The Eric Metaxas Show - Anthony Bradley (Encore)

Episode Date: January 20, 2024

Erics Socrates in the Studio conversation with Anthony Bradley 

Folks, welcome to the Eric Metaxus show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m. Investments.com. That's LegacyPMinvestments.com. Welcome to the Eric Metaxus show. It's the show featuring Go-Go-Go the chimp. Nothing like a chimp to liven up the radio show. Easy there. Go-go, go, go. No, go-go. Folks, you're listening to a special edition of the show. These are the audio versions of amazing conversations I had. Socrates in the studio. These have not aired yet. We want to encourage you to go to Socrates in the cityplus.com. Socrates in the city plus.com. Sign up. This goes live January 4th. You can see the videos. It's amazing.

And now here's my conversation with the great Anthony Bradley at Socrates in the studio. Here it is. Welcome to Socrates in the studio. Today, my guest is Dr. Anthony Bradley. He is a distinguished senior fellow at the Acton Institute. He currently teaches at Kuiper College in Michigan. For 14 years, he was a distinguished professor at the King's College here in New York City. He's also theologian in residence at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Lincoln Square campus here in New York City. Today, we're going to discuss with him his brand new book. heroic fraternities. Here is my conversation with Dr. Anthony Bradley.

Welcome to Socrates in the studio. I am particularly excited, as I think you will see. I honestly get so excited about this subject. I was thrilled you wrote about it. So before I tell the audience what it's about, why don't you do that and how you came to write the book? That's great question. Again, thanks for having me on the show. You know, we have about 350,000 men currently in fraternities in this country. Wait, now. Now. Today. 350,000 men in fraternities today. Right. Okay. Wow. Yeah. In about 4,000 chapters, and I see this as an opportunity to do two things. One is to make university life better, but also to produce the next generation of America's leaders because if you look statistically and historically at the history of fraternities

and the types of men they produce, there's something like in the 70 to 80 percentile of all CEOs, all members of Congress, all presidents and vice presidents, and if you look at the Supreme Court, et cetera, where do those men come from? They come from fraternities. And so when we sort of talk about the crisis of men and masculinity in America, I'm thinking, well, one of the best places, I think, to resurrect the sense of producing America's leaders is fraternities. Now, I came to write the book because I was concerned that a number of fraternities were getting suspended. In fact, what I noticed in the news cycle, this is before COVID, is that once a week, somewhere in America, a fraternity was being suspended every single week. And I thought, what is happening with fraternities? And I began to look at the

data. And as you look at those stories, I began to see these patterns, right? I mean, they were being suspended for hazing violations. They were being suspended for alcohol abuse and things like that. And at the King's College, I taught a class on the history of masculinity in America. We did a unit on the history of fraternities. And when I looked at the history of fraternities and I looked at the current expression of fraternities, I was confused at the disparity. And what's fascinating about the disparity is that in the beginning fraternities or organizations that were primarily that were primarily literary societies. In the 19th century. In the 19th century, in the early to the 19th century, fraternities were places where men would come and read Socrates. They would read Aristotle. They would

read the classics and they would debate them together. This is what they would do for fun. In fact, the libraries in a lot of fraternity houses were better than the libraries at the university. So it was a sort of a finishing opportunity for men of arts and letters to prepare them for leadership. And what I noticed when I looked at the narrative and the story is if fraternities began this way, and then we found ourselves currently with all these suspensions. And what I noticed is that in 1978, and you will remember this, there is a film called Animal House. The only reason I remember it was because it was required viewing by people in my high school. You know, like everyone had to go to see it.

And I guess I thought it was 1979, but maybe it was made in 78. But it had such a powerful impact that when I entered college in 1980, where I went to school everywhere they were doing Toga parties, which was a case. So this was, this was one. of those films Animal House, and I'm glad you brought it up because obviously I was going to at some point. It really was a cultural landmark. It's like a film like The Godfather, that it's more than just a film. It basically affects thinking about college life, about fraternity life, obviously,

and was very influential, probably mostly for ill, but it had huge cultural impact. It had a massive cultural impact. In fact, I'm willing to say that the reason that we see some of the challenges with some chapters on some schools is actually because of that film. We can trace it back to that. Oh, no question. Because what happened, right? As you said, a bunch of middle school and high school boys watched that film in 1978, and they said, when I go to college, I'm going to do that. And then they went and they did that. And every fraternity film after Animal House is a variation. on the theme of that film. It's probably, I would say, one of the most impactful cultural found projects in modern American history. And for people who don't know what it's about

