The Dispatch Podcast - Destined for Greatness | Interview: Shilo Brooks

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

Jamie is joined by Dr. Shilo Brooks, executive director of Princeton’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, to discuss how looking to the past can save the next generation. Agenda: — Five Thinkers: Xenophon, Niccolo Machiavelli, Theodore Roosevelt, Sandra Day O’Connor, Frederick Douglass — Restoring honorable ambition — Rebuffing criticisms of Western classical tradition — Getting ideology out of classrooms — Why pro-Hamas demonstrators are on elite campuses — Don’t be safe, don’t be boring — Is there a leader alive worth admiring? Show Notes: — James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions — Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince — Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus — Frederick Douglass’ “Self Made Men” — Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil — Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and weekly livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Terms and conditions apply. Visit BMO.com slash ViPorter to learn more. more during the volvo fall experience event discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures and see for yourself how volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute this september leased a twenty 26 xe 90 plug-in hybrid from five hundred and ninety nine dollars biweekly at three point nine percent during the volvo fall experience event condition supply visit your local volvo retailer or go to explore Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Jamie Weinstein. My guest today is Shiloh Brooks. Shiloh is the executive

director of Princeton's James Madison program in American ideals and institutions, in a lecturer in its Department of Politics. He came to my attention from our friends at the free press who did a profile on him. He is a fascinating figure, fascinating intellectual. I think you're going to find this conversation incredibly rich about statesmanship, what makes a great leader, what's happening on college campuses, and so much more. Without further ado, I give you Professor Shiloh, Brooks. Shiloh, Brooks. Thank you for joining the Dispatch Podcast. Hey, thanks for having me. Charlo, you are the executive director of the James Madison program in American Ideals and Ambition at Princeton.

We had the founder of that Robbie George on not too long ago, the show. But for those who might not understand what this program is at Princeton, what is it? Explain to the audience what the purpose of this program. Yeah, I love that you call it American Ideals and Ambition. It's American Ideals and Institutions, but I teach on Ambition. So, you know, it's a great slip because it's true. You know, the James Madison program is a program where we invite students in to get an education in the best that's been thought and said in Western history. We study, you know, Professor George teaches legendary courses on constitutional law and civil liberties.

I teach courses on statesmanship and ambition. So we've got a big cohort, 260 undergraduate fellows can come through. take our courses, come to our events. We host speakers almost on a weekly basis. We have 10 or 11 postdoctoral fellows who we invite in on an annual basis to conduct research on American history, constitutional law, political theory. We take students to the Supreme Court. I take students to Oxford to read great books.

We have, you know, all sorts of programs for high school teachers and high school students and really a kind of national outreach in addition to Princeton outreach. that's what that's what we do and we've been going strong for 25 years here at princeton i think you just laid the groundwork and what you said there with a lot of what i want to to dive into today and even my slip and ambition uh i think the slip was there because it comes in later quoting you but i read about you and your work through the free press our friends at the free press today a profile on you one of the courses you teach or is the art of statesmanship in the political life the description of this court read a course reads in part this course

examines the art of statesmanship, the meaning of political greatness, and the proper means of educating aspiring young statesman and stateswomen. What is the importance of studying statesmen? What is the importance of understanding what makes a great statesman? You know, I think there's a couple of different axes we could take on this question, a couple different approaches. I mean, first and most fundamentally for me, and what got me interested in it was I'm a student of political greatness. As a young man, I always admired and must. marveled at former presidents or when reading Thucydides at some of the extraordinary Greek statesmen or reading Xenophon or reading Herodotus. I felt like I was in the presence of human

types who were not around me on an everyday basis and whose weight and heft I could feel and who I thought were leaders of an extraordinary kind that I just didn't see every day. And so one of the things that I wanted to do was to share that with students who I think also just don't see that every day. I think that the concept of greatness, the notion that there's such human beings who are extraordinarily gifted at what they do at the level of statesmanship is, has in a way been lost. I think we haven't certainly, you know, we haven't seen that in a while. And I think the students are pretty cynical about that these days. And so one of the things that I wanted to do just initially is show the students what it meant to do, do public. politics at the heights. But I think the second way we can get into this question and why I think

it's important is that a lot of these folks are people who govern on the basis of principle. And I think it's important for the students to see people like Churchill or people like Lincoln or people like Theodore Roosevelt who come into office with a set of principles which they've coherently articulated or will coherently articulate in speeches in office and then try to live up to those principles. And I think that that in our politics is sort of missing too. So I think it's a combination of trying to show students, you know, what it means to do politics at the heights, grand ambition, the political life in all of its robustness, but also that there's a way of doing that life and leading that life on the basis of principle. And different statesmen

disagree about what those principles should be. And we should talk about those principles and debate those principles. But that's really the inspiration for the course. Is there a value in studying these lives, even if you yourself, you know, I can never live up to some of the people that I'm reading about. I can't, I don't have their talent or their skill, or maybe even their discipline. Is there a value to studying, studying these figures, even if you know that you yourself might never achieve what they have achieved? You know, I do think that there is, and this guy actually comes up in the class. I think that these people have salutary effects on all of us. I go back, to one of the books in the course, Machiavelli's Prince. In the sixth chapter of the Prince,

