After Party with Emily Jashinsky - World Cup Brings American Patriotism, Obama vs. George Washington, PLUS the Reason Supergirl Tanked

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

Why are fewer Americans proud of their country? Emily Jashinsky and Dr. Matthew Mehan of Hillsdale College discuss new polling on patriotism, Barack Obama vs. George Washington, and the political battle over American history. They also examine Democratic politics, the World Cup’s unexpected celebration of American culture, and why Supergirl tanked at the box office.   USAFacts: Demand government accountability by signing the open letter for reliable public data at https://USAFacts.org/supportdata   Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code AFTERPARTY at www.cowboycolostrum.com/afterparty   Cozy Earth: Visit https://www.CozyEarth.com & Use code EMILY for up to 20% off   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to After Party, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. Our guest tonight is Dr. Matthew Mien. He's the author of The American Book of Fables. It is gorgeous. It is out. You can get it now. We're going to go through all kinds of wild and interesting news stories with Dr. Mian. Truly one of the smartest people that I have ever met my life. So I'm very glad Dr. Mian will be with us today this evening because as I mentioned, we have a lot to go over. Because with the 250th anniversary celebrations. Barack Obama and others are coming out and talking about the founding, talking about George Washington. We have an Obama clip on Washington in particular. That's very interesting. Senator John Osseth has been going viral for what the left sees as perhaps a positive iteration of democratic patriotism. But there are also new numbers released today from some tough polling when it comes to how Americans feel about our own country. that then has been manifested in some of the candidates that are succeeding right now in the Democratic Party from like Democratic Socialists of America, wing of the party, and we'll have a lot to break down about who's been winning those races, why perhaps they're winning those races. And, you know, if you haven't seen the clip of Scott Weiner getting harassed at Pride yet, we'll probably be playing that too because it's just there's so many layers.

to understand American politics in that one, like one minute long clip. So I'll also be talking about the New York Times' story on why Supergirl seems to be like belly flopping. It's hilarious. It's one of those times where I get to put a piece of quote-unquote mainstream media reporting up on the screen and dissect it with all of you. So I'm looking forward to that. Of course, I'm looking forward to that.

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Happy Hour that drives every Friday, where I take your questions that you send in to Emily at devilmaycaremedia.com. My real email address. You can communicate with me there. Many of you know that because you do indeed communicate. with me there. So all that being said, we have a lot to get to tonight. Let's go ahead, take a quick break. We'll be joined on the other side by Dr. Matthew Meehan. This episode is sponsored by USA Fax, a non-partisan organization making government data easier to access and to understand. I'm partnering

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All right, everyone has promised. Dr. Matthew Mehan joins us now. Dr. Meyhan is author of the American Book of Fables. He's Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Government for the Van Andle Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College in Washington, D.C., where actually he was a professor for fellowship I did a few years back, and I am so grateful, Dr. Mian,

that you're taking the time this evening to talk to us about this amazing book and some really important stories in the news. So welcome. Thank you very much for having me, Emily. It's good to see you. Yes, absolutely. It's great to have you, and this new book is gorgeous.

for the listening audience. I can't even describe to you how gorgeous it is. Just know it's beautiful and go pick up a copy. It's out now. If you are watching this, you're seeing some of the beautiful images from the screen. And Dr. Mane, let's just start here with a little bit of explanation from you

on the inspiration behind the American book of fables, the beautiful illustrations, the poetry, the excerpts from some really fundamental, or I should say, foundational American text, some literal foundational American texts. Why did you want to do this? And where was your inspiration drawn from? I mean, it's America, it's 250. A sort of go big or go home has been my motto. I've spent my whole life studying both literature and politics together. And I've always thought as a kind of responsibility of mine, because I study these things, to sort of mind the

stories that are undergirding our way of life and what images are there to help us sort of have a strong moral imagination to live as a free people, citizens, but also hopefully good men and women. And, you know, let's say in terms of the American imagination, if you liken it to a pantry, Mother Hubbard's cupboard is pretty there. And so I felt that the American Book of Fables is the perfect time to do this. So I did a long study of the fable tradition and of American history. I've been doing that my whole career. And I realized that this was really, one of the best forms of literature to represent the American Republic to itself and kind of, you know, restore the American imagination to the next generations.

And for a frontier culture, which, I mean, really is the heart of so much of American culture, it's been really, I was going to say amusing, but I think that underplays what we've seen play out as Europeans have come, and people actually not even just from Europe, but from all over the world have come to watch World Cup games. And you have this wonderful road trip image that was just up on the screen of everyone kind of stuffed into, it was a Bronco, right, Dr. Vant? So it looks like a Bronco in the front because it's the same front end, but it's actually a Ford F-250 for the 250th. In fact, when I asked the Ford Motor Company for permission, I said, you know, they said, why do you need a Ford F-250? I'm like, guys, 250, the 250th?

So I'm still waiting for my money from them for whatever tips I. I gave them for how to celebrate with their Ford F-250. But yeah, no, it's got a road trip feel. It has a lead character, Hugh, Manatee from the Everglades. The book has 13 chapters, and it goes through 13 regions of the country and explaining those regions, their ecology, their animals, and folkways, and their local history, but also explaining sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase, sometimes paragraph by paragraph, the Declaration of Independence. So when you get to the great rivers and great

lakes, it's the inalienable right to life. When you get to the prairies, the Great Plains, it's the right to the right to the right, sort of where the Buffalo roam. You seemingly can do anything you want, but there are rules to the road in the prairies. And then the pursuit of happiness, which is a kind of climbing of the mountain of virtue and service and actually, you know, the pilgrimage of mankind through this life, religious liberty, all those things. So it wound up being a kind of road trip for humanity, meeting a bunch of merry friends. He starts right here you can see in a hurricane

and goes off to get friends to help with the rescue effort afterwards, sort of a giant FEMA recruitment trip. But at the same time, I go through kind of the history of the country. And so you keep learning more and more about the settling of each region of the country, all the difficulties, the sacrifices. And frankly, what the book is, designed to do in a kind of serious part is, like I said, create witty wise citizens, as Ben Franklin liked to say, who was quoting Shakespeare, who was quoting Chaucer, who was quoting

the Gospel of Matthew. But it's also to create a sense of gratitude. A shared memory of our beautiful history is going to know us to love. And once you see all the sacrifices and all the beautiful things people did to bring about this wonderful nation with these principles of liberty and justice and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, natural rights, nature and nature is God. It's an incredible story, and this is a 395-page, massive heirloom book. Big hardback, hundreds of illustrations, pen-and-ink illustrations, paintings, watercolors. You know, that gratitude is what I was really getting after.

