The Three Whisky Happy Hour: From Plato to NATO

ask about the new thinkering. And my first question for you is how many packs a day do you smoke? To keep your heavy smoking deep voice?

I quickly realized it wasn't for me. I was reading a lot of dosto Yevsky and Nietzsche in my free time, which gives you an act events of my mental state, which was not hot I We'll put it like that. But I gradually got into Plato and very interested in what seemed to me just a brilliant understanding of the human being in human psychology, a political, social, and individual level.

I got into the works of Leo Strauss and also of his great student Seth Bennardetti, who was unfortunately dead by that time, and so I went to study with one of his students, Roni Berger, at Rann University, also Richard Welkley, who had came in the same year. So from Richard I was able to learn a lot about Strauss and Heidiger, which I've actually been using lately because I'm working on something on Strauss and Heidiger right now, and from I learned a ton on Plato. It was

my dissertation. Dissertation became my first book, and I wrote two more books on Plato, number of articles, et cetera on early Greek philosophy. At the same time as I went onto the job market. And this is maybe something we'll get into, which is, oh, the academy, which is one of my favorite things to gripe about, both in print and on Twitter. But hit with the job market, realizing how the political landscape had really changed things. It took me five years to land a good job. I

ended up at CU Boulder. I was associated a bit with the Benson Center, which you were a crucial encoundering and for which founding I'm very grateful. And then I made my way in and currently am a professor of political philosophy at the University of Austin, not being confused with the University of Texas at Austin our pale imitator,

but the University of University. But I'm currently on eighteen months of research leave, where I'm back at the Benson Center at CU Boulder as a sabbatical scholar and visiting researcher, writing on very right topics.

there something else there? And why did you pick Tulane, by the way, and not.

I think since then it's become a real home, and she has a number of graduate students, and the students do really well. I tend to think for all the programs out there, it's about the best to engage in close reading. I mean, Rana sits there and she reads one Patonic dialogue of say, fifty sixty pages over fifteen weeks, and she really takes you through the ringer, shows you

how to notice all the odd details. Doesn't always tell you what to do with them, which is good, but she trains your eyes, and when you do something wrong with it, she tells you why you're wrong, but she pushes you off the wrong track. You have to make your own way, and so if you really take that sort of education seriously, you're going to get a lot

out of it. At the same time, you know, studying with Richard, what always struck me as his amazing talent was his ability to enter any of the systems of these modern thinkers, whether it's Rousseau or Kant, or Hegel or Heideger or a Nietzsche or Strauss himself, just to masterfully switch from one to the other. And so you really learned what it's like to occupy and think through a systematic philosophy, but with an eye to a philosopher's irony,

which he often finds in these these thinkers. And so you really do get two different approaches within the tradition. But it is a philosophy program, which is meant it's been harder to find jobs traditionally, but with the New Civic Center, there's not a lot of philosophy programs that want Straussians that very allergic to.

philosophic training. And so I think it's actually having a good sort of run on these these new programs right now.

student at the University of Maryland of Charles Butterworth. Oh, great translator, interpreter of medieval thought also but I'm known very much for his translations of Frabbi of airways et cetera. And so I went to sit in on a class and Greg was a graduate student at the University of Maryland under Butterworth, and so I got to meet him a little bit there. But then over the years, you know, I think we were all together at a bachelor party or two, and and then you know, we had a

text threat. And you know, I had thought about starting a podcast or some kind of online magazine, kind of journal that's kind of centered on philosophy, but a little

more loose without all the academic structures. And when COVID hit, we decided, let's just record conversations and it became weekly and uh uh it did well for a niche, and we just kind of brought our banter from text messages, took out all the stuff that we get you immediately canceled and and uh, you know, turned it into a podcast and and it worked well because there was a genuine friendship right now, the genuine friendship was eroded by

the routineness of it. And now we all bid each other and each other behind wells, which if you keep if you keep having me on, that'll happen here too.

I started smoking at a very young age. And some of my fondest memories the house I grew up in, at least my teenage years I spent, had this lovely huge picture window overlooking this beautiful valley, and my dad and I when I was in college, I would work at his glass company, and so we would get up very early, you know, to be to work by six in the morning, and we'd sit and watch the sun come up over the valley in this picture window, and we would have what my dad would call a horse breakfast,

which was two cups of coffee and three cigarettes. Some of my fondest memories.