because there are tons of younger people watching right now who, you know, they were not around or it's so far back now that they don't, you know, they think it's like a classic film from the 30s. That film glorified, drunkenness. I mean, in a lot of ways this gets into a larger conversation about media and the glorification of bad behavior. But you had one of the biggest stars of the time, John Belushi, who was one of the main figures on Saturday Night Live, starring in this film as what, a kind of a model of debauchery. Like that was his thing. And it was cool. It was, you know, cool, funny.

That whole idea was pushed very, very strongly in the culture with a principal figure. And then you fast forward 20 years later or so, and you get Will Ferrell, another huge figure in films and an S&L appearing in a similar film called Old School or whatever. But it definitely started with Animal House. Absolutely. And what's really fascinating to me quite sad is that what you see in Animal House, that is not what fraternities are about. In fact, I was in fraternity when I was in college. We weren't about that. Most of fraternities at Clemson were not about that.

But that genre, that media project, has really sort of stereotyped in a negative way what fraternity culture is like. So here's a problem. There are lots of parents who are dissuading their sons from joint in fraternities because of that film. And they're missing out on all the good things that fraternities could possibly produce and provide. And so I wanted to get back, this crazy project I have, to try to sort of infuse virtue back into Greek life. It's a crazy project, but I just believe that we have a generation of men who want to use their presence and their power and their creativity for the benefit of other people. They want to do that, but they don't know how. And so I say, well, I'll at least give them a framework for what that can look like.

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Talk a little bit about your own biography with regard to fraternities. You said you were at Clemson because obviously that's what gives you the principal credential to weigh in on the subject. So talk about that. You were at Clemson and you, what was your experience in what's called Greek life? Since I'm Greek, I always have to, like, pause. It's like, no, it's not about that. It's about frat houses.

And maybe you can actually, before that, tell us why it is that, you know, tell us about the word fraternity. But then tell us about why did they adopt Greek letters so that we now know of, you know, fraternity life as Greek life? What was that? Just a classical influence in the 19th century education? That's exactly right. So fraternity started at Union College in Schenectady, New York. There were three men who were veterans, and they missed the camaraderie of serving together, serving in the military. And so they got together at Union College and decided to form a fraternity. They met with a professor in his office and said, hey, we want to do something. And because at the time, sort of being grounded in the classics was so normal.

unlike it is today, that, of course, they wanted to sort of resurrect sort of Greek influence of camaraderie and brotherhood, kind of deep connection and community. And it was out of that. It was out of a longing for camaraderie and this strong sense of brotherhood. They chose the word fraternity. Okay, so this is so, I mean, this is 1824 in Schenectady, a bunch of veterans. Now, I don't know, what war were they in? the War of 1812, or I guess maybe they were just serving in the military together,

and then they decided to go into university. We don't need to talk about this now, because I want to talk about your Clemson experience, but it is fascinating that men seem too long for brotherhood, for camaraderie. There's something in men that longs for that, and that can be for good or for ill, obviously, as you write about in the book. So I want to touch on that because that's so fascinating that that's how it all started. But what was your, what pushed you, you know, as a very young man at Clemson to say, I want to be in a fraternity?

Well, I mean, I was like a lot of my students sort of seeking a deep connection with a group of brothers, sort of have a path, sort of have a tribe, right? You sort of want to be a part of a group. Guys want to be a part of a group. This idea that, you know, sort of Americans are individualists and kind of lone rangers is absolutely false, right? Guys want to be a part of our group. In fact, from way, way back, they're like the little rascals if you can remember that program. That's one of the greatest things ever.

Hal Roach are gang comedies. That's like the greatest ever. I didn't think we were going to go there. Thank you. Well, you can go from there to the Three Stooges. I mean, all the way of happy days. I mean, sort of all these meteor projects, right? Yeah.

Sort of explain and you can see the day. deep longing that guys have in a community. It can be for good or ill, like a gang, for example. Yeah. Right. But Hal Roaches are a gang was innocent. So it's kind of funny. The word gang has taken on this thing.

