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- [00:07]
Scott Bertram
From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true and the beautiful are taught, nurtured and honored. This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.
- [00:25]
John Tillman
Car pulls up on the other side of the park pump. Woman gets out. Her 20ish year old son gets out and takes a few steps to go prepay. She stood there with stress. She looked at him and said, let's do $20. That's why we need greater supply of natural resources to lower the cost for that woman. That's where we want to tell the stories at the gas pump.
- [00:46]
Scott Bertram
This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. That was John Tillman. He's the author of the new book the Political how the Radical Left Controls America and the Path to Regaining Our Liberty. We go in depth with John on today's program. Also later on, Luke Foster from Hillsdale in D.C. tells us all about the spirit of a gentleman.
- [01:13]
First, we're joined now by John Tillman, who's CEO of the American Culture Project, one of the nation's most prominent leaders in the free market public policy area. And he's got a new book, the Political how the Radical Left Controls America and the Path to Regaining Our Liberty. It's right there. John, thanks so much for joining us.
- [01:32]
John Tillman
Great to be with you, Scott. Thanks for having me. Good to talk to you again.
- [01:35]
Scott Bertram
The book attempts to answer this question, why do all politicians, whether they be Democrat, Republican, conservative, liberal, move to the left once in office? And there's your device. It's real. There are diagrams that you've designed called the political vice. To help us describe this, let's sketch this out because it'll help provide the basis for a lot of the conversation to come. What's the political vice as you describe it?
- [02:04]
John Tillman
Well, in the political vice, the politicians, the political decision makers, mostly we think of elected officials, but it applies to anybody that has political power to make policy decisions. They're in the middle of the vice in the traditional sense of it. And then on one side of the vice, it's a three sided vice. Think of it as the letter U. In the middle of that U are are the politicians. As I've said, on one side is the media, on the other side is the people or the public. And on the bottom side, which is the most important side, are elite influencers. And all three sides apply pressure, squeeze like a vice. Think of the trash compact you're seeing in the original Star wars movie where they're getting squeezed from all sides and there's terrible trash in there. It's very good metaphor for politics, which is a trashy business. So anyhow, the point is that, well, well thought, thoughtful conservatives often get elected. And the question I began my journey with is why is it conservatives who claim to be conservative, and some of them are, get into office and move left and start voting for big government programs and all the rest of it, and why does nobody ever move to the right? So I started on this journey to study it. I've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of elected officials and people in politics. And what I learned was that the incentive structures in politics all move you to the left in terms of policy decision making. Because the way you win votes, even for your pet projects, are by voting for bigger and better and more extravagant government that will solve all of the problems. And the influencers, by the way, Scott, are important because they not only apply direct pressure to the political decision makers, they run operations that create influence in the media as well as with the American public, as we're seeing with these indictments that just came out from the Department of Justice on the Southern poverty also.
- [03:46]
Scott Bertram
Yeah, and influencers we should sort of define because it's not influencers necessarily. In the new social media definition of a term, influencers means those who have influence on politics. And as we'll talk later, one of the biggest influers are like unions, public and private sector unions. So it's not just social media stars, it's those who have an influence on politics. And one of the reasons it's important is because the lesson that you learned too is that pressure works. When the vice of prize applies pressure, most of the time it works in pushing someone, an entity, an organization, an individual, a politician, towards an intended goal. Why is pressure so important in moving someone toward a prescribed policy goal?
- [04:37]
John Tillman
Well, the three motivators of a political actor are a political principle, political fear, and political expediency. So most politicians, 60, 65% of the votes that they take, positions that they take, they're just doing an expedient thing. I'll vote for your bridge if you vote for my gazebo in my home district or whatever the case might be, my new highway deal making of one sort or another. And most of those votes go under the radar of the influencers, the public and the media. There's just a lot of that that is done out of sight and out of mind. And people sort of go along and get along and then there's fear. Political fear means I really don't want to take this vote because my constituents will be unhappy with me, my donors will be unhappy with me, the media may be unhappy with me, my community influencers, my leaders may be unhappy with me, or if I do take it, this other set may be happy with me. And so fear is a big driver of what makes an elected official ticket. And then I mentioned political principle. Of course, when I got involved in all of this over 20 years ago, I was a very naive former political science miner who thought that all politicians operated out of principle. Sadly, it's only about 5% of the votes, 30% fear, and about 65% expediency. And so the reason this pressure works is because politics is a pressurized system. He who can apply pressure has power, and politicians don't like pressure, so they take votes to try to minimize or avoid pressure. I write in the book about the case with former Senator Jeff Flake from Arizona, who actually ran a libertarian think tank at one point. He just crumbled under the pressure during the Kavanaugh hearings that we can see right there in front of our eyes in an elevator bay where these paid activists, fake influencers, if you will, were shouting at him to take a procedural vote to delay the Kavanaugh hearings further. And he crumbled under that and eventually left the Senate because he couldn't take the pressure.