It came back to me as I was reading that Compact magazine piece about if you want to study the humanities or read English literature, don't go to graduate school. Good advice. I think. I remember back in the seventies when I was in college and a friend of mine, who I think was going to USC, back when it was purely a party school, told me the story of a class one day when in the seventies.

books where he wrote about voter sailing? And turned out it turned out no, you know married you know Jackie Kennedy, And he realized the lady thought Aristotle was Aristotle Onathis. That's the sort of ignorance we had, And now it's probably even worse. So let's see, let's try this. I think you have got a book almost done or close to being published or something on this.

then you get the Industrial Revolution. You get suddenly the three major ideologies have the equipment necessary to propagate themselves and also to institute their schemes, and it sort of lays those out from the standpoint of political psychology, arguing broadly for a kind of platonic perspective, but in not being so direct in that way. The second chapter then

goes back. It goes from political history to something like philosophic history, to the modern revolution what I call the modern conspiracy, starting from Machiavelli, and tries to lay out

how we got this place. And it's basically a kind of sweeping history of modernity, but the main thrust of it, and we could get into this a little bit if you want to, but the main thrust of it is how we got to have these kind of chaotic education institutions we have, which are a weird mixture of medieval kind of study, really small, right, but it's still there in little vestigial forms, at least in the mottos on the buildings that nobody knows how to translate anymore. Right.

And then you know there's a business interest, technological interests from early modernity. There's an ideological pressure from the left that's very well sort of cataloged. And then there's also just the kind of its market pressures, right, dumbing everything down so they can get the students. And what happens when you have a the peak of education, or what ought to be the peak of education, is so chaotic and contradictory, is that everything that's downstream from that, which

is the regime, becomes chaotic and contradictory. You get the regime you earn by the citizens or subjects I would

argue that you make. So the third chapter goes into the chaos of the education institutions, students, faculty, administrators, and the fourth chapter so that's more like social criticism and the fourth chapter is kind of like bird's eye view public policy, not really concerned with the nuts and bolts of it, but in broad sweeps, how do you start thinking about universities differently so that you can fix them?

So this has been something I've been meditating about a while, drawing a lot from my experience being disgruntled within the academy, but seeing on the ground what's happening with civic institutes, what's happening at UATX, the things I think we're doing that are genuinely innovative and should be a model for other institutions.

fifties was like a survey of a waxworks museum. You know, maybe interesting, but not really relevant because it's not from our time. And I just think that makes students think the material is not important, therefore not serious. So you know, that compact article said don't go to graduate school if you want to read English literature. Lucretia for years has been saying, if you want to understand the Constitution, for

God's sake, don't go to law school. Right, isn't that still your view of Lucretia, I think most.

and it made no sense to me. But so I was, you know, the good dean that I was. I was trying to find reviewers who would be you know, sympathetic, but at the same time had good reputations. And god, when I started looking into what populated English departments, I just, I mean I almost became physically ill. And never mind what they did to Shakespeare and critical race theory and LGBTQ queer plus US and you know, it's just there was no English anywhere. There was no there was nothing

I mean anyway. So, and that was ten years ago, almost now, probably five ten years I once saw, I once read an article on that argued that Caliban.

preeminent American specialist in Russian literature. And second, he was telling me, so, you know, he gets classes with free, you.

Dan Lowenstein at UCLA put us together for dinner. Lucretian knows Dan a little bit, and he was telling us that the political no, the English department, he's part of the you know, the languages department, they won't give him any graduate students as teaching assistants because they don't like his politics and they don't like his popularity, I think, even more than his politics, which aren't that overt really.

He writes for commentary now and then, but U and so he has to get teaching assistance from the political science department for a course on Russian literature, which I mean, you and I could squeeze that in easily enough, but it's still an interesting thing.

have ever had since in my life. There was just something about going down into that abyss with Dostavskan coming back out, But in my nightmare, I didn't come back out, and I've never forgotten that. So, you know, the idea that they could just turn Russian literature or Shakespeare or anything else into nonsense just makes me sick.

out of phase. But when we come back, Alex, I want to ask you for step one on your path to recovery for higher education. So don't go eight. The three whiskey happy hour will be right back. So, Alex, you mentioned that you're very capacious sounding book that I can't wait to read. I may flog the manuscript out of you at some point. Is you know, ideas for the way back? So what's step one? And maybe the next two or three after that too?