But this is my gang. This is my group. This is my, you know. And there's something really beautiful about that. And that is particularly masculine. That there's something about guys that long for having something like that. Well, and I've seen some great psych data on this. What essentially happens that when, when men,

are deeply embedded in a community of support with brothers and sort of comrades, if you will. They're much more willing to take risks. They're much more willing to be brave. They're actually much more willing to be compassionate and empathetic. They're much more willing to put their lives on the line for others. They're actually much more likely to live out the cardinal virtues when they have a community around them to encourage them and push them, right? to encourage, right, to put courage in them to be great men. And great men cannot be great without other men.

It's absolutely impossible. We've never seen it in American, not just American history, but in the history of human culture, we've never seen a culture where men have been great outside of a community of men to put courage into them to do amazing and outstanding things. And guys want to be heroes. They really do.

I mean, we are in a season of Halloween. and costuming. And what do you see kids do? Boys put on costumes often of heroes. And they have this intuitive sense, the sort of intuition that I cannot be a hero alone. It can only be a hero when I have a squad with me, right? And so what do they do? They want to join a community of men to make them great. They have that intuition. And when I was in college, there's someone who wanted, who had aspirations to be a leader, things like that. I knew because of the history of fraternities, particularly in the black communities.

So I play as Alpha Phi Alpha Incorporated, which is historically black fraternity. Some of our most famous members are Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr. You may have heard. What? Some of our most famous men, that's pretty famous. You may have heard of W.B. Du Bois and people like that.

Also W.B. DeB. De Bois? Yeah, our fraternity. Is there any fraternity in the world with like three names like that? That's kind of impressive. It is impressive. We have more. Are you kidding? There's a long, long list.

At Clemson. There's a long, long list of men and Alpha by Alpha who've essentially changed America, but that would be a different conversation. But my fraternity was founded at Cornell in 1906. Uh-huh. and it served as one of the Divine Nine, so the Divine Nine is a collection of historically black fraternities and sororities that really saw themselves, one, as forming leaders out of college

to be placed in the community to be leaders later, secondly. So when I was growing up, I mean, part of what it meant to be an African-American in the community was to be a part of Greek life. I mean, my mom's in her 80s. She plashed Delta Sigma Theta, and she still goes to sorority meetings once a month. So in the black community, Greek life is not simply about the first few years of college, and then it sort of ends afterwards. This sort of college is the preparatory phase for pressing in to being a community leader.

And so during the civil rights movement, for example, the fraternity and sororities in the black community were heavily involved in organizing and fighting for, freedom and justice and things like that. So when I was in college, sort of growing up in a community in Atlanta, where postgraduate Greek participation is really, really high, I thought, well, it's a natural thing for me to want to be a part of as an African American, one of the Divine Nine Greek organizations in order to be a leader in this country.

I know Thurgood Marshall was at Howard University. in 1930 because Dietrich Bonhoeffer, when he came to America, he visited the South and visited Howard. So that's another thing to mention is that when you join a fraternity, you're joining a fraternity that connects you not just to that chapter of that fraternity in that college, but that connects you to all the fraternity brothers across colleges across. that that's kind of a magnificent networking. If you did it only for networking possibilities,

that's an extraordinary thing that Alpha Phi Alpha, is that what you said, that that would be a connection to all of these people, you know, throughout the country and all the alumni. So that's a very interesting. In other words, that would just be a very attractive reason for somebody. you know, to join a fraternity. Absolutely. It's a huge draw.

I mean, to know that you will be a brother in a fraternity, which puts you in a legacy of great men. And here's the thing. High school guys want to be great men. That is just a fact. The problem is they don't have a good roadmap for that. And few people are investing in them and encouraging them on exactly how to do that. So one of the big issues I've had in terms of how we

relate to young adult men is we simply are we encourage them by negation what I mean by that is don't be bad right don't mistreat women don't haze your brothers right don't abuse alcohol and drugs but they aren't telling them what to do right they aren't giving them the virtues of greatness and excellence they aren't giving them prudence they aren't giving them you know sort of justice They aren't giving them the cardinal virtues. It is formation by negation, which is not formation at all. And so we have a whole cohort of young men who are trying to figure out what to do, what to be with this sort of heroic impulse that they have. And what they end up doing, we're seeing this right now, is they're on YouTube trying to figure it out.