I wanted that animating force because I know we're going to talk about some of the politics of today. That politics is a politics of ingratitude. is I don't owe this place anything because it gave me nothing. I find it distasteful, disgusting, and I feel no debt of gratitude. And I think that is such a, that's a deep thing that doesn't really rise to the level of policy and politics very often. And it is the role of artists and poets to sort of give that over to people. So that's a fundamental engine of the whole book. I love the word that you used when you said part of the inspiration was to represent to Americans, the country, back to us.

And that's the experience I think many people have had actually watching some of these reactions on TikTok and Instagram to people from outside of the United States, experience the United States. And actually, interestingly, kind of on journeys from all of these different regions that you write about and have these beautiful illustrations of and explore so deeply. I wanted to roll this clip of a man named Oliver Henry issuing an apology to America. This is SOT Five. We owe America a huge apology because America is nothing to love. like what the media tells us. Everyone is so friendly, everyone is so accommodating, and I've honestly had the best time. I fly home Sunday, and the English have a song where we say, please don't take me home, I just don't want to go to work, let me stay here and drink all your

beer. And I've never resonated with that song more than in America for this World Cup. And that's just one of many, many. I mean, it's become a meme, of course, of people experiencing Buckeys and other places in the country, ranging from the trivial and actually some things that perhaps were not so proud of, which would be like a bucket of Dunkin' Donuts coffee, to things that are less trivial and are really about American hospitality in the vein of, like, de Tocqueville, and some of the important points about the American spirit and character that you write about, Dr. Mien. So I was curious how you were sort of reacting to seeing this happen, having just written about many

of these places and these features of the American people and the American nation. What's it been like for you? In one sense, it's very analogous because I won a Heritage Innovation Prize and an NEH grant. And my illustrator and I actually traveled the country. I went to Yellowstone, Glacier National, Monterey Bay, Big Sur, all over. The Everglades, got chased by a saltwater crocodile. I wound up learning a ton about the country and regions I'd never been to, so I I feel they're living my last year of travel and research.

But it is a gift to have other people sort of revisit your life and your way of life with foreign eyes. And so we can see ourselves as others see us. I actually do think it is a funny backfire because I think a lot of people thought that this would be a great cosmopolitan sort of watering down of our semi-quincentennial 250th. That would be a global thing. I think that was the lefts and Obama administration's idea of like, this will be great to sort of tamp that down. And it's backfired.

It's the opposite, right? It's actually, we see all these people coming to appreciate us. One of the things I kind of treat in the book is America is the is a, is very unusual because the word in English for stranger we have is a good word. Like, howdy, stranger? Right? It's sort of like if you're a visitor, you know, and why that is is one frontier mentality where everybody's on everybody's side, right? We're all trying to survive here.

So you make sure you help every neighbor and every traveler. But the other thing is we're a Democratic Republic. That is to say the people are sovereign. So you don't have to be the mayor or a cop. Someone walks in and you're like, I am the ambassador for this town, this neighborhood, this city, this school. Like people are instantly ambassadorial. and sort of take charge because they are in charge.

They're citizens. And that's a kind of beautiful thing that America has, that hospitality, that sense of friendship, but also that sense of ownership and leadership. We're self-goverting people. Oh, that is a really, really interesting point. And on that note, let's talk about Barack Obama's latest MS Now interview, where he touched on George Washington through the scope of historical perspective, or he attempted to do it through the scope of historical perspective,

which I just want to download it in people's mind. And I think that's kind of going to be the theme of a lot of this conversation is the sort of perspective in the sweep of history of what America is, what America means. So let's listen to Barack Obama commenting just in the last, I think this was 24 hours and this aired Sunday evening on MS Now, SOT1.

It's possible for me to be a great admirer of George Washington and also acknowledge, He was a slaveholder. And that does not negate his greatness. It simply acknowledges that there's a profound deep flaw in these founding fathers who were also geniuses and gave us these tools. And which is true of all of us, right? It's true of every president. That we're this mixed bag.

We've got contradictions and embody the country's contradictions. Okay, so I think it would be very difficult for him to say that if he were not black, honestly, because on the left, if a white man said that, and we'll probably pick it apart a bit, Dr. Meen, but if a white man said that, that would actually be pretty tough to come back from. You'd get in trouble for that based on what Barack Obama just said. What did you make of it? Yeah, there's that. There's also, I mean, people like to dig Trump for being brash and comparing himself to Washington. and Lincoln. But if you heard him, that's exactly what he just did. He said, all of us presidents are a mixed bag, i.e., I'm just as good, maybe better, than George Washington. It's the sort of classy version of braggadocio, pretty, pretty, I think pretty, it's smarmy and also somewhat haughty to think you're better than George Washington. I also, the language is, forgive me for being a little prefaceorial, but I admire this guy.

So it's about me admiring them, like meaning I can appreciate things through all the dross. I can sort of find something in Washington to admire. But it's all vague. He doesn't say any of the good and incredible things that Washington did, like defeat the British, like hold the country together, like put off the attempt at a monarchical coup at the very end of the war. Like putting down power multiple times in order to secure a republic and the peaceful transition of power. the incredible work, how he freed his own slaves, by the way, and helped get them ready for free life and manumitted them all.