to think about modernity and about modern institutions. Right, So, manchi Vellu gave a very vivid image for how he was thinking about politics, which is there is a torrent, an out of control torrent, a flood of human wickedness, right, and it will tear cities apart and rip up the earth, he says, right, unless you set up dikes and dams, right, just walls that this torrent has to respond to, so it can be guided safely and soundly to its low

but very very concrete end. Right. This is how institutions operate. Right. You set up and you set up walls, and you say, go at it. Be greedy, do whatever you can to get rich, whether it's the market or the state. Be ambitious, politically ambitious. We have checks and balances, We have certain sort of regulations around the market that make sure it has basic fairness. And then you go out and you

will maximize productivity. And if politicians can't agree on what's a sensible policy, they'll just cancel each other out and we'll get a still which is much better than the alternative, which is active idiocy, right, which is too often what's pa all the ancient republics, right as the moderns well understood. Right. So the problem with that, though, is that you turn human beings into very greedy, selfish and narrowly ambitious people. Right.

And so what we want, what I propose is thinking about dikes and dams that don't just direct the torrent of human wickedness downward, but maybe upwards a little bit.

think I think more teslas in getting gulfed in than that. Yeah. Anyways, trust you trust that this is going to work right. Similarly with institutions. But the problem is, human beings are not just fuel. Yeah, we can be irritated, set on fire, and we'll go out there and we'll find a way to make a buck, right. But the problem is is we don't always feel good about it, right, And so we have to educate those moral sentiments and we have to direct people to take them seriously. So what's wrong

with education institutions, probably especially higher education. Well, we've talked about lower lower standards, right, We've talked about a lack of historical literacy. Right. So one of the things we've done at the University of Austin is that every student has to take a core curriculum. Every single grade in that core curriculum is ai proof to I think something like eighty percent very high percent, which means you can be certain that and we're also anti grade inflation.

on your rank in the class. So one policy we've had is that if we have a let's say you have a startup idea and we have a wealthy venture capitalist. Sounds redundant, but never met a down on can probably not be a venture capitalist anymore. But you've got a wealthy venture capitalcies interested and guess what, only the top GPAs get to go there. Those are concrete sort of walls. Let's say, if you want access, if you want the degree, first of all, but also if you want access, you

need to be doing the right things. If you start thinking about educational institutions in this way, you can revitalize and incentivize historical literacy, right, institutional literacy just understanding how we got where we are, why it's sensible, what the limits are of what we're doing, and you can then take the most ambitious students, make sure that they have that background knowledge, but then also give them access to

real opportunities. If you start thinking about institutions in that way, you'll you'll start producing much better citizens and leaders. Right. So that's just a single example that gives you a kind of general sense of how I'm thinking about this conceptually.

have taken over educational institutions. They have to what purpose. It's not entirely clear, because there is no end for the right thinking leftist, but they have been so successful at destroying the ability of students to think, at the ability of students to write. They have been so successful all the way down to pre school that I am not sure unless we can sort of begin there rather

than with right thinking, intelligent graduate students. I really am playing Devil's advocate a little bit because I'm not quite as it's pessimistic about this. But at the same time, you know, I have students who really cannot form a sentence. Now they can because they have AI, of course, but well, you know, and and they have this zero, absolutely zero historical knowledge.

self interest, right, which is what Machiavelli does, Hobbes does. Right. They all kind of do this, and then they say, well, taking man singularly, we can kind of build institutions around them. I'm heartened by the fact that as theoretical physics seems to sort of not have basic answers to our deepest questions.

Is this revival of interest in Stoicism, in traditional Christianity, especially Catholicism, right in pre modern thought generally, It's remarkable to see technologists talking about Xenophon's education of Cyrus, Plutarch, about Marcus Thereli, is about Plato, even as they talk about Machiavelli and others.

you doing. I see this from young students that they really do want more. They do want something more, but they want it to be rigorous, and so there's a real opportunity for revival of nutrition. Now, as to where you should start to go back to the beginning of education, you're absolutely right. But here's the thing that I've been thinking about more and more lately, is that when a student comes into your classroom at eighteen, they haven't been

in education that long. It's civilization can be destroyed very quickly. It can also be revived by people who really are not unafraid to wield power. And I'm hardened by the fact that the right is getting less afraid of wielding power and less sort of anti status. And it's I think that the libertarianism has its place in market et cetera. But we need to be dear about what our cultural

priority civilizational priorities are. And I think if you did something as simple as classify any education institute that is accepting a certain percentage of students that are reading and doing math at below a certain level as remedial institutions and then use that as an index for failing high schools. If you just to clear an education crisis and really

