Talk about that process of selecting chapters and why you included at least Reagan and the poets.

Yeah.

There are three sections in the book.

The first section is a collection of Dr. Kirk's most important writings on the founding, generally speaking.

What are the causes of the American Revolution? How did we frame our Constitution? And then the second section is about the great conservative statesmen of the American Republic.

John Adams is sort of the founding conservative of Kirk's American tradition.

But I also profiled John Randolph Roanoke, who I mentioned, a Virginia senator who was more of a Jeffersonian until he thought that— Until he wasn't.

Tell me about your interest in chambers and why you adopted that name for your firm.

Is it quiescent about these matters? Does it pontificate? The Foreign Relations Committee used to be a tiger.

Yeah, so I actually think there's considerable bipartisan consensus against isolationism in Congress, especially in the United States Senate.

Of course, you have sort of loud members, extremists in both parties who embrace isolationism, who advance isolationism, and who I think are big problems in terms of this.

But for the most part, I mean, think about this recent sanctions bill that was passed against Russia, named after the late Lindsey Graham, for example, who You know, I think there is a genuine consensus.

The problem, though, is the real foreign policy making institution in our government is the executive branch.

And Congress actually has relatively limited responsibilities in this space.

And so I think that's one problem.

Michael, MAGA, is it isolationist? Is that what we're hearing now, these stirring around chairs, people leaving the room?

about Dr. Kirk's

vision of statesmanship.

Right.

And, you know, this is true, especially the conservative mind.

He's pulling people from from all these different factions and traditions that that that wouldn't have gotten along in life.

And he's sort of pulling at the conservative thread in in in their thoughts, sort of identifying what is truly conservative about these people.

And how can we sort of use it to construct a conservative identity today? So I'll address Lincoln and Adams together.

I could be wrong,

Can you please speak about that?

Yeah.

So Churchill, while I think it's fair to call him an American patriot, he also was a British subject and very proud of that.

And he sees America as being one of what he called the English speaking people.

So his great Nobel Prize winning work is called The History of the English Speaking Peoples.

And it tells the story of both the American Republic and the United Kingdom on both sides.

of the Atlantic.

This is an opportunity for us to re-sanctify the culture in the virtue that is necessitated for this constitution.

treason if Kirk had said it.

Yeah.

But so I think Field, one of her concerns is that she thinks that politics as a matter of justice has to concern itself with material questions, especially with questions related to equality, and that therefore an idea's first conservatism, whether it's from Harry Jaffa or or Richard Weaver or whoever, I think that she would say this, this is sort of neglecting the real substance of politics and therefore is little more than a sort of moral fig leaf for oppression.

Some of that might be a little exaggerated, but I think that that's probably good enough for the sake of this.

What I think she gets wrong and what I'm sort of trying to do with my essay is show, you know, Weaver was not some kind of proto-authoritarian, even as much as he thought authority was a necessary thing.

force in society.

He certainly was opposed to all forms of central planning.

I'm doing a lot of throat clearing here to kind of kick it over to you to say, assuming I've got my facts straight there, how would you define or summarize rather Weaver's view of the progressive Gnostic school of education and what did he offer as an alternative?

So Kirk would say what? That the American founding is essentially this expression, culmination, I think the word you used, of Western heritage, right? What does that mean?

So a lot of people see the American Revolution as a strong break with the past, that we're starting something new.

Thomas Paine once said that we have it in our power to begin the world again.

Kirk didn't agree with that.

And I think most conservatives would realize that's kind of a foolish attitude to take toward the past.

Kirk instead wants to stress continuity, not change.

Continuity is the thing that's really important.

Did he share this great perspective of John Adams that others didn't?