- [06:34]
Scott Bertram
John Tillman, with us. His book, the Political how the Radical Left Controls America and the Path to Regaining Our Liberty. So why. Why is the left so much better than the right in operating the political vice?
- [06:48]
John Tillman
A bunch of reasons, but the biggest one is the left loves government power. They actually believe in expanding the purview of government to regulate and tax every aspect of our lives. They believe they have the moral and intellectual high ground on how society should be organized. And they think that the American people are just dumb rubes who vote the wrong way all too often and make bad choices for what's good for America and good for our various communities and good particularly for subsets within group identity politics. And so they really think that government power is the only way to overcome rapacious capitalism, a free enterprise system that in their view is. Is flawed. Entrepreneurs become super successful and take advantage of the system and don't pay their fair share. They believe in all of that, and they believe only the government can come in and put its foot on the scale to right those wrongs and create fairness and quote, unquote, equity for their agreed coalition within their voting block. So they love Government power. So what happens is even though you have somewhat of a diverse coalition of the left, the one thing that unifies them is for all of them to be successful. They have to work together because they all require government power. And going back to the influencers you mentioned, government unions, private sector unions, the trial bar, nonprofits, again, most of the money from government that we've learned through Doge and much of what's been going on during the second Trump administration. They all have one thing in common as well, which is that their business models, their revenue models, require government tax and regulatory efforts and policies in order for them to have a business model that works and creates revenue. A union, whether private or public, relies on government regulations. And the government uses directly extract money from taxpayers to pay union dues and to pay union numbers. Trial bar relies on government regulations to allow them to sue people in the private sector. And then going back to the other side, in the private sector, most of the people just kind of want to be left alone who are conservative. They want the government to protect our rights as enshrined in the Constellation Institution and the Bill of Rights. Other than that, they want a light hand and just let's go live our lives. And so we don't really like power as much. We want to actually devolve power. And so you don't attract the power hungry people into politics on the right as much as you do on the left. And when we do, sometimes they're big government Republicans, which is also not good.
- [09:10]
Scott Bertram
John, sometimes it does work for those on the right. And one of those examples is prominent in the book and one that you were involved in the Supreme Court case Janus versus afscme, which was a victory for freedom. And this is an example of the right using the vice, squeezing people toward a desired outcome and defeating even the powerful public sector unions in this case. How did that all come together?
- [09:37]
John Tillman
It was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I founded the Liberty justice center in 2011. And then you might recall that there was going to be a case called Friedrichs that was going to bring this issue of forced union fees in government workers to a head. But then Supreme Court Justice Scalia died and the Friedrichs case was deadlocked at 4 to 4. We happened to have the next case in the docket right behind it. Ours would have been come, would have become irrelevant if the Friedrichs case had gone forward and Scalia had lived and assumed that he voted with what was later a majority. So the basic point there was that a 1977 case called Abood essentially split the baby when it came to union dues. The court said that mandating dues from a union worker who's opted out of the union for collective bargaining was reasonable. And you can do that, but union fees are. If you opted out, you couldn't do the collective bargaining, but then they still had to pay agency, what were called agency fees. And basically our case, Janice versus as we said, that everything the union does is political by its nature. Therefore, no money should come out of somebody who's opted out of the union's membership. And that's what the ruling was. Justice Alito wrote the ruling of a great jurist when it came to worker freedom. And it came about because courts respond to politics, too. And there was a really. Anybody who's a political watcher knows that courts respond. Politics. Just go back to Justice Roberts and the Obama care case, and you know how that works, right? But nevertheless, in this case, we really had a coalition of people on the right. And I think the best illustration of why we won that fight is because during the protest, when the case was heard In February of 2018, I was one of the leaders of the protest in front of the Capitol. We were having a good old time with our signs, and right next door were the government unions, and they were protesting, too. And the irony was we. We all, Scott, had the same signs, signs rather, workers rights were for the worker. Empower the worker. And eventually, as I write in the book, these women came over to try to infiltrate our protest and disrupt us. And I got to talking to them. I said, so what are you protesting for? And she said, workers rights. And I said, that's what we're protesting for. I said, let me ask you, you know, who do you think should control your relationship with your union? You, you or the union boss? And she kind of gave me that look like, oh, no, this is a trick question. But she goes, I think I should. I said, you should be over here with us. And she kind of walked away with her friend sheepishly. And I realized that that was the point, right? Who should control your destiny? We believe in the workers. And that's what that case was about. So we had a great coalition of people from the State policy network, the D.C. think tanks all around the country, the state think tanks, all publicizing this case for many, many months and frankly, years in advance of it. And that really helped, I think, give the justices the courage they needed.