compel some serious changes, you'd see something. Now if you look at what's going on in Mississippi right for less money, they have higher reading scores than in California, that shows you that all it takes is a little political. But it doesn't take that much. Right now, it's Spencer pract going to do it in California. I doubt it. I really employed that superman at or whatever, right, but I do. I do think there is political will, and it only takes a decade or so. And I'll leave you with

this this thought. The school choice movement does classical education. These civic institutes. There are young men and women already going through these places about to go and get an education. They'll get PhDs, they'll go into leadership roles. I think that in ten to twenty years you're going to see some pretty remarkable young men and women come out of these education institutions, and guess what we'll get. We'll get on the right, you're going to have really well formed,

well educated leaders. And on the left, what will you get what we saw with Joe Biden and Kamrade Harris. You get puppet presidencies, right, you get weekend at Bernie's presidency, and then this DEI face for what is essentially, if you want to go that far a deep state right, you'll see how it works out. The real substance is

going to be on the stage. And I think you know, we often as conservatives of one kind or another, put myself in the other category, but essentially, at one time or another we get very disheartened about the future of civilization. But there is a positive story to be told in which the quality and the power of leadership will be undeniable on one side because the other side has relied on institutions and not enough on individual formation. And that's just where the right has as a leg up. Yeah.

cut these Hillsdale grads. They're really smart and they're really able at age twenty two, age twenty three, and I'll bet uat X is going to get that reputation really fast. Right, we're going to take another quick ad break. But when we come back, Alex, I want to take you back to something you said in your initial description of the

book to push this a little bit further. So, Alex, you talk about remedies, but I want to go back to one of the conditions you describe in a way have never heard it done before, but I think it's probably correct, profound, deeply serious. You said something like I was trying to make notes that when you get chaotic educational institutions, it ends up spilling out too or causing a chaotic regimes. So the point is is that what you say, the populars version of that thought to the

extent that is the same. Is everything bad in our country starts in faculty meetings, right, It comes from the campuses, right. But boy, I mean it's one thing to start turning out some really smart, effective leaders from these isolated citadels of excellence that we're all trying to promote and help

out with. But boy, that's a long time for that to drip feed through a political system and turn around this the ship of state that's you know, sinking, right, So that's a I don't know, I'm saying, yeah that perhaps.

So I would just say that there's you know, there's a bit of of of pressure against that, and I am struck how much the the average person, even who's who's fairly ideological, will start conceding points when when they it comes up and butts up against their own lives. Right, So I think I have just a word of caution on the too much of the doomsday stuff there. But yes, I mean, civilization is always a difficult thing, right, It's always very fraught, and it has its fragilities, and it

can be lost on the one hand. On the other hand, you know, students are running away from the humanities. And what's interesting is I see So let me take my friend Shiloh Brooks in his class at Princeton. He taught that at CU, he brought it to Princeton, and this guy, who was not a tenured faculty member, suddenly went from a class that had I don't know, a dozen two dozen students to hundreds in his class because he knew how to teach, He knew how to speak to the

deepest longings of students. He wasn't just giving prepackaged ideology, wasn't finger wagging at them in this homeownersh way about their race, etster and their privilege. He just talked about what it means to be ambitious And guess what, Prince students, wouldn't you think they're interested in ambition. They tend to be an ambitious bunch and what they want to learn about that part of themselves, the part that they deal

with every single day. I think there's you know, my hope, to be quite blunt, is that the civic institutes will cannibalize students from the other discipline so that they will grow even as we have this population. Yeah, and I think we're going to see it. As long as these places are well run, there's going to be a shift and the students are going to flock to them because that's where real stuff is going on. They have money,

they have interesting speakers. There's a debate happening. They're actually facing the questions instead of just talking down to you. And guess what where talent is. That's where smart kids will go and the best kids will go. So things like that, and we could go on and on about this, but I'm happy to see some counter pressure. I'm firmly believe that the education on offer by individuals in these places is uh leaps and bounds better and more relevant

and addresses to real issues. And that's students eighteen year olds. They're not committed like their teachers are. They are flexible, willing to dye their hair different colors, they'll dress differently, they'll think differently. Provided that there are some decent arguments, you just got to put them right there.