Machiavelli says that sort of aspiring princes should do what prudent archers do. And that is that they aim very high if they want to hit a target that's very far away. Such that the arrow may not come down. I mean, it's got to go really far to hit that target far away. But if you aim high, the arrow will come down closer to the target than if you aimed your bow straight at the target and shot at it. It would only come down, say, halfway there. But if you aim well above the target, you'll come down closer to it. And so I say to the students, one can take as one's example, someone who one knows. Perhaps one could never aspire to be a Lincoln or a Churchill. I hope that the students do. But they may have other aspirations. Those aspirations

you know, maybe more humble and those students may have more humility, which I think is probably a good thing. But nonetheless, I think seeing someone like this, modeling yourself after someone like this, Machiavelli says, you may not become what they are, but you'll at least be in the odor of it. And so I think that it can shape you into something better than what you would have been, no matter what your goals are. The other thing that it can do is just acquaint you with the sorts of people you should be voting for, the sorts of people you should hope if you don't want to be the leader, then who should? And you would acquaint yourself with the characteristics of those people who you do find admirable and who you do think deserve to hold

on. So I think you can both improve you and improve our civic life. The course itself focuses on five figures, xenophon, McAvelli, Teddy Roosevelt, Sandra Day O'Connor, and Frederick Douglas. How did you choose those five? You know, I chose those five because, And it's the oddest group probably imaginable. And there's a lot of people, and in a way, an even more interesting question is, why did you not include certain people? But I'll begin. I chose Xenophon because, in my view, Zinophon's book, The Education of Cyrus,

is probably the greatest book on the political life as such, simply, just an analysis of the political life in all of its warts and all of its glories of the ancient world, I think. And so we begin with Xenophon's educational Cyrus largely to see a Socratic man, again, a person who was a student of Socrates, who himself lived the political life. He was a general, a Greek mercenary in his own life who led 10,000 Greeks out of Persia back to Greece, to observe a man who's lived a political life at its heights, but also has had a Socratic education reflect on the nature of the political life. That's invaluable, right? That's almost more valuable than than a person who's just a fatesman, because you've got this person who was an extraordinary philosopher and students of the greatest philosopher in history. So that's why I picked Xenophon. I picked Machiavelli largely because he's thought to have written the greatest book on modern leadership ever written, and he's in direct dialogue with Xenophon. In the Prince and in the discourses of Livy, Machiavelli constantly refers back to Xenophon's education of Cyrus,

talks about it. He calls the book The Life of Cyrus and the Prince, which is an interesting departure from the actual title of the education, but I wanted to see whether the greatest teacher of modern statesmanship agrees with or disagrees with the greatest teacher of ancient statesmanship on the question of the choiceworthiness of the political life. So those two figures really set the stage for the course. And once we've got that, I wanted then to introduce the students to a wide variety of kinds of statesmen, and I use that term broadly, who lived the political life and tell about it. We begin the sort of more contemporary, once we've departed from Machiavelli, part of the course with Theodore Roosevelt. He wrote an essay called Promise and

Performance in which he criticizes Machiavelli. You won't find many presidents who are familiar with the inner workings of Machiavelli's teaching, but Teddy Roosevelt was one of them. And he says, look, Machiavelli was wrong. You have to be a decent person. You have to be a person who obeys the Ten Commandments. You have to be a person who keeps their promises, who performs the people puts you there. And then he criticizes people. And he says, if you, if you elect a Machiavellian leader, that's on you. We need a higher quality of people so that higher quality leaders get into office. So we begin with Teddy and we look at some of his criticisms of Machiavelli. We also read his autobiography and we talked about his own vigorous youth overcoming his asthmatic, weak, you know,

nature as a young boy and rising to the robust man that he is. And then I take a kind of version. of that in Sandra Day O'Connor. Sandra O'Connor, like Teddy, was formed by the rough and tumble of the American West. She grew up on a 250 square mile ranch on the border of Arizona, New Mexico, and she's a woman who at Stanford reads the great books,

who takes into herself the classics, who loves her course at Stanford from Plato to NATO, basically. And like Theodore Roosevelt is a curious person. Teddy writes a history of the American West, and he's written all these essays, and he's writing on birds, and he's got a history of

Oliver Cromwell, and he's writing books on ranching. Sandra O'Connor is a person who's curious. She's constantly asking questions, and yet she's got this kind of roughness that Roosevelt has, goes on to become a lawyer at a time when women are not graduating from law school, when women are not going to get jobs. She ends up in her first job working for free at a prosecutor's office next to his secretary because she can't get a paying job and works her way all the way up to the Supreme Court.

