This episode is brought to you by the Master of Arts and Catholic Education program at the Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology.

Dedicated to the renewal of Catholic education, this degree equips school teachers and administrators to bring Christ to the center of every classroom

through a focus on sacred scripture, theology, Christian anthropology, and the traditional liberal arts.

Johnny Berkha is president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute,

the renowned conservative student organization.

Before that, he was at the American Conservative magazine. He has a nice edition, a new edition out of classic writings on leadership,

just published with the title Gateway to Statesmanship, selections from Xenophon to Churchill,

with a long introduction by Johnny. On a first name basis,

we've had interaction for a while. Welcome. That's our topic today. Welcome, President Berka.

Thanks so much for having me, Mark. All right, your opening sentences in the introduction.

Give us a dismal, a dismal assertion.

Americans no longer have faith in their leaders.

What the heck has happened?

Well, it's a question of where we want to begin.

I begin the book, you know, focusing in particular on the state of American leadership post-Cold War,

reciting a narrative that I think would probably be familiar to many of your leaders.

You know, there was sort of an overconfidence.

There was a highly ideological view that history had reached its climax and that

we would be entering an era where, you know, the historic tensions caused by religion first and

foremost, but also just cultural differences. We're going to take a backseat to the triumph of

more abstract,

idealistic principles of individualism, global markets, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know,

...