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Glenn Ellmers
Glenn Ellmers is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute
Series
Recent Episodes
So it happens that Francis Fukuyama, who became famous because of his of book The End of History and the Last Man back in the early 1990s, is having a moment in 2026. See, he really didn't mean it, and besides, he is no longer even a neo-con but has moved left because Donald Trump ruined his parade by restarting history. Or at least disrupting it. Or something. And suddenly he's getting glowing notices in the liberal media. Big surprise there. Glenn Ellmers of the Claremont Institute takes the truant John Yoo's place this week, and as the author of a book that is a sharp contrast to Fukuyama (The Narrow Passage: Plato, Foucault, and the Possibility of Political Philosophy) is the ideal person to assist our beatdown of Fukuyama. Not to worry, and don't be scared. We keep our mentions of Hegel and Kojève to a minimum, and use the occasion to beat down on Progressives—our favorite target. Our cameo segment this week is with comedian David Deeble, who has lately made his first comedy club appearances in . . . Germany. In German. Is this conceivable? As he likes to say, "There are two things Germans don't joke about: Hitler, and everything else." We talk about the whole comedy scene, and whether comedy clubs are in fact the front line of turning back wokery. And Sydney Sweeney is back in the news. What's not to like this week?
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Steve Hayward
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Ricochet
July 2023
John Yoo is away overseas this week, so Steve and Lucretia are joined by Glenn Ellmers, author of the brand new book The Narrow Passage: Plato, Foucault, and the Possibilty of Political Philosophy. Do not be intimidated by the mention of Foucault or anything else in the title, as this crispy-written and very accessible book comes in at a reader-friendly 79 pages (Glenn admits that it began as an essay that grew a little out of control). It sheds a lot of light on our current culture war, which is really a continuation of the ructions in the country from the left that began in the 1960s but fooled us by receding briefly in the shadows for a time when the Cold War ended. More than that, though, the roots of our current contentions trace all the way back to Plato, and from whom we may also find some answers. As as we say, all this in 79 pages! Steve and Lucretia also dilate the Farce of the Week in Washington, the latest lower court rulings that look like promising attacks on the administrative state, and why the Equal Protection Clause was such a mess at the Supreme Court for 150 years, contra Alan Dershowitz's argument that Earl Warren had it right all along. No sale! We'll be back next week with John, when we'll subject him to a heroic pummeling over his new co-authored book everyone should get, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court. Send in your questions! Our topical exit music this week is "Nihilist" by a group called The Ancients, which fits our discussion in this episode on both ends.
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March 2023
John Marini was one of the first conservative thinkers in 2016 to recognize that Donald Trump posed an existential threat to the administrative state, in a series of articles that are included in a recent collection we highly recommend, Unmasking the Administrative State: The Crisis of American Politics in the Twenty-First Century. In this second half of our conversation (take in the first part here if you missed it), Glenn Ellmers helps us draw John out further on these deeper aspects of the problem, noting that conservatives might actually find some insight into the authoritarianism of the administrative state from an unlikely source—certain French social theorists, in particular Foucault. Now I know what you’re thinking, and yes, references to Foucault usually summon my gag reflex, too, but you should hear out John and Glenn on this point. From time to time I bait Lucretia with the suggestion that we can sometimes turn the left’s dogmas against them, and she usually doesn’t buy it, but here we may see some support for this idea.
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February 2023
The “administrative state” is an obscure and ungainly phrase, but in recent years the term has burst out into general use, though it is often conflated with another term currently popular—the “deep state.” They are not the same thing, though they do overlap, and “deep state” does enjoy the advantage of being shorter and pithier. What is “the administrative state”? It is a mistake to confuse it with mere bureaucracy, or just concentrated executive branch power, nor should it be analyzed principally as an economic problem on account of high taxes or stifling regulation. It is partly a constitutional issue, as it involves the erosion of the separation of powers. But the administrative state is a more profound problem than that. The premier analyst of this subject is Prof. John Marini of the University of Nevada at Reno. Prof. Marini is retiring from his long teaching and writing career at the end of this semester, and we decided it was high time we sit down with him for an extended conversation involving one of my “origin story” intellectual histories before proceeding to the main event. John explains the philosophical origins of what he prefers to call the “rational state,” taking after Hegel. But it is no abstract theory. It leads to the practical result we’ve just experienced with COVID, where the presumptions of scientific expertise were married to the authority of executive government to yield a wholly authoritarian response. "Lucretia" and Glenn Ellmers, both dutiful students of Prof. Marini, join me for this fascinating conversation, which we'll continue with next week in the sequel we're calling "Marini Strikes Back."
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November 2022
Glenn Ellmers has done it again, with a new provocation that "the constitutional republic created by our founders no longer exists." His article posted at American Greatness, "Hard Truths and Radical Possibilities," backs up this startling proposition with five very stark supporting arguments, starting with the fact that elections no longer suffice to control our government (even if they are fair and above reproach). Elections are now a mere nuisance—barely a speed bump—for the administrative state that is determined to rule us regardless of the opinions of the American people. Neither political competence in the ordinary sense nor "normal politics" are sufficient to remedy the crisis we are in: Our current woke oligarchy becomes more fanatical every month, yet instead of getting weaker or provoking a popular backlash, it seems to grow ever stronger. In part, this is because the elites have maintained a semblance of institutional normalcy.
