We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashenski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at fdr LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course to
the premium version of the Federalist dot com as well. Today's podcast is a
special one. I was actually at an American Compass Media symposium last week at
the National Press Club. I was super interesting. I was on a panel
with David Leonard of the New York Times and the Washington bureo chief of The
Economist as well. As We're talking about how the media can better represent,
or better reflect or better the various sort of needs the everyday lives of people
outside of the belt weigh and particularly the working class. So of course that's
fascinating to hear from The Economist and the New York Times about how they see
that problem. David Leonhardt is one of the people at the New York Times
that was sort of pushing their coverage in a somewhat better direction on COVID,
taking a little bit of a risk there on their COVID coverage, their school
lockdown coverage that was more in tune with the rest of the country arguably then
the kind of the New York City bubble, and he was very kind.
Economists was very kind. It was quite an interesting event overall. You know,
my take is basically that until these sort of class biases are really reckoned
with, there are going to be gaping blind spots in any media coverage period
ticularly from places like The New York Times. And I think this is you
know, their biggest problem is they don't concede their biases. They still truly
believe to their core on their news side that what they're doing is the sort
of aspirational neutrality that mass media had for a really long time. That you
know, you're the example that I always use, and listeners here have heard
in a million times of Johnny Carson and Stephen Colbert. If you apply that
to the news media. Johnny Carson was not a political He was, you
know, sort of he made plenty of political jokes, but he was the
top rated host in late night. He had to appeal to everyone because there
was few there were fewer choices, and so advertising dollars went to the person
who could draw the most eyeballs. And you know, you look at Stephen
Colbert, he's so political, he's barely funny. And yet he was for
a while during the Trump administration, the top rated host in late night TV.
But with a much smaller section of the public. You can apply that
to the news media. So if The New York Times just kind of admitted
that it was for affluent Adam Rubinstein is out in the Atlantic with some reflections
on what happened with Tom Cotton's at ed in twenty twenty. He is one
of the right of center people on the opinion desk at the time. And
I knew Adam a little bit when he worked at the Weekly Standard because they
shared an office with the Washington Examiner, a really interesting guy. The Atlantic
piece, he's talking about how they were doing icebreakers and his question was what
his favorite sandwich was, and he said Chick fil A, And a human
resources person was not happy about that because he said that his favorite sandwich was
a spicy chicken sandwich from Chick fil A. So again, the New York
Times as evidenced by the whole Tom Cotton debacle that you can read more about
in Adam's New Atlantic piece, and James Bennett, who was basically forced out
after that he was the head of the opinion desk, has written a long,
long piece in The Economist about this as well. They did that because
they are now subservient to a tiny slice of the public, which is their
subscriber base. They have a pretty robust subscriber base of affluent, educated people
who have the will and the money to subscribe to The New York Times,
and they don't want to see op eds from Tom Cotton, not even you
know, sort of mainstream conservative arguments, as was the case with his peace
I don't even know that you could call that a conservative argument. At the
time, it was polling pretty well with the country in general. So you
know, if the New York Times kind of reckoned with that, understood that,
you know, they were fully responsive now to a small slice of the
public that their aspirational neutrality is impossible because the vast majority of their journalists have
these sort of outward biases when it comes to trans identity, black lives matter,
Donald Trump, faith, all of those different things, marriage, abortion
that you know, are not allowing them to even aspire to neutrality anymore.