None of those things are said, but then he's very concrete. And he was a slaveholder, which is sort of deceptive because he was a reluctant slaveholder who spent his adult life on Mount Vernon getting them ready for more technical skills. He switched them from hard labor in the fields to more advanced things such that they could make a living, and they weren't going to be so laborious and just backbreaking work alone.

It's actually a beautiful story that he tried to get them ready for freedom, and it wasn't easy to just release people at that time in plantation southern states from slavery. Manumission could lead people into poverty, destitution, and re-enslavement. So it's all this vague, I admire,

because I'm an American, and I have to say that, but then it's concrete, visceral, you're a bad man. And that juxtaposition of, something vague versus something concrete and upsetting, you do that 100,000 times as he's done in his life of talking about the founders and how the left in the 1619 project, how they all do it. That's actually a way of sort of photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy.

You slowly drift from any actual historical, factual, factual, patriotic, pious appreciation of our founding fathers. And thus you sap gratitude. You celebrate yourself in the present moment. and you don't know anybody anything, and you don't have to maintain or build up our way of life. Georgia Senator John Assoff is drawing comparisons, many comparisons, to Barack Obama, young Barack Obama, obviously a senator and from a state that is now purple in the form of Georgia. And John Assoff was kind of also trying to straddle this line, ride this fence,

because as we've seen, and we're going to talk about in a moment, young liberals, many of whom are leftists, are deeply disillusioned. Actually, so are many young conservatives, but deeply disillusioned about legacy of the United States and the present status quo here in the United States. And so here's how Assoff is going massively viral, people saying he's a generational talent for handling the question of the founding S2.

Just think 250 years on, what the founders would see if they visited us today. But wait, they would see that slavery had been abolished. They would see that Americans without land and then women's and then the descendants of slaves had secured voting rights. And this goes on for a couple of minutes of him building into interestingly sort of populist rendering of oligarchy and elites in the present day United States. But that's where he started, Dr. Meen. And I guess I'm wondering how you compare that to the way, Obama, a figure of a very different era, is handling some of these questions in our present era alongside Senator Assoff.

In one sense, part of me says they're of a piece. There's not that much difference in the sort of the discussion there, at least in that clip, that part of it, of a kind of the whole journey is basically we overcame the founding. And the founders would reluctantly say like, Bravo, you guys did it. Which, you know, I think there's lots to be proud of there. That's an easy one. In one sense, he's, you know, like, you're in Georgia and you're celebrating the defeat of slavery, right?

Like, in the Democratic Party, like, that's a winner. It's a winner for all Americans in some sense. But it strikes me as a kind of just another subtle version of absolutely nothing to do with the content of the character and achievements of the founding, but only, you about the present moment and what we're doing. And so it's a kind of, you know, sort of that emotional Harry Potterism. Like, it's the kids. They're the ones who are going to save Hogwarts, right?

It's sort of like, but all the adults are in the Ministry of Magic and sold out, and the ancestors didn't know what they were doing. It's, you know, it's the 60s all over again. Don't trust anyone over 30 kind of thing. Oh, my goodness. I have never thought about the message of Harry Potter that way. I'm sorry, yeah. Don't get me started.

I think we should get you started. We're going to take quick break, but we'll be back on the other side of this break with some of the promised clips of people who are now wow, I was just going to mix up five different words, ascendant on the left. So we'll be right back, stick around. The summer, if you want real results, better gut health, glowing skin, stronger hair, and steady energy. Start with colostrum. When your gut is balanced, everything else improves. Today's sponsor, Cowboy Colostrum offers premium bovine colostrum sourced entirely from American

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For a limited time, our listeners get up to 25% off their entire order. Just head to Cowboy colostrum.com slash afterparty and use code afterparty at Check out that's 25% off when you use code afterparty at cowboy colostrum.com slash afterparty. We're back with more after party. Thank you so much for sticking around with us tonight's guest is Dr. Matthew Mian. He's author of the American Book of Fables. It's out now. He described it as an heirloom book, which that's a great way to sell at Dr. Mia because it's so beautiful. He's also an associate dean and an associate professor of government at the Van Andal Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College here in Washington, D.C. Now, Dr. Mian, I needed to get your reaction to Dariah Liza Avila Chivalier, who is the nominee in a deep blue district in New York.

She is likely to join Congress after November. And some old posts of hers have been dug up, including some from CNN's Andrew K-File, actually just in the last several hours. CNN has a new piece, some of which we've seen already before. But here's V6. This is a post that Chevalier made about wiping. She didn't have a napkin, so she wiped her hands on the American flag. I think it was from 2020. Yeah, if we look closely at that, I think it says it's June 2020 or October 2020.

I forgot to get napkins, so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me. That is the exact post. And meanwhile, this clip of her, when she was in a debate with the incumbent center Espelat that she ended up defeating, I thought was worth. re-upping in light of the new conversation about some of these old tweets, they were asked, these are two Democrats. One is an establishment Democrat, the other sort of ascendant DSA socialist, Democratic, Socialist Democrat. Here's how they responded to the question of who they were rooting for in the World Cup S-8. World Cup is here. The first match this weekend at MetLife Stadium taking

place in New Jersey, even though some people say it is technically New York. But what do you think will win it all? Who are you rooting for? I like Mexico. Mexico. There you go. No, Mr. Hesavéi. I'm learning for Senegal. Senegal. Okay. Mexico and Senegal. What the hell you're running for Congress in the United States?

I like actually don't know if I'm missing something, Dr. Meen. It seems so wild, but the atmosphere that they exist in, just finally before I turn it over to you, there's a new Gallup report out that finds, as the U.S. marks its 250th anniversary, 33% of adults say they are, quote, extremely proud to be an American. That is the lowest reading in Gallup's trend, dating back to 2001. Another 20% say they are, quote, very proud, which means just over half of Americans

express high levels of pride in their country. The remaining shares say they are moderately proud, 22%, only a little proud, 15%, or not at all proud. So I suppose Dr. Mian, it's not entirely surprising that as these numbers plummet to lows, we actually start seeing that reflected in our politicians. Yeah, I mean, I am pleased to see that that tweet of hers, only got three likes, which is good.