- [12:35]
Scott Bertram
My old friend John Tillman will continue with us in just a moment. His new book is the political vice. First take a moment now to make your plans for May 31, June 1 or June 2, or maybe all three dates. That's when Hillsdale College's big screen debut is in theaters. It's revolutionary America, the first documentary about the revolution you can trust from Hillsdale College. America's 250th anniversary is approaching and you can find out more about what happened all those years ago with Revolutionary America. Hillsdale Edu Film F I L M Don't let the anniversary pass without seeing the film that shows what our founding fathers risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honors. Tickets available now for a limited run. Find a theater near you and find your tickets at Hillsdale. Edu Film for Revolutionary America. Hillsdale Edu Film we continue with John Tillman, CEO of the American Culture Project. Find him on X onm Tillman. His book the Political how the Radical Left Controls America and the Path to Regaining Our Liberty.
- [13:57]
John Discussion about those different sides of the vice. One of them is the media and there's portions of the right that would say why ever go on cnn? Why ever talk to NBC? Why try to have an op ed placed in the New York Times? They're biased, they don't care about our voters. They're going to twist your message. There's an argument in the Political Vice that says, well, there's value to that for a couple of reasons. Why should the right conservatives still consider legacy media opportunities?
- [14:30]
John Tillman
It's a great question and the point I make in the book is that the reason you want to go on a legacy players is there are persuadable soft Democrats who are open to moving to our side and that is the place where you can reach them. And if you come across as a reasonable communicator, you make a moral high ground argument about why our ideas are better for all people and especially especially the poor and disadvantaged. You can move some of those people over. I wouldn't be cautious, for example, with a long form interview with a New York Times reporter who's going to do a print interview because they will twist your words. I prefer in those cases to use email and or keep my own recording of it. But live or even taped events, I highly recommend people engage because you can win people over. And the other reason is that even if you don't get the greatest message out, you can edit yourself, edit yourself, put it in the framework that you want and then redistribute your version of that interview that's favorable to your argument to the target audiences using digital tools and you can Target the very people I just described. You can just target soft lefties who are open minded on issues and would hear that message on CNN because they're hearing it on cnn. They see you on cnn, they'll give you a listen. Whereas if you did the same exact verbiage on Fox News, that soft lefty Democrat won't give you a listen. And that's why you should take advantage of all types of media.
- [15:50]
Scott Bertram
Also inside that chapter is a portion on cancel culture and how to resist cancel culture. And I found this very interesting, this advice that to beat back and to defeat cancel culture, you need the ability to deploy your own media. You call it a marketing machine. You helped to build this inside Illinois Policy Institute, which is one of the reasons why the Janus fight was so successful. So for I don't know if it's possible for individuals, but for organizations or for those who might be in the crosshairs of cancel culture, what does it mean and how can you deploy your own media to fight back against those allegations?
- [16:29]
John Tillman
Well, we deployed what we call and continue to use across all the organizations I'm involved with what we call an owned audience strategy. So the strategy is twofold. One is you have content that you create that you want to disseminate and that content should be customize for the different audiences that you're after. So if you're after parents in suburban schools, that's one audience. If you're after after African American men living in urban America who are fed up with a crazy progressive agenda and they might be open to voting the other way, that's a different audience and all and so forth. So you first start with your message, but then there's a distribution strategy. And the distribution strategies we just talked about a moment ago is taking advantage of third party channels such as legacy media. The other way to do it is to try to build channels of communication that you largely control. And with an owned audience strategy, what you do is you use third party channels such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, etc. And you put content out there that is compelling. And all of your listeners have certainly seen this where they see something on one of the social media platforms and there's a little button there that says learn more. Well, we do the same thing in our issue ads on those platforms. When you click learn more, you're given the opportunity to provide your first name, last name, zip code and email address. From that point on, that person has opted into our content stream that we can now directly go to them with through email and Then we often get their cell phone number and can directly go to them with text messaging. And the key, of course, is to not abuse that privilege, but always to have interesting, compelling content that is given at a proper pace, a proper cadence, that is where they're receptive to it. And then over time, with a really thoughtful strategy of messaging, you can develop a relationship with all those folks, educate them on various issues long before an election happens, and then when election time comes along, turn them out. So this is something that anybody can do at any scale. If you're a city council member, if you have just a very modest budget, it's not as expensive as you think to do this. If you're doing it in a statewide or national effort, you're going to have to spend a lot more money and have a material budget. But what I highly recommend is starting somewhere with a social media strategy, thinking through your brand identity, whether you're an individual activist or whether you're running a small or mid sized or even a large sized nonprofit.
- [18:43]
Scott Bertram
John Tillman is with us. His book the Political Vice. How do we turn that vice toward liberty? Perhaps we look at another example of school choice and the fight for school choice in areas all across the country. It's one of the issues on which I think the right has been most successful over the past decade or so. What lessons can we learn from the successful campaigns for school choice and school options across the country that can be applied toward other issues of freedom and liberty?