Great you know that we could start talking about all of their errors and how
some of their blind spots are leading to errors. But if we could at
least dispense with the lie that there's any sort of ability on behalf of these
journalists at the Post, the Times, places like The Atlantic to come down
with a neutral perspective. I guess maybe The Atlantic isn't the best example of
that. SID never really purported to be neutral, but the Times, the
Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CNN, they're sort of lie to the
public that they are aspiring towards neutrality, when in fact they're openly embracing all
kinds of very specific positions. I think dispensing with that lie would at least
be helpful, because then, you know, it wouldn't be you wouldn't have
as much weight to Paul Krugman writing about how everyone's fine economically or whatever else,
and we could just sort of have a serious conversation about where we're coming
from, and that will lead to truth. It will lead to better coverage,
and you know, people need to be hired from different backgrounds and all
of that. This is a tangent, but some reflections on the conversation that
we had at the Media Symposium with American Compass, which was just a really,
really fascinating discussion, And on the sidelines of the symposium, I had
the opportunity to chat with Johnny Burka, who's the president of the Intercollegiate Studies
Institute and doing a lot of good work over there. He also is out
with a new book on statesmanship. So Johnny and I were supposed to do
a podcast later in the day, but we were both in the same place,
so I just sort of had the opportunity to pull him aside on the
sidelines of the symposium, right in the middle of the National Press Club,
with all the hustle in the hustle and bustle of the Beltway. If you're
not based in DC or don't spend a lot of time here, it's just
a couple of blocks from the White House. It's a cool spot, and
we had the opportunity just to kind of We found a table in the hallway
and we talked a little bit about statesmanship, the history of statesmanship, how
Christianity, the concept of sort of Christian ethics, how that altered the sort
of Greek outlooks on statesmanship, how Machia Valley came along how Churchill saw statesmanship.
Super interesting conversation, especially because you know, when I look back on
the immigration deal of a couple of weeks ago, it just it really is
shocking how little statesmanship is involved in some of these negotiations, how little statesmanship
you see true statesmanship on the left and the right. I even asked Johnny
what he thought about Donald Trump on Twitter. You can a statesman be a
sort of a boomer tweeter. So we go through all of these random questions
that I have, but also I found the history to be really interesting,
and I just wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, the
symposium, the conversation with Johnny, and thank everyone, as always for listening
to Federal Stradio Hour. We appreciate it immensely and mensely immensely. I'm so
grateful, So thank you for listening. And I really hope you enjoyed this
conversation with Johnny Burka. Johnny, you graduated from Hillsdale, right, that's
right, class of twenty twelve, Class of twenty twelve. Okay, I
won't call you old, but that makes you old, Johnny. So tell
us just a little bit about I think this is your first time on Federal
aust radio hour. That's right somehow, But tell us a little bit about
your background and how you ended up running ISI. Basically, yeah, absolutely,
So. I grew up in rural south central Michigan, went to local
public schools, had the experience of what we were talking about earlier today of
living in the rust belt. And my dad actually worked in the auto industry
and had the ups and downs of that industry contracting in light of the China
shock. Then he ended up starting a winery and a micro brewery. So
I grew up with a lot of hands on entrepreneurial experience working for my parents.
Ended up going to Hillsdale College and that really changed the trajectory of my
life. Studied under Larry arn My senior year in particular, I took a
class on Aristotle and one on C. S. Lewis that he was teaching.
And it was really at Hillsdale that I fell in love with this tradition
of the mirrors for Princes, which we'll talk more about, which is classic
texts offering leadership advice for statesmen. So that kind of set the course of
my intellectual trajectory. But I went on to seminary because I thought I wanted
to be a pastor, ended up becoming Eastern Orthodox, decided not to go
to seminary, and then got back involved in the world of politics. Worked
for ISI for two years as a fundraiser, then came to DC for four
years where I ran the American Conservative magazine, and then ISI came knocking on
my door, and so three and a half years ago I went back there
as president. Is an incredible trajectory, and actually on that point talked to
us a little bit about this laneanguage that you speak and that doctor Arne speaks.