That's a good sign. But it's such a disgusting thing for someone who's going to hold public office to treat the symbols of the country that way. That is a kind of barbarism. It's a kind of just civilizational decline into a disrespect for any kind of symbol that represents our unity as a people and our history and all of the sacrifices that have been made. And it's performative. It's obviously a kind of, I'm in the know.

I'm one of the new sort of revolutionary haters who treats the flag this way. So it's a kind of coded language that's pretty disgusting. He did say, who are you rooting for? Then who do you think is going to win it all? And so the first guy said Mexico, which is kind of like maybe he was making a call. But she then said, I'm rooting for Senegal. You're like, okay, you answered the first question. You're tagged.

Yeah, I mean, this is performative anti-patriotism, and it's a kind of dialect of the Democratic youth electorate is to sort of hate on the country. And look, those numbers are terrible and sad. But if you break them down by party, it's actually horrifyingly lopsided. Yes. The Democrats are actually the ones who hate the country, or rather are totally ashamed of the country. And I'm sorry, I blame the public school system in large part. You know, I like to say, we like to say at Hillsdale that we try to teach history warts and all. But history warts and all, imagine if your history was just a series of close-up shots of warts.

That's kind of how history is taught for the most part. and that's an extremely demoralizing way to teach your founding, to teach your history. Everything is about slavery. Everything is about mistreating Indians. One of the things I do in the book, as we go through, I tell stories of these beautiful sacrifices

for the Native Americans, for the Indians, and the peace that was made and the friendships that were built and the strained peace and sometimes the personal destruction, like families killed trying to maintain peace with the Native Americans. We have a view if you follow your average cheap history that a kid will get in school is that we sneezed on quilts, right, and gave them to Indians and killed them.

Like that's the history. It's basically a kind of dances with wolves agit prop. Whereas the real truth is it was an extremely difficult situation. They were very cruel and they did not follow any of the rules of war. and they murdered women and children, they captured and scalped and killed people, raided their towns. And the piece was always very difficult.

So I actually like to focus on heroes like O.O. Howard, known as the Christian General, or James Cook, who wound up being the good friend of the last warrior chief of the Sioux out west, Jim Cook, the last cowboy. I try to tell some of these beautiful stories, which people used to know. And now they don't roll off the tongue. We don't have these kinds of American heroes who, yeah, there's lots of bad things that happen in our country.

But there are incredible stories of overcoming those bad things. And I think the truth is that there's a little more good than bad at the end of the day when you really break it down. And that is something you can't even say if you're going to teach history today in a public school setting. I mean, fortunately, that's changing in certain places. We can thank DeSantis and Sanders and some governors who've done. done some reforms. I've helped with some of those. But it's baby steps and the blue states are the worst of this. I actually try to not take this for granted because I'm 33 and people younger than me are much more depressed about the state of the country. And my generation was always fairly

depressed about the state of the country. And it's not entirely new, of course, in history for people to be down on the circumstances. But I think that's what's difficult as maintaining historical perspective in light of sometimes really uncomfortable revelations. I mean, think about how much just in the last 20 years we've learned about our own CIA, our own intelligence community, like really deeply shameful things. And they are, to some extent, new. Jim Crow existed in the lifetimes of people who are still with us on this earth, who experienced enormous racism and discrimination. So I was reading a Washington Post article on actually the Freedom Trucks that Hills, helped with here in the America 250 celebration in Washington, D.C.

And the post, this was a straight news piece, was critical that Hillsdale included the part of Frederick Douglass's what to the slave is the Fourth of July that was hopeful about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution without the negative parts, which is exactly the inverse of what all mainstream history teaches people in public schools, to what you just mentioned, Dr. Meehan, and through Hollywood celebrities when they're posting about the 4th of July, it always leaves that part out. And it just made me want to ask you the most fundamental basic question, which is why focus on the good? To your point, you mentioned focusing on warts and all or telling history, warts and all, but why in the United States focus on the good? Is it really, you know, does it outweigh the bad?

Is that why we should focus on it? It sounds like a silly question, but I try not to take for granted why people feel so down on the country right now either. No, we've favored a kind of scientism in history where it's like, I just want the most accurate picture of every good and bad and I want to be able to weigh them in percentages. And that's something that a scholarly historian ought to do, but public history should focus on the things

that will help fire the hearts of men and women to be good citizens. That is a first-order business. That doesn't mean you hide or dissemble about evil. You don't do that, but you focus on and you emphasize the goods. Now, in fact, the shrewd and smart way that you would teach the bad parts of history is by telling the stories of those who overcome the bad parts of history. So even as you explain the dark side of the moon, the bad things that happen,

you're focusing on heroes like Frederick Douglass, who freed himself. By the way, by reading a book, not unlike the American Book of Fables, The Columbian Order, one of the books I try to imitate, he read after he taught himself to read, and he read a crazy dialogue, not unlike some of the ones I wrote in the American Book of Fables, and he said, oh, from those dialogues, I learned that I could free myself.

So focusing on those sort of positive stories of overcoming evil, that is the way you teach the bad, too, in that way that helps moralize and strengthen our hearts with gratitude. because if you only do sort of 50-50, what you wind up doing actually is hunting around for bad things when most people who are alive have lived kind of goodish

and some excellent lives, right? Like if you wind up being married, holding a job, raising a family, and passing it on, like you get a kind of pat on the back. Like, bravo, buddy. You kind of did something pretty good. And that's, by the way,

most living people, right? And so there's a kind of general negativity, which we've accepted from the sort of Marxist critique, acid bath, and a nice modest person winds up trying to be agreeable, and so they say these horribly negative things, half of which are true, half of which are exaggerated, and the other half, yes, my math's bad, the other half is absolute lies, right? When you have that, people sort of split the difference. And so like, okay, great, but there's some good stuff, too, so I'll meet you halfway. Well, what if the truth is actually three quarters of the way towards the good, right? We don't even ask that question anymore.

