The Rising Tide of Political Violence

Summary

Podcast Summary: “The Rising Tide of Political Violence”

Hillsdale College Podcast Network Superfeed
Date: May 11, 2026
Host: Hugh Hewitt
Guest: Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College

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Overview

This episode of the Hillsdale Dialogues explores the increasing climate of political violence in America, drawing comparisons between the current era and the turbulence of the 1960s. Host Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, discuss the roots and consequences of conspiracy thinking, the distrust of institutions, the role of education, and the enduring value of old books in safeguarding against the “madness” of the times. The episode also touches on developments in Supreme Court jurisprudence, the partisan evolution of American politics, and recent influential books authored by Hillsdale-affiliated scholars.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Commencement Week and Campus Protest Culture

• [00:57] Dr. Arnn discusses the significance and emotions around college commencement at Hillsdale.
• Notes the possibility of campus protests:

  “Commencement is beautiful and exciting and emotional and controversial…we probably have protesters.” (Dr. Arnn, 00:57)

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2. Political Violence and Assassination Attempts

• [01:38] Hewitt raises recent assassination attempts on President Trump, referencing four distinct incidents.
• [02:38] Dr. Arnn compares today's environment to the 1860s and 1960s, noting a higher rate of such threats now due to both population growth and underlying political tensions:

  “The assassination attempts are a multiple of what they were in the 60s...it’s a sign...of fundamental difference about the meaning of the country and how it should be governed.” (Dr. Arnn, 02:38)

• Arnn attributes some modern unrest to a “fair amount of craziness in the population,” referencing the formative experiences of young people during the pandemic and their subsequent susceptibility to conspiracy thinking.

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3. Conspiracy Theories, Mistrust, and Formation of Opinion

• [04:44] Hewitt metaphor:

  “If you swim in sewage, you’re going to get sick. And a lot of the lunatics of the left and the right are living 24/7/365 in Reddit threads...” (Hugh Hewitt, 04:44)

• [05:18] Dr. Arnn describes efforts to guide Hillsdale students away from internet echo chambers, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing between informed opinion and hearsay.
  • Recounts a four-hour dialogue with freshmen and sophomores, urging the importance of grounding opinions in history and fact.

  “What I want you to know is the difference between a serious opinion and something you listen to on YouTube...when you’re young...you should be skeptical and you should go look it up.” (Dr. Arnn, 07:04)

Notable Educational Moment:

• Dr. Arnn discusses the founding of modern Israel and the nature of Jewish identity, offering an example of historically grounded debate.

  “If you’re a Christian, that’s a religion of belief...But the Jews are different...they are a people.” (Dr. Arnn, 09:15)

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4. Reading Old Books as Antidote to Modern Madness

• [12:56] Returning from break, Hewitt references Joseph Loconte's new book and a quote from C.S. Lewis:

  “The best antidote to the madness...is the fresh sea breeze of old books.” (C.S. Lewis, paraphrased at 13:18)

• [13:47] Dr. Arnn expands:

  “All learning...involves an act of stepping outside yourself...An old book lets you step outside the time that you’re in...It’s like visiting another dimension.” (Dr. Arnn, 13:47)

  • He discusses the enduring lessons found in classic literature (Lewis, Chesterton, Stevenson) and decries the oppressive abundance of contemporary information.
  • Recommends Treasure Island and The Black Arrow for their permanent value in exploring human character and tribalism.

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5. Rise of Political Extremes, Decline of Institutional Trust

• [20:29] Hewitt describes a Maine Senate race involving extremist candidates and comments on the left's embrace of radical figures.
• [22:41] Dr. Arnn explains the proliferation of “crazy” ideas and the rapidity with which they can spread:

  “Maybe the country is dying...People think a lot of crazy things now, and it’s easy…alarmingly and rapidly make them known.” (Dr. Arnn, 22:41)

• He links this disintegration of trust back to national versus local control, noting that local governments previously had more daily influence:

  “If you took a poll in 1950, do you trust the federal government? The trust numbers were very high...after 1970, they are very low…” (Dr. Arnn, 23:41)

• Expansion of federal bureaucracy undermines education; as non-teaching administrators proliferate, critical faculties decline.

