1
00:00:04,920 --> 00:00:08,360
Speaker 1: On this episode of news World, frank Meyer devised the

2
00:00:08,400 --> 00:00:14,360
Speaker 1: blueprint for American conservatism, fusionism championed by Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan,

3
00:00:14,720 --> 00:00:18,400
Speaker 1: and so many to this day. Yet earlier in his life,

4
00:00:18,760 --> 00:00:22,400
Speaker 1: communist in London Chantel free frank Meyer to block the

5
00:00:22,440 --> 00:00:26,160
Speaker 1: deportation of a comrade who was their cause celeb Those

6
00:00:26,200 --> 00:00:29,920
Speaker 1: fervent Marxists could never have predicted that their hero would

7
00:00:29,920 --> 00:00:34,600
Speaker 1: one day provide the intellectual energy necessary to propel conservatives

8
00:00:34,800 --> 00:00:39,800
Speaker 1: into political power. The Man who invented Conservatism unveils one

9
00:00:39,840 --> 00:00:44,520
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century's great untold stories. A communist termed conservative,

10
00:00:44,840 --> 00:00:47,919
Speaker 1: an anti war activist turned soldier, and a free love

11
00:00:48,080 --> 00:00:52,839
Speaker 1: enthusiast termed family man whose big idea captured the American right.

12
00:00:53,600 --> 00:00:57,120
Speaker 1: Here to discuss frank Meyer's life, I'm really pleased to

13
00:00:57,160 --> 00:01:01,760
Speaker 1: welcome my guests. Daniel Flemming, your editor of The American Spectator,

14
00:01:02,120 --> 00:01:04,920
Speaker 1: serves as a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution for

15
00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:07,920
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four twenty twenty five Academic here and

16
00:01:08,080 --> 00:01:23,959
Speaker 1: is the author of seven books. Dan, welcome, and thank

17
00:01:23,959 --> 00:01:25,320
Speaker 1: you for joining me on your tour.

18
00:01:25,880 --> 00:01:26,720
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.

19
00:01:26,959 --> 00:01:31,319
Speaker 1: What attracted you to dig into Frank Meyer's life.

20
00:01:31,760 --> 00:01:34,560
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people are attracted to write

21
00:01:34,800 --> 00:01:39,280
Speaker 2: about figures like Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill that everybody knows.

22
00:01:39,360 --> 00:01:42,360
Speaker 2: I'm the opposite. I want to write about somebody that

23
00:01:42,440 --> 00:01:45,560
Speaker 2: I think people should know about but don't. And Frank

24
00:01:45,840 --> 00:01:48,280
Speaker 2: had one of those stories that you know, as you

25
00:01:48,360 --> 00:01:50,520
Speaker 2: put it in the introduction, it was one of the

26
00:01:50,520 --> 00:01:53,320
Speaker 2: great untold stories of the twentieth century. And so the

27
00:01:53,400 --> 00:01:56,760
Speaker 2: idea of telling this exciting story the way I look

28
00:01:56,800 --> 00:01:59,960
Speaker 2: at it, the early conservative movement or ideologues in general,

29
00:02:00,320 --> 00:02:01,840
Speaker 2: there are a lot of them that live kind of

30
00:02:01,880 --> 00:02:05,400
Speaker 2: black and white, dull lives. That's most of them. I

31
00:02:05,440 --> 00:02:09,639
Speaker 2: think there's a few that operated in technicolor. Whittaker, Chambers,

32
00:02:09,680 --> 00:02:13,240
Speaker 2: Wilmore Kendall would be examples of that. Fred Meyer lived

33
00:02:13,240 --> 00:02:15,560
Speaker 2: in three D. He really pops off the page. So

34
00:02:15,639 --> 00:02:18,200
Speaker 2: as a biographer, he did a lot of the heavy

35
00:02:18,200 --> 00:02:20,119
Speaker 2: lifting for me, just in the way that he lived

36
00:02:20,120 --> 00:02:20,680
Speaker 2: his life.

37
00:02:20,960 --> 00:02:22,799
Speaker 1: Before you decided to do the book, had you been

38
00:02:23,560 --> 00:02:25,680
Speaker 1: aware of and influenced by Frank Meyer?

39
00:02:26,880 --> 00:02:29,799
Speaker 2: I had read in Defensive Freedom. I think for young

40
00:02:29,880 --> 00:02:33,320
Speaker 2: concerns coming up, that's one of those kind of maybe

41
00:02:33,320 --> 00:02:37,040
Speaker 2: a dozen canonical books, of which you'd have to have

42
00:02:37,080 --> 00:02:39,240
Speaker 2: read eight of them to kind of have entry into

43
00:02:39,440 --> 00:02:42,519
Speaker 2: serious conversations with other serious concernis. So i'd certainly read

44
00:02:42,520 --> 00:02:44,920
Speaker 2: in Defensive Freedom. I don't think I called myself a

45
00:02:44,919 --> 00:02:48,560
Speaker 2: fusionist or thought a whole lot about Frank Meyer, And

46
00:02:48,560 --> 00:02:51,120
Speaker 2: in fact, my prentice coming in is I don't want

47
00:02:51,160 --> 00:02:52,880
Speaker 2: to write about one of these audiolongs. I want to

48
00:02:52,880 --> 00:02:55,960
Speaker 2: write about someone exciting. I had written about Jim Jones

49
00:02:56,000 --> 00:02:58,359
Speaker 2: and Harvey Milk. In a previous book, I wrote about

50
00:02:58,440 --> 00:03:02,520
Speaker 2: Erin Claffer, who really was exciting character, various figures on

51
00:03:02,560 --> 00:03:05,919
Speaker 2: the American left, like Julius Wayland, John Reid. I thought

52
00:03:05,960 --> 00:03:08,640
Speaker 2: those were exciting guys. I thought, well, geef Rick Meyer,

53
00:03:08,680 --> 00:03:11,079
Speaker 2: he's boring. Well he was the furthest thing from boring.

