This is an episode about the crisis of American man.

I recently rewatched a classic of American cinema, one of the two greats of American film,

the multi-falking, and I realized that it and the novel on which it is based are both much

more than just fun pop culture or even great pop culture.

I kind of knew this, I guess, in the back of my mind that this was true, but revisiting

the movie really inspired me to go back to the novel too and dig deeper into them,

because they are both, and the novel especially pivotal classics for America, but also for America

is kind of the developing vanguard of the West.

We don't think of ourselves this way in America all the time, but we talked a little bit about

it with Senator Cruz when we had him on, but because America is our home and we're familiar with it

and also because it is big and fresh and comes under a lot of flak, gets a lot of flak,

we kind of think of America as this crass, lowbrow place.

And I'm going to get into ways in which some elements of that perception might actually be right,

but that's largely speaking, it's false to think about America as just this backwater.

We are the living tradition of the West.

I mean, we are where the greatness of European statesmanship past all of its wisdom,

our founders looked back to the ancients and to classical political philosophy and classical philosophy, full stop.

And the development of our culture is the development of Western culture.

So it's a mistake to shrug off America as having nothing to offer to these high classical traditions.

And we've already done one episode on Gone with the Wind, so you guys know that I'm not averse to or allergic to pop culture.

I think the pop culture genuinely matters, and I think that when you start to do a podcast about the West

and the great works of the West, everyone kind of assumes you're going to be reading like Dusty Old Scrolls from Yon 1500s.

...