll notice is it is an executive function. Elon Musk is doing what he's doing not because he was elected, but because Donald Trump has empowered him to do so. And that's fine, Trump can do that, but binding lasting change in this country that's actually transformative requires congressional... debate and process and it requires parties on both sides buying in and you'll probably end up with a product that's a little bit more watered down than maybe what you would have hoped for but it's lasting and it actually has a an impact on our life. I would say for all the good that Doge could potentially do and there's a lot of harm they could do I dare say I think a lot of it is window dressing because it's not lasting change it can't be lasting change and maybe most importantly we're talking about an thin slice of the federal federal expenditures. long as politicians, left and right does this, Republicans and Democrats do this, ignore entitlement reforms, which is where the real, that's what's going to sink us financially, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. I'm not saying I'm against them. I'm just saying you have to focus on that. You know, there are certain years, I think during the Obama era, where you could have literally eliminated the entire federal government and the U.S. military, and we still would have been running deficits just because of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. So long as politicians on both sides will not talk about that, I'm not really interested in what Doge comes up with in terms of like trying to actually get her fiscal house in work. Good could come of it. I'm all for it. But we're kind of ignoring the bigger problems. And that is a very imprudent approach, if you will. Yeah, I think that that's correct and I agree with you. You know, on Doge... One of the arguments that I keep hearing from folks that vote differently than I do is like, you guys are all caring about Elon Musk. Don't you care about government efficiency? And a lot of MAGA folks are trying to paint Democrats as kind of like, yeah, we are pro waste fraud and abuse. And when I don't think that's necessarily the right characterization of where Democrats are coming from. think personally, like I am very pro government efficiency. I mean, I'm a veteran and I get most of my health care at a VA health center and it's terrible. It's absolutely terrible. And so, hey, if you can make my life better by making the government more efficient, I'm all for it. The problem is like, like Elon is the wrong vehicle. Kind of to your point too. to take us to where we want to go because number one, a lot of the stuff that he's posting on their government website per se that apparently is open now that folks can just upload stuff to, know, like a lot of the stuff that he's saying he's cut are these like cultural identity programs, know, like DEI, LGBTQ, like if the president has issues with those, it's his prerogative, but like, is that really? waste, and abuse, or is it just stuff I don't really like? So I guess, you know, my question to you is, like, in your mind, like, what would be a good, you know, example of waste, fraud and abuse that, you know, Elon or one of his minions can go after? I'm in the audit industry. That's my day job. I actually work for the state of Oklahoma as an auditor. We're the good guys because we audit governments, not taxpayers such as yourself. And so I obviously am very interested in the reduction of waste, fraud and abuse. However, I also recognize as an auditor, and this is a very sad statistic, but more fraud is caught by accident than by external auditors. The number one source of fraud being caught is somebody on the inside sort of reporting it, if you will. And so knowing that basic fact, we in the audit industry have had to recognize that we're not the first line of defense in reducing waste fraud and abuse. What we can do, however, is have a laser-like focus on what are the internal controls within an entity that would mitigate against fraud? In other words, not so much how do you catch it, but how do you prevent it? How do you disincentivize it? How do you make it to where you've empowered other people to do their role so that it's less likely to occur? And if it does occur, it's less large. So taking it from that standpoint, my temptation is not to give you specific examples, but rather to say, and here I'm speaking as a conservative, look, you're right. I have yet to meet a Democrat that says I am pro waste, fraud, and abuse. Nobody wants that other than maybe very tiny groups of people within the inside that are profiting from it, right? And that's not Republican or Democrat, that's just self-interest. I think the real question isn't are we pro or against it? It's what sort of systems lead to waste fraud and abuse. And again from a conservative standpoint, I would say the first line of defense is to have a laser-like focus on what should the government do and whatever it should do, let's do it well. Beyond that, the private sector or individuals acting in their own capacity maybe should be handling these sorts of things. That's not necessarily a solution to everything, but I think I would attach, I would attack the problem backwards. Not so much trying to deal with the government as it is and trying to eliminate waste fraud and