And we don't go back and read. That's why so much of what I do in this book is weave actual firsthand accounts of real things that happened that are beautiful, painful, painful, difficult, but beautiful. And I think we need a return to a beautiful account of our nation. And we think that means lying. It doesn't. It means prudent, thoughtful representation of the truth. Another really basic foundational question would be, when did that end and why? I think it ended after World War II with a kind of massive change in curricular design in our schools.

What happened was Sputnik, and that caused us to have a panic on STEM, and so we pushed a lot more hard sciences. and calculus into high school and grade school. And as a result, we crowded out a lot of the humanities. And so then it became, look, give them a basic kind of connective arc of history, just pop, pop, narrative account. No heroes, no deep studies, no biographical, just a quick forced march through time.

And then you add the Marxist ideological takeover the universities and this sort of fu-coucoucoucels. and this sort of Foucaulian desire to frame everything as a power dynamic of oppressor and oppressed. And that is a perfect combination because now you're not actually close to real human beings. You're just speaking in a meta-narrative in a big fat textbook, which can be manipulated

because you're not reading their primary sources, you're not reading their lives, you're not reading their letters, you're not engaged. That's why Hillsdale has always had a very strong preference for primary source material. That's why there's a great book that I helped work on called Becoming Rome. It's a textbook that's about to get a publisher

is about to launch it more officially, but you can get a self-published version on Amazon. It's 70-30 primary source materials. That's how the American Book of Fables works. It's tons of primary sources. But that's how we used to teach. We let them come close to souls from the past and fall in love of them.

I heard beautifully, Emily, your sort of benediction on your grandfather. for the other day. And I thought that was really lovely. And I'm like, here's a beautiful example of a life that you know intimately, and you're trying to tell us a little about him. And he's both a kind of patriot. And so he's part of our patriotism because he's served in Japan,

the Pacific Theater. But he's also your ancestor. So it's your family piety. It's a nice mix of those two. Getting to know the people, that's what's, we've lost that in history. And so when Barack Obama, disses George Washington and sort of vaguely nods to his admirability, but then just dumps on him, right? That's cutting us off from our history and our inheritance.

This is so interesting because, yeah, one of the things that fascinates me about the life my grandfather led is that he came back and, you know, high school education, raised seven kids on an electrician salary. My grandmother stayed home, raised the children, Milwaukee Catholics. all that and, you know, was happy and healthy and successful. And I think now of why so many, particularly young men, which has been an area of focus in your career, are disillusioned with the country. And part of it is they feel like that was their inheritance, the ability to have an American dream type path where on one income and it could be a blue collar income,

you could have not a luxurious, lavish life, but a fairly comfortable, steady, stable, normal middle class existence. And as that slips away, it does seem like the chevaliers of the world become, and that worldview itself, by the way, which is, like, I think lacking perspective on American history becomes much more attractive to younger people. And I guess as somebody who is a professor, Dr. Mann, who deals particularly with students in that age demographic all of the time, how do you convey the good while also, I think, acknowledging the problems with the status quo?

Yeah. I mean, honestly, I mean, I do policy, you know, conversations, as you know, from the James Madison Fellowship, we sort of do these closed-door salons where we try to think through the principles of different policies and try to sort of kick them around. So I take policy very seriously and I don't mean to make light of it with my next comment because I do think it matters how we, you know, sort of make the law and create the kind of conditions to live well. It's of the utmost importance.

That said, you know, not being a lawmaker myself, something I know an awful lot about is actually the moral way of life that our forefathers had. And that's part of the inheritance that's been cut off. Magnanimity is a virtue that was required to settle this country. And I submit to young men, it is a virtue that is going to be required to resettle this country. Right. We need that. And that means that you see a goal and you do not count the costs.

I will not sit here and jawbone you all with the things I had to do to support my eight children on an educator salary in one of the most expensive towns in the country. but I can safely say it was not comfortable, not in the least. And you actually have to say, I'm not going to count the costs, and I'm going to have a very uncomfortable life, because to secure these goods as a man for my family is going to be a very difficult job. And I do think that in one sense, you tell a man that, a young man, their hearts are primed for that, but they need to see that,

that there's this thing in front of them that is very difficult, but it is worth it all. Go for it. And I do think that that is a certain part of our inheritance we've lost, where there's a certain kind of, well, if I have to die trying to do something, it probably isn't worth it and I should find something else to do. Tell that to all the people who died on the frontier at the hands of Indian raiders because they thought it was worth it to try to get a piece of land and make it their own for their family.

Right. Were they fools to do that? that? I don't think so. I think they were magnanimous young men, fathers, right, and frontiersmen, who said, this is worth it, even if it costs me everything. And it costs some of them everything. And that kind of mentality, that courage and magnanimity, that greatness that is in the American character, needs to be reintroduced. That's why I feature Boone and Crockett and a lot, and Joseph LeBarge, like one of my ancestors who set the speed record up the Missouri River with a steamboat, fighting off Blackfeet Indian.

Like, it's, there's awesome stories to be told. And I try to give a lot of that in the book. You know, it raises this question of citizenship and how we've deluded the concept of citizenship. Obviously, you're a student of Rome, Dr. Meehan. And I wanted to play this clip of Senator Ed Markey, Democratic Senator Ed Markey, reacting to the Supreme Court decision on temporary protected status for Haitians and Syrians. Here's what he had to say just in the last several days, S3.