And she's a woman on whose lap fell some of the most. difficult decisions in American history, decisions about affirmative action, Bush versus Gore, abortion. She didn't always please everybody. She was a swing boat. She was not somebody who had the typical Ivy League education, so she felt like an outsider. And so she's got this extraordinary story, and she's a person who has to make real decisions of weight, right? And so we look at her. And then finally, we conclude the course with Frederick Douglass largely because Douglas is a person who is a statesman without a stake. He ends up affecting American, the trajectory of American civil rights movement more than perhaps anyone else, and yet never holds elected office. And you want to talk

about somebody who rises from nothing. This man was a slave and went all the way up to become the greatest order of his time rivaled only by Abraham Lincoln, who deeply admired him. And so we look at Frederick Douglass in the way that a person who has a kind of statesman like nature, who's not a president, who's not holding elected office, can still shape politics. And this is the last thing I'll say about him. He wrote an extraordinary essay, his final essay, which was a speech that he gave called self-made men, in which he talks about people who create themselves, people who are self-made like him, I think, but like Lincoln and others. This echoes Machiavelli, this echoes xenophon. And so at the end of the course, we return to the beginning and the notion

of the self-made statesmen, the person who lists themselves up by their own army. to the virtue. Let me ask you about one characteristic that I think of when I think of my favorite statesman and if I was at home instead of on the road here, you would see a picture of Winston Churchill holding a Tommy Gun, an element of destiny. He, you know, famously told at 15 at Harrow, his friend, that one day England's going to need a leader and I'm going to be that leader and I'm going to save this country and the civilization. And on the other hand, when I think about today, about the characteristic of someone I wouldn't want to be president.

It would be someone who, at a very early age, said, I want to be president and work their way towards that, maybe not by reading great books, but by, you know, checking the boxes in some ways that are necessary. What element of destiny played in some of the figures that you teach? Did they see them destined to be greatness?

And is destiny, you know, this ambition from an early age to be something great? Is that always a positive? Because, again, I think about that element of, you know, a politician today who goes out of his way to do nothing wrong or nothing out of the ordinary because they want to state the narrow path of no negative stories on their assent to the Senate or the presidency. Yeah, this helps me, I'm going to answer this question, but also sheds light on your previous

one about why I chose these figures. I think that all of these figures and Churchill is occasionally included in the course for the very reasons you've already articulated, do have. a sense of destiny. I think Douglas for some reason knows he's getting out. I think O'Connor knows she doesn't know that she's going to be a Supreme Court justice, but she knows that she's going to

blaze a trail, right? I think Teddy, of course, from the very beginning, sees on the horizon something great for himself. And so I do think that that impulse can be healthy. It is very different from, at least in my view, from the kind of thing

that you discussed or mentioned a moment ago when you said, well, about these politicians who just do the kind of neutral thing, the milk toast thing at every point to try to get ahead. One of the things that I tell the students and one of the reasons that I've selected this group is that at Princeton in particular where I teach, that's sort of everybody here. In order to get into the Ivy League, you have from kindergarten made all of the right decisions, quote unquote, right, and conformed to expectations of what a person who wants to get into the Ivy League should do and be. And so the first thing I say to the students on

the first day of class is you're all boring. Everybody in here is boring. And the reason is that you've lost your rough edges. Let me introduce you to Cyrus the Great. Let me introduce you to Theta Roosevelt. Let me introduce you to Sanorda O'Connor and Frederick Douglass. These are people who ascended, but who kept a certain roughness about themselves, who were people of character. When they walked into the room, you knew that they weren't just a stiff, that this is a person who has a kind of unique soul, which has been cultivated by way of its rough edges and its oddity, its convictions, whatever the case may be. The same was certainly true of Churchill. So I think that one of the things that I'm trying to do is show the students that precisely that

way of being in politics, that box checking way of being, that's also the way of being in the Ivy League, is not going to get them to the heights that they aspire to. And if it does get them there, it won't get them there in the grandest possible way. They need to keep their rough edges. And if they don't have any, they should probably cultivate some. Look at these folks. You know, my slip of the tongue in the beginning of this podcast, probably is because I had this question here, is that you've said that one of your goals is to rehabilitate ambition. What did, what did you mean by that? Is it, is there a positive and negative form of ambition that are out there and that you want to focus on what is the positive elements of ambition? Yeah, I mean, I do think that ambition, you know,