- [19:13]
John Tillman
It's a great question. So briefly, there are three types of vices. Political vice. There's the traditional one which I described earlier. There's the one we're in the middle of, where the political left is trying to restructure the vice and put the the American people in the middle of the vice. And then partnering with liberal media, liberal politicians and elite influencers of the left force us to comply. They are really into coercion and submission. And the trial run of that, of course, was the pandemic. And they watched and saw how many people were much more worried about their security and were willing to submit to those pressures and start to comply with the government mandated behavior instead of those who really wanted to preserve their freedom. So we got a real experiment there. To answer your question, we have to create a liberty focused political vice. And what we have to do there is move the American people to the bottom of the vice, which is the leverage position, put the politicians back in the middle and then through our work and how we follow people in media and which elite influencers we choose to follow restructured the other two sides of the vice. There's a lot of really good work and great investing going on right now. Now, on the media side, there's a great burgeoning media infrastructure that's been going on now for well over 10 years that needs to continue and expand into popular entertainment, in my view. And then on the other side, we're watching right before our eyes, different elites being chosen. The election of President Trump is a choice of an elite. And all that he has done to put different people into the cabinet positions in the various agencies, the governors that were endorsed and supported when they started, started to reject the lockdowns. Governor DeSantis in Florida, all the governors that you know around the country, Governor Camp in Georgia and elsewhere, who did right by the people and stopped the lockdowns. So we get to choose who the elites are by who we choose to follow, and we get to choose who the media, which media has power by who we choose to pay and subscribe to. That's how we begin to put the Liberty focus back into the political vice and put the politicians under the pressure of the people, people once again, the way it should be.
- [21:17]
Scott Bertram
One additional hurdle that you identify inside the political vice for the right is that we fracture often, more often than we unify. It seemed like the Trump 24 campaign was one instance in which that didn't happen. And that's how we ended up with people like RFK and Tulsi Gabbard and Lori Chavez, D. Reamer in the Cabinet because those, those different portions of the voter base all came toward Donald Trump in 2024. So is that a singular event due to a singular candidate, or is there a lesson learned on the right?
- [21:49]
John Tillman
No, I think this is a. This is a really important discussion point because I think we're in the middle. Maybe not the middle. I forget exactly where. I would just haven't thought too much lately about where I'd say we are in this process that I'm about to describe. But I've been talking really since the advent of the Tea party back in 2009, of the tea. I'll call the Tea party area area era, 2009-2014, that that was the beginning that the public became aware of a complete political restructuring. And the Trump candidacy that was publicly launched in 2015 picked up the reins of the now falling behind or, you know, sort of going dormant Tea Party movement, but took the energy that was still there, but had gone dormant, dormant because of a lack of leadership. And he rebuilt it into what we now call call maga. And this movement is not about partisan politics. This movement. And the reason you got this coalition that you just described, which is a cross partisan devise, is because it's really a rejection of the duopoly in politics between Republicans and Democrat of sort of a settled wisdom about how things should be run in America with this bipartisan consensus on big government ever expanding spending deficits and the insiders, the privileged, the connected, always getting the favoritism and average people, middle class people and even affluent people. And of course the poor and disadvantaged always being left on the outside in. There's been great discontent for decades with the establishments of both parties. That's what the Tea Party was about. That's why Donald Trump got a lot of Bernie Sanders votes in 2016, because the Occupy Wall street movement, which was part of the left during the Tea Party movement, there was a Venn diagram overlap with the grievances such as corporate bailouts and corporate welfare by government. So the reason I think that this is going to continue is because those structural problems are going to continue. And people who think MAGA is going to die when Donald Trump's presidency ends, I think are sadly mistaken. There is a great awakening among the American people that is rejecting the bipartisan consensus since the end of the World War II era.
- [23:52]
Scott Bertram
John Tillman One of my favorite portions of the political vice is when you begin talking about group identity politics. Wokeism. But this idea that you lay out the progressive lift that insists that government institutions are responsible for providing their sense of purpose and fulfillment. And later that they are seducing the American people into a mindset of learned helplessness, dependency, grievance and fear. These are these. It is seductive when you hear those messages to believe them and believe the deck is stacked against you and there's nothing you can do to overcome. You need someone, something, the government in this instance, to come in and lend you a hand and help you out and punish someone else to help you rise. All right, what do we have in our weapons? What weapons do we have to fight against this? That kind of message?