abuse. But trying to work with Congress, what sort of things, and I'm talking about a departmental level, and I know this might be controversial, aspects of the Department of Education or the Environmental Protection Agency, what ought they not to be doing that they're currently doing? The things they should do, let's fund that. Let's empower them to do it. But if we can collectively agree they ought not to do these things, well, let's remove those responsibilities. And inadvertently, I think we remove a lot more waste, fraud, and abuse in the process. Yeah, I think as an auditor, you probably have... a very informed insight on probably like how people are being wasteful. And I'd love to kind of get your thoughts on like what are some misperceptions you think people have about waste, fraud, and abuse that would make them better advocates for cleaning it up. Like for instance, I work with lot of people that are on social security. I know that's an interest area for Doge and I know that it is sort of littered with waste, fraud and abuse. But kind of to your point, I think a lot of it is just process based because it's really hard to get on social security. Maybe that's for good reason. But because of the difficulty of how hard it is, people don't want to get off of it because they had to hire a couple of lawyers to advocate for themselves and do all this. And now they're like, they're on it. You got a company that wants to offer them a full-time job. They're like, I'll take it, but I can only work certain amount of hours because I'll lose my social security. And then you're like, that's fine. I'll give you 40 hours a week. No, can't do it. And it makes sense because you've got this low-income person that's already had a hard time getting on social security because they've got some sort of... thing going on in their life where they can't work full time. But if they could work full time, they don't want to do it because of the difficulty. And I'm not saying that applies to everybody, but I'm saying that that's been my experience talking to folks who have been on social security. So I'd love to kind of get your thoughts on that and what are some other dysfunctions of our system that are kind of causing this? Yeah, and you mentioned Social Security. I know people who, for health reasons, have been drawing Social Security and hope to have their health back and have made improvements, but feel stuck because their income and their health is unpredictable. So how do I just tell the federal government, hey, I don't need this anymore. And next month I do. And it's a relatively clunky system, if you will. And I think this is the... I think we have to have two things in mind simultaneously. One is a sort of continuous recognition that there may be, there are ways to make the present system better. Maybe there's ways to make it more responsive to individuals. The amount of input that goes into this system though, to try to understand each individual specific need over a system that is necessarily generalized for all of us, because we don't have a generalized system and that's right for misappropriation and fraud and... and all kinds of prejudices, you know, awarding one group rather than the other. So for understandable reasons, governments naturally want to commoditize everything. They want to break us all down to individual units that they can understand. Maybe we'll put us in groups, but I'm a Caucasian male in my early 40s kind of thing. That's who I am. That's not really who I am. I'm far more complicated than that. And I need things that that no government bureaucracy could ever anticipate. They could get better at it. They can maybe say, wait, people with with this skin tone need this. Maybe that's a weird way to approach it because now I sound like I'm getting race based on this. Right. Yes, in less need of a tanning bed. So that being said, guess one of the values I think conservatism has to offer us is it's very cautious to say there may not be solutions to problems, but there are tradeoffs. And sometimes what we need in society is clear-eyed conversations about what exactly are we willing to live with and what aren't we. If we have a nationalized entitlement system, we're going to always have a certain level of these problems. I personally would rather have a different system. I would rather have something that's more free market based. I would rather have something that's more up to the individual state so that if Oklahoma screws it up, wherever you gentlemen are living currently, maybe you guys get it right. Maybe we can learn from you. I think there are other ways to do this. But that is the trade-off, right? If we do it individually, a lot of people are gonna hurt. Maybe on whole more people would be better off, but some of us can't really count as, well, I can't look at the people in West Virginia harmed that much by federalizing this, if you will. And so therefore it needs to be nationalized. That's a debate worth having. What I'm suggesting though is any system you develop is going to have its pros and cons. And I think one of the problems we have in this era is an inability... We want to nationalize everything, which is going to make most of us unhappy. And we want to pretend as if all problems have solutions, which is not right, although we continue to elect people that