54
00:03:11,520 --> 00:03:15,080
Speaker 1: So in a sense, you approached this as a professional biographer.

55
00:03:15,919 --> 00:03:18,880
Speaker 2: Yes, not as a Meyer writer, a fusionist or anything

56
00:03:18,960 --> 00:03:20,840
Speaker 2: like that, but just someone that wanted to tell an

57
00:03:20,880 --> 00:03:25,200
Speaker 2: interesting story. And as I say, Frank lived an interesting story.

58
00:03:25,240 --> 00:03:27,880
Speaker 2: So that made my job a lot easier. Part of what.

59
00:03:27,880 --> 00:03:31,920
Speaker 1: Strikes me in Meyer's life is that he had a

60
00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:36,880
Speaker 1: permanent sense of passion although it shifted radically from being

61
00:03:36,920 --> 00:03:40,440
Speaker 1: a passion for communism to being a passion for conservatism.

62
00:03:40,560 --> 00:03:42,240
Speaker 1: But would you agree that there was something at the

63
00:03:42,280 --> 00:03:45,720
Speaker 1: core of his being that required passion in order to

64
00:03:45,800 --> 00:03:47,080
Speaker 1: have fully lived his life.

65
00:03:47,800 --> 00:03:49,880
Speaker 2: I think so, And I think people want to be

66
00:03:49,960 --> 00:03:53,920
Speaker 2: around passion. Very early on, I see a letter than

67
00:03:53,920 --> 00:03:58,120
Speaker 2: I found that is saying to Frank's from a prep

68
00:03:58,160 --> 00:04:01,080
Speaker 2: school teacher in Pennsylvania, saying to Frank, you know I

69
00:04:01,080 --> 00:04:04,920
Speaker 2: miss our scintillating conversations. Frank's back at Oxford. He's in Pennsylvania.

70
00:04:05,320 --> 00:04:07,120
Speaker 2: You know, I want to go drinking with you. You're

71
00:04:07,200 --> 00:04:09,960
Speaker 2: so exciting when you give toasts and you drink. And

72
00:04:10,000 --> 00:04:11,480
Speaker 2: I want to do a cooks tour this part of

73
00:04:11,520 --> 00:04:13,800
Speaker 2: the country with you. And all these books that you recommended,

74
00:04:13,800 --> 00:04:15,920
Speaker 2: I want to read them. And just went not and

75
00:04:15,960 --> 00:04:18,719
Speaker 2: all him. You know that letter was written by James Mitchner,

76
00:04:19,160 --> 00:04:22,080
Speaker 2: and that to me was very cobbin. But Frank came

77
00:04:22,200 --> 00:04:24,320
Speaker 2: all of these friends. This is a guy fifteen to

78
00:04:24,440 --> 00:04:27,120
Speaker 2: twenty years before he wrote Tales of the South Pacific,

79
00:04:27,120 --> 00:04:29,560
Speaker 2: which is one of the most famous books that became

80
00:04:29,680 --> 00:04:32,400
Speaker 2: of the most famous plays in American history. And here

81
00:04:32,400 --> 00:04:35,200
Speaker 2: he is as a prep school teacher, basically begging Frank

82
00:04:35,240 --> 00:04:37,360
Speaker 2: Meyer to be his friend. So when you say passion,

83
00:04:37,680 --> 00:04:40,360
Speaker 2: people exude passion while other people want to be around

84
00:04:40,400 --> 00:04:44,120
Speaker 2: that guy. In Great Britain, Frank was the Johnny Appleseed

85
00:04:44,320 --> 00:04:46,960
Speaker 2: of the communist movement amongst the youth. When I looked

86
00:04:46,960 --> 00:04:49,880
Speaker 2: at MI I five and I six to classified your tingle,

87
00:04:50,160 --> 00:04:54,520
Speaker 2: they repeatedly identify him as the founder of the student

88
00:04:54,560 --> 00:04:57,760
Speaker 2: Communist Party movement in Great Britain. And here's this guy

89
00:04:57,839 --> 00:05:00,520
Speaker 2: that does this in England, that is the Jonny apple

90
00:05:00,560 --> 00:05:03,440
Speaker 2: Steed of communism amongst the universities in England. He comes

91
00:05:03,480 --> 00:05:07,240
Speaker 2: over to America estentially does the same thing for conservatives.

92
00:05:07,760 --> 00:05:10,800
Speaker 1: Let me start with his Becker. What do you think

93
00:05:10,839 --> 00:05:15,560
Speaker 1: there was in his childhood and his early youth that

94
00:05:15,720 --> 00:05:19,279
Speaker 1: led him, first of all to be so passionately communist.

95
00:05:19,880 --> 00:05:24,240
Speaker 2: Well, his mother was very active in Judaism and his

96
00:05:24,279 --> 00:05:27,920
Speaker 2: father was a capitalist, and at about sixteen Frank rebelled

97
00:05:27,920 --> 00:05:32,280
Speaker 2: against both of those things, religion and capitalism. When he

98
00:05:32,320 --> 00:05:35,880
Speaker 2: gets to the United Kingdom, he kind of styles himself

99
00:05:35,880 --> 00:05:39,880
Speaker 2: a revolutionary and he found something called the October Club,

100
00:05:39,960 --> 00:05:42,640
Speaker 2: which is a club that still exists in Oxford to

101
00:05:42,720 --> 00:05:47,400
Speaker 2: this day, and Frank gets to Oxford, there are zero

102
00:05:47,600 --> 00:05:50,640
Speaker 2: Communists in Oxford. By the time he leaves, there's three hundred.