- [24:45]
John Tillman
Yeah. You're talking about the fact that every human being experiences calamity in their lives. We all experience disappointments. We didn't get the job, we thought we should get the promotion. The girl married my neighbor instead of me. Whatever the case might be, we all suffer. And as a result of that, the American tradition has long been that, geez, I'm so sorry that happened to you, and a little pat on the butt from your parent or your coach and get back out there, pick yourself up and go at it again. And we had to lift ourselves up and overcome that. The left's message is different now. Not only do you not get a pat on the butt, you actually get a pad that's patronizing on the head and saying yes. It's so terrible. These awful things have happened to you and you need to, you need to marinate in your grievance. You need to marinate in your resentment of these terrible things and these specific people that cause this problem. And as a result of that, you need to come and join us in our political coalition because we are dedicated to, to alleviating and mitigating your grievances against the man. And the man is often a white middle aged dude like me. I'm going to put you in that category, but you're too young. But the point is that they sell the idea that is very seductive that every calamity that befalls you is not your fault, you're a victim. And as a result of that, you need to join with us and you can be on the righteous side of history when we all come together to solve these, these problems and fix these problems for those that have been agreed by an unjust society, particularly a free enterprise system that is broken and doesn't work. Founding principles that were never noble and don't work. And these particularly don't work for people of color. They particularly don't work for anybody that's different and unique. And that's why the grievance coalition of group identity politics is an ever expanding group. The only people left standing are basically white men who are not allowed in to the grievance coalition because they, they're the oppressors. I read in the book, Scott, as you probably remember, that one of the reasons young men are turning to faith more than ever is because I, I really believe it's because everywhere else they turn, they are seen as the villain. And they're looking for support and hope and redemption in a wonderful place. And I think that's actually a good thing. Our antidote to this, by the way, is what I just described about grievance is one side of the human condition that we all have face that the other side of the human condition, what we must gravitate to and sell is that human beings by their nature are builders. We by our nature are collaborators. We like to think of how we can make tomorrow better than today for ourselves, our families, our communities, our friends. And so we like to build. We are creative beasts. We're A gathering species. And when you look at the places in this world where that part of the human spirit is most unleashed, the greatest achievements have been created. And that of course, is America and the American miracle. And that's what we have to focus on as the antidote to believe this culture.
- [27:38]
Scott Bertram
John Tillman, the End of the Political Vice lays out a grand strategy to help take back the vice and to take away power and control from the left. So again, how do we do that? What's the grand strategy behind taking back the turning the screws on advice?
- [27:58]
John Tillman
Well, I'll try to summarize it briefly. Number one is we have to build more capacity to compete for the commanding heights of American cultural narratives. The late great Andrew Breitbart popularized the idea that politics is downstream of culture. That's true. The point I'm always trying to make to everyone that's involved is that means we have to be at the headwaters of the river engaging in competition for mindshare of the American people and thus the American cultural narrative. For example, in Virginia, that very narrow loss on the ballot measure that did the Democrat favoring gerrymander, that battle was being fought months and months and months and months before the actual voting. And I was in one of my organizations, was very involved in Virginia, directly and indirectly. And the Democrats were on the ground long before the election socializing, if you will, this idea and trying to get the yes votes. And they only won very, very narrowly. Our side waits too long. We do not go in early. Our donor class, and to some degree our consultancy class, has a blind spot to perpetual investment and we have to get to those headwaters. So that's number one. Number two, we have to really build capacity in message creating messages and it has to be done in a data driven way and tested relentlessly. One of the things that various teams I've been involved with over the years, we have capacity to do data analysis. We have a whole data science team at the marketing agency I co founded, Iron Light, and we analyze constantly on a daily basis different segments of the audience that we're after. We slice and dice it into very fine pieces and then we test different messages with them to see which one resonates and, and which one. You can test a proxy call to action in voting so that by the time we get to elections many months later, we have a pretty good feel for what's going to move voters to a call to action. Unfortunately, there's not enough people investing in that work between elections. We have to do more of that. The third thing we have to do when it comes to messaging is we have to take the moral high ground back. One of the things the Trump administration, all of its spokespeople have been particularly good at, and Marco Rubio is perhaps the best at it, is not accepting the premise of the narrative premise of the media and the left. They always reject it and they pivot and we establish a premise where we are on the moral high ground of the argument. And that is why they've been so effective in persuading despite the media onslaught of negativity. So taking the moral high ground back and all the arguments is important. And then we have to continue to invest in building distribution. We need distribution across the board. As I mentioned earlier, we have excellent investments going on in consumer conservative media, but we've got to compete in podcasting, which we have good advantages there, but we have to keep doing that. A popular film and entertainment, the streamers and all the content that comes in out of the streaming programs. Taylor Sheridan, the creator of Landman and Yellowstone and when I just started watching the Madison, I mean that if we could clone Taylor Sheridan, we would have some really good content because he is putting out content that is pro liberty and not just in a in a perfunctory or pandering way at all. I mean, he is doing it in a challenging and interesting and compelling way. One of the problems, Scott, with content on the right is our creatives tend to want to beat people over the head with the message. And what we want to do is actually create compelling characters and compelling story and the message is an underlying part of it and not the thing that you drive home in the face.
- [31:23]
Scott Bertram
Well, this is something that Illinois policy did and does so well, is telling the story and not just using facts, figures and graphs identifying people who will really be affected by the policy change and how their lives will be different and how it will affect the difference, affect the lives of people around you, friends, families, loved ones.
- [31:47]
The right has to get better at
- [31:49]
telling those stories and in that way influencing voters, minds and activities.