claim, you me in office and I will fix this problem. I think a bit more adult-like approach is to recognize a nation of 300 plus million people. We probably need more variety. We probably need more options and we probably need to countenance the way you do it in your state might be a little different than how I do it here. And that's okay, because we're trying to deal with the difficulties of life the best we know how at our individual levels. One of the advantages there, of course, is if what we're doing doesn't work out, it's a lot easier for me to fire my governor than to fire the entire United States Congress, right? Or it's a lot easier at a more local level for people to take responsibility and ownership for their successes or failures and for us to grade them accordingly. When you nationalize everything, it's not only harder to do that, it's harder even perceive whose fault something is, if you will. So I love this idea of the trade-offs and I'd like to dig into this a little bit more. Do you feel like this is a primarily conservative or primarily embraced among a conservative audience or is it like... and not let's say on the left or on a more liberal audience that maybe has this kind of different vision of what's what's possible like in this trade-offs like it seems to me that trade-offs are just a this is just a reality that if you explained it that people would accept it or that makes sense. have to have trade-offs. can't you can't do two things simultaneously. Even though we say we can't we actually can we actually can multitasking is attention moving from one thing to the next. I mean just trying to bring it very simply in the sense that I can't be doing what I'm doing right now in this podcast and also be having lunch with someone else or having you know coffee with someone else. simultaneously. There's a trade-off. There's a use of the time. Is this something that you think is understood? And what do you think is so mysterious about this? Or why is it so difficult for us as a nation to grasp this? Gosh, that is a great question, but I need to ask you first. Have you read Thomas Sowell's A Conflict Division? I have, yeah I have, listen to it, yep. Okay, because it sounds like your question is coming sort of from that book. I guess, yeah, now that you say it, you're like, yeah, it kind of is. You're right. I mean, it was a while ago, but yeah, I was a big fan of Thomas. So I know he's been very debated and controversial, but I always appreciated his way of thinking. He is...he's one of the...not to get on a Thomas Sowell tangent, but he's one of the four individuals on the Mount Rushmore saving elephants conservatism, if you will, and the thing I think I'm the most impressed about him is his consistent ability to communicate incredibly complex ideas in a way that almost anybody can understand it. That's not a gift I possess and most people don't. But anyhow, getting off that, A Conflict of Visions is one of his earlier books and it's really interesting because I don't think he even uses the words liberal, progressive, conservative, in any of it. He refers to them as visions of the constrained or the unconstrained vision. And he talks about this almost innate in human nature, if you will. And this is one of reasons I don't think we'll ever truly rid ourselves of the left right debate. I don't wanna say we're born this way in the sense that there is no ability to have conversations or even change across the political divide, but there's these sort of innate understandings of, what is human nature? What is our, know, in a lot of ways we have been having this argument, maybe it predates this, but at least since the French Revolution. To what degree is human nature malleable? Can we change as a species? Can we truly solve things, say politically speaking, through social manipulations? What impact does that have? And to be fair, I don't think there's anyone that is 100 % all in on either side of that equation. Obviously politics can solve problems. Obviously it can't solve all problems. I think that we're talking about an area of not so much extremes, but people that kind of lean to one side or the other. The unconstrained vision, this is what we might typically think of as the left, tends to take the view that problems are more solvable, that problems have solutions, that problems have if we empower certain individuals to do certain things we can actually achieve progress in some form. The constrained vision, which tends to be the more conservative, is not so much that problems aren't solvable but that they that we don't necessarily have the tools needed as humans to do it collectively. That fixing this over here might cause something to go off wrong over here. Now that's not the same as saying every step forward is an equal and opposite step backwards. It just means there was a recognition that maybe solutions isn't the best way, maybe progress isn't the best way to think of politics. Maybe society doesn't have a goal it's getting to. Maybe rather the purpose of politics is to create a level, sustainable playing field so that we as individuals can imbue our lives with purpose and meaning and build on top of that. Now these things being said, Because I think part Josh, the nature of your question is I don't know that it's necessarily fair to say like in today's