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6. Supreme Court Decision on Race and Redistricting

• [25:26] Hewitt summarizes a recent Supreme Court ruling ending the use of race in congressional redistricting.

• [26:52] Dr. Arnn welcomes the clarity:

  “Many of the institutions built beginning in the 1960s to combat discrimination on race became engines of discrimination on race.” (Dr. Arnn, 26:52)

  • Argues against using race for political advantage on any side.
  • Warns that, despite the ruling, redistricting may remain dishonest.

• [30:00] Discusses Madison’s view on faction:

  “Liberty is to faction as air is to fire. We're always going to have factions...the danger that we could get that here.” (Dr. Arnn, 30:00)

  • The modern state holds vast resources, increasing the stakes and intensity of partisanship.

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7. Books and Intellectual Production at Hillsdale

• [32:30] Hewitt highlights recent books from the Hillsdale community for Mother’s Day gifts:
  • Alito by Mollie Hemingway
  • The Making of the American Understanding by Matt Spalding
  • The Case for America by Bret Baier (with recommendations from Wilfred McClay’s Land of Hope)
• [33:54] Dr. Arnn lauds the “talent” producing these works, emphasizing their depth and influence.

  “All three of those books are splendid…they’re very worth reading.” (Dr. Arnn, 33:54)

• [34:52] Arnn explains that Supreme Court Justice Alito has not yet spoken at Hillsdale due to security concerns, which are emblematic of this “age of intensity and violence.”

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8. The Era of Intensity and What’s at Stake

• [35:20] The rise in public event security and the riskiness of civic gatherings are discussed.
• Arnn closes by reflecting on commencement as an uplifting ritual despite the fraught times:

  “...That’s what they are intended to be. Uplifting and jolly and for the parents who are wondering what their students have been doing for four years…” (Hugh Hewitt, 35:20)

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Notable Quotes

• “I think that that prepares them [young people] to believe conspiracy theories while they’re too young to find out which ones are true.”
  - Dr. Larry Arnn [03:23]

• “An old book lets you step outside the time that you’re in... the only old books that are worth reading...are books that contain an explanation of things that abide.”
  - Dr. Larry Arnn [13:47]

• “Many of the institutions built...to combat discrimination on race became engines of discrimination on race.”
  - Dr. Larry Arnn [26:52]

• “Liberty is to faction as air is to fire. We’re always going to have factions…what we have a struggle over, the reason politics are intense, is that there’s a danger that we could get that here.”
  - Dr. Larry Arnn [30:00]

• “They’re swamp creatures. They can’t live if it’s drained...another way to put the point in rather more direct language: it is a question what form and purpose of government will we have? Just like in the American Revolution and just like in the Civil War, the consequences of that fate today.”
  - Dr. Larry Arnn [32:03]

• “He [Justice Alito] did say he would love to [visit], but he also says he doesn’t want to put the security people to the work it takes these days...that’s a cost that we all bear by the intensity and violence of the age.”
  - Dr. Larry Arnn [34:52]

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Segment Timestamps

• [00:57] – College commencement and campus climate
• [01:38] – Recent political violence and assassination attempts
• [05:18] – Student formation, conspiracy theories, and the importance of history
• [12:56] – The value of old books in tumultuous times
• [20:29] – Political extremes, trust, and education
• [25:26] – Supreme Court ruling on race and redistricting
• [30:00] – Factions, federal power, and the risks of majority tyranny
• [32:30] – Recommended books and Hillsdale’s intellectual output
• [34:52] – Violence and security in public discourse/events

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Conclusion

The Rising Tide of Political Violence episode offers a thoughtful, at times somber reflection on the roots of American political division, the dangers of unchecked conspiracy thinking, and the need for strong civic and intellectual grounding in classical education. Dr. Arnn and Hugh Hewitt connect past and present, arguing for the preservation of reason, community, and tradition in an age of heightened anxiety and diminished trust—echoing the wisdom of the great books and thinkers whose names and works endure.