- [31:56]
John Tillman
The easiest way to think about how to do that, because it's not easy, and especially for people that come out of the policy side who are a little academic pandemic, it's very hard to think about how to do that. But here's the the way I've taught people this over the years is you want to tell the story about public policy at the point it intersects an individual's life. So, for example, high gas prices. When you want to talk about that, you don't talk about the fact we need to expand fracking, we need to drill offshore, we need to open up ANWAR and all the other places and all the national lands. That's, that's the way policy people talk about it. The way we need to talk about it is, you know, I was at a gas station recently and I pulled up, pulled out my credit card and put it in there. I was going to fill up my tank. I can afford to fill up my tank every time car pulls up on the other side of the pump, woman gets out, her 20ish year old son gets out and takes a few steps to go prepay and he turns back and looked at her and said mom, how much? And she stood there with stress and tension in her face and did some calculations in her head. She looked at him and said, let's do $20. That's why we need greater supply of natural resources to lower the cost for that woman. That's where we want to tell the story is at the gas pump.
- [33:08]
Scott Bertram
John Tillman is CEO of the American Culture Project. You can find him on X as well the brand new book the Political how the Radical Left Controls America and the Path to Regaining Our Liberty. John Tillman, thanks so much for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
- [33:25]
John Tillman
Thanks for having me, Scott.
- [33:26]
Scott Bertram
Up next, Luke Foster from Hillsdale in D.C. tells us all about the spirit of a gentleman.
- [33:32]
I'm Scott Bertram.
- [33:33]
This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. You know the Robertson from the hit TV show Duck Dynasty. Now Hillsdale College offers you the unique opportunity to learn alongside the Robertsons as they dive deep into Hillsdale's online course, the Genesis Story. Every Friday on the Unashamed Podcast, the Robertsons will share their insights and perspectives. Learning from Hillsdale professor of English Justin Jackson. Take a trip down south to Louisiana for this one of a kind learning experience we call Unashamed Academy. Visit unashamed4hillsdale.com and enroll today. That's Unashamed. F O R hillsdale.com to experience the genesis Story alongside the Robertsons.
- [34:42]
Larry Arnn
Great books, great people, great ideas. Learning about these things is critical to being a well educated human being. And we can help with the Hillsdale Dialogues. Each week, Hillsdale College president Larry Arne joins radio veteran Hugh Hewitt to discuss topics of enduring relevance. And from time to time they also talk about current events, but always with an eye toward more fundamental truths. And they want you to tune in to a conversation like no. The Hillsdale Dialogues are posted every Monday on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. At Podcast Hillsdale Edu. That's podcast Hillsdale. Edu. Or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find your audio.
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Scott Bertram
Welcome back to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
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I'm Scott Bertram.
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Go ahead and follow us on Spotify, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Never miss an episode of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour when you subscribe. We're joined by Dr. Luke Foster. He's assistant professor of government at Hillsdale College in Washington, D.C. Dr. Foster, thanks for joining us.
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Luke Foster
Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
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Scott Bertram
Talking today about an essay you wrote over at Modern Age.
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People can find it there.
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It's called the Spirit of a Gentleman. For those who haven't caught this piece, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by the spirit of a gentleman?
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Luke Foster
Thank you. So the inspiration is a famous line from Edmund Burke and the Reflections on the Revolution in France where he's trying to articulate what the sources of liberty, self government in the Western world were and how they're threatened by the new revolutionary ideological tyranny coming out of France. So he says everything good about our civilization is dependent for ages upon two principles and were the result of both combined. I mean, the spirit of a gentleman and the spirit of religion. What I think he's trying to say there is we used to know how to civilized and gentle men, literally, right? The harshness, the aggressiveness, even the cruelty of human beings. And I think men specifically have to be refined and polished into something that uses the raw materials but is better and more finished than those raw materials. And if we don't have education, social practices, customs and institution, political institutions that know how to do that gentling work, we really can only be governed by force and fear, basically. So constitutional self government and all the good things that go with that require this gentlemanly attitude and spirit. And part of why I wrote the piece is to say this is not just a quaint argument from Burke, but it is actually just a human principle which our civilization has understood for a long time. And even when things are very disordered in the world, you can work to cultivate it in yourself, to foster in others, to, to create expectations, to behave this way. So it's, it's a concrete good that we can seek as well.
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Scott Bertram
How would you, how would you explain the way that people perhaps think about gentlemanliness today? And how does that compare to what we've just explained?
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Luke Foster
Yeah, so this is part of the problem is meaning is a word shift over time and sometimes that's a neutral thing and sometimes things get lost I think to the extent people think of a gentleman is typically in our society today. What we mean is holding doors for ladies, taking off your hat indoors, a sort of superficial derivation of maybe like mid century classic Hollywood ethos. And all that stuff is good, right? All that stuff is part of gentleness in its, in its true and fuller sense, but it's not, it's not essential to it. And there's a danger, I think, of superficial politeness, almost kind of prissiness being becoming held in contempt and therefore getting dismissed. Right. So what I'm trying to do is point people to the deeper philosophical sources. Much of the piece is really extended quotations from canonical thinkers. Yes, Burke, but also Aristotle, Cicero, John Henry Newman. I want to put people in touch with the deeper tradition that I'm just riffing off of to show them where they can go to learn about this.