It would have been common to people who had basically been educated, and
not everybody was educated, you know, decades ago, let's say, five,
six, seven, decades ago, a lot of people would have understood
what you're talking about when you're talking about the like the mirrors of the princes,
when you're talking about actually the subject of this book. Frankly, that
would have been a sort of common parlance. Now it's really reserved for a
sliver of the public. Let's start with just asking how you personally got interested
in it. Was it Hillsdale. It was it Hillsdale that I was first
introduced to the work of Thomas Moore and Erasmus. Erasmus wrote The Education of
a Christian Prince, which is a gift that he presented to the young Prince
Charles, who had become Charles the fifth of the Holy Roman Empire. And
Thomas Moore wrote a book Utopia, and he of course was an advisor for
Henry the eighth. So it was there that I really discovered this tree,
and the reason that I fell in love with it kind of gets precisely at
what you were what you were asking is today in America if you say mirrors
for princes, or even if you mentioned Thomas Moore, Erasmus or Xenophon,
most people's eyes would glaze over. But this whole tradition actually existed to bridge
the world of philosophy and political theory with the world of action, because these
were attacks that were not presented to philosophers. They were given to statesmen,
to kings, to queens, to people serving in a public capacity who were
very busy, very ambitious, had many other cares and oftentimes didn't really care
about philosophy, didn't care about living the good life. And so these were
written in such a way that it would also appeal to their own self interest
in terms of their political leadership and what they wanted to accomplish. And it
was a way for an advisor or for an educator to say, hey,
you know, pick me. I'm here to offer my services, and also
here to remind you that you may be in charge as a king or queen
or political leader, but ultimate one day you're going to have to give an
account to your actions, and so you better pay attention to your conscience to
while you're governing. So let me have fun with the devil's advocate question here.
And it's one that you deal with a lot, and I know this,
but it's basically the hey, hey ho ho, Western Civice got to
go argument? Why are we better off for having studied Xenophone or now church
Hall? Sure? Why is it that centering these thinkers who have been centered
for so long to use the sort of vernacular, Why is it that's essential
really to crafting statesmen, crafting leaders? And let me tag on to that
question. Does it speak to the lack of true statesmen that we have right
now that this sort of fell out of fashion? Absolutely so interestingly enough,
you know, one of the problems that I hope to address with publishing this
book is really reminding people of the civilizational in particularly the religious context out of
which every political system emerges, even our own tradition here in America. And
so what I did for this book that somewhat turns that narrative on its head
is that I actually went back to nearly every ancient civilization. So I went
to ancient China, India, the Islamic world, the Persian world, and
I included their classic texts on advice for statesmen, alongside the more prominent Western
tax of Cicero and Aristotle and Xenophon. And so in doing that exercise,
I actually think that you discover there's greater unity among a lot of these classical
civilizations than we might think today. So one example of this is nearly in
every tradition, but particularly the Persian, the Indian, and the Chinese,
the foundation for effective political leadership is self control. Self control. It's the
restraint of those kind of base human passions or glory for alcohol, for food,
for sex, and almost stoicism. So almost as yeah, there's a
type of stoicism. And you see this, I mean, you open up
this ancient Indian text, you know, that was written thousands of years ago.
And the very first thing is, you know, your kingdom will come
to ruin if you don't have restraint over your senses. And so this is
common in every tradition. And so I really do think that living that morally
virtuous life. You know, Machiavelli might believe that you should depart from that
in select occasions, but even then for him it would still only be in
select occasions. You know, having self mastery is quite important in every tradition.
And the other thing is that religion really was, especially in the ancient
world. It wasn't really until Christianity in the West changed this a little bit,
but religion and the religious cult was the foundation for the political order,
the religio exactly, history, economics, the Great works of letters, the
meaning of the US Constitution. Did you study these things in school? Probably
not, or if you're like me, maybe it's just time for a refresher.
Even if you did study them. If you listen to this podcast,
you know I talk all the time, I don't know that I actually studied
these things with the best content in the first place. Time and technology have
changed a lot of things, but they have not changed basic fundamental truths about
the world and our place in it. That's why I am genuinely so excited
that Hillsdale College is offering more than forty free online courses in the most important
and enduring subject You can learn about the works of C. S. Lewis,
the stories in the Book of Genesis, the meaning of the Constitution,
the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, or the history of the ancient
Christian Church with Hillsdale College's online courses all available for free. That's right,
you heard me say that they are free. I send these courses to my
friends and family all the time. Personally, I recommend you sign up for
C. S. Lewis on Christianity. In the seven lecture course, you
will examine some of Lewis's classic works, including Mere Christianity, my favorite,
The Screwtape Letters, The Abolition of Man, and more to see what Lewis
had to say about scripture, prayer, suffering, joy, Heaven and Hell.