political climate that either Republican or Democrats are more or less guilty of this per se. think conservatism going back is certainly more trade-off oriented. And part of this is, I don't want to get too far off base, but this might be helpful. I think both the progressive and the conservative have their own individual underlying virtues that animate them. For the progressive, in my opinion, it is justice. It is a sense of this is right and wrong. That can just be equality, but oftentimes it's more a sense of, want to empower people to do good things because that's right. We want to do good things. And that's not something that the conservative denies, but the animating virtue for the conservative is gratitude. It's an understanding that what we have is a good thing, let's retain it. Let's try our best to hold onto it. And you can see how these fit into these sort of constrained, unconstrained worldviews. know, one is a tragic view, if you will. The conservatives are tragic view. It's... let's just make sure things don't get worse, right? Because things could always get worse. The progressive tends to be a, I don't mean it's a pejorative, but a more utopian view. Almost an unfettered things not only could get better, but they ought to. And we ought to even be angry that they're not there already. And it's not so much in totality either those are right or wrong, but that is the tension, if you will, between the left and You know, I am kind of curious and I'm glad we're talking about this and values of political parties because as much as I despise our duopoly in America, I recognize its value. I'm a Democrat. I believe the Democrat Party stands for social justice, progressing this country. in a direction where everybody's equal and so on and so forth. And so that's why I'm a Democrat, because I recognize that you have power when you find people that share similar viewpoints with you, and you can vote and make change and whatnot. Republicans, same thing. So I'd love for you to explain in your mind What does it mean to be a Republican? And what do the Republicans believe? What do they value? What do they think is important for this country? Because I was thinking to myself, if you were talking to a brand new citizen of this country, and you just raised their hand, swore, took the test that we would all fail, and became an actual legitimate citizen, And they were going to vote for the first time in their life, but haven't really, you know, followed politics. And they're in a state where you have to register. think there's like, you know, 30 some odd states where you have to register. Not in Virginia, by the way. And they're like, well, what party should I register for? Like, what's your best argument for why Republican is the party they should register for? I wondering where the question was going end up there. Wow, that's a good one. My thousand foot view answer is I'm podcast host of Saving Elephants, I'm a lifelong Republican. I am not unaware of the direction my party has gone, nor that I'm in the vast minority of its viewpoints, if you will. So I don't necessarily tout the party line in a lot of ways. I do, however, recognize that as a conservative, over the long period of time, the Republican out of the two parties, the Republican Party, is the most likely to champion conservative policies in the long term. Even if there's a lot of ways in which they're currently championing, I would call them more nationalist populists, honestly, even in some sense, big government progressive policies, over the long term, and to be fair, it's not as if the Democratic Party has acted as a counterweight and says, okay, well, we'll become more moderated in the meanwhile. Maybe in rhetoric, but certainly not in... not in policy. And so talking to an individual as a newcomer, why they ought to, I'm trying to be cautious here because I probably, if I'm talking to a brand new citizen in the United States who just does not know, and by the way I'm reminded of a conversation I had years ago in an airport terminal with a woman from Germany who had very broken English at the time the Tea Party was new, and I was struggling with trying to explain to her why the Tea Party was not the same as a Democrat or Republican party. This is hard to do if you only have a few English words that we can share. But talking to someone who's brand new to the United States, and I know this might sound a little odd, I don't know that I would necessarily encourage them to join the Republican Party. Now there might be certain individuals who are Republicans that would run. There are certainly values that I think that the Republican Party holds or spouses or claims to hold that I would hope would win through. But Again, a long-term view is such that I hope the Republican Party maintains a sense of its origins, honestly dating all the way back to Lincoln. I'm not trying to get super nostalgic here, but sort of a clear-headed understanding of where exactly our rights come from, of how equality is balanced with consensual government, how both can be true and counterbalanced at the same time, and that from that you can derive a very durable framework of something we can be proud of. of individual rights that has honestly been one of the hallmark achievements of humanity of the past, I don't know, ever since we crawled