We must make America home for these TPS holders. Congresswoman Presley has been successful in passing the Haiti TPS bill in the House of Representatives, and that's an inspiration. And now, as soon as we get back, we are going, Senator Lisa Blunt, Rochester and I are going to bring that same bill out onto the floor of the United States Senate to ensure that there is TPS protection for Haitians until the next election. But we also have to push for the Secure Act in order to give all TPS holders from all countries a pathway to residency, a pathway to citizenship in our country. So that's a very subtle conflation of TPS with PPS, permanent protected status.

And I wanted to roll also this clip of Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, kind of conceding that Biden had it wrong at the border, but of course it's the year of our Lord 2026, so S4. I think it's also fair to say created a crisis at the southern border. Biden did with how he handled the... Yeah, the Biden administration did a bad job at the border. Joe Biden created a crisis at the southern borders as Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly in 2026, juxtaposed that with the Ed Markey Post basically saying or videos, saying that temporary

protected status should become permanent protected status should become a path to citizenship. And Dr. Mann, it strikes me as so probably animating for young Americans to think of themselves as citizens, but we've conditioned people to see themselves merely as residents because we just had the largest immigration surge in American history. And it defies logic. to see Mark Kelly talk like that. Well, and Ed Markey talks like that because you can't put those two things together. And it seems to me they want to.

They insist that they can. Yeah, they want the National League and the American League of the MLB mixed with FIFA World Cup, right? That's what they want. No, I, the Arizona, the second clip, that actually makes me fear that he thinks the deportations are done.

Because if you're willing to admit that, it's because you actually think that you got everything you wanted out of the massive influx of new voters for the Democratic Party. So I'm not pleased to hear that. But with regards to the first clip, I know people who have done that kind of immigration screening for those temporary, the TPS status. And look, not to flog my book, but it's absolutely related. Part of the reason why I chose fables is because they teach witty-wise citizenship. You know how to tell a hawk from a hand saw. You know that there's more than one way to skin a cat.

You kind of know that you could be tyrannized through the law and that the name game is a clever game that clever shysters play. Right. And this sort of, this idea of like, well, they're obviously they need our help. It's like, or is that a status that? was used to just funnel people through regardless of consideration, right? And so they have the protection of law, but in fact, it's a lawless endeavor, right? Tyranny through the law is the favorite course of tyranny, only the sort of like OdeWalker

the third barbarians just sort of behead to people without the cover of law, right? Stalin used law, for goodness sake, right? So the idea that you can't do unjust things with legal status of TPS, etc., that I think I think is something that the American people aren't buying. They're witty wise enough to see those kinds of games. Whether or not the Massachusetts electorate is remains an open question. But I do think that these things are the kinds of tyrannical little games that tyrants play. And the founders looked at this new swath of wilderness and saw opportunity.

And you can talk about this better than I conduct, me in as to sort of build on the Western legacy of Greece and Rome and to allow people to have this opportunity, this privilege of citizenship. I mean, listen, people have the choice not to vote, and they should have the choice not to vote, but we also should look at it as an enormous historical, world historical privilege. And in D.C., where I live, non-citizens can vote in local elections, which is just anathema to the concept. And you can explain this because people my age have been conditioned to see citizenship and residency basically is the same thing. But you can kind of explain whether than I can why that was not the founder's vision for the people who came and settled this vast wilderness and built great dense cities but also rural areas

and now the suburbs in between. We are self-governing and the actual act of governing is it's a burden but a privilege. Yeah, in the Declaration of Independence, which the book I've thought a lot about because it's basically a kind of explainer of that. In the Declaration of Independence, the notion that it's about natural rights, right, nature and nature's God and these inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and all that that entails, people forget that the end is we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, right? It's absolutely, we're all in.

We are a duty-bound people. We are citizens who will sacrifice our. ourselves for others. We are going to fight at Lexington and Concord. We are going to be shot and killed in New York, in New Jersey, right? Cow pens, Yorktown. We're going to shed our blood. I have in the book, in the American Book of Fables, I have a letter from some Marylanders, and they're just reminding Washington, we are very proud of your presidency, and we are very proud to be Americans because we shed so much blood at Yorktown, we Marylanders. They're very excited about it, right? Because that is part of what it is, is you have to give your all. The kind of show up and

get something, right, and get taken care of and get on the dole, this sort of this open-ended situation, it's so antithetical to citizenship. So to basically ask newcomers who really haven't given yet and don't know enough to give well, even if they want to, they have to learn and naturalize and become citizens in order to properly give, sit on juries, you know, sign up for the draft, serve in various capacities, and just serve in their communities for a time. Naturalization takes time not just because you have to learn the language and learn how to be, but it's also, you have to don't forget, you have to actually sort of be around and be of service for a time. And so that sort of every right has a corresponding duty.

The founders knew that very well with citizenship. And Dr. Miam, before you run, I did want to get your reaction to this clip of Scott Weiner, who is poised to take over Nancy Pelosi's speech. Coractonyms. Correctinims are real. Nominal determinism here, yes, who has been at the forefront of the LGBT pride movement. And when I say that, I mean, like, kink pride movement is what Scott Weiner is into. He got chased out of a pride event. I think it was a Jewish pride event over the weekend.

And the video is absolutely brutal. This isn't the first time it's happened. He also recently got chased out of a restaurant, but let's take a look. We don't belong here. We do not belong here. You do not belong here, Scott, anymore. It sucks because you've been wonderful. You've been wonderful for trans people.

And you've been terrible. And you've been terrible. You've been terrible. Just the raw anger and hatred and hatred being directed. to that, who would be, I think it's fair to say, the single most radical pro-LGBQ member IA plus plus plus plus, member of Congress and Scott Wiener, who has, by the way, called what happened in Gaza a, quote, genocide. So he's not exactly the most moderate person on Israel in all of this. He's much more moderate than some people, but he has used that term and he's been criticized

by some moderates for having used that term. This is what's coming for him amidst all of the years he's put into defending what was for a long time the tippy top of the left's kind of hierarchy of oppressed classes, Dr. Meen. And it's very interesting to see that then be rejected because he hasn't gone as far as he was. would have on what the hashtag kink pride when it comes to Israel. Yeah. So let me put this, frame this as a cautionary tale for the right in this way. The culture of ingratitude is the preparation for the inability to be grateful to one's friends and allies, right?