ambition is, I mean, it's a sin, right, in some ways, right? So, at least regarded as a sin by some, and a pejorative term, right? And so I think that there is a certain way of restoring to ambition. It's, I'll say it's honorable luster. I had a teacher, Boston College, named Robert Faulkner, who wrote a book on honorable ambition. And that title and that subject has always fascinated me, the notion that there's a way of being ambitious, which is not simply self-serving, and which is not simply Machiavellian in character, but which is ambitious for the sake of something higher than oneself, namely for the benefit of one's people. And one can think of Lincoln, one can think of Churchill, one can think of Washington, and these sorts of people who had an honorable ambition rather than merely a self-serving one. And so what I would like to show the students, one is that it's okay to be ambitious.

At Princeton, you don't really have to convince them of that. But two, that ambition, when it's not moderated, when it's not tempered, can go up in flames for you and for the people on whose behalf you serve. This is the lesson of the education of Cyrus. By the end of the book, Cyrus's empire essentially collapses, and he is something of a tyrant of the highest order, and he sought out at the beginning to benefit human beings. By the end, he seems to be harming them, so that one has to be wise with respect to one's behavior.

I think they don't see that. But that there's a kind of ambition which is honorable, which is public-spirited, the models for which are people like Lincoln and people like Washington. And I think that the students just simply aren't told that anymore. The folks of ambition who they see in the popular press and the news, we can look at a long musk, you know, we can look at any number of presidential candidates, we can look at any number of celebrities, really aren't people of character. This is a theater-rosel term, honor, character.

And so that you can have an ambition of character. this is one of the things that I try to do in the course. When you tell your students, when you teach about Teddy Roosevelt, that the least important thing he did perhaps was graduate from Harvard, what are you trying to convey to them? You know, one of the things I'm trying to convey is this, that you think, because you've gotten into Princeton, that you have made it, that you're great, that you deserved it, that you are somehow extraordinary, and that it sets you apart. and I tell them,

Theodore Roosevelt got into Harvard. Nobody but me and the other scholars who studied Theodore Roosevelt know that he got into Harvard. When you think about Theodore Roosevelt, when you hear that name, you don't think Harvard, you think president of the United States, right? You think vice president.

You think governor of New York. You think police commissioner of the city of New York. You think assistant secretary of the Navy. You think botanist. You think bird, you know, birdwatcher, naturalist, you know, whatever the case may be, that getting into Harvard is a footnote in Theodore Roosevelt's biography, and that's how you know he was great.

He doesn't die a Harvard man, and Harvard is the only thing and the best thing about me and trot that out. It was merely a moment in a life which was much more fully lived, right, whose purpose and end goal wasn't going to Harvard and then going to Goldman Sachs. That was something bigger. And so I try to get them to put their own education and perspective. Don't let this be your end. Don't let this define you. In fact, this is a, drop in the bucket of what can be a great life. And I like to trot out Frederick Douglass's self-made men's speech where Douglas says it might well be a disadvantage to go to an Ivy League institution because

anything you do after you've gotten into Harvard, Princeton, or Yale, people are just going to look at you and say, well, that's because you went to Harvard, Princeton, or Yale. It's not because of you. And so what they'll do is take your agency from you. They'll say the opportunities that you had are what made you, not you. And so I tell the students, no one's ever said this to you, but you've been disadvantaged by coming to Princeton, if you can believe that, because your agency has been taken away from you. Everybody's going to say, that person got that job because they went to

Princeton. That person got that because they went to Princeton. Whereas about me, I didn't go to Princeton, and nobody can say that about me. Nobody could say that about Frederick Douglas. That person got that because they merit it, because they're excellent, because they have quality of soul, whatever the case may be. And so I try to encourage the students to take their agency back and think of their lives as a much more robust and deeper thing than merely the Ivy League. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security

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the best of what has been thought and said. But as you know, there are many critics of this approach, especially these days. They say, you know, you're teaching mainly what old white men say. They might say that, you know, Teddy Roosevelt, what can you learn from him, the ordinary person? He was very privileged. At least he came from a privileged background. Many of the people perhaps were imperfect and then some maybe pretty bad things, especially in today's, you know, way of thinking and way of looking. What would you say to critics like that? Well, I think there's two parts of this. First, just a general.

