WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Olympics Controversy That’s Suddenly About America Itself

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

James Joski og WRFH talks with Michael Lucchese to discuss his debut for the Daily Wire’s new lifestyle and culture section. He wrote about the politicization of the Winter Olympic Games, contrasting the mercenary approach taken by American-born Chinese skier Eileen Gu with the more patriotic and inspiring story of two-time gold medalist US figure skater Alysa Liu. From 03/02/26.

This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm James Jasky. With me today is Michael Lucchese. All right, Mr. Lucchese. We've had you on the station before, but could you just give us a quick reintroduction for any listeners who are unfamiliar with who you are? Hi, James, yeah, it's great to be back on.

Always love coming back to Radio Free Hillsdale. I was a Hillsdale college student. I graduated in 2018. I worked on Capitol Hill for a few years. And then I founded a communications consulting firm. So based in D.C., proud Simpson alumnus, actually. And I had a radio show on WRFH when I was a student there, actually. Nice, nice. That's awesome.

So the first article I'd like to talk about with you, it's called American Immortals talking about the reflections of Frederick Douglas on Abraham Lincoln. What brought you to write this article? So I've been interested in Frederick Douglass for a long time and Abraham Lincoln. When I was a student, this must have been in 2016 or 2017, Dr. Kevin Porteous in the politics department. He actually taught an honors seminar on the statesmanship of Frederick Douglas. So I've been interested in Douglas for a long time. This book came out, and it's a fascinating book.

It's a collection measuring the man. It's a collection of Frederick Douglass's writings on Abraham Lincoln, actually. And I find it very interesting. you know, it's one great American reflecting on another great American and there's a lot that you can learn from these documents. And this measuring the man book,

when did it come out? Is it relatively new? Has it been out for a little bit? Yeah, yeah. It came out a couple months ago. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, something interesting I saw in the article was talking how a lot of people think Lincoln was a revolutionary

in his views on ending slavery. But when you wrote this, he said that he was actually quite reserved. Could you elaborate on that? Yeah. So a lot of abolitionists actually really didn't care for Abraham Lincoln. The radical wing of the Republican Party that controlled Congress for much of the Civil War was actually very, very much opposed to Abraham Lincoln. It was only after his assassination that abolitionist sort of claimed Lincoln as a symbol. Lincoln was always anti-slavery.

He thought slavery was an evil institution that had to go. But he also was persuaded that the federal government didn't have constitutional authority to interferes with slavery in the states where it existed. His platform was banning slavery in the territories, not in the states. And he thought that if we did that, then slavery would eventually come to be abolished. And so that got him in some hot water with abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and to a certain extent with Frederick Douglass, too. Yeah. So that brings me right to my next question, actually. So Douglas started out as a follower of William Lloyd Garrison. Could you explain to the audience who that was and why it is important to contrast Garrison's approach with that of Lincoln's? For sure. So Garrison was one of the most prominent

white abolitionists during the antebellum period. He was based in Boston, Massachusetts. He ran a publication called The Liberator. And he was a real, real radical. He said that the Constitution, because it provided for the institution of slavery, was a pact with hell and a deal with the devil. And famously, 1 4th of July, he burned a copy of the Constitution on Boston Commons. So Garrison was the real representative of radical abolitionism. And when Douglas freed himself from slavery and became an advocate for emancipation, he sort of fell into the social and political circle. that Garrison was in charge of in Boston. Over time, though, he started to break with Garrison because he believed that the American founding

provided what we needed in order to end slavery. So Douglas became much more patriotic than Garrison in the end, I think. Yeah, and so with the radical abolitionists, we call them radical. And I think today, like when we hear radical, we tend to think fringe. Was radical abolitionism?

was that actually fringe or was it a fairly common view in the north and abraham lincoln was actually as a centrist less common no no it was definitely a fringe view um most northerners were not committed to abolitionism the way that william lloyd garrison and his cohort were um of course there are some right um and the north was generally speaking anti slavery but uh lincoln i think is much more representative of the mainstream of of north I think that's why ultimately he wins the Republican nomination in 1860 over more radical Republicans like Salmon Chase, for example. So with the radical abolitionist, I might be ignorant on this topic, but it seems to me that

in the long term of history, their narrative has kind of won. Like when I think back on history, I kind of, I guess, assume that that was the common viewpoint. Yeah, I think that one of the reasons for that is, especially in the last 30 to 40 years or so, one of the dominant schools of civil war historians are called the neo-ab abolitionists. And these people have really taken the abolitionist viewpoint and sort of made it as it were the protagonist of the history of the civil war. And as sympathetic as I am to the abolitionists on the moral question, I think the political and constitution question is a little bit more complicated than they let on. And I think studying Douglas's writings on Lincoln is interesting because Douglas starts out at that Garrisonian position, that radical abolitionism. And he never leaves abandon his commitment to total and immediate emancipation. But what you sort of realizes over time is that, no, we live in a constitutional republic.