out of the swamps, I suppose, and that that is a more durable vision in the long term. Now it remains to be seen, maybe 20, 30, 40 years from now, I might say, you know what, maybe we've reunited the Whig party and we need to go with that. And part of the reason I'm saying that is because, Will, where you started off here, I'm not a fan of the duopoly either. But it's a necessary evil almost in a sense. way our...until we restructure the government, and I'm not even devising we do so, we're going to have two parties. If the Republican party fell off the face of the earth, it would be replaced by something else. doesn't...if the Republican party split, one of those would eventually went out, or they would take over the Democratic...we're going to be stuck with two parties so long as our system maintains the way it does. That being said, the nature of the parties do evolve and change over time in their understanding. You what it means to be Republican today is different than 20 years ago, let alone 200 years ago, or I guess it would have been. There weren't too many Republicans 200 years ago, but you know what I mean. Several generations back. So some of what you're talking about is the mechanism whereby we elect elected officials that comport certain coalitions or values. There is a stickiness to it in that you can trace through lines between Lincoln up until today, but it's also not a pure what the Republicans believed back then is identical to what they do today, part of which because issues change. We can't have continuity of those same beliefs. And so there's a, my desire is to strengthen the Republican Party and to reinforce its conservative principles so that someday when I'm meeting with that immigrant who has just become an American citizen, I can proudly say here is exactly why I think you should join this party. I really, really like that. And it's bringing to my mind this sense that like how important it is for us to separate ourselves from the parties that we've voted for. Right. So when I hear you say I'm a lifelong Republican, what I hear you say is that I've been a Republican my whole life, not necessarily I'm going to be a Republican for the rest of my life. Right. Because say the Republican Party started becoming which and some people may argue it already has, completely unmoored in some ways from some of its foundational principles or conservative principles. My assumption is that you and I will probably be like, ooh, this party is not my party anymore. And it's because Republican, Democrat, if you take the same thing, name it Democrat, name it Republican, right? It's what's being represented going back to this idea of this conflict of visions. It's the idea, it's almost like this view of reality. It's this view of like, what is reality like? What's going on? And it moves down to foundational assumptions about human nature. about the collective, not just an individual person's human nature, but how we act as a people, how we act as a collective, what happens when we all get together and we can't have maybe 300 million people can't have a conversation. It's impossible. And so what has to happen? Well, there's mechanisms that we use to spread ideas and things like that. And of course they're going to get shifted and changed through these mechanisms of action that spread them. And I'm thinking like, what are these principles? And I know we've talked about this, I think even last time you're wrong, but it's really worth revisiting. What are these things that like, here are the principles of conservatism that really represent reality as it is? In other words, why should Will become a conservative? Why should he think And I mean that or vice versa, right? Because if we shouldn't become a conservative, then why are we conservatives? And if we shouldn't become a liberal in Will's view, why is Will a liberal? Is it just willy-nilly? Whatever feels good? Sometimes it feels like that for all of us, right? It's just whatever, that feels right, that feels wrong. And maybe it does come to that. I'd love to get your thoughts. Like, what's going on, conservatism, this view of reality at its core? that, and even maybe piggybacking on that, how are we doing as a Republican party? Are we really keeping up those principles, do you think? No, but neither party has truly kept up their principles ever, though I dare say I think we're living in an era where we're far more breadth of people keeping up principles than, you know, than what I have witnessed in the past and would presume hopefully in the future will suit me different. And I appreciate you separating the problem because there's a big difference between me talking to that immigrant about why this should become a Republican and me talking to Will about why you sir should be a conservative, right? Because I because by nature, since we're talking about something that talks about ideas and human nature and the fundamental anthropology of who we are, and this is a conservative notion, of course, that doesn't change, or least it doesn't change very much, or it changes extremely slowly. We're all gonna be long dead before that, we're gonna have very many, shall we say, truly innovative causes and morality, or the nature of humans. And for that reason, I can... Now, sometimes words change and you gentlemen know very well that