criticism of the Western tradition, and I would say this about that, about the Western tradition, and then I'll get to the statesmen themselves. But one of the things that I love about teaching great books, and you can see this in my own research record, is I love that the Western tradition produces the deepest and most profound critics of the Western tradition. I wrote a book on Nietzsche. There is nobody, there is no philosopher who has moved me more deeply than Nietzsche. And the reason was, is that when I met Nietzsche, everything I grew up believing. You know, American patriotism, religion, the goodness of liberalism, you know, any number of these, reason and its authority in our life are subjected to relentless,

profound criticism by Nietzsche, who is himself a product of the West he criticizes, right? And you can make the same argument. Of course, people will say, well, it's true that the Western tradition is responsible for slavery, but it's also responsible for that tradition, the theoretical foundations of which serve to liberate the slaves. And so I find one of the most beautiful things about the Western tradition is that its critics emerge from it and encourage us to engage more deeply with it. And so I don't really buy the more shallow criticisms of the Western tradition. I'm a proponent of criticizing it, but I want it to be criticized by those who understand it. And this is why thinkers like Nietzsche or Marx, people who rightfully belong in a great

books curriculum alongside Plato, alongside the Bible, alongside Shakespeare, to be read. And so by teaching the great books, one doesn't venerate the great books and say, you know, the great books and the traditions of the West are authoritative. In fact, one arrives if the education is truly liberal at an attempt to liberate oneself from those things by way of whether it's postmodern thinkers, critiques of rationalism and that sort of thing. The same applies to the statesman question. And, you know, you mentioned Theodore Roosevelt and wasn't he privileged? Well, it's true. On the other hand, you know, I tell students his wife and his mother died on the same day when he was very young.

It's not as though this man faced no difficulties, right? And so the same is true of Sandra Day O'Connor. This woman grew up on a 250-square-mile ranch out in the middle of nowhere, had to go and get a job when nobody would hire women. Frederick Douglass was a slave. Nobody in this room has ever been a slave, right? And look what he did. Look what he achieved. And so I think we should look at these people, warts and all.

It's true that Teddy was a self-mythologizer. It's true that his politics might not be to everybody's taste, especially when he takes his progressive turn. It's true that O'Connor made a lot of decisions that a lot of folks disagree with. It's true that Douglas had a lot of personal travails, a lot of personal difficulties. It's true that Churchill had demons, right, involving his mother, involving drink, whatever the case may be, that we can learn from these people warts and all. They are humans just like you.

And one of the things that's most interesting about them is the fact that they manage to overcome their demons and still be extraordinary people, that that is what the humanities are about, the full human beings so far from casting them aside because they're flawed. You too are flawed. Take these people as human beings and celebrate both their tragic aspects and their triumph at once. What do you make of the state of higher education, university education, a place where it seems to me that the type of education that you're articulating is out of vogue? You know, I think that that's largely true. I mean, I think that the James Madison program and certain centers that have been cropping up at state universities around the country, there's one coming online at Ohio, North Carolina, there's mine in Florida, University of Texas, some of these big state flagships. I think that there's a lot of promise in the kind of thing that we're doing. I'm inspired by the classical ed movement going on in a lot of the states. And so I grant you that higher ed has been in some ways impoverished from a lot of directions. It's been impoverished by ideology leaking its way into the classroom. But it's also been impoverished by a model of tenure and promotion,

which encourages scholars to become researchers and almost exclusively. and to produce novel research rather than learning and sharing with students the robust fundamentals of their disciplines. And so I would like to see folks, and I would like, I'm excited about these civic centers. I certainly don't want ideology in the classroom, you know, but I would also like to see, and one of the things I think would benefit higher ed is to make room for people who have a little bit of the rough edges scholars who have some of the rough edges that folks like O'Connor and Teddy had. And by that, I mean, people who come in, and they're, they're not there to say something

novel about Aristotle, necessarily something that nobody's ever said and produce a research in any sorts of things. But the university would hire somebody on the basis of the fact that they love these books, that at night they can't sleep because all they're thinking about is Shakespeare, and all they want to do is share it with the students. So I think there's a number of things we could correct in the university. But I think one of the things that will heal these places is if you have teachers in front of students who love what they're doing and who don't see their jobs merely as the delivery of content, that sounds like a bureaucratic term, like I'm a human resources representative. This is not the delivery of content. This is the shaping of souls

by way of a love of ideas. That will go a long way in addition to, you know, getting ideology out of the classroom and giving students alternatives in these sorts of things. One of the themes of this show has been what has happened to education, partly through my experience finding schools from my oldest son, five-year-old son in Washington, D.C., private schools and the ideology I saw even in that early age, partly seeing what I would call pro-Hamas demonstrators on campus. And we've had Robbie George on and Harvey Mansfield and others to try to explore and help me understand how we got here. What is your view? And if you dispute my characterization, that's fine and explain why. But how did we get to a point where what I see is,

effectively pro-Hamas demonstrations on some of the most elite college campuses in the country? Well, I think that we, you know, we got to that point by way, I mean, but there's a lot of causes. I mean, you know, I want to be a good social scientist and say we have to have multiple variables to account for a phenomenon. There's not a single cause and it would be reductive and in a way disingenuous to boil it down to a single one. I think the variety of causes can include certainly that there are faculty who created these students. I think people would say, when this is what you're seeing in the classroom, this is what you're going to get on the quad. People will say it's not the faculty's fault necessarily.