That sort of lack of patriotism for one's ancestors and founders and the patriots and citizens who brought about the country. that's actually a preparation for the destruction of the art of civic and social friendship, which destroys parties, by the way. It actually weakens the ability to coalesce around a cause and not eat your own, as we see in that video, and we've seen quite a bit of lately. Right. And that's, to my mind, a cautionary tale. And why I have some hope for the right side of the aisle for keeping itself together in friendship

such that it can actually continue to govern in a pretty turbulent time. But, you know, if the left is just evil and clever enough to control its raging passions for a little bit longer, maybe just maybe they can hold power again, you know. But I do think that's what you see. This is those bitter fruits from the seeds they sowed of this kind of ingratitude and hatred of the past. That is, if you can't be friends with your ancestors and be grateful, how can you be friends and be grateful to those who just help? you in the last 10 years. It's the same motion of the soul. Earlier in the show you mentioned that you feel like a lot of the blame

lies on public or lies on their shoulders of the public schooling system and the people who control the public schooling system, which is a product of public schooling. I think that is. Same here. No, no, I did too. Right. And we saw it up close.

And so I guess I wonder where you think then for people who do have this, this lack of perspective, gratitude about the sweep of history in the United States' place in it. to some extent, I have a hard time blaming individuals, and maybe you'll disagree with me on this, but I do have a hard time. I actually really understand why people are angry and bitter and disillusioned about America, given the stories we've told about ourselves for, you pinned it to the end of World War II. That would mean many, many decades now.

Yeah, I mean, sort of, this is the question of, is there sort of structural sin, right? I don't believe in it as something that is not this. So let me define structural sin, I think correctly, or structural evils or wrongdoing or structural injustice. It is an aggregate composite of a thousand little injustices done by various citizens. So when you add it all up, it has a potent, powerful, awful danger, right? But it doesn't strike you as that evil when it's, just a little here and a little there and a little there.

But it is actually people making a host of delicately wrong and unjust decisions. And I saw that and I watched the best U.S. history teacher at my high school be attacked, zeroed out, savaged, and pushed out over the course of five years. And the alumni of the public school came and begged the school board to give him honors and help him continue to teach. and a bitter and poorly informed and much less patriotic set of teachers

basically forced them out. Now, they had their own opinions, et cetera, et cetera, but they didn't do it justly, they didn't do it fairly, and they didn't sort of restrain their own desires for what they thought was right. Now, does that make them evil? Maybe, maybe not.

But they did something wrong, and that's just one, you know, sort of one piece of straw on the camel's back, but you keep adding them up. up and you get these incredible structures, these heavyweights that break souls. It's been such a privilege to have you here on the show tonight, Dr. Mian, who's, of course, author of the American Book of Fables. You can get it now. An heirloom item, as he described earlier in the show.

Matthew Mian is also Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Government for the Van Andal Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College here in Washington, D.C. Dr. Matthew Mian, thank you so much for your time this evening. Thank you, Emily. It's wonderful to talk. Yes, likewise, we'll have to do it again. Soon, we are going to take a quick break. We'll be back with the disastrous numbers for the new Supergirl movie.

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survey, mention that you heard about cozy earth right here. Comfort lives here. Welcome back to After Party, everyone. Thank you so much for being here with us this evening. I want to get right to this supergirl controversy, which, now, if you have seen a bit from the star of that films, her name is Millie Alcock. She has been caught up in some of what she's been saying politically. But what's interesting, particularly about this, is I don't think that Supergirl failing at the box office has anything to do with the politics of the star of the film, or maybe even the politics of the film itself. We'll get into it.

But the basic fact right now that you need to know is this movie cost $170 million, $170 million to make and is bringing in for its opening weekend. It looks like on pace to hit about $38 million Thursday through Sunday in the U.S. and Canada. Those are, let's say, disappointing numbers. The New York Times says it's about 24% below pre-release analyst projections of $50 million, which was already a low number brought in about $30 million overseas. But let me just put up on the screen, the New York Times article I'm reading from right now, because it is fascinating.

As promised, I'm going to go through it and just want to point out the way that it frames what's happening at the box office for Supergirl. Now, we've seen over the last decade plus every time you have a female superhero movie, there's controversy about the politics, the alleged politics, the non-politics of it, and whether or not people want to see these films, whatever. So let's get into the way the New York Times frames this. This is from their Hollywood correspondent. So the author writes,

audiences have become much more selective about superhero movies starring since the genre's heyday in the 2010s. In 2022, Black Adams starring Dwayne Johnson arrived to a, disappointing $67 million in opening weekend ticket sales, while Morbius, with Jared Leto in the main role, had a disastrous $39 million debut. I'd forgotten about that one. Still, the author writes, box office analysts on Sunday noted an uncomfortable truth. Female-led superhero movies have been rejected almost uniformly over the past five years or so, perhaps reflecting a resurgent misogyny among the core fan base, which is love.

largely male. Before its release, Supergold became caught up in a now familiar cycle of online abuse. Warner Brothers executives said they were surprised by both the ferocity of the backlash and its reach, believing the culture had evolved past that sort of campaign. So immediately in this article, the New York Times is broaching the framing of misogyny to explain why Supergirl is faltering at the box office. Well, let's turn to the critics, shall we? This is. A review in variety, which is hardly some right-wing publication. That would be a ridiculous description of it. The headline from reviewer Owen Gleberman,

Supergirl review, Millie Alcock takes charge in a dystopian superhero movie so flat. It's super horrendous. This is, again, in variety. I'm not reading from The Daily Wire. I'm reading from Variety. This is so brutal. So here's the key thing to know about Supergirl, the review states, the second outing from James Gunn's DC Studios. The entire movie thinks it's, quote, punk rock.