And so that's why, you want to ask, why is it that college men are so driven to these influences on YouTube? It's because there's a vacuum. You should do a book on this maybe. There's a vacuum of instruction on how to be an outstanding and excellent. Man, there's like nothing out there for them. And so their joint fraternity to try to recapture some of those virtues and to join a legacy of men who've proven and demonstrated that they've done it. Wait for the morning night.

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for 15% off. Again, Neutrametics, N-U-T-R-A-M-E-D-I-X.com. Neutrametics.com, use the code Eric for 15% off. I did a book called Seven Men and the Secret of Their Greatness, and then a sequel, Seven More Men and The Secret of Their Greatness, which are short biographies, because sometimes you can help people get virtue, get the concept of virtue as they read stories of greatness, right?

You read a story of greatness, and without telling people it's this value and that value. You see it and you kind of pick it up. So that's, in some ways, for the same reason you wrote this book, I wrote the book, Seven Men, because I thought we lack in our culture, any, a number of the things you've already mentioned, but we don't talk about virtue. We don't model virtue. We now denigrate virtue. if anything, we're going to denigrate or mock virtue or these kinds of heroism.

It's mocked. And as you're saying, men in particular automatically respond to this kind of thing. And so that's why I wrote those books. But your idea of using the Greek system, the fraternities that already exist as a delivery system for this, I think is genuinely brilliant. It's amazing. And that's why I was just so excited to talk to you about this, because it really is, it's simply a great idea.

It's an amazing idea that these things already exist. And if we could get any number of them to begin thinking along these lines, and then even the fact, as you say in the book, that there's historical precedent. They used to be shaping men in a good way. and it's only really in our lifetimes that this has kind of gone sideways. Every single campus that I speak to a fraternity

and I invite them to a heroic life of virtue, they almost come out of their skin and excitement. And on almost every campus I go to, this is a sort of response that I get because I say, hey, again, why don't you use all that you're about, right? Use your power, your presence, your creativity, all that you have, right?

Your strength, use all of that. for the benefit of your brothers in your chapter and everyone else on campus. Whenever I invite them to that, I get a standing ovation every single time. And this is what they say to me, no one talks to us like this. There's no one inviting us to be great men. No one believes in us. And so what I tell them is, like, I believe in you, and I believe that you can actually use the virtues and the values of the mission of your fraternity

because they're back, you know, these were developed in the early to mid-19th century. So they're sort of classically Judeo-Christian, all of them. They have these, all of these fraternities have fantastic values and virtues and mission statements. And if they plug back into those, it will not only change the campus, it'll change the country, because out of that cohort will come the next iteration of America's leaders. Well, I'm so glad to hear you say now and to read in the book, you are being invited to speak at colleges around the country on this subject. It's interesting that their response is that nobody's talking to us this way, because,

I mean, let's face it, the culture has gotten profoundly confused on these basic issues. Even when you mention masculine traits or whatever, there's either confusion or derision. And I'm just so grateful to you for turning that narrative because the hunger is there, as you've just said. Well, I think what happens is that so much of the current cultural discourse is about how bad men are. Not just the word toxic, but unnecessary. And that men make things worse. This is, and think about your average 20-year-old, 18, 19, 20-year-old, 18, 19, 20-year-old, has grown up in a society and a culture where they've only heard how bad men are.

And they've just experienced shame and rejection. Not encouragement, but rebuke and shame and rejection because you're a mistake. And if we could just get rid of men, the world would be. Yeah, no wars, no serial killing, how great that would be. You use a term, I wrote it down in the book, you talk about disorder. masculinity and the purpose void. That's the issue, isn't it, that you and I, men of faith, we know that God's idea of masculinity or the traditional Judeo-Christian view, or even the Western view of masculinity,

is fundamentally heroic. It's fundamentally meant to be self, not self-serving, but self-less. that's the model, you know, obviously we can talk about chivalry. That's been there for the longest time, and it's only recently in a way that masculinity has been defined in terms of toxicity. I mean, I don't know if it's worth getting into, but how that happened? Because it really is, I always say that if you denigate, great men, you will be harming women. There's just no way around it. If you, if men do not embrace this heroic view of masculinity, it means they will embrace something that is the opposite of that.