Here's another cause. It's the admissions office that they select for these students, such that these students are coming in sort of pre-indocrinated. And when they get here, they're doing exactly what the admissions office and the university wants them to do. This is what we thought they were going to do. So we can say that that is one of the causes. I think the other thing, of course, technology is certainly one of the causes. the way in which these narrow views gain a footing in a way that's outsized that you wouldn't have seen in the 80s or the 90s. But I want to, I mean, regardless of what the cause is, I do want to say this because I think it's true.

I, this semester, the semester of protest and the demonstrations that you're referring to, taught a course of 260 Princeton students, one of the top four or so biggest courses on this campus, and probably one of the biggest in the Ivy League for all I know. I will say this to you. Many of those students, many of those students, I can't say how many. I would venture to say a majority are not at all interested in going out on the quad and demonstrating. Many of them came to my office during the demonstrations and thanked me for keeping the books front and center and said to me, I'm just here to get an education. This is the greatest opportunity I've ever been given.

I've worked my whole life for this. I just want to keep my head down and read these books with you and thank you. That's a lot of kids. Now, it's true that there's however many out on the quad and that there's news cameras there and microphones. But what about these hundreds of other kids who are not out there who are studying for their finals? This is going down in April and May and these kids are trying to get my paper turned in. You know what I mean? And so I think that the coverage has in a way, I don't deny these things are bad and what happened at Columbia, happened at Columbia, and that it's horrifying and something must be done and that ideology is a problem.

But I do want people to see that there are good kids here who really are trying to get an education and who look out at those demonstrations, maybe they can't make up their mind about them. Maybe they don't like them. Maybe they would participate. Maybe they wouldn't. But they really just don't have time because they got to get their test in. And I think that as long as that spirit is here, that there are kids here who are trying to get an education, we're going to be all right. I have a one, three, and five-year-old. It would be tragic if I didn't ask you. How would you educate children of that age, given sometimes the options of schools, both public and private. What, what, from what you've studied of the great statesmen, the great leaders,

is there a path, educational path starting at a young age that you would advise me to follow others who might be listening who have a similar age children to follow? Yeah, I mean, I hear you because I have a six-year-old just turned seven yesterday. So this is, this is not just a theoretical question, but a practical one. I mean, I mean, everybody knows, you know, there's no perfect education for every child, that every child is different. But I think one of the things to focus on, and this is something that I focused on, and you ask me about what I've learned from reading about states people in their youth, which is really what I'm interested in, is statesmen who were young, who became what they were as a consequence of some spark in them

when they were young. And there are a few things that I see. I mean, one of the things that I see is that, you know, Lincoln was self-educated and Churchill went to the finest schools in England, and Sandra Day O'Connor went to a school in El Paso and then to Stanford, and, you know, Theodore Roosevelt didn't even go to school like they didn't send the kids to school and then he got into Harvard. All these people have different paths, but one of the things that they were encouraged to be by their families or by the teachers if they had them was curious, that you want a school where any question can be asked and any answer can be given.

And if a student shows an interest in mathematics, they should be able to go and snoop around or in Shakespeare, go and snoop around. But you want to do your best to encourage your children and you want the schools that you send into to encourage your children to be curious. Another thing that I've seen in a lot of these people is that they're people who embrace the notion of adventure. They want to go, whether it's in their teens, in their early 20s,

and do something that's extraordinary. You know, Churchill goes through the Bourne War and gets captured and these sorts of things. Lincoln leaves the only sort of area he's ever known and sets out and sort of explores the Midwest. You know, O'Connor takes off from the desert in the middle of nowhere and goes to Stanford. Teddy goes to the American West. The adventure is encouraged, not being safe.

Don't be safe and don't be boring, right? That they welcome risk into their lives, measured and moderated. And so I think, you know, things of that kind, the curiosity, the adventure, those two are a potent cocktail. And so I think if you can find a school that in its own way, encourages these sorts of things, and certainly an acquaintance with the best it's been thought and said, you know, read, let young people read Shakespeare, let them read the Bible, introduce them to the beautiful children's stories for very young people. My daughter has just been read to C.S. Lewis.