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Scott Bertram
So yeah, you trace this back to
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Aristotle, Cicero, this idea of the spirit of a gentleman as well. What did they understand about human, human formation that perhaps we've forgotten?
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A little.
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Luke Foster
Right. So the core notion, along with this insight that aggression, strength, masculinity is in a way easy, but manly, refined, civilized habits are difficult. The other core principle they share is the notion that nature needs to be perfected and fulfilled by what Burke calls art, convention, social practices, how we live together. So human beings are a strange kind of animal because we have a nature, the classical thinkers argue, we develop and flourish in certain characteristic ways that are given and not chosen. But at the same time we're born unable to walk, unable to talk, minutes away from death, without proper care. So the human being, the human nature to be fulfilled requires an awful lot of work by other human beings. But that work isn't arbitrary as well. And so part of gentleness in this tradition thinks about what are the customs and conventions that build out what nature intends and what are things that would thwart it. So eating with a knife and fork is good and proper and one way to make our eating together not just barbaric. But there are other possible ways. You could eat with chopsticks, or there are even ways of eating with your hands which are mannerly. So culture doesn't necessarily. Culture is non arbitrary, but it's also quite flexible. And so different contexts are going to develop, different rules, different practices, and there's legitimate variation as well.
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Scott Bertram
So is the rejection of the gentleman really a deeper rejection of tradition and inheritance over the years?
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Luke Foster
Yes. So in the piece I kind of finger Rousseau for this. You could point to other people, but rousseau in the 18th century is a very beautiful, articulate, poetic argument for saying, no, no, our real nature is the raw, primitive thing down beneath. It doesn't have anything to do with convention or society. And in fact, society should be suspect because that's how his version of the fall is socialization. So this has a tendency to move people to think in terms of year zero, blank slate, start all over again. In each generation, we can undo all the sins and failings of our ancestors. We don't inherit anything from them necessarily. And that, unfortunately means a lot of gentlemanly codes become unintelligible because they require generations and even sometimes centuries of practice to build up.
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Scott Bertram
So in this piece over at Modern
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Age called the Spirit of a Gentleman,
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we talk with Luke Foster here on
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the program, you describe the gentleman as someone who recognizes unearned advantages but responds with magnanimity rather than guilt. Why is that distinction so important?
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Luke Foster
Right. So I think this brings us to one of the most important things about this argument today. In a way, what you have from the left, the very powerful kind of philosophical, poetic move on the left, is to say any hierarchy, any inequality is necessarily oppressive and, well, at the very least, suspect, right? Maybe it can be dealt with, but it's a problem. And so this means that, of course, things like family name and inherited wealth, we know, fall in this category. But increasingly, things like someone's race, someone's sex, you know, even, even increasingly, right, citizenship, the very being born an American citizen, which is not open to everybody in the world, all these things are problematic because. Because they're unearned, right. They're not directly the products of our own labor. And there's a certain kind of moti, I think, shallow response on the right which plays into the hands of this right, which says, well, I'm just defending merit, I'm defending earned success. But the reality is that if we are as human, if human beings are natural and artifactual in this complicated combined way that the classics, the classic thinkers, articulate, there's going to be a lot of things we have which are good and we value that we haven't created for ourselves, going all the way down to our nature ultimately, which is a gift of God. We can't make that happen. So they're basically the response on offer today from the left is guilt tripping and that we know about how this gets public arguments about reparations or about structural injustice. But on a personal level, I think what this leads down to, a lot of people feel guilty and ashamed about their advantages in life. And my argument is to say, I'm very worried about people who want to respond to that also by just saying, yeah, let the great do what they will and the weak suffer what they must. Just to kind of doubling down on, you know, in a sort of Nietzschean spirit, power, domination, success, as if that's all there is to. To the moral life. And I'm trying to say gentleness is part of actually the. The missing piece there, which is you can be great and magnanimous, you can use your greatness in a way that's gentle, generous, and builds up others. This is core to the gentleman's understanding, Right. His. His gifts and his powers are not for himself alone, but are actually to make for a richer, more beautiful, more enjoyable social and political life for everyone. So in a certain way, the most gentlemanly thing to do is to actually. Is to raise others up to your level if you genuinely are better and greater than others. Right. And this, I think, was the attitude of our founders. This was the attitude of. This is, in a way, the attitude of God himself. Right. Who. Who comes down to us, but in the process raises us up. So it actually has very, very rich philosophical resources, but practical resources to think this way as well.
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Scott Bertram
All right, let's get to that.
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Which is how can we revive this spirit of gentlemanliness in this day and age?
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What does it look like in practice? And perhaps are there figures from your historical overview who might be beneficial for
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the challenges we face in our time?