That's a reference to the Superman movie that came out last summer did very well. It opens with Crypto the Superdog peeing on a newspaper headline about Superman saving a small town. From there, the film introduces us to Millie Alcock's character, who, rather than being the spunky supergirl of legend, saving Earthly lives in a primary colored spandex suit, is an interplanetary drunk in a blind. T-shirt popping from one era dystopia to the next, seeking out junk heap bars on junk heap planets, getting into fights set to razory anthems by wet leg, and all see. This movie sounds atrocious. Now, let's then, maybe that's just one review.

Let's go to the aggregator, Rotten Tomatoes. You can see this up on the screen right now, or shortly you'll be able to see this up on the screen. Amazing here. Rotten Tomatoes has the movie right. now at 54% on the tomato meter, 76% on the popcorn meter, which actually undercuts also the New York Times case, that it's purely misogyny because this is a case where audiences like the movie better than reviewers, the tomato meter versus the popcorn meter, the infamous comparison between

the two points. So if 76% of people are giving it a positive rating, I suppose you could say the other 24% are just purely misogynists, or maybe it would be higher, if not for the latent misogyny and all of the people going to review it on rotten tomatoes.com, but it looks like it's a pretty bad movie. I haven't seen it yet. I don't really like superhero movies, so I'm probably the wrong person even to be doing this segment. But I thought it was really, really interesting to look at the New York Times review and then juxtapose that with how it's being. reviewed elsewhere because the New York Times immediately, immediately in the article goes to misogyny. Like how many paragraphs in? One, two, three, four, five.

Like, right away, it's misogyny that explains this. And from the perspective of somebody who's worked in journalism, that's your primary framing. If that's, you know, you're saying, oh, the ticket numbers are disappointing and then you introduce the quote-unquote uncomfortable truth as a why, that's your intentional framing for what's happening in the story. And I don't know that sex even, even alleged misogyny and sexism even warrant a mention in this, given the reviews that are savaging the film for basically being a mediocrity and embarrassing mediocrity at that. And I think that's probably the bigger picture problem with so many of these female-led superhero films that are desperately trying to

to seem like they could appeal to men, like over the top. They're focused on making, it's not even about that really. It's also they're trying to appeal to, I think, women, trying to get women more interested in superhero movies, and instead of just telling a good story, like doing a good job making the film, they end up desperately trying to do one thing or the other thing, and it doesn't work out

because they're much more focused on checking boxes, and they're so self-aware and self-conscious that, and by the way, also have this, I think, overly negative view of the average American moviegoer as somebody who needs to have, you know, right in their face that this is, like, quote, punk rock. Like, the movie needs to open with a dog peeing on a Superman newspaper to show this is what we're doing to the legend and to the myth.

Like, this is how subversive the movie you're watching is. Like, it's so ham-fisted and it ends up being, I think, insulting to the viewer. And it ends up feeling really contrived and creates just a bad product. And that's not to say the average blockbuster film is, you know, a Picasso cinematically. But it is to say that when you end up being so self-aware, so self-conscious and believing your audience is full of misogyny, it sort of becomes this weird self-fulfilling prophecy where you create a bad product because you're trying to appeal to people you believe are misogynists

when in fact they're just looking for a good piece of cinema. And that's what's like in this New York Times article, I think so telling that they jump to it. Instead of, I mean, I'm scrolling through this again now. I mean, it's really doesn't mention anywhere. I'll put this back up on the screen. it really doesn't mention anywhere that the movie is being absolutely savage by reviewers. The studio said they, as I mentioned earlier, they believe the culture had evolved past that sort of campaign.

This is from Peter Saffron, who's co-chairman and co-chief executive of DC Studios. While Supergirl didn't meet our box office expectations, it's just one component of a broader long-term strategy at DC Studios that we remain confident in. I mean, what's the strategy? Because obsession is running circles around Supergirl right now in its, well, okay, so it got 10 million this weekend and ticket sales. But it's in its seventh weekend. Seventh weekend. And nobody spent like any money on that and it's made $370 million, $370 million worldwide.

And when you spend, how much is it? Let me just pull the number again to make sure that I have it accurate. Yeah, $170 million, $170 million on Supergirl and can't even bring in 40 million in your first weekend, while Obsession has made $370 million. I mean, for the New York Times to then jump to immediately blaming the audience. That's the first explanation they bring up, not, hey, maybe the movie is bad. Yeah, I hear. Okay.

So I guess they do mention the bad reviews. They say the film received a rotten rating from the review aggregation site, Rotten Tomatoes. Ticket buyers were similarly unimpressed, giving Supergirl a B-minus grade in cinema score exit polls. But then it's right after that they jumped to the sexism, right? So they say, hey, yes, it doesn't have great reviews on these sites. But box office analysts are noting an uncomfortable truth, misogyny without going through

actually what some of those reviews say about the technical failures of the film and why maybe people don't want to see it, which is apparently it sucks. And it's like wildly lacking subtlety is completely in your face about trying to be subversive and actually doesn't manage to pull any of that off. It would be perfectly easy to inject that explanation into what's actually happening here. But no, no, we jump to misogyny instead with just a brief mention of the bad review. without digging into the bad reviews, we jump straight to misogyny in the case of Supergirl. It's just the elite instinct to blame the average American.

That's what's on display in articles like this. Not to blame the studios for doing a bad job of telling this story, not to blame the studios for being awful stewards of nearly $200 million, $200 million, or this IP. but we go sort of gloss over. Yeah, bad reviews, bad reviews, but then boom, hit you with the misogyny. Incredible stuff. All right. I'll leave it there for this evening, but appreciate you all tuning in so much. Thank you. Thank you. As a reminder, my email is Emily at devilmaicaremedia.com. We will be back on Wednesday with more after-party. Stay tuned. Have a great evening and make sure

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