you could have another guest on here next week called conservative. I think I was watching your second most watched podcast was Clay Clark. It's just weird that we're both called conservative. He lives not too far from me, by the way, and I've never met him, but I know people that know him and he is an individual to be sure. Very entertaining, I'll put it that way. But the animating world view, if you will, of conservatism is something that does not change. Now, it can respond differently to different data or input or process of time, as I often say, you I am a conservative in a sense of the ideas of the American founding, not 17th century Ottoman Empire. You know, those are two different, very different kinds of conservatives. What are we conserving? And in fact, that's one of the things that makes us messy is conservatism, much like radicalism, is one of the very few contextual based ideologies because it's not enough to just say I am a conservative. a conservative of what? What are you trying to conserve? If you're a radical, in some ways I'm a radical. What am I trying to tear apart? And people can swap. Some people can be radical about the very things I'm trying to conserve or vice versa. But I think conservatism properly understood has a number of advantages to it. I think it consistently, and I am a Christian, Josh, so I don't want to get too terribly religious here, but there's some crossovers that I can't avoid. I think conservatism is the best shot we have at taking seriously Christ's command to render into Caesar's that which is Caesar's to God that which is God's, which if you think about from one standpoint is like, don't know how to... isn't everything God's? Like what is the dividing line there? But I think Christianity and conservatism as an underpinning frees us to consistently recognize the difference between the eternal and the immediate, the here and now. Christianity does not disavow the importance of the material world, or the importance of establishing truth and justice in this material world, of feeding the poor, of helping those who are in need. It also simultaneously recognizes that this isn't the eternal. so it frees the Christian to not be bogged down by some ideology that finds salvation in their politics, but instead consistently says, while politics is important, it is literally nothing more than an aspect of what is all of life. I think when we break from this, we end up with the silliness we're in today where it's hard to think of anything as not political, whether it's football, whether it's social media, everything is political. It ought not to be. There's a lot of things that Politics does not need to intrude upon it, it doesn't enrich our lives to make it all political. think it what was it, several years back when Colin Kaepernick was taking a knee and that was the same year Kanye West was courting Donald Trump and somebody posted to Twitter, weird takeaways from this year. The left gets football, the right gets Kanye. I just thought, this is not the world I want to live in, right? What does any of this have to do with politics? So I think that is one thing that conservatism can be helpful about, is it consistently focuses on the durable forms that provide our life meaning, the thick institutions that stand outside of politics. Politics is important, it obviously talks about politics, but if you really delve into the conservative intellectuals of old, they were just as concerned about the moral health and fabric of society. In fact, maybe you could even argue more so, that unless society was working, unless the individuals were governing themselves, there was no such thing as self-governance. and these things are all down, you know, it's been maligned, I guess, by the Breitbart founder. good grief, why am It's not Steve Bannon. Who am I thinking of? It's the... Thank you! Yes, the dude with the name Breitbart in. I should have known that. I'm much more, yeah, I'm much more fan of Andrew than his predecessor, but he didn't invent the phrase, but he popularized it, the culture is downstream of politics, and I think he's absolutely right about that. Now, we can have a big argument, because I think... The culture wars we're having are stupid, and the things we talk about, conservative culture, aren't necessarily cultural. But it is a good idea that conservatism consistently focuses first on the non-political so that our politics can be durable and enriched. So I have so many questions and I'm trying to think about what direction I want to go given the time that we have. let's just keep it kind of on the quasi current. So Trump gets elected. Last time you and I talked, we had a different president. Trump is the president now. And he has nominated a bunch of very controversial cabinet picks, some of whom have worked at Fox News and, you know, some have just been controversial because they're controversial. you know, two come to mind, R.F.K. Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard. They were confirmed. Every Republican senator voted for them, except one. Mitch McConnell, which I'm not really scratching my head because most politicians find their courage when they don't have worry about a primary. But I'd love to get your thoughts about like, what does this mean? mean, Mitch McConnell is no resistor. He's no progressive. So like, what's your take on that? On Mitch McConnell specifically? McConnell's... What does it mean for the of the Republican Party when you have the stalwork of the Republican Party who has, you know, managed to get all kinds of wins for conservatives? Yeah, well, I certainly wouldn't call Gabbard an RFK wind for conservatives, but I understand what you mean. And McConnell is one of the most complex political figures of our time, I think. And granted, he's on his way out the door, but I think in some ways it's weird because he almost perfectly represents in my mind both the villain and also the actual prudent politician I would hope others would emulate. I mean, I think there is no denying the man is ridiculously talented. Yes. has pushed forward things that most others in that position could have never done. And so from a talent standpoint, I think he is worth understanding and emulating to that degree. I think he is far more, this is what's weird, is I'm in this very odd minority who I'm not happy with the direction of Republican party, but I recognize there's a reason we got Donald Trump. And so my desire is not to return us to the George W. Bush, Mitch McConnell era. because that had its problems too. It had its establishment excesses that now we have sort of the populist excesses we're trying to rid us of. So there's a balance there. And I think in my mind, McConnell represents a lot of ways an improvement on the current model, but also sort of a throwback to a previous era that leads to the current model, leads to the dissatisfaction that eventually causes the populist right backlash. Because while it does have certain advantages and certainly knows how to run government, It does not seem to understand how to reach people where they're at and recognize, mean, if look at something as simple as immigration, it has such a wooden ear to what the actual experiences of the people on the ground are and such an inability to break from the political power players, if you will, in the worlds of business and politics, that it consistently tells its base, shut up and get along until the base eventually rises up and throws it out. With Gabbard in particular, Part of reason think McConnell is a very peculiar guy is because I think he does have certain underlying guiding principles, but they're muted. I think he is an extremely savvy, cunning politician. I would never confuse him with a man of high morals and high integrity, if you will. But he does occasionally, I think, show... a long term view that is lacking in the Republican party. And I think he recognizes the dangers in putting someone like Tulsi, which to be clear, in some weird ways, I'm a fan of Tulsi Gabbard. She's very, she's very talented. She's very articulate. She holds certain views that I think are interesting. I think it's good the degree to which she would buck the democratic system. I liked her better as a Democrat than Republican because it seemed like she was doing more good for the Democratic Party to have sort of a flying the ointment that they're having to contend with. And there may be some cabinet positions I wouldn't mind seeing her in, but not in the one she's got. Anybody that's even remotely courting the idea that Assad maybe wasn't all that bad of a guy. It needs to be nowhere near any American international intelligence agencies. Or at the very least, needs to be compellingly able to explain to us why she has radically evolved from that position and why it was a mistake. And I do wonder if it's literally as simple as Mitch McConnell still has an ounce of integrity in his body. like, yeah, we can't put a person like that. And the other thing you could say of Mitch McConnell is he's not winning MAGA awards. He's not... So it's not as if I think he's doing the right thing when it's hard all the time, but it's more of a, he's not gonna, had he voted for Tulsi Gabbard, it's not as if everybody in Magna said, okay, I guess he's an okay guy. They hate, he was booed at the RNC as he was announcing, I'm going to nominate Donald Trump. They're booing this guy. He knows that he's lost the base. He owes them nothing and he's never going to get their affection back. And so I think that may explain in part why he did what he did. Hmm. So, so I got to ask the bombshell question, dude. Is Donald Trump a conservative? I would love for you to talk about Donald Trump. Is he a conservative? And really what I'm actually really trying to get at is what is the crux of the issue that you think like the most important issue that we're facing right now in conservative and conservatism? And how is Donald Trump going to help us or hinder us in? answer that. It's DEI. DEI is the most pressing issue facing the country. Yeah, it's there's such a juxtaposition between what actually impacts our life and what animates us because what we get to see in the We're so fortunate and prosperous in this country that we live our political lives as if it's all a big movie Right and we just want to get the win and we want I mean in a lot of ways and I don't I'll say this is a criticism well what okay, one of the things you can say of the Donald trump cabinet is they look like they're made for television This is arguably the most attractive cabinet we've had at least in my lifetime maybe ever. And I don't think that's an accident. I think that is