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You say you want to be liberated from these kind of meatheaded prejudices of nationalism, but the level of sacrifice required for establishing brotherhood of man on a universal scale doesn't actually seem to interest many of these people.

And in fact, many times it just seems like a cover story for ditching their obligations to their fellow citizens.

Hello, I'm Knows of Client Show on the Vox Media podcast network.

My guest today is Michael Brennan-Dowardy. I've known Michael a long time, he's at the National Review. He's a very thoughtful, populous conservative.

I always read with a lot of interest and admiration. And he's brought out a book. It's called My Father Left Me, Ireland, an American Sun Search for Home.

And so obviously on some levels in memoir. And it's not quite that too. It is, I was reading it. I sat down at a coffee shop to read it.

And I have these notes at the beginning. And it's like in like blue pen. It says it's about fatherhood, identity, nationalism, wonkishness, and individualism.

So these are about big themes and pretty big things that I've been thinking about. The show has been thinking about.

And so I wanted to talk to Michael, not just about his experience, but about an argument that is laced through the book.

And one that I think is laced through our politics and our culture now, it's really about modernity. And about whether or not some of the claims made in modernity, about the worth of nations, and about the value of a kind of ever empirical, perfecting attitude towards culture rather than an attitude of suffering and grand mission.

Whether or not these things are robbing us of something or bringing us something. I would say this podcast begins a little bit slow, but it gets into I genuinely think some of the deepest territory of any of these conversations I've done and probably has more of my world view clearly articulated in it than almost any podcast I've done.

I think this is an interesting lesson. And I think these are these are topics that in some ways it's useful to be able to address through people's life experience because they're topics that to some of the conversations we have in here, they're hard to address through data.

We don't often have a news peg or or an event that lets us discuss modernity or you know what is the right way to think of the nation or what role has a nation played.

So when is it doing something positive for us and when is it failing us. So I found a lot of values conversation. I hope you will too.

We're going to do the MA in a couple days. So this is the final call I'll make for asking me anything questions. Given its final call, I'm looking for some off the beaten path questions, some weirder questions. I appreciate all the great ones we've gotten so far.

And so we've gotten a lot of the you know what have you changed your mind on or how do you prep for podcasts. These are great questions and I'll answer them.

But but go a little weird. Let's try to get some stuff in there out of left field. So I'm as a client show at box.com again send questions to as a client show at box.com and you know be creative and I'll try to be creative in my responses.

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