‘This Is Western Civilization, Bro’ | Interview: Stephanie Slade

What can and can’t the government do? Can it ban softball on Sundays? Or perhaps prohibit little old ladies from having Bible study at the local library? What about drag queen story hour? Can it—horror of horrors—tell you that you have to mow your lawn? Joining The Remnant to help us sort through these thorny political thickets is Stephanie Slade, author of a popular new book about fusionism. Listen in as Stephanie and Jonah Goldberg cover the dissident right, Frank Myer, Brent Bozell, liberalism, libertarianism, virtue, and everything in between. Show Notes: The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Dispatch, based in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, enormous lizards roamed the Earth. More immediately prior to that, Jonah spent two decades at National Review, where he was a senior editor, among other things. He is also a bestselling author, longtime columnist for the Los Angeles Times, commentator for CNN, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. When he is not writing the G-File or hosting The Remnant podcast, he finds real joy in family time, attending to his dogs and cat, and blaming Steve Hayes for various things. The podcast transcription below was generated using artificial intelligence and may include occasional errors or misspellings. Music 0:00 [intro music] Ladies and gentlemen. Music 0:16 Can I please have your attention? Can you dig it? [crowd cheering] Jonah Goldberg 0:27 Greetings dear listeners, this is Jonah Goldberg, host of the Remnant Podcast, brought to you by The Dispatch and Dispatch Media. I can't tell you in the last, I don't know, three months, Jonah Goldberg 0:38 how many propeller-beaning, Jonah Goldberg 0:42 intellectual history, egghead nerds have emailed me, texted me, DMed me, pulled me over on the street and said, "You have to have Stephanie Slade on to talk about her fusionism book. You're gonna have her on, right? Right? Right?" Like, it got really annoying, and if I didn't like Stephanie so much and if I didn't like the book so much, I would have just, out of pure ornery contrariness, refused to have her on. But I couldn't let my own annoyance with people pestering me get in the way. Uh, Stephanie is a senior editor at Reason, Reason Magazine. I mean, if you don't know this, man, today is the wrong day to tune into the Remnant, but The Reason is sort of the flagship libertarian magazine, has been for quite a while, though there are, there are many rooms in the mansion of libertarianism, which we'll get to in a moment. So some people, some people call themselves libertarians have big fights with it. But anyway, it's a great magazine, and she's the author of Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, and the Future of the American Right. I mean, she's written for all sorts of places. We, we ran an excerpt from her book at The Dispatch, which we were happy to do, um, and she covers the intersection of religion and politics and all sorts of other things. And Stephanie, welcome back to The Remnant. Interactive transcripts are available to Premium members. Join to follow along with the audio. Join Now More We Think You’d Like