Transcript

[Podcast Announcer]

Every week, Hillsdale College President Larry Arne joins Hugh Hewitt to discuss great books, great men and great ideas. This is Hillsdale Dialogues, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More episodes at Podcast Hillsdale Edu or wherever you find your audio.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Morning Glory and Evening Grace America. I am Hugh Hewitt. That music means Hillsdale Dialogue has arrived. The last broadcast hour of the week of the Salem News Channel and the Hugh Hewitt show on the Salem Radio Network, all of our wonderful affiliates. And I am back with Dr. Larry R. And Dr. Matt Spalding sat in for him last week as they got ready for commencement, which is this week. So it's a busy week at Hillsdale. It's commencement week. Are you preparing to process?

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

Dr. Arne yeah, it's a big deal. Commencement is beautiful and exciting and emotional and controversial. College is kind of famous and we probably have protesters. We get them sometimes. But yeah, it's a lovely day and the weather is promising.

[Hugh Hewitt]

The blue robe with the black stripes, there are all sorts of different beautiful robes based upon the degree and where you got it from. What do you have?

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

I have a blue robe with four black stripes and only the pres gets four. Oh, you get one for each. You get one for each degree you hold. And then you get a fourth one if you're the boss.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Oh, that's a. I'm envious of that. Four black stripes. It's like that Command sergeant major of the Army. All right, I want to waste time on our we taped this earlier in the week because you're actually processing at the end of the week. So we don't know if Iran has been blown up more when we're sitting down to talk about this. We'll get to that in a moment. But we do know, hopefully the president hasn't been shot at again. President Trump since the last we spoke was the object of the attempted fourth time since he began running for president of an assassin to remind people of the they know the three. The guy on the tree in Florida, they know Butler. They probably do not know that on February 22nd of this year, Austin Martin was a 21 year old from North Carolina who was shot and killed trying to break into Mar a Lago with a shotgun and a knife. And then of course, number four White House Correspondents Dinner two weeks ago. Are we back in the 60s, Dr. Arn?

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

A lot of violence. It, you know, so the population is, you know, what is it? It's 40, 30 or 40 bigger than it was in the 60s. And the assassination attempts are a multiple of what they were in the 60s. So, yeah, I don't know, something's going on here. And it's a sign, you know, they, there were many plots to kill Abe Lincoln and one of them succeeded. And what was that about? That was about fundamental difference about the meaning of the country and how it should be governed. And we have those today too. And it generates a lot of heat. And also there's a fair amount of craziness in the population right now. If you just look at, you know, I deal with 18 to 21 year olds when they were in high school, they were deprived of going to school for two years. And most parts of the country and what they noticed was that none of their friends died. And so what was this all about? And the highest authorities in the land and the leading experts in the world were telling them, you got to stay home, you're going to die. And they didn't. And so I think that that prepares them to believe conspiracy theories while they're too young to find out which ones are true. I myself believe in certain conspiracy theories and they're documented. But you have to get a bit older to figure out which is which.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Well, John Booth was himself part of a conspiracy, a conspiracy that almost killed attorney, the Secretary of State Seward on the same night. I think they may have been going for Grant as well, but it was screwed up. 1865 conspiracy. I do believe we've gone to the moon. I hope you're with me on that one, Dr. Arndt. But I've been saying, yeah, I've been saying if you swim in sewage, I'm

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

not sure it's not a phony that we went around it the other day.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Come on, we know the Artemis guys. The adage I've come up with is if you swim in sewage, you're going to get sick. And a lot of the lunatics of the left and the right are living 247365 in Reddit threads that you and I don't go to among weird people that we couldn't have talked to when we were their age. How do you counsel your students at Hillsdale not to do that, to stay attached to the actual reality of books and classics?