There are limits on government power for a reason. And we as citizens have to really work not so much in terms of coercion, but in terms of moral persuasion. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm James Jawsky, and I'm talking with Michael Lucchese. So, Mr. Lucchese, this idea of returning. to rather than replacing the Constitution that was so prevalent back in the questions of Lincoln's time with slavery. How do you see that in today's political turmoil? Yeah, that's a great question. I think right now there are a lot of people on both sides of the aisle right and left who have

sort of abandoned the idea of the Constitution. On the left, of course, you have everyone from, you know, these Democratic Socialists to, you know, gender ideology and a whole bunch of different ideological, the 1619 project crowd, right? On the right, I think that you have this sort of post-liberal movement, right? Intellectually, it's represented by Patrick Deneen politically, you know, Josh Hawley, J.D. Vance. These are sort of people who, in some ways, have distanced themselves from the idea of constitutional government as an end in and of itself, right? I think in that way, actually, a lot of, especially the intellectual critiques of America that post-liberals propose, for example, Patrick Janine in his book, Regime Change, and to a lesser extent, in his book,

why liberalism failed. I think they actually, the narrative of American history that the post-liberals present is very similar to the leftist narrative of American history. And so I think that people like Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, are great reminders, actually, that liberty is something that we inherit, and it's something that we have to defend. And, you know, it's something that we have to choose in each and every generation. And I think that right now, the extremes in American politics are trying to persuade us not to choose that inheritance, not to keep up the Constitution, not to repair its fabric, but rather to abandon it. I think if we were to follow the example of somebody like Douglas or somebody like Lincoln, we would reject that sort of 1619 project or post-liberal mentality. Yeah, that is that is very well said. Just one question for the audience, just if they might not know, but could you tell us just very briefly kind of the similarities and leftist thought?

Yeah, well, I mean, obviously, you know, they sort of position themselves as great antagonists, right? The left is saying, oh, you know, the post-liberals are theocrats, Christian nationalists, fascists, et cetera, et cetera. And the post-liberals are going to say, you know, the left, they're socialist, they're communists, they're irreligious, they're liberals, you know. But ultimately, I think what both these groups have in common is, you know, they're sort of looking to accumulate as much power as possible, and they're using moral arguments to justify the accumulation of power. So in that way, they actually greatly resemble William Lloyd Garrison,

right? Both sides are, albeit for different reasons, frustrated with the limitations the Constitution places on American politics. And so they look to, you know, they look beyond the Constitution. They want to move beyond constitutional politics. And I I think what Lincoln's example demonstrates is that through American statesmanship is about finding ways to advance the common good within those constitutional boundaries. And I think that's something, you know, these documents that that we get with Frederick Douglass, Douglas, of course, was initially, you know, Martin Luther King, he has this great, this great phrase, the fierce urgency of now. And that's sort of how Douglas thought about slavery. you know, it's a morally urgent question for Douglas.

And he's right about that. I don't mean to deny that. But I think what Douglas comes to understand is that the Republic is best as a kind of moral guardian, not as the font of morality as it were. And I think that's a lesson I wish that the extremes in American politics left and right would learn. So just to clarify, before we move on to the next subject, what would be one example of these tendencies in the left and right where there is an issue where they want to overturn the Constitution, just to give the audience kind of a clear example to hold on to? Sure. So, I mean, I think when it comes to the left, we've got a whole bunch of examples, you know, many of the things that President Biden and Obama did.

And, you know, the idea that we need to concentrate as much economic power in the federal government, that's something that a lot of them advance. And there are different, you know, shades and variations of this and different levels of extremism. But on the right, you know, I think it's somebody like Adrian Vermeel, who's a law professor at Harvard, he has this essay in the Atlantic from. around the time of the coronavirus, actually, called Common Good Constitutionalism, where he said, we need to move on from originalism. We need to stop interpreting the Constitution according to its original public meaning, and we need to start interpreting it according to my definite conception of the common good. And, you know, that I think is a recipe for constitutional chaos, right? because it's not just a question of, you know, constitutional politics certainly has room and space to consider moral questions.

I am no libertarian. I don't want to move away from those moral questions. But also, you know, federal power is channeled in a certain way in the Constitution. And I think both right and left seek to sort of overrun those things. in pursuit of their own distinct visions of the common good. It's really factional politics like what Publius is describing in the Federalist. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm James Jawski and I'm talking with Michael Lucchese. So Mr. Lucchese, you wrote another piece called the Olympics controversy that's suddenly about America itself.