They don't go away. They will simply channel their energies into, into negative things. So we are seeing some of that. Absolutely. I think, you know, when do you want to start the clock on when it went south. I mean, you could actually go back to the roaring 20s. You could go back that far if you like. But, I mean, there was, there has been this sort of incremental sort of disdain for all things, masculine in the name of liberating other communities to experience freedom and justice and things like that. Are you tired of not getting a good night's sleep? Well, my friend Mike Lindell has created the perfect solution. He didn't just stop at the pillow. He also created the Giza dream bed sheets.

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checkout. Don't wait any longer to get the best sleep of your life. Call 800-978-3057 or go to mypillow.com now and use promo code Eric. In the season where we really wanted to empower women, and in many cases there was a place for that because of the ways in which we pursued culture and kept women from doing things. But what happened is instead of celebrating and empowering, right, sort of encouraging women, we did it at the expense of men.

And it's really fascinating and somewhat depressing when you have situations where, and I've actually heard people say this, that we have to keep men down today because of what men did abusively in the 1930s and 40s and 50s. And I want to say, wait a minute, what is this 18, 19 year old lad at the University of State College have to do with what happened in 1940, 50, 60, et cetera. And so there has this, there has been this we need to sort of celebrate and empower one gender, which, but by doing that, it's kind of a zero-sum game. We can't do that. You took the words out of my mouth. This is cultural.

Marxism. It's like it's a zero-sum game. The world is not constructed so that it works along the zero-sum game thing, right? A rising tide lifts all boats. So this idea that I'm going to, in order to lift up women, we have to push down men. If that worked, I would say okay. But when you push down men, you end up pushing down women. There's no way around it. You could say the same thing around the race issue. The zero-sum game argument doesn't work. It's intellectually confused and is leading to further harm to women. So it's tremendous irony.

So that's part of how we got here is the zero-sum game cultural Marxist paradigm that has been pushed strongly in our lifetime. And this is why we have the purpose void because there's so many young men today who have no idea why they're needed. The culture doesn't tell them what we need them for. Now, in part, that's been precipitated and altered by just sort of changes in the market. So we don't necessarily need men's physical strength as much as we did 100 years ago. We have machines and technology to do some of that. But men are really lost. They don't know where they fit in.

and the culture isn't really providing them a pathway to understand what it means for them to be adults. They just don't, they're just, it's like, well, what am I supposed to do? So here's been the result of that. About 60% of all college freshmen are women, we have about 9 million prime age working males, ages 24 to 54, who are not working. and doing nothing.

We have a mental health crisis among young men, 15 to 24, spiking in depression, anxiety, and suicide, massive amounts of drug overdoses with young men, especially in Appalachia. It's an opioid crisis. What are we seeing right now in Seattle, San Francisco? We're seeing fentanyl take out young men. The suicide rate in this country is spiking.

most suicides in this country are men. So something around 80%. So in one sense, it worked negatively. So men are lost, they're depressed, and what they've chosen to do is simply resign. They're not protesting. They're not burning down things. They're not necessarily wreaking havoc.

They've just withdrawn. They say, I'm out. So what are they doing? Video games, endless amounts of time on the Internet. Because the Internet says, well, if you don't have anything to do out there, well, then you can create an imaginary world over here and practice some heroism. You can be important, and you can matter online because you don't matter in society and in culture. So a lot of women are like, where are the men? And that's a great question.

They're off the grid. They're not working. They're not in school. By the way, they're also not in trades. People think, well, the young men are in trades. No, no, no, no. they're not, they're doing nothing. They're doing nothing. And so for me, I'm thinking, well, what's the one population of guys who are willing and ready to do something? You're engaged, who are aspirational, looking for a pathway for that, and then I end up thinking about that small population, and then you're actually in college. So the purpose void is really massive. And one of the things I tell, I invite men, and this is when they get really excited, I invite college fraternity, to develop this reputation

because you're right about the context in which women's lives are better when men excel and excellence in virtue. It's just a historic fact. I say, hey, listen, guys, why don't you make your fraternity house? Why don't you make your house? The reputation on your campus

is that your house is the safest place for women on campus. It's the best place for women on campus. In fact, when women leave your house, they would be better off than they were when they came. What if the reputation on your campus is that when women are with you, you all, you and your brothers, they fill a sense of dignity and honor and respect and joy and celebration? They have a great time, right, and they become better people. And I've seen this on campus after campus after campus.