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Luke Foster
Thank you. This is. Yeah. Something that's. It's dear to me and genuinely difficult. Right. In the historical overview, one of the people I talk about is John Henry Newman, who wrote this wonderful book, the Idea of University, in the middle of the 19th century. And Newman was worried that, you know, because he's a Victorian Englishman, he's worried that gentleness is in the process of decaying because it's disconnected from what Burke called the spirit of religion.
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John Tillman
Right.
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Luke Foster
Gentleness is just becoming mere social convention, mere niceness, mere politeness. He says it's almost the definition of a gentleman to make all feel at home, to never give offense. But when there are real evils or errors being promoted in your society, you need people to not just go along to get along, but you need people to actually stand up and object and argue back. And so I think Newman's warning is really salient. Right. When if we try to revive gently, it can't just be mere conformity because that would get us to acquiescing with the DEI regime, with giving your pronouns before every board meeting. Right. It can be corrupted very easily. So I think it has to start with religion, with philosophy, with higher transcendent standards of justice and goodness that aren't just mere convention. But then we have to work out in our particular day and age, what are the forms these things should take? I think one really important area today is social media and electronics in general. We probably should shame people more in more social settings, Right. For being glued to their phones. Right. It ought to be normal in a nice restaurant that you put your phone away. It ought to be normal. Thankfully, in a Hillsdale classroom, it is normal that you. That you put your phone away in class.
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Scott Bertram
Yes.
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Luke Foster
Not everywhere, right. Some institutions are struggling with the kind of the selfie narcissist, narcissistic age intruding in everything, and we have to fight that. But I also think, especially in a, you know, in a context like Hillsdale, we can teach these virtues explicitly. We can exhort people to see why they matter, to think about their, you know, positional duties based on where they are in a. In the institutional hierarchy and. And how they can best. How they can best reflect their. Their rights and duties. I mean, I'll give you a little example from the office, right? There are certain privileges that faculty have that are different from staff privileges. We have better parking. I think it's really important, therefore, that I don't leave my dirty dishes in the sink, but I wash them up after myself. Because if I don't do that, it means de facto. I'm assuming, somebody from the staff has to do it. That principle should percolate into all our social interactions of the more we have privilege, the more responsible we are. And that's the core of the ethos.
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Scott Bertram
Luke Foster, his piece at Modern. The Spirit of a Gentleman. One final question. Is there a female equivalent to this ideal, or is the spirit of a gentleman pointing to something that is specifically masculine?
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Luke Foster
Excellent and difficult question, which I. In the piece, I mostly speak to young men because that's. That's the experience, that's the context I know best. So I think. And unfortunately, it's a slightly complicated answer, but let me try to take it on two levels. A large part of this gentlemanly ethos is just the conduct of a noble person. That's how the classic authors think of it. Aristotle, Cicero, primarily, they're saying this is what it is for a virtuous human being to be like. And you even have equivalents in the Confucian tradition, like the Junsi in East Asia is really meant to be the excellent virtuous person of both sexes. However, I think there are two things which make it gendered to an extent. One is, as I mentioned, aggression, warfare. Men need to be gentled as part of their civilizing, socializing process in a way that women do not as much. So that does mean historically there is an emphasis on self restraint, on learning how to value persuasion and friendship rather than force and fear for men particularly. And then I think there's another layer which is the Christian Middle Ages with the codes of chivalry and the poetry around chivalry make many of the things of the gentlemanly duties specifically have to do with his treatment of ladies. Right. So the superficial courtesies I talked about earlier are, you know, holding doors, taking off hats, those are remnants of that code, which is just distinctively Christian because the assumption is you're, you're trying to civilize people into the marriage of free and equal spouses who can, who can commit free for life. So there's a much actually higher view of womanhood and therefore of what a man has to do to become worthy of a woman, to win her. So that's where, again, there's specific, I think, different duties for each sex. But it's called ladylikeness for women. And there are concomitant duties, I think, of knowing one of the great stories on this is Jane Austen, right? How does a woman discern well when a man is worthy of her trust? How does she learn to inspire and motivate the best in him without making him feel mothered or stifled? These are really rich and complicated themes of wisdom in our tradition, which if we cut ourselves off from them. I think it's not surprising that young men and women are increasingly having a really hard time forming couples and forming families because the Internet alone won't civilize you.
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Scott Bertram
Dr. Luke Foster is assistant professor of government at Hillsdale College in Washington, D.C. you can read his piece at Modern Age. It's the spirit of a gentleman.
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Dr. Foster, thanks so much for joining
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us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
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Luke Foster
Thanks for having me.
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Scott Bertram
It's a real honor that will wrap up this edition of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Our thanks to John Tillman, his book the Political Vice, and Luke Foster From Hillsdale in D.C. remember, you can hear new episodes every week on this station. You also can find extended versions of some of our interviews or listen anytime to the podcast Podcast Hillsdale. Edu, or wherever you get your audio. Until next week, I'm Scott Bertram, and this has been the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.