it's more about the sizzle than the steak if you will. To directly answer your question Josh, no Donald Trump is not a conservative and I want to be clear I don't mean that as a pejorative. I don't think by any strict definition of conservatism Donald Trump would claim to be a conservative. Now he will in certain circles because it's to his advantage And if we're just talking about the stupid binary world of red team versus blue team, okay, I guess we could call him a conservative if everything gets divided. If all the complexities of human thought and life are divided into these two stupid camps, sure, he's more team red than team blue. But at that point, we're just talking about it's a sports jersey. It's not an actual deep intellectual understanding. I think there was one instance in his first term where he basically said, some people have called me a nationalist, I guess I'm a nationalist. And I I wished he would have leaned into that because I think that was probably closer I think he's a nationalist populist and I think maybe maybe fair to say I've often said look Trump has two abiding issues one immigration to his trade He's been the same Donald Trump for the past 30 40 years on those two issues They've kind of molded a little bit due to the change in circumstances He talks less about say Germany than and or Japan if you will and that now it's more about China Beyond that, I think he is essentially a populist demagogue. Again, I'm not trying to be just negative on the guy, but I think it's very clear he does not have a consistent ideological through line. And that's not always a bad thing. Sometimes the worst leaders in history have really consistent ideologies. Lenin, for example. Trump is all about Trump. believes the problems are, and this is sort of a populist view, he believes the problems are simple. There are elites. manipulating things and harming good people, the majority out there. There are the people who are behind me and if they will empower me, I will throw out the elites and put in the right people who will do the right things and all will be well. It's a needlessly simplistic view of how the world works, if you will. I've said before, don't think he believes he can walk on water, I just think he thinks that foreign policy and trade is easy and it just takes a person with a strong will doing the easy thing. In spite of all evidence to the contrary, I think he really believes that. All that being said, there are aspects in which we could call Donald Trump more conservative. mean, one of the things this guy has the capacity to do is make the left go insane. it's fascinating to me the degree to which they could just consistently take the bait that if If either party would just straighten up and act like adults for a long enough period of time, I think it would destroy the other party. But somehow Trump in the mix just blows everything out of the water. And so I guess for that reason I would say maybe the ultimate Donald Trump is not a conservative is, as I mentioned earlier, I am a conservative in the sense I desire to conserve the ideas of the founders. Not all of them, obviously. They had some bad ideas. But as far as the system of government, their anthropology, and their understanding of human nature, I don't believe we improve upon that. I think we can build from it, but I don't think we get a better version of what it means to be human. In that sense, I am a conservative. In the sense of Donald Trump, he is by definition of radical. He does not desire to hold within the strict contours of the rules of law. The question is, how do I use this system to advance the principles I want to advance? Not, how do I protect the system so that when the next guy gets in office, he can't use it against the American people? Gosh, that's really good. And I wish we had like another hour to chit chat because I have so many comments and so many questions. I mean, we haven't even talked about the 4.5 trillion and all that. So love to have you back on. Maybe we can dissect, you know, trickle down economics and taxes. And my guess is, you know, whether it's reconciliation or one big bill, I predict that the government will probably shut down here in middle of March. So we'll all have some extra time to chit chat about what it means to be a Republican. But thanks so much for stopping by, Josh. Really, really appreciate this conversation. When does your show come out? Episodes on my podcast, well, they drop every first and third Tuesday of the month. Occasionally I'll throw some more out there because I'll have some sort of cross-partisan chats. I try to get out there, but I try to do an original episode every Tuesday, every first and third Tuesday. OK, cool. You have a website. Yes, savingelephantsblog.com. There are way too many people trying to save elephants for me to get savingelephants.com. I know you're like, wow, he really is serious about saving. OK, this isn't the right website. Well, thanks again, Josh, for everything. This has been pretty fantastic. Saving Elephants podcast. You all make sure you check it out if you want more of the conservative perspective of what's happening in the country. And hey, to our audience and listeners, thanks again for stopping by and always keep your conversations not right or left but up. And we'll see you next time. Take care.