In this bonus episode, Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is interviewed by Wes Siler, director and founder of The Burkean Conservative. This conversation was originally broadcast on Facebook Live under The Burkean Conservative’s weekly video series Conservatism on Tap LIVE. The conversation centers around how Saving Elephants came to be and the ongoing project to reignite conservatism for Millennials in hopes of restoring the Republican party.

The Burkean Conservative is a website, social media presence, and series of frequently updated videos focused on educating and expanding the conservative movement on the basis of Edmund Burke's principles. They define a “Burkean Conservative” one who ascribes to conservative political philosophy in the tradition of Edmund Burke, an 18th century philosopher and statesman widely credited for developing classical conservatism.

According to The Burkean Conservative website, Edmund Burke took strong stances against the violence and progressivism of the French Revolution while also taking a position of sympathy and leniency towards the more justified impulses of the American Revolution. Today the ideas, speeches, and political stances of Edmund Burke serve to philosophically differentiate conservatism from other beliefs. However, Burke's ideas are still too often ignored and disregarded by leading American intellectuals today. Far too many conflate conservatism with libertarianism or simple nostalgia, and in doing so they ignore the true intellectual roots and maturity of the conservative perspective.

October 27, 2020 at 06:22AM - Josh Lewis

Can we all just admit that 2020 sucks? This year has been a disaster on so many fronts it’s hard to keep track. What feels like a decade’s worth of news stories pass from one week to the next with no end in sight. But just how bad is 2020? Compared to what? How are we doing as a nation, world, or species in the grand scheme of things? Is the future bleak or bright? And how do we maintain perspective so that we can clearly see what needs to change without overlooking genuine progress quietly taking place elsewhere?

Long-time guest Bob Burch is back after a long hiatus to join host Josh Lewis in parsing through the good, the bad, and the ugly truths about 2020 and to share how the conservative mindset can help keep hope alive in the midst difficult times.

October 20, 2020 at 06:33AM - Josh Lewis

Hardly anyone disagrees Americans are divided, or that our divisions are problematic. But could continual political partisanship and polarization actually fracture the United States into multiple nations? What is the likely outcome or potential risks if we do not find a way to reverse the negative polarization? What are the preconditions for state secessions, and how close are we to meeting those preconditions? Is the United States facing another civil war, acrimonious divorce, or eventual reconciliation?

Those are precisely the questions David French sets out to answer in his new book Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. David joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to discuss the threats political polarization represent for the United States, what our history can tell us about the likelihood of these dangers, and how returning to the Madisonian blueprint of the extended republic may offer the solutions to many of the controversial political battles today.

About David French

David French is an Iraqi war veteran, attorney, free speech and religious liberties advocate, political commentator, and author who has been at the center of some of the hottest political battles over the past four years. His name was used to coin the term Frenchism to describe a deference to classical liberalism and opposition to the new nationalism and authoritarianism on the Right (see the Saving Elephants article on Frenchism for more information).

French has served as a senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice and the Alliance Defending Freedom, has lectured at Cornell Law School, and spent much of his career working on religious-rights issues. He served as president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). He retired from FIRE in 2005, citing plans to serve in the United States Army Reserve as a judge advocate general officer. He was a staff writer for National Review from 2015 to 2019, and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute. In 2019 French left National Review to join the conservative news site The Dispatch as a senior editor.

October 06, 2020 at 06:18AM - Josh Lewis