When I invite men to treat women with great honor and dignity and respect, they get elated. They're like, we want that. What do you have to you to get that? And you see them taking notes. Their eyes get big and they get really excited. And what woman does not want to marry a guy with that attitude? Absolutely. That's extraordinary. Absolutely. And what's interesting is that no one is invited them to do that. So what do we say to them instead, don't sexual assault women. Don't treat them badly. But we don't say, hey, treat them well, treat them great. Here's how to do. This is what you should do. This is what you shouldn't do. And this is where, older alumni have a role to play, fathers have a role to play, older men have a role to play,

and helping to give these young men some sort of vision or coaching or tutorial on how to treat them well because they actually want to do it. They want to be great men. They want to be good men. They really do. We would say, you and I, that we're hardwired by our creator to want that. It's there. It's not like we have to find it. It's already there. Part of the, The issue here is the narrative, the way the narrative has changed over the decades about, what am I supposed to do with my life? There was a time in America when the norm was, I'm supposed to man up. I'm supposed to find a good wife, have a family, support the family.

In other words, if you start there, you already have a reason. You say, well, I've got to support my family. I've got to work hard. I've got to sacrifice. I got to whatever that is. when that norm goes out the window, we encourage this perpetual adolescence. I don't know if I've ever said this publicly, but because I was married with a child, that made me be able to write my biographies of Wilberforce and Bonhoeffer.

I know, I can say this. I know I would not have. gone through what it took to do that because it was very, very, very, very hard unless I knew I had to do it. I kind of had to do it. It wasn't just about me. And I think you write about that in the book about discovering that you can do more than you thought you could because you're as a right of passage.

Talk about that a little bit because that's to me, you know, rights of passage for men and women. but we're talking about men, that's been a staple in cultures around the world. That has gone out of our culture. Yeah, one way the psychologists talk about this is a failure to launch. Yes. Right? They're just stuck in delayed adolescence or arrested development. Do you want to use that phrase?

And that's partly precipitated by a generation of their parents who have so much money. that they don't have to launch because their parents are paying their rent for them. Parents are saying, you can just stay here and figure it out, even though you're 33. And there's just no pressure to move out because their parents have so much money. We're talking to talk about Gen Xers and younger boomers are loaded. And so one of the greatest wealth transfers in American history will be the parents of millennials to them. It's going to be massive. And they don't have to do anything.

And you're right. There was this natural progression of like, okay, go do. You got to get out of here and go do something. And in the West, and this is a part of our affluence, there just hasn't been that pressure. And so what we've done is we've let adolescents and we let children and young adults create their own rights of passage. Because we didn't provide one for them. They just made up their own. So what did it include? It included alcohol consumption. It included the ability to pick up girls. It included the ability to jump off something really dangerous and not split your head open, right? So they should have created their own rest of passage. And this is one of the benefits of fraternities is they are designed structurally to provide a right of passage from boyhood into adulthood, to be challenged with things that you have to overcome obstacles together and you learn that you have these gifts.

and capabilities that you did know that you had, and you have a group of people saying, we believe in you. So what happens? You face these obstacles together with a bunch of your brothers. You discover gifts and interests and passions and opportunities and all sorts of capabilities that you did not know you had. You're now excited about those, and then you go back in the community when you graduate college to use them. I was interviewing someone this week from from the University of Michigan. He's in a fraternity. And he was explaining this specifically,

that when he was in high school, he was a bit of a loner, he didn't have any social skills, he wasn't really a leader, but he's only been in the fraternity a year, and he says, I've come out of my shell, I know how to talk to people, I know how to do conflict resolution now,

and so now he wants to be a leader in his fraternity. And now he has these aspirations to be a different kind of person, And that's only because the fraternity gave him the opportunities to sort of transition from being this really timid, isolated, 130-pound high school grad to sort of just developing man who now has the self-confidence to take risks to be leaders. And this is what the right of passage does. It gives these lads self-confidence. And that's one of the things I've seen over the years in terms of exercising the need to exercise wisdom

is that if a young man does not have self-confidence, he will not make wise decisions because he's too afraid of being rejected and being kicked out of the tribe.