The course is self paced so that you can start whenever and wherever.
En roll right now in C. S. Lewis on Christianity to discover Lewis's
core lessons regarding the truth and goodness of the Christian faith and how to apply
those lessons to your life. So go right now to Hillsdale dot edu slash
Federalist to enroll. There's no cost and it's easy to get started. That's
Hillsdale dot edu slash Federalist to register Hillsdale dot edu slash Federalist. So I
was gonna it's funny that you said, I was just going to ask you
about Tom Holland and dominion because this question actually I was reading on some wild
Milton atheist website. One of their critiques of Tom Holland is that he doesn't
realize the ways in which early Christian sort of stole from the Stoics. But
are there ways that some of this is the water that we're swimming in?
So why read Xenophon if we're swimming in his waters? How true is that
when it comes to these philosophers? Well, I think what you'll find if
you you know, it sounds kind of high and abstract, But if you
open the book and sit down and just read any small section you could pick
any of the one of the eighteen to twenty authors that I have, you'll
see that the advice really rings true today because they were offering profound reflections on
human nature, which I think is permanent in nearly every context. So if
you want advice on how do I pick you know, let's say this is
in a political context, how do I pick good advisors? How do I
find personnel to staff my administration? How should I approach foreign policy? How
should I spend my time? This is going to have practical advice for you.
Or if you're just an eighteen year old and you're president of your student
council and you want to make an impact in politics, and you want to
know, like how do I grow and develop in my career and my professional
development, there's practical pieces of advice for you on these pages, and you
would think that, wow, maybe this is something that Jordan Peterson might tell
me, or something that my one of your favorite influencers might talk about.
So it's a very practical tradition. So Johnny Burka is the Jordan Peterson for
politicians. Is what I just heard you said it? Now, Okay,
so actually let's talk a little bit about you. So you include I'm reading
from the list here, you have Cistero, Augustine, Erasmus, Maket Valley,
George Washington, and then you get to Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.
And obviously doctor Arn't probably loved the Winston Churchill part of that. But if
we stay for a minute on some of those cross cultural differences in the ancient
philosophers you mentioned restraint, are there other things or are there key differences when
you went back and sort of consulted these texts that are are salient to leaning
wisdom from them on statesmanship. Sure so, especially with with Xenophon, with
Han Fei and China, with Catilian, ancient India, these are operating much
more from a realist political tradition, which I would say is much actually more
in line with Machiavelli. Some people say that Machiavelli was a significant rupture from
the ancient world, and I think it's true that he was a rupture from
the Christian kind of medieval world, but perhaps less so from this ancient world
of real politic, where to some extent it does feel to me like the
ends do justify the means. If you can be successful in your political accomplishments,
people will celebrate you as a victorious conqueror. But if you fail,
you know you're you're a despot and a tyrant. Yes, So I think
really the biggest change that's introduced is by Christianity because in this ancient context,
you know, the kings were often believed to be gods, right, this
was they were the one inter me the area, the link between heaven and
earth, and that's why the religious call it was so central to the to
the state. Christianity, you know, believes that there's only one God,
right, and that that Christ is king. Judaism ancient in ancient Judaism does
that too, and that's that's a very very important point. So you do
have kingship in the Old Testament, but there is a there is a distinction
between the priestly class and the kind of the royal dividic class, even though
I would say, you know, you have king David wrote the Psalms,
right, so there is a priestly function. There's a sort of a priestly
aspect to a king in ancient Israel, but it's certainly not the kind of
the divine status that you would find in ancient Egypt or ancient Mesopotamia. So
I think Christianity does introduce that distinction between between the Church and the state,
which then over time, you know, grows to be I think more absolute
than I think probably the early Christians would have understood it to be. So
I think the introduction of Christianity, and then obviously with Machiavelli, you do
see that rupture where the world. This is to quote you know, Harvey
Mansfield and his introduction to the Prince. Basically politics is kind of unfettered from
anything above it. So there's that that severing and it's kind of done,
you know, for its own sake, and so you do seek, you
know, sort of with this rise of a more secular approach to politics,
a different approach to statesmanship. So what does Christianity do to the concept of
statesmanship, especially when you're looking back at you know, Xenophone and then comparing
it to what a statesman is like or even Alexander the Great, and then
comparing you know, post Christian statesman, you know, how kings saw themselves
and then even how a Theodore Roosevelt or Winston Churchill saw themselves on the world
stage. So in the ancient world, you know, in Aristotle talks about
this, honor is really honor in the public realm is really the highest end.