She's reading, Bombs, Wizard of Oz. She's, you know, Little House on the Prairie, you know, these children's classics and these sorts of things. Encourage that curiosity and that wide-ranging interest. Let me close with a few, I think, fun questions. Some of them are questions I used to ask in my old podcast, which I think you would have interesting answers for. Some are kind of tailored to you.

Do you see greatness in any modern leaders? Is there any modern leaders out there that embody the type of things that you're teaching in the class and type of people that you're teaching in the class? It's fitting you ask me this question because I ask the students a similar question, not about greatness, but I say, can you name me a living person of character? in our public life. Tell me somebody of character. I want who has character, once we've studied, once Theta Roosevelt introduces that concept. And I've got to tell you, I'm standing in front of a room of 250 of the best and the brightest, and I hear crickets. That is dispiriting. And so to answer

your question about greatness, it's very difficult. Living people who I think rise to the heights of, and I don't mean the heights of, in terms of achievement they've been elected president, I mean, the fullness of soul, the richness of intellect, the robustness of ambition that encompasses a person that rise to the level of a Lincoln or Churchill or somebody like an O'Connor who sees from the sideline that they can rise to be an important player in our politics and want and welcome decision-making of the highest sort that will change the country on there. I don't. I just don't see a lot of that anymore. And I'm hoping part of my now you're on to me because part of of my conspiracy is to do that at Princeton. I'm in front of some of these people. Maybe we need to, maybe I can produce one in the next 20 years. But right now, I just don't see them. Well, I guess two corollaries to that. Is it, were all these leaders recognized as great as, you know, would they imagine that they would be taught, you know, 100 years hence? Is it

hard to recognize some of these figures while you're living? And second part of that is if there is really no one of the equivalent, is that the nature of how our political system has evolved to where you can't be this type of rich human being, this rich character, and achieve the highest level of office in the land? You know, I think that they, I think you're right to say that it's hard for them, it's hard for us to recognize people who are alive, who are, who are that way. On the other hand, you mentioned that wonderful Churchill quote about destiny. You see the same thing in Lincoln's speech, Lyceum speech on the perpetuation of our political institutions

when he says, a Napoleon or Caesar will arise in this country, and when they arise, they're either going to enslave everyone or free the slaves. Where will the person of the, you know, pride of the lion, the tribe of the eagle go? And he's talking about himself, and he's 27 years old. So I get the same, and O'Connor, I think, knows when she's there that there's something big for her on the horizon. She's just going to have to blaze the trail. And so, and Douglas, too. I mean, I think, Once Douglas learns to read, it's off to the races for him. He's getting a hold of abolition literature. He sees that there could be a space for a man like him,

ends up writing three autobiographies. So I want to say, these people seem to me to know. And my sense is that occasionally someone so full arises who, you know, other people begin to know. But I grant you they could be out there and we don't even know it. And I want that to be the case. And I want students to start thinking of themselves in those terms, even if they can't achieve it and they can't do it.

I want them to have a certain kind of impulse to see that and want that either in themselves or in others. But I do think you're right that there are causes in our politics, causes in our educational system that prohibit people from cultivating that kind of ambition or cultivating the cast of mind and enriching the kind of nature that would permit somebody to take those courses. On the other hand, America is a beautiful place.

You can come from any, I mean, you know, Sandra O'Connor comes from the backwoods. Lincoln comes from the middle of nowhere. I'm constantly amazed when I get into class with some of the students in Princeton, who are from rural Ohio, who come up to me and ask me after class if they can quote the actual Greek in their papers. And I'm like, where did you learn Greek? Where are you from?

500 people in that town? And so we've still got some extraordinary young Americans. And what we need is a kind of system of education that can support them and also a politics which shows them that there's opportunity for them and maybe shows them what it means to be a dignified human being. Are there three books you can point to that most shaped your worldview? Yeah, I think so. I mean, that's hard.

Three books is hard for a guy like me. But I think, you know, I can remember, you know, I mean, I have to include Xenophon's education of Cyrus. If you haven't read this book, it's just an extraordinary, extraordinary book written by a man who's a statesman and a philosopher about the greatest possible philosophic, or the greatest possible political human being. I tell the students, if you wanted to create a statesman in a lab, the perfect leader in a lab, like Spider-Man or one of these superhero movies, Cyrus is that lab. He's good looking. He's smart. It's charismatic. He's, you know, he's got all

the pieces. He's got all the pieces. And yet by the end of the book, it goes up in flames. And I think Xenophon is trying to teach you something about politics very profound in that book. So that would be one of them. I mentioned a moment ago how moved I had been by my encounter with Nietzsche and still am because Nietzsche's beyond good and evil is a book that is, I mean, you know, it's a little bit advanced and one has to come to it at the end of a long education in the history of Western philosophy and literature. But to see somebody as profound as Nietzsche call into question the foundations of everything we hold dear in the West is part of a crucial part of a fully realized liberal education. It is liberating in its own sense, and one has to come to terms with it.