Could you explain that piece a little bit? Sure. You know, I'm a big Olympics dot. I watch it every every two or four years. years. And I love it because, you know, American athletes are going out and pursuing human excellence, not just for themselves as individuals, but for us all as a country. And at the beginning of this Olympics, there was this great controversy over this skier Hunter Hess and some of the things that he said about how he was, you know, competing under the American flag, but didn't stand for everything

the Trump administration stood for. But so Hess, Hess, I think, is representative of a certain kind of, you know, Olympian who is going out there and saying, you know, I'm a liberal. I don't agree with the Trump administration. And that really set off a lot in the conservative media. On the other hand, though, I think that's not how most American Olympians actually thought of the way that they were competing. And so I really wanted to, in this article, challenge that kind of culture war mentality about the Olympics and redirected to, you know, the gym. genuine patriotism of so many of these athletes. And for me, I think a lot of that can be summed up in the differences between the

American-born Chinese skier, Eileen Gou, and the American figure skater, Alyssa Liu. Yeah, could you talk about who those two people are? Sure. So, Eileen Gou was born in America. She's Californian. Her mother is Chinese. and for the Beijing 2020 Olympics, Gu decided to compete for communist China under their flag.

Alyssa Liu, on the other hand, her father is also Chinese, but he actually is as a political refugee. He was one of the organizers of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. And when that turned into a massacre, he fled China, came to America, and raised his family in America. Liu, the Chinese Communist Party,

they have a, they call it a repatriation program. And the idea is that they take a foreign-born athlete to have some kind of familial connection to China and they pay them to compete for China. They tried, they succeeded in recruiting goo. They tried recruiting Alasa Liu. and her family said, absolutely not. This is a tyrannical regime.

We're never going to compete under your flag. And actually, the Chinese Communist Party, they continue to send spies to harass the Liu family in America and when they travel abroad. So the Lou family actually has a special arrangement with the State Department where they provide extra security. And so I think that ultimately this is a real contrast, right, goo, who sort of has this mercenary approach to competing in sports, is just competing

for China because of the money. And Alyssa Liu, on the other hand, of course, gold medalist figure skater, very inspirational figure, who's choosing to compete for America, in part because, you know, we provided her, her father a refuge from the persecution of communism. It's a very inspiring story. And I think that there's a lot Americans can be proud of, uh, from our Olympians and everything that they achieved over in Italy. So did they both compete in the 2022 Olympics and then also in, you know, this year's Olympics? Yes, they both competed in the 2022 Olympics and in the 2026 Olympics. Okay.

Yeah, so in the article I read so that when Liu went to China, there were actually, she needed protection because of that, that's fine. Do you? Yeah. Yeah, the Chinese Communist Party is incredibly aggressive. I think this is something that not everyone understands just how sort of committed the Chinese Communist Party is to really stretching its centicles into the Chinese diaspora. You know, and the Liu family's harassment is not the only case of this, right? The Chinese Communist Party has operated secret police departments here in the United States. They frequently harass Chinese students studying in America.

And I think this is a really good moment to remember that the Cold War is not over, right? The Chinese Communist Party is committed to global revolution. And they have, like the Soviet Union, that they have a communist underground that is seeking to advance the Chinese Communist Party's interests, not just in mainland China, but all across the world. And the Olympics are really one of these places where the Chinese Communist Party tries to sort of pursue its own ends in this regard. And I think that the Alyssa Liu story really demonstrates to Americans, you know, the stakes that ordinary Chinese families take face for standing up for freedom and for democracy,

whether or not they're in mainland China or, part of part of the diaspora. So do you know how Gou and Lou did this this year? Yeah, so Alyssa Lou, obviously, a two-time gold medalist. She broke a 20-year drought for American

women's figure skating. Gu, she meddled, but she got two silver medals and one gold medal, which was kind of a disappointment. So in that sense, I think that America won. Of course, it was the greatest winner Olympics

performance for the United States of America in our history, actually. We won more gold medals than ever before. And so I think we can consider this a success for the United States of America and a failure for the Chinese Communist Party. And for people across America and eyes across the world that have watched the Olympics unfold this year, kind of seeing that mercenary approach in China versus the voluntary approach in America, what message should observers take away from this? I think the really profound lesson here is the relationship between human excellence and freedom, right? I think these totalitarian systems think that they can create, you know, communists say that they can create a new man because of their sort of utopian aspirations. But that's just not the case.

The reality is that freedom doesn't just make people free and doesn't just let people live. live, you know, the sort of phrase that you hear sometimes is low but solid, right? Freedom is a low but solid aspiration. But I think really what stories like to list lose, other Olympians, and so many other American stories in industry and literature, in science, right? I think what it really proves is that freedom is the atmosphere where human beings can truly flourish, where human beings can pursue excellence to the highest possible degree. And so in that sense, I think it really demonstrates the superiority, the choiceworthiness of the American way of life.

Yeah, that is beautiful, Mr. Lucchese. So that is all the time that we have for today. Thank you so much for having the time to talk. It's been a pleasure to have you on. It's been great to be on. Thank you so much. Our guest has been Michael Lucchese, and I am James Jawsky. I'm Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM.

You know,