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I'm Josh Hammer, and this is Josh Hammer show well, I'm in Texas today for CPAC speaking today, a speech that I put a lot of thought into and I hope that you will view it favorably. We will discuss it certainly, and perhaps even play parts of it on tomorrow's show. Meanwhile, coach Bruce Pearl, the former Final Four coach of the Auburn Tigers basketball team, joins us today for an extended conversation on how the war against the Iranian regime is going, as well as this wonderful tournament, this College Basel tournament that is going on. It's very easy to focus on the ups and downs of the news cycle. Sometimes it's important to think about some of the lighter things in life as well. And that is where March Madness comes in. But I am out here in Texas and my thoughts right now are on all things CPAC and all things Concerned Movement related. And that is the subject of our opening monologue today. The Concerned Movement finds itself at something of an inflection point. If you listen to or watch this show on a daily or near daily basis, these are not going to be new thoughts to you. You likely understand that there is a lot that is currently up for grabs. There are a lot of folks that are trying to now try to shoehorn and retrofit their highly idiosyncratic at best and deeply dastardly and insidious ideas and thoughts at worst into this somewhat open definition as to what it means to be a conservative. But our stance here on the show is pretty straightforward, which is that what it means to be a conservative, what it means to be on the right in general, what the right does stand for, what the right must stand for if it wants to have any chance of succeeding, of defeating the left and by extension of actually saving the United States, and by extension even further, of saving Western civilization, what the right actually stands for is not infinitely malleable. This is not an all options are equal sort of calculation. There are some conceptions of what it means to be on the right that make sense. There are some that are consonant with basic philosophy, with basic ways of thinking, and there are some that are not consistent. We read to you on the show, I believe it was last week, the opening line of Alexander Hamilton's essay in the Federals Papers, the Federalist paper number 31, where he famously says that, quote, in disquisitions of every kind, there are certain primary truths or first principles which upon which all subsequent reasonings must depend. In other words, you have to start somewhere. If you don't actually start somewhere, you're not going to know actually how to arrive at a public policy conclusion. Public policy, law, legal interpretation, legislation, drafting policy ultimately for the common good, which is the foundational task of the statesman, is an impossible task. It is literally not possible unless you have a starting place, unless you have certain places where you are entering from in order to ultimately reason to. For as long as what we think of as conservatism has been around, that starting place has been fairly simple. That starting place has been the biblical inheritance, the values, the principles, the ideals, the axioms, the ways of life that have been passed down from one generation to the next in this broader biblical inheritance, the shared inheritance of the two biblical religions, Jews and Christians alike. Unfortunately, many of the leading organs and many of the leading impresarios, let's call them of capital C conservatism, have tended to obfuscate and have tended to diminish and downplay the importance of these primary truths and anchoring principles. They have tended instead in their stead in their place, to promote the notion of just trying to get clicks, clout or perhaps just straight up cash. They have decided, in other words, in order to appease the algorithms of the day and perhaps the ratings of the day, or the clapping like seals, useful idiots of the day, that sometimes it is more convenient to just abandon all that you once purported to care for, instead to adopt by means of pure, just convenience. Pure convenience, something that just plays for the news cycle. Cpac, the conference that I'm here in Texas to speak at, has definitely at times fallen to that. There are a lot of great folks speaking at this particular conference at the cpac. There are certainly a number of less than Stell inclusions in the lineup as well many of the other major conservative organizations, Turning Point USA among them, very much the same way I was a friend. As you know, if you watch this show of the late Charlie Kirk, I did not agree with all of Charlie's platform decisions. I actually disagreed mightily with some of his decisions in the final, final few years as the movement descended into some of the chaos and the strife that it is currently in. So this is a real moment for choosing, and that is the main theme indeed of my speech at this conference. Is this moment going to go down the conspiratorial rabbit hole? Is it going to just completely shunt aside any pretense of having any fealty, any loyalty, any care about principles, values, any of that? Or is it going to make a conscientious effort to recover some of that which it holds dear? And a lot of this is happening right now in the context of the war in Iran. It very much pertains not just to overseas and geopolitical events, but it very much pertains also to domestic events as well. All sorts of domestic policy, all sorts of other non policy issues, namely this subversive fifth calm operation trying to tear apart the Jewish Christian Biblical alliance has been a big theme of our show for a long time now. It's really, it's really all up for grabs and it's an extraordinarily crucial time there. And here's hoping, here is hoping that some of these leading organizations, some of these leading conference impresarios, organizations like cpac, organizations like Turningpoint usa, given the sheer level of the grift that is out there, given the fact that there are people like, like Joe Kent who are now openly admitting that they tried to subvert and undermined the movement and this administration from within, it is a time for choosing and is crucial that we choose correctly and that we choose timeless principles and values. And yes, we can be a little more malleable when it comes to tactics for sure. My thesis, for instance, when it comes to lawfare, is that the only way out is through and that mutually assured lawfare destruction is the only viable path forward towards getting us back to a mid to long term stable equilibrium. That's not necessarily your quote unquote nice answer. That's not perhaps what the lawyers learned or were taught in law school. So the tactics might need to get a little more brass knuckle, a little more hands on, a little more aggressive. But the actual principles, the guideposts, the lodestar, those primary truths that Hamilton spoke of, those haven't changed. And perhaps even more to the point, it is indispensable that they be there in the first place and that we not just promote loudmouths and shameless promoters and hawkers and grifters and people who are in it fundamentally for themselves and not for the greater good. By the way, folks, this show, as you hopefully know, is on the Salem News Channel where we are deeply proud to have the show distributed. It's a big day here on the Salem News Channel because Salem News Channel is expanding. SNC is available live on the Roku Channel. You can now find SNC on the Roku Channel app or on the Live TV Guide on your Roku tv. For more ways to watch, go to SNC TV and click on Ways to Watch. We hope that you check out this show on the Salem News Channel if you have not already done so. So among the ways, as I mentioned, that this is all playing out here in real time, including at this conference. CPAC that I'm speaking at is on the foreign policy issues of Iran. And this is a war that Donald Trump did not choose. It is a war that was 47 years in the making. We're going to bring on coach Bruce Pearl. Surely we'll get his thought on that matter. That's been that that's been our thesis on the show for a long time now is that this is a 47 year forever war. In fact, just, just last night I did a separate event in Dallas while I am in town here in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. And my, my interlocutor asked me how I could reconcile what Trump is doing when it comes to Iran with how he vowed to end forever wars. And I said it's actually very simple. There is literally no issue perhaps other than tariffs on which this man has been more consistent over the past 47 years. In 1980, he criticized Jimmy Carter for not using military to go in and get the hostages out of the embassy after the revolutionaries there seized the US embassy in 1988. He told the Guardian, the British newspaper, that he would, quote, go in and take Kharg island, this highly strategic island there near the crucial 21 mile wide straight off Hormuz oil choke point. Trump has been deeply, deeply consistent on this issue. So it is not like other people force his hand there. It's not like the Jews, the Israelis, as some of these idiots say, force his hands. In fact, the country has actually gotten the bulk of this incoming fire has actually not even been Israel, as we've said repeatedly, it's been the United Arab Emirates. They've gotten roughly 60% of all of the attacks. And their minister of state, Lana Nusabel is actually on Fox News talking about this all with Bret Baier last night. Let's go ahead and watch this from Fox News.