And I always said to myself, either I'm going to refute Mecha or go with him. There is no other option, and I'm not a serious man, unless I can either refute him or I can't. And I have to hold my feet to the fire on that. So that book, I think, really changed me. And then I'm a man of literature. I love novels and these sorts of things. There's a book of the American West written by a Texas author. I happen to be from Texas named Larry McMurtry, when the Pulitzer surprise in 1986 called Lonesome Dove. And it's about the dissolution of the West. It was made into a beautiful

miniseries, but it's about the frontier gradually moving such that it meets the ocean in California, and there's no frontier left anymore, and there's no frontier ethos anymore, and it's two cowboys who are going on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana, and they're essentially running from the bankers, running from civilization, that an entire way of life

is a modernizing way of life is coming to an end as the frontier expires in the Pacific Ocean. That book really, really profoundly moved me. It's a book about love. It's a book about justice and a book about the American West. So there's three for you. Is there a writer or are there writers that when you see their byline or you see their book on the shelf that comes out modern, that you always read them? There was a couple.

They've recently died. Unfortunately, so McMurtry was one, died around 2022. Cormat McCarthy was one, died just last year. I think he was, in my lifetime, the greatest living American author and probably will be the greatest one in, you know, for all the years that I live. That would be one. I would buy also everything David McCullough ever wrote. I loved popular history.

I think David McCullough was a master at it. So those would be, you know, unfortunately you ask for living people. Those folks are dead. I can name. I mean, but they're recently just. seats. So they're not that, you know, they've all died in the past three years. I mean, you know, of course, politics and these sorts of things, everything that Harvey Mansfield writes, I'm going to eat up, everything that you've all then writes, I'm going to, you know,

I'm going to eat up. I mean, these sorts of books I certainly, uh, certainly love. There's a, I mean, just, this is now getting into the weeds, but there's a scholar at the University of Texas at Austin named Devin Stalfour. He's written a couple books on Plato, one on Hobbes. Those books, his interpretations of Plato's Gorgias, of Plato's Republic changed my life. they are beautiful they're accessible they're deep um so there are still living scholars in particular whose books i love this one is probably uh in my final question a tough one for you given what you teach what historical leader do you most admire that's hard i mean i wish you would let me do what i just said people do with cyrus and like take strands of them and put them into a beaker and like mix them up

and then i come out with my superhero leader you know what i mean because do that i admire aspects of so many I mean, you know, I'm an odd duck in that I understand the criticisms of Roosevelt, and I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, you know, advocating for all aspects of his politics, but I'm a, I'm a seeker of souls. And when I'm in the presence of Theodore Roosevelt, I just feel, and maybe it's just me, I don't know, I feel somebody who's a kindred spirit, not that I could ever rise to his level, but a man who in his dorm room at Harvard wrote a naval history of the war battles, Naval War battles of the War of 1812.

You know, he's just, he's writing a four-volume history of the West. He's, you know, he's, he took a bullet. He, you know, he's given a speech and he takes a bullet. And I read the speech out loud in my students, and he says to the crowd, I need you to be quiet. I've just been shot. But it takes more than that to stop a bull moose. I'm going to give this speech.

And he goes on for 45 minutes with a bullet in his chest. And, but also is talking thoughtfully about all sorts of aspects of history and loves letters and loves nature. So I think a guy like that, who's at that full, I really do love. You know, you mentioned Churchill. I've been reading Roberts' extraordinary biography, Walking with Destiny. You know, I've read my early life. I actually just finished up the Boer War because I'm working on a book on the course.

And, you know, Churchill's wit and prudence, the rough edges, I love that guy. I mean, I just can't get enough of the depth and the charm, but and the intellectual discipline oddly of a man like Churchill. So I think, you know, Teddy and Churchill are big time. I'm trying to think of who else. I mean, you know, people would say, you know, you've got to mention Lincoln. I mean, Lincoln's so big. I mean, I almost can't even, I just can't even imagine.

I feel like I can connect with Churchill and Roosevelt, but Lincoln is too big. So that gives you two. Charler Brooks, thank you for joining the Dispatch podcast. Hey, it's been a pleasure to be here. I'm going to be able to be.