It's the path to immortality because they were not entirely sure about what happens
to the soul after death. You see at the end of Cyrus the Great's
life, he's on his deathbed and he's giving a talk to his two sons,
and he says, you know, I hope that my soul lives on,
you know, and that there is some sort of life after death.
And hopefully that can be a reminder to you, my sons, that my
soul and spirit are here, and that can help you to be a better
leader. But I'm not entirely sure about that. And so there's a lot
of hope that's placed in the public honors, the songs that will be told,
the monuments about your accomplishments on earth. And so I do feel like
that helped to incentivize that ambiguity about what happens after death, incentivized more of
a conquering spirit, because this is the only place you had to make a
mark and live a legacy. And even for Aristotle, right, he said,
it's worth there are some condition in life that are not worth living,
you know, and so you really do dying perhaps in pursuit of honor,
would be worthwhile because it'd be a way of the only way of achieving immortality.
Where are Japanese? Yeah, there you go exactly. And then you
know, with the Christian context, a lot of these texts really starts off
by saying, you know, hey, you know, hey, person in
power, right, one day, you're going to die and you're going to
stand before the judgment seat of Christ. And if you're not just and merciful
and you know, caring for the poor and pious and have more eternal rewards,
you're going to spend eternity in hell and that's going to be really painful.
And so it's kind of their role is almost to like prick the conscience
of the king, because it was an era where there were I don't want
to say no checks and balances, because there are many organic ones that we
don't quite realize today, but there were less formal checks and balances on a
king's power. So pricking their conscience and reminding them of eternal life or damnation
was a method that many of people Agustin and Aquinas used. So on that
note, you include Theodore Roosevelt and not Franklin. Roosevelt actually got interesting.
I know this is a specific person from a list of many people that you
include in the book, But talk to us about why Theodore Roosevelt. You
selected him to sort of take lessons from fund statesmanship. Yeah. So this
tradition of mirrors for princess ends at the modern era, and so what I'm
trying to do is revive that for our own day. So I've included some
of these thinkers and statesmen like Teddy Roosevelt to expand this tradition. There's a
few reasons why I included Teddy Roosevelt. The first one, this text is
called Citizenship in a Republic, and this is where you see two things.
One, he gives this admonition saying, in a republican context, you're only
going to have great leaders if the mass of the body politic are educated and
actually receive sort of the intellectual and the moral foundations needed for self government.
And so he says the quality of your leaders will ebb and flow with the
quality of the body public and their education level. So I thought that was
interesting and relates closely to our work of educating college students at II. And
then the second thing is he concludes with his famous quotation on the man in
the arena right, And this is basically, it's better to strive after great
and valiant deeds and if you fail, you know, you come short.
You know, at least you'll never be with the cowards who neither know victory
or defeat. And so this whole book is really saying, hey, in
our particular context in America, it's easier tempting to be to be blackpilled,
to want to withdraw from public life because things have gotten so bad. And
so this is book, the whole book is really a call to action,
and I think Teddy Roosevelt really embodies that, you know, the turn of
the twentieth century, that American spirit of being, the active life, and
the virtues of that. So when do you think that tradition finally aided so
the mirrors for Prince's tradition in the context of American politics, in the context
of American politics. So the founders Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton would
have been familiar with Cicero and Xenophon and Aristotle, so they would would have
understood this tradition. Now, I do believe that, you know, a
lot of this was at the beginning of the progressive era, when some of
these classic texts kind of dropped out of the curriculum, but you also do
with the general broader shift away from monarchy towards republican government, the tradition vanishes
because it was a little bit easier when you knew who the king or queen
was to write them a letter or to say, hey, I want to
be a tutor to your young prince. And this is the curriculum that I'd
put together. But my whole point is, you know, previous generations in
every civilization gave very careful thought to the qualities that they wanted to see in
their political leaders, and then they articulated them, and they created the educational
institutions needed to pass that on. And so I think there's no reason we
couldn't have a mirrors for presidents or mirrors for senators tradition in our own day.
