He bought the law

Future Perfect

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, Society & Culture, Philosophy, Tech News, News

4.5 • 622 Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2019

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John M. Olin isn’t a household name, but his foundation helped create the Federalist Society, turned federal judges against environmental protection and unions, and bankrolled conservative polemicists like Dinesh D’Souza. How did one small foundation do so much to advance conservatism?Jane Mayer’s history of the Olin FoundationMayer’s full book Dark MoneyJames Piereson remembers his time as president of the Olin FoundationJohn Miller’s sympathetic history of the Olin FoundationSteve Teles on the rise of the conservative legal movementAmanda Hollis-Brusky’s history of the Federalist SocietyAsh, Chen, and Naidu on the impact of the Manne seminarsThe time Tim Geithner called Dinesh D’Souza a dick Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Let me just look at the picture in here.
0:02.2	I've got, I thought I had the picture of them, too.
0:04.4	Hold on.
0:05.2	Jane Mayer is the Chief Washington correspondent for the New Yorker.
0:08.4	And she's flipping through her book for an old photograph.
0:11.4	Here he is.
0:12.2	John M. Olin.
0:13.2	Kind of central casting plutocrat.
0:18.5	We're looking at a guy who's wearing a blazer and a pocket square to go out on a hunt with his dogs.
0:24.8	His dogs were beautiful, I have to say.
0:27.1	He really did have gorgeous-looking Labradors.
0:29.8	We can't fault him for that.
0:31.2	No.
0:32.9	But John Olin was more than a stuffy guy with some good dogs.
0:37.0	He was also one of the most influential conservative philanthropists of the 20th century.
0:42.3	In Jane Mears' book, Dark Money, she does a deep dig into that influence.
0:46.3	He is the founder of the Olin Foundation, and he is the inheritor of the Olin Company, which his father started.
0:56.0	The Olin Company made all kinds of things, from mining explosives to munitions to chemicals.
1:02.6	John M. Olin inherited the company from his dad, and he was a stickler for hard work.
1:07.6	According to one biographer, he didn't really believe in days off.
1:12.0	And that hard work mindset translated into some pretty conservative values. John M. Olin was very anti-Big government,
1:19.1	but the truth about the Olin business was that it exploded thanks to the government, first in
	...

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