He's a total modernist. I looked at syllabus. It's all modern journal articles on silly things plus two excerpts from Plato Symposium, and that got him in trouble because I think he was using him for mischievous and incompetent purposes. But but you know, am I actually pretty weak on Plato. I mean the Gorgioas is the one I know best because I took my first seminar in political philosophy with

Jim Nichols. Was translated. Yeah, and you know, we spent a whole semester doing it like Roni Berger does, going you know, two pages at a time. It was fantastic, And I go back to the Gorgias and look at my notes in the margin all the time. In any case, So the Symposium, though, I think it's pretty different from a lot of the other dialogues, and it's actually I'm not sure it's right to say less of a dialogue

than most of them that we're familiar with. Is it possible, Alex me to give a little thumbnail sketch about what's the central not ideas, but you know, central purpose of the symposium and how it firs from the others, And what's one or two things that you think people ought to know about it and why they should read it.

way of saying, I'm going to subvert your expectations. And if you've heard about the book at all, you'll you'll know who's in it. Socrates, Aristophanes, al Sabaiines, Agatha, all these really remarkable figures in Athenian politics and in Athenian intellectual life. Pausanius, Eric Simgus. These are known people. And so it has a reputation, a gossipy reputation, and it opens with gossip by people talking about it, right, and you think, oh, this is like being at the mech

gala after party. Right, I can talk to you know, this person and that person or whatever. Creastia rolls her eyes if you have a fine of her deep psychic health. That's very good, right, But Trance a certain reader, and who is this kind of reader? They want to be part of the in crowd. They want to be part of this community, the sense of that there's something, there's a real gathering here happening. I want to be a part of it. And guess what. Socrates shows up late.

He shows up rudely, he insults the guy there. And here's the problem. Agathon is a is an accommodating host. He creates a beautiful environment, and that's what you think you want to be a part of. But Socrates, how do you accommodate the annoying, petulant, difficult Maggie Socrist? You can't. And Agathon struggles, and of course what does you do? The second he gets a chance to speak, he starts

asking people questions, trying to make it a dialogue. And then when it's finally his turn, he objects to the whole proceedings and he has this whole whole issue, and

he tries to change it. And the question really at the heart of it is can this wonderful, beautiful community ultimately satisfied The most stringent of guests, right, the most demanding of guests, and the philosophic question there is whether the beautiful or the noble, right, this beautiful, organizational, organized whole can actually be good for you for the person who's most serious about what their own good is, about what living the good life is. And the answer is yeah, maybe,

but probably not not on this social social level. So it's a delightful dialogue. It's full of speeches about love, very ironic, kind of un self aware speeches about love. It's titillating, it's sometimes a little gross because there is a kind of pedaph right about it, and it's politically remarkable. Alcibiz comes in drunk and vino very toss. He confesses is joked in love with Socrates, the fact that Socrates, here's something for you, Socri seems to laugh at him,

at his naked body. That it doesn't take a master psychologist to know that that could be damning to a beautiful person, to have the ugliest man at Porson Athens laugh at the person that everybody wants at his naked form. And that's that's a uh if you, if you ask me, what's a philosophic text that's both delightful and deeply interesting. It's got to be the symposium. It was interesting. His favorite dialogue, maybe the most beautiful dialogue.

and comedy. And Java says that was anticipating Shakespeare. Does that strike you as plausible or is that unting too far?

It's a wonderful translation, with a really good introduction by the translator. Anyways, Setting that aside, the person who makes tragedy by art by technical ability can also make comedy. Tragedy has that it's heart the gods. Right, If you're making it by technical skill, you're essentially inventing the god of the play. It's not just inspiration from beyond and then you give it voice, but you're actually making it, and so you've got a bit of ironic distance on

your own gods. So that's a kind of a comedian element. I would say that the first master of that, and the first persons Socras intimates is Plato. The way he invents the forms, the good, the one, the precise itself, depending on the dialogue. But Shakespeare is certainly certainly capable of that, I think, and it's it's very difficult to see in play in Shakespeare, I mean, where he's not in control of the plays and everything that's happening in them.

So certainly a master of his of his craft and of everybody on the stage, even if it is the God and Lee or something like that.

as we ride back for our usual closing. Although I've got a couple of new ruffles and flourishes maybe, so we'll be right back. All right, Lucretia, what's the best of the Bee this week that you've seen so far?

to books. And then I usually come in and say, you have been listening to the three Whiskey Happy Hour sponsored by our friends at the Civitas Institute, the podcast dedicated to single malts singular metaphysics coming soon, microtonal punk. I know that it's my new way I'm going to torture you and John Lucretia stand by you will, you will, Those who know, we'll know, and others will find out. And with that, that's a rapper this week. Thanks for coming, Alex, this has been great.