What would that look like sort of practically, well, the most so,
you know, first and foremost, it's it could be putting together a
collection of these classic texts. And I actually dedicated my book to the forty
seventh President of the United States, so maybe one day, you know,
he'll hold that in his hands as a source of inspiration. You know,
in some respects it's you know, many of the famous kind of statesmen from
throughout history. So Julius Caesar is said, and never have left for a
battle without carrying scrolls of Xenophon's education with him. Thomas Moore didn't leave the
house without copies of sisters on duties in his breast pocket. So you're saying
they're absolute losers. Yeah, exactly. I mean, so I think one
it would just be you know, we can revive these classic texts. But
I think, just like we have business books for entrepreneurs zero to one by
Peter Deal, Jim Collins, good to great, how about we have some
books for how to become a great statesman or articulating the qualities that we want
to see. So I think writing our own. But then also if you
if you move to Okay, how do you establish the educational institutions? You
could certainly do that through an ISI, through a Hillsdale College. Those are
things that take a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot
of manpower to be able to implement or build or scale. But the classic
way in this tradition that the knowledge has passed is through one on one relationships
with a tutor and with a pupil, and that is really cost effective,
and so I think there's a way in which we could actually bring that back
today. You know, wouldn't it be amazing if you had a great philosopher
like a Harvey Mansfield, like a Larry arn actually kind of mentoring, you
know, some of our senators. So I think there's ways that we could
bring it back today. Inflation's not going anywhere. The Watchdown on Wall Street
podcast with Chris Marcas. Every day, Chris helps unpack the connection between politics
and the economy and how it affects your wallet. Major companies are continuing to
lay off thousands of workers. Wholesale and retail prices went up in January.
You can't believe the government's job numbers. The spin will be out there,
whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially.
Be informed. Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski
on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't want
to make a joke about how they'd mentored young men in ancient Rome. I
don't want to make that joke at all, Johnny. But I will also
ask man that was so inappropriate. Maybe I'll cut that, maybe I won't.
But the question of education is tricky because it also feels like there's so
little control or there's so little interest in imbuing young people with anything other than
moral relativism. Now, and I guess it's just you know, young people
or senators alike. I can understand how a Republican senator might find his way
into a conversation with Larry arn But statesmanship is almost a it's a lost concept,
it seems to me on people like Chuck Schumer, like, what does
he think about it? Actually, the one person who told me they read
good to great Kevin McCarthy interested in McCarthy, But I mean, it just
seems like he was trying to do something. But it seems like Hakim Jefferies
doesn't have any ambition to be a statesman. How do you explain the concept
of statesmanship in and of itself when people seem to have lost that from its
most basic level. So part of it was lost by design. So at
the beginning of the progressive era, there was a shift away from statesmanship classically
understood in favor of management expertise and beureauocracy food to judge exactly right. So,
and that was also mirroring a lot of the changes that were happening in
the economy with sort of you know, much larger scale kind of conglomerates and
corporations that weren't as entrepreneurial, but that almost you know, mirrored to some
extent kind of the bureaucratic layers that you would see in government today. You
know, we celebrate, at least in certain corners of the country, kind
of the great entrepreneur Peter T. L Elon Musk, et cetera. But
we don't really hold in high esteem the CEOs of Fortune five hundred companies.
You know there really are seen as managers more than great leaders or visionaries.