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John Yoo•
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August 2022
Glenn Ellmers has done it again, with a fresh provocation entitled "America Never Existed." Say what?!?! Did he drink some 1619 Moonshine or something? Here's his lede: It is possible (not certain, but possible) that within the next 20 years or so, the United States will no longer exist. . . The end of the American republic would most likely mean the end of self-government all over the globe—the beginning of a new dark age. The United States, even now, is the world’s greatest example of constitutional democracy, and if the cause of freedom fails here, it probably will not survive anywhere. More than that, however, the end of liberty on these shores would most likely mean the end of any memory of America. The United States would not simply cease to exist; it would never have existed at all. Well. Strong stuff indeed. I decided that I wanted first crack at a podcast with Glenn (partly to scoop our rivals at the American Mind podcast), but as I'm on the road again this week, I delegated the task to Lucretia, who skillfully walks Glenn through what he's up to.
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June 2022
Two favorite guests and friends join us at the bar for this week's happy hour, to hash out bar fights they started in less reputable watering holes. Jeremy Carl argues in The American Conservative that there needs to be "A Republican Counter-Elite," while Glenn Ellmers continues to spark controversy with his article a year ago, "Conservatism Is No Longer Enough," and now, last week, a sequel (channeling his Lordship Kevin Bacon in Animal House)—"'Remain Calm, All Is Well'; How Not to Save the Republic." What we're really after is a response to two great axioms from classic authors. The first is G.K. Chesterton, who wrote 100 years ago: "The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected." How is it that we've taken so long to catch up with his perception? The second is from Eric Hoffer, and bears on the dissatisfaction expressed today in the phrase "Conservatism, Inc"—"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."
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April 2022
Jordan Peterson took the intellectual world by storm in 2016, bursting on the scene in a way not seen by a non-leftist thinker since Allan Bloom in the late 1980s. His idiosyncratic mix of Jungian psychology, existential philosophy, and common-sense self-help advice (also lobsters!) as expressed in his best-seller 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, is hard to sort out at times. Glenn Ellmers, one of our favorite recent authors (who also got a long notice from Thomas Byrne Edsall's latest New York Times column this week), took a deep dive into "the Jordan Peterson phenomenon" in the Claremont Review of Books back in 2018, having attended one of Peterson's live appearances in Washington DC. Above all, we marvel at how Peterson cooly flummoxes his critics and media interlocutors, as in the justly notorious TV interview with the obtuse Cathy Newman in Britain in 2018. One thing the enthusiastic response to Peterson demonstrates is how large is the void of sensible intellectual and moral thought available especially to young people. Peterson's capacious and eclectic approach to communicating is an implicit reproach to conservatives who reside too narrowly in policy wonkery and stale cliches. Can Peterson be imitated or replicated? Probably not, but there are some general lessons to be learned from his example. Did you know there is actually a Jordan Peterson drinking song? It was the obvious choice for exit music for a podcast organized around whisky.
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February 2022
Almost completely ignored by conservative media, there is a growing generation gap emerging within young conservatives that in some ways resembles the "generation gap" of the 1960s which saw the new left "hippie" generation emerge from liberal homes, as Midge Decter explained in her early book Liberal Parents, Radical Children. Now it is happening on the right. I started picking up on this story with Michael Anton's long essay almost three years ago on the phenomenon of the underground but highly popular book Bronze Age Mindset, which, it must be said, is a very different book from The Conservative Mind or The Road to Serfdom. Then I started following a group of mostly younger conservatives who participate actively on Twitter, and sometimes live in the "Spaces" chat communities that Twitter has launched.
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September 2021
Next Tuesday, Encounter Books will publish Glenn Ellmers' magisterial intellectual biography The Soul of Politics: Harry Jaffa and the Fight for America, and Glenn joins us this week to walk through some of the highlights in the book in what is turning out to be a month-long "Jaffapalooza." Naturally, we draw Glenn into our running argument about the problems of communicating the proper understanding of the principle of equality in an age of raging "equity," which is not the same thing. But from there we move on to surveying the capacious mind of Jaffa, including his excellent but overlooked work on Shakespeare, and how, over course of 40 years, he changed his mind about Lincoln and the American Founding. Glenn had access to a large number of Jaffa's early letters and papers that no one has seen before, such as his extensive correspondence with Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (among others) over the years.
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April 2021
This special 250th episode of the Power Line podcast offers a twist on our Three Whisky Happy Hour format, as Lucretia and I put aside our Glen Livet in favor of talking with Glenn Ellmers. Glenn is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, research fellow at Hillsdale College, author of a forthcoming biography of Harry Jaffa entitled The Soul of Politics, and author of several recent articles at The American Mind on the state of the conservative movement today that are raising eyebrows and blood-pressure counts. The most controversial recent piece is "'Conservatism' Is No Longer Enough." It throws down a basic challenge about whether there is much left to "conserve" in American institutions and culture right now without a serious counter-revolutionary effort. It drew the attention of Tucker Carlson earlier this week: you can see a short preview for the episode here. Our conversation ranges widely over what prudence demands, and whether conservatives ought to support an Article V constitutional convention to discuss formal secession or other changes to restore constitutional government. Conservatives have always feared an Article V effort might lead to a "runaway convention," but at this point a runaway convention might be the best case scenario. As whisky drinkers know, the apex of Glen Livet is their "Founders Reserve" bottlings; you might say the apex here is "Glenn Ellmers Preserving Founders." And then for the last few minutes Lucretia and get back to our whiskies, preview a couple new ones, review the latest Ashli Babbit magic number, and celebrate that Berkeley is finally going to hire a professor of cannabis research after all these years.
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