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

Well, they, you know, life growing up is a process of learning to be a serious person. And so in a really great meeting, we had one night, an extra meeting where we invited a bunch of boys. And you know, at Hillsdale, we know what everybody thinks, and everybody knows what we think, everybody knows what everybody else thinks. And some of them were, you know, listening to Tucker and Stuff and getting ideas and we find out about that. And so we invited him to a meeting and, and we talked for like four hours. And we talked about specifics, we talked about. And you know, it was fun, right? And I told him, I said, I don't care what you think about these issues. You're too young to have a serious opinion about them. You got to learn. I said, but what I want you to know is the difference between a serious opinion and something you listen to on YouTube. And, you know, we talked about the founding of modern Israel. I haven't known quite a lot about that. I help Martin Gilbert write books about that. And you can say that's illegitimate if you want to, but if you do, then you're stuck because Saudi Arabia and Iraq and Kuwait and Jordan and the Lebanon and Syria all come from the same set of facts. And they were all founded in roughly the same way, carved out of the Ottoman Empire, which joined the wrong side in the First World War. And the promises that were made to the Arabs and to the Jews were made at the same time, roughly, and for the same service. If you will fight for us, we will give you countries. And the Arabs got a whole bunch of countries and Israel got one, but they all got them the same way. Well, I pointed that out and, you know, it's just true. You should read Martin Gilbert. You'll see. And then, you know, what is Judaism? You know, questions like that. And one of the points that I made was, and see, this is friendly, right? They're not, they're not. We're not at war in Hillsdale College. I said, if you write a paper for me or for Professor Gerke sitting over here, he was young man, he's a Hillsdale graduate who teaches history. You will probably take it seriously. You'll probably try to find out what the truth is to write in your paper. You should remember that that's how you find out. That's, you know, what you hear on YouTube may or may not be true. And especially when you're young and you don't have all the critical faculties fully developed yet, you should be skeptical and you should go look it up. And you know, you, you know, I remember one time.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Were these primarily fourth year students or were they freshmen?

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

They were mostly freshmen and sophomores. And, you know, they're, they're fine, right? I told something about the development of modern Israel. You know, ancient Israel is the first step in Western civilization. The first step in Western civilization. The earliest chronologically is God's covenant with Abraham, which in a time, you know, and this is 1500, 2000 years before Socrates. Religion at that time was tribal and familial. Your gods were the gods of your ancestors, your own gods, right? Not somebody else's gods. And so this thing happens in the Bible, I will be your God and you will be my people. And this will be a blessing to all the peoples on the face of the earth. And in all of the several God's covenants with the Jewish patriarchs, all the people on the face of the earth are always mentioned. The one God for everybody. Well, that's a wonderful thing, right? Isn't that a piece of magic, the equivalent of, you know, extended and perfected by Jesus Christ and parallel to the achievement of Socrates, to look for the truth as it is, wherever it is, and not just according to our view of it. So we went through that stuff and then at one point I said that the early Zionists in Europe, this is a factual point, were not particularly religious people. And so one young man asked the question, well then what's a Jew? And I said, yeah, I see. If you're a Christian, that's a religion of belief. And if you don't believe, you're not a Christian. And if you do believe, you are. But the Jews are different from that because they are a people. That's not quite the same thing as a race. That's a family extended. They are descended from one another and they inherit things through their families. But even if they don't become Orthodox, they think of themselves as Jews. They're a people.

[Hugh Hewitt]

That's a correct aunt. People that have become a nation, but some have not become part of the nation, but they are culture and some are religious and some are not. That's an excellent answer. More coming up with Dr. Larry on this Friday edition of the Hillsdale Dialogue. All things [e-mail]. all the prior dialogues are collected at q4hillsdale.com Stay tuned.

[Podcast Promoter]

On the new episode of the Larry Arn Show, Hillsdale College President Larry Arn sits down with senior journalism fellow at Hillsdale College and editor in chief at the Federalist, Mike Molly Hemingway for a one on one conversation.

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

I always try to be optimistic about the situation, but we really do have some serious problems going forward that need to be addressed. And we need more great men to help lead us. Men like Justice Thomas and Justice Alito. These men are not made every day, but there are other men and women I would encourage to step up and help lead us from our current troubles.

[Podcast Promoter]

Listen to this exclusive interview with Molly Hemingway right now only available on the Larry Arn Show. Find it on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at Podcast hillsdale. Edu or wherever you get your audio and subscribe to receive new episodes delivered right to your device. That's Podcast Hillsdale. Edu.

[Podcast Announcer]

Hey there, it's Scott Burton, tram host of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. This week I'm joined by an old friend, John Tillman, CEO of the American Culture Project. He's got a very interesting new book, the Political how the Radical Left Controls America and the Path to Regaining Our Liberty. We'll talk about why so many politicians and elected officials drift to the left after taking office and how to stop it. And Luke Foster joins us From Hillsdale in D.C. discussing the spirit of a gentleman. All that this week on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Find it at podcast hillsdale.edu or wherever you get your audio.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh hewitt talking with Dr. Larry Arne about the 1960s, back again with all their splendor and glory. Dr. Arn I did want to before we finished up talking about the wildness of conspiracy theories, I read a new book last week by Joseph leconte, who has written extensively on a couple of old professors by the name of Tolkien and Lewis and how they went through 1933 to 1945. It's called the War for Middle Earth. It's really fascinating. And in it, Lacan quotes C.S. lewis as saying, the best antidote to the madness of Hitler and of the new ideologies, the only cure for it actually is the fresh sea breeze of old books. What Ink Lewis meant by that?

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

Well, he writes a lot about that. He actually wrote an essay called on the Reading of Old Books. And his argument there is that, you know, all learning, by the way, involves an act of stepping outside yourself. Right. Because learning is of learning something else. You know, I'm looking at my desk and right now there's a keyboard and there's a stapler and there's a whatever there is. And the point is if I want to understand those things, I have to look at them. There's a wonderful, you know, in Aristotle's Day, book three, chapter four, people should go and read it. It's dense, but it's beautiful. He actually describes what the soul of the human being would need to be like for it to be able to see a thing in its kind and form. He says the soul has to be immaterial. It has to be only that thing that it sees. Well, there's step one, but step two is an old book lets you step outside the time that you're in because, you know, we're in this time right now, right? And this time is particularly oppressive with information. It's so abundant with information that it's oppressive. So read an old book. It's like visiting another dimension, certainly another dimension in time. And the only old books that are worth reading, ultimately, the only contemporary books that are worth reading now are books that contain a microcosm or an explanation of things that abide things that are the same over time. You know, we think everything changes. And as we say that, we are using a faculty of reason to say it, that if it changed, we wouldn't be able to understand anything. Is it wrong for an adult to abuse a child? Has that changed? It's been done. It is done. Is it wrong now? Was it wrong then? Can we see that it's wrong? Is it still true that human beings live between certain range of temperature best, and when it gets really cold or really hot, it's hard? Right. In other words, fundamental conditions, most of them. That's why we call them fundamental change. And so reading old book is a way to isolate what those are. And, you know, I've been reading Chesterton lately. I like him. I like Lewis the best, I think, but I like Chesterton. And he is much more of a. Well, it goes on and on about Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson. He just loves those guys, Treasure island, you know, Stevenson. And I'm reading right now Black Arrow, and you wouldn't think it would be interesting. What it's about is. It's about the. Yeah, it's about the. You know, it's, it's. And see, he writes adventure books. And Chesterton makes a claim that these books are of permanent and transcendent value. Treasure island is probably the best of them. People know what that one is. This one, I'm early in the book. But what it is is there are these families and there's, you know, the English Civil War is brewing and there's raiders and there's. And they're out in the woods and they're shooting bows and arrows at each other and they're having a rocking series of adventures. And it's clannishness. It's, you know, my family. You're from my clan. Your clan, which is an extension of family, tribes like tribe. And so. And you see these people fighting and saving and rescuing and killing, and you see their characters unfold. You see what they're like under pressure, right? And you see that some of them are very worthy. And some of them are not. You see that many of them are very formidable and bad, and many of them are very formidable and good, and you're on the side of those ones. Well, aren't those relationships permanent? Aren't those the characteristic phenomena in human life? And that book was written a long time ago.

[Hugh Hewitt]

I was unaware that Chesterton recommended Robert Louis Stevenson. Lewis recommends Chesterton. I learned that in this new book by Lacante, the War in Middle Earth. A very big fan of Chesterton. So that's our recommendation for the week. We're coming back. Don't go anywhere in America. But our recommendation for the week is Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure island in the Black Arrow. Though I don't think we'll be doing a whole Hillsdale dialogue on it, though I never know. We do what Dr. Arne wants to do. Stay tuned.

[Podcast Announcer]

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[Podcast Promoter]

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[Hugh Hewitt]

Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Dr. Larian is my guest. The Hillsdale dialogue is underway, the last broadcast hour of the week on the Salem News Channel, the Salem Radio Network, all of our great affiliates, all of them are collected, hundreds of them. Hugh for hillsdale.com you can also find everything at Hillsdale, including a fabulous new video course on classical rhetoric and logic, which is very seductive, very, very well shot, and a younger man is teaching it who I've not made the acquaintance of yet, and I'm looking forward to Dr. Arne up in Maine. Last week, Governor Janet Mills withdrew from the race to become the next United States Senator. She wants to take on Susan Collins, but she can't get any ground picked up on a fellow named Graham Platner. Now, there used to be a reality show called Extreme Makeover, and it was originally about unkept people who had bad clothing habits or bad hygiene habits or just didn't know how to cut their hair. And they would give them an extreme makeover and they would come out great. Then Extreme Makeover, the Home Edition, that's the Home and Garden Channel. They go into a dump and they would fix it up, and then they'd have the extreme. This is the extremist makeover. Young Mr. Platner, who's 41 now, has got himself a Totenkopf tattoo, though he's tried to blur it out. That's the death head ruined by the SS who guarded the extermination camps that could kill the prisoners on their own volition. He's got a Reddit thread over years full of every kind of bigotry and racist evil you can imagine. But they're nominating him. Janet Mills got out of the race. She's raising all the money from the young people. And he's running against Susan Collins, who's the moderate? Moderate. She's a quintessential nice person, effective representative, chairwoman of Appropriations on the Senate Intelligence Committee, lovely lady. And she won by nine points six years ago when Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by nine points in Maine. So she's formidable as well. Why do you think this keeps happening? Why are Democrats nominating crazy people?

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

The explanation of one of my closest and longest serving colleagues is maybe the country is dying. You know, I mean, really, this is pretty bad. Yeah, people think a lot of crazy things now, and it's easy to, you know, alarmingly and rapidly make them known. And some of these guys, you know, are like Nick Fuentes, you know, who's a nut. He's smart. Right. I think he's fundamentally irresponsible and amazingly wrong. And I read the other day that he's losing audience. I hope so. But, you know, you can listen to that stuff, and it's like a whole new world opening up to you before you start trying to find out whether any of it is true or not. And, yeah, and people are. Remember that. People. If you took a poll in 1950, do you trust the federal government? The trust numbers were very high. And if you took control a poll in 1970, and every year after that they are very low. And one of the reasons for that is the federal government has taken over things in our lives that it doesn't do very well. It orders about and it's got half the economy under its control directly and indirectly. And you know, in the, in, you know, in 1930, that that amount was 12%. And so, you know, we got on with living our lives. Most government in 1930 was local government, not even state government. Over 60% of total government was your city, town, county. So now all those decisions are made remotely and they're made nationally and they're not made very well. The federal government used to come to site chiefly for its three main purposes, which are national defense, a national system of commerce among the states, and dealing with the foreign world. And that's what it did. And so now it does everything right. And it has altered education in fundamental ways. More than half the employees of public education in America are not teachers. And we run charter schools and that. And there the ratio is 6 or 8 to 1 in favor of the teachers because you don't need that. Right? And so if you've got teachers who are reduced to functionaries beneath a huge pile of bureaucracy, education suffers. And that means we don't know as much as we used to know. And that is dangerous.

[Hugh Hewitt]

As education suffers, people do get dumb and dumber. People are more susceptible to mind viruses. I'll be right back with Dr. Army. I talk about the redistricting decision last week by the Supreme Court. Stay tuned. Welcome back, America. Hugh Hewitt the Hillsdale dialogue is underway. All things hillsdalesdale. Edu. They're having commencement this week so you can get your application for next year now, and I would recommend that you do that and you get all the online courses you can sign up for. Imprimisillsdale. Edu. They have a brand new movie coming out on our 250th birthday. I recommend you get information there and you can get every Hillsdale dialogue dating back decade [e-mail] Dr. Ahren, the Supreme Court did something last week which was truly magnificent. They ended the use of race in the drawing of congressional districts. Now this should have been done years ago. I've been teaching these cases for 25 years. They were incoherent until last week when Justice Alito said, and I'm going to condense it here for the Steelers fans, you can't use race to award a congressional district or to deny a congressional district to anybody. Race Cannot be used in the absence of a previously proven definite intention to use race to screw or to reward. That's it. We're done with it. I'm very enthused about this decision. What do you think?

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

Oh, yeah, well, race is a special category. Right. It would probably be wrong to discriminate against left handed people. But race is more obvious and has a history of discrimination against it. And so there are extra protections in the law against discriminating on that ground. And they are. Many of the institutions built beginning in the 1960s to combat discrimination on race became engines of discrimination on race. You know, Hillsdale College does not take the money from the government. When that money began to be offered in about 1960, there were a lot of debates on our board and they said, well, we could take the money. We never discriminated on race, our founding articles say, without regard to race, sex or national origin. We've always, we read that at the beginning of every board meeting today, this week would we have a board meeting. So we thought we could do it. But then, you know, it became compulsion to count by race, to report by race, to come under pressure if you don't have the numbers that they like of race. This redistricting stuff too is the same. I remember a few years ago I read an article from some conservative or Republican who said, yeah, this is a really good thing because it forces them to concentrate a lot of Democratic black votes and that will mean more Republican seats. And, and I, I, I responded to that. Okay, they shouldn't take account of that at all. Right. Not for, not for our political advantage or theirs.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Correct.

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

Not for anybody's.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Not for anybody.

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

And so now I'm not saying that redistricting is going to be honest, I think it's going to grow more dishonest. But you know, I heard my colleague Molly Hemingway say the other day, she teaches journalism here. I heard her say the other day that if the red states did what Virginia is attempting to do, court seems to have stopped him for the time being, they could get 48 more Republican congressional seats. Well, you know, that means two can play at that game. And the Republicans are more spread out across territories and the Democrats. So I, you know, I expect that there'll be attempts that way. You read about them going on right now. Florida, I think, is the latest.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Yeah, it's an era of maximum partisanship. I do not mind this, Dr. Arne, I really don't. I know that the framers weren't big fans of faction, but faction is here and it's inevitable. And so, provided they don't draw lines based on race, I think the courts ought to stay out of it. And states can have independent commissions if they want. They can divide by continuity, contiguity, or by cities or by compactness, but they just can't use race and let the chips go where they may.

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

That's an enormous gain. Right. And that by itself. Right. And you know about the Founders, by the way. I should mention, writes Madison, liberty is to faction as air is to fire. We're always going to have factions. What he tried to do was prevent there being a majority faction. And that's what they, you know, in other words, he defines it carefully in Federalist 10. It's a group of people who have majority control and rule in their own interest, which is also the definition of tyranny in Aristotle politics. So he was trying to prevent that. And what we have a struggle over, the reason politics are intense is that there's a danger that we could get that here. Because remember what I said, if half the economy directly and indirectly is controlled by the government, then there's enormous resources at stake. Right. And the government itself and its assignments, its employees, its beneficiaries, its contracts are an enormous force in the electoral system. So there are dangers of majority faction among us today. What was it James Carville, you know, the moderate Democrat, said that if the. The first time the Democrats get control again, they have to do D.C. put D.C. and Puerto Rico into the union, fully get four more Senate seats out of that, and then we have to amend the voting rights laws so we can't be losing elections anymore. Well, that's the danger, and that's why politics are so intense. And then on the other hand, you get certain politicians arising who want to drain the swamp. The swamp is very big and the people in it don't like it, don't

[Hugh Hewitt]

want to be drained. They don't want to be drained so

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

that, you know, they're swamp creatures. They can't live if it's drained. So you see, that's in other words, another way to put the point in rather more direct language. It is a question, what form and purpose of government will we have? Just like in the American Revolution and just like in the Civil War, the consequences of that fate today.

[Hugh Hewitt]

And that's why the debate. We have one more segment coming up. Don't go anywhere, America. Dr. Ahn and his. His tribe at Hillsdale have been turning out amazing books, and I want to talk to him briefly about two of them. In our last segment, Molly Hemingway he mentioned. But I also have to bring up Matt Spalding and I also want to bring up one that's referenced by Brett Baron, Brett's new book, the Case for America. They're all Hillsdale books. They're all Hillsdale people. Stay tuned. You'll hear their titles next on the Hugh Hewitt Show. Welcome back. America, the Hillsdale Dialogue wrapping up this week. Hope you have a great Mother's Day weekend planned. If you haven't bought anything from mom, here are three suggestions. Dr. Larry Orne is my guest. He presides as president over Hillsdale College. Connected to the college are three books, two of them real new. Molly Hemingway, who teaches at the Kirby Center Journalism, just produced Alito, which is a fabulous book. I also want to mention that Matt Spalding, who was on last week, produced the book the Making of the American Understanding, Declaration of Independence, which won the ISI Award for book of the year, which is a big deal. And then I was interviewed by Brett Baer for his new book, the Case for America. And he asked me what should people read? And I said, well, I think they ought to start with Wilford Maclay's Land of Hope, the one volume history of the American people. That is fabulous. You're turning out a lot of good books up there in hillsdale, Dr. Arne.

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

Yeah, I keep thinking how to give him more work. Yeah, there's some talent. All three of those books are splendid. Not the first book any of them has written. All their other books are good too. But these three are sort of coming at peaks in their career. You know, they worked on these kind of things for a long time and they've learned a lot and they've got themselves their skills to a place where they can really produce. So they're very worth reading. Alito is, you know, he ranks there close to Clarence Thomas because those two are revolutionary justices on the Supreme Court and thank God for them.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Steady and courageous men. They are steady and courageous. Now, I don't know who will be judged the more influential over the years. I suspect it will be Alito, but the more inspirational may very well be Justice Thomas. Has Justice Alito been a guest on your college yet, Dr. Arne?

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

No, he entertains our students in his chambers and I've invited him to speak here. And in this day and age, he didn't say he never will. He did say he would love to, but he also says he doesn't want to put the security people to the work it takes these days for him to go anywhere. And you know, that's a cost that we all bear by the intensity and violence of the age.

[Hugh Hewitt]

It is a consideration of his is generous because it is actually quite real. And when people step out and have at public events. I wasn't at the White House Correspondents association dinner this year, but I doubt that many such events are going to be held anymore. I pray that commencements go well. I don't know who's speaking at yours this week, but have a jolly commencement. That's what they are intended to be. Uplifting and jolly and for the parents who are wondering what their students have been doing for four years because they're different now than they were when they dropped them off. So have a wonderful commencement. Dr. Larry Arnold,

[Podcast Announcer]

thanks for listening to the Hillsdale Dialogues, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More episodes at podcast hillsdale.edu or wherever you find your audio. For more information about Hillsdale College, head to Hillsdale.

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

Eduardo Sat.