So part of this is kind of just built into the structure. And then
all of the schools, you know, if you look at the Harvard Kennedy
School or all these kind of public policy schools, they're really interested in creating
credentialized managers for the bureaucracies, not kind of great sold leaders. So that's
that's a bigger structural issue that we have to address. But I do think
if you were to sit you know, because some of this, though,
is really just getting back to the most human level of what does it mean
to be a great leader? And so part of me wonders if you were
to sit Hakeem Jeffreys or Chuck Schumer down and you were to say, all
right, what are the if you're just thinking abstractly, like what's your vision?
What's your end game? You know? And I think they would probably
say justice, or they would probably have a list in saying no, it's
actually good to be courageous, it's good to whatever. They would have their
own vision, and I think we would disagree on what they're either what the
terms mean or the ends that they're pursuing, but they probably would still say
you should be prudent, you should be just, you should be courageous.
And so to some extent, the art of this tradition is, okay,
maybe you are a smart, wise philosopher, academic or professor or theologian.
How do you make this advice? How do you sit someone like that down,
get them talking and actually kind of take things back to first principles and
help them to make better decisions. I have a really dumb question and really
specific, but what does states mean trip look like on social media? And
I don't know if you've ever thought of that before. But I still find
it almost and this is going to be a matter of personal preference maybe,
but I still find it almost beneath the dignity of the office for a president,
whether it's Joe Biden or Donald Trump. But let's even talk about Joe
Biden tweeting a picture of himself eating ice cream or saying, you just something
silly that we know he didn't write. We know that Trump does write his
tweets, but you know, obviously we could talk about him tweeting about Mika
Brazinski or whatever. You know, Let's say there's a blank slate and you
can write the template for a statesman in the era of TikTok YouTube, instagram,
Facebook, Twitter, What would that look like ideally? Well, maybe
it's important just to back up for a moment, so you do see you
see a shift in the twentieth century really away from so kind of in the
old classic conception, right, a king, it was an individual who was
in charge of the state, but it was very much an institutional individual.
You see this if you watch The Crown and you see the ways in which
Queen Elizabeth her own personality, her own interests have to be suppressed, and
she's a public institutional figure. Then you see kind of in a republican era,
kind of an era of you know, our founders. Washington himself,
right, he resisted the idea of being a king or a dictator, and
he put all of his capital into building institutions that would endure. And he
was even a reluctant statesman, someone who has pulled away from his farm to
get into the service of government. For a long time in American history,
probably one hundred years, it was that trope of the reluctant statesman who has
yanked into the public arena by popular demand. But in the twentieth century that
really does begin to shift, and instead of having the institutional individual or these
institutions kind of running things, you do get I think, this sense of
individuality that is really dominant, and that you see in Teddy Roosevelt, in
Winston Churchill, even in Ronald Reagan. And so even though these are you
know, conservatives or lowercase C conservatives of a stripe, their individuality is in
their charisma is really a defining aspect of their leadership. And so as you
transition to this social media era, you know, we have, really the
institutions of our republic are degraded to such an extent that we really do just
have you know, essentially mass mass democracy. And so really the only way
to achieve political power is to some extent by playing the part of a demagogue
and kind of groveling before to two different constituencies. You're you're groveling before the
oligarchs right to get your hundred million dollars to run your campaign, and then
you're groveling before you know, the masses on social media for two and a
half years, you know, and maybe you could even say that the whole
kind of historically, going back to Cyrus, you know, he had to
lead his military campaign. You know, there was the conquest and then eventually
the ruling that came after the conquest. Now, I guess you could say
that the conquest is making it through the two and a half your campaign,
and then the ruling is the part that comes after. And most people aren't
even really interested in governing. It's sort of the thrill of the campaign is
the whole thing. And so I think it's very difficult in today's day and
age not to you know, to Thomas Aquinas warns about kind of men in
pursuit of public life in a context like this, you know, often become
false because they're trying simply to just please the ears of the people that they're
they're hoping to win them into their camp. So I think there has to
be some way where you are still courting kind of mass appeal the way that
someone who's not a conservative, someone like FDR did, But you're actually calling
people towards, you know, more transcendent ends than politics. You're pursuing them
and good You're leading with a beautiful vision. You're painting a portrait of the
world that you want to create, and you're giving people confidence that you can
bring that about and make that a reality. And I would hope that there's
enough goodness left in the American people that in mass they could rally behind a
beautiful vision like that. And now you're just sort of trying to be the
president of Babel. Yeah, exactly, the president of Babel. So some
time ago, maybe it wasn't that long, with maybe five years something like
that. It just kind of shook me when someone in the conservative movement said,
you know, I think it was in the middle of a border debate
something like that they said, we don't have statesmen anymore, and I had
never thought about that. It was part of the reason I was excited to
talk to you. And let me pose the question that you're going to get
a million times during this book tour, which is, is there an example
of a statesman today, a great statesman today? Are there people who shall
promise? Are there people who are examples of what not to do? But
as we look at the kind of political landscape, the cultural landscape today,
are there examples that are helpful to the point you're making. Yeah, So
I think someone a couple of people come to mind. But I think,
let's say, someone like DeSantis is kind of a cautionary tale, which in
a sense, you know, I think, within the context of his own
state in Florida, he he you know, really it's a state that he
won by a small margin. Initially, he took some courageous positions, especially
on COVID, He kind of built a new coalition, and then he executed
on a laundry list of conservative priorities and has you know, probably flipped the
state a purple state pretty red for a long period of time. So I
think if you're just looking at the local level. Yeah, he is a
promising statesman, but I think his campaign really fell flat on its face from
the start because I think he didn't really understand that in order to win at
the national level, a great statesman does have to have a vision not just
for their camp or for their tribe to win, but a vision for the
flourishing of the whole society. And you do have to paint on that big
canvas, you know, beautiful, captivating colors that are really going to capture
people's hearts in their imagination. And I think he thought you can lead on
policy, he can lead on rattling off the list of his accomplishments, which
are all, you know, great things, But I don't think he really
understood the heart of a voter and how that works. So I think he's
a cautionary tale that policy alone and previous victories aren't enough. I think if
someone else, Robert Leitthheiser, who I admire, right, who's not an
elected statesman, but who is operating, you know, as the US trade
representative in the Trump administration. And this is someone who going back to the
late nineties, wrote an op ed for The New York Times warning against China
entering the World Trade Organization. Everyone kind of thought he was crazy, but
he had a prophetic voice, and then the way, you know, his
own the waves of his own sorry, the waves of fortune eventually ended up
aligning with his own position, and he found himself advising Donald Trump. And
then I think had to be very artful in a cabinet that was actually quite
divided over the appropriate response to China and trade and tariffs, and he very
deftly kind of navigated that and I think helped to bring about a paradigm shift
and how our country approaches China. And so I think someone like him would
be a certainly a model as an advisor to a statesman. Oh that's a
great point. We've been very lucky to have this chat, Johnny, about
your new book called Gateway to Statesmanship Selections from Xenophon to Churchill. The forward
again is by Larry arn the prophaces by Larry On. Johnny. Lastly,
just tell us a little bit about what you guys are up to at II.
Yeah. Absolutely, So ISI exists really to implement everything that we've been
talking about in terms of, you know, we look at the country and
we see the failures of our elite leaders in nearly every sector, but especially
an education and so then the question becomes, how do you get new and
better leaders? And so what we're doing at ISI is we're traveling the country
and we're actually doing talent id and we have very specific i would say,
both both moral, intellectual and leadership skills. We have a checklist of traits
that we're looking for in students and so we identify those and we help through
a network of mentors, friends and educators to give them the knowledge that they're
not getting in the classroom and then to help to place them in positions of
influence after they graduate. So we have nearly one hundred and fifty chapters on
college campuses and also a network of eighty five newspapers. So we're really doing
that work of educating the minds and the hearts of hopefully future great leaders for
America desperately needed. And Johnny Burka once again is the author of Statesmanship Selections
from Xenophone to Churchilli dot org i side dot org. There you go.
All right, Well, you've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio
Hour. Emmily Dashinsky, culture editor here at the Federalist, will be back
soon with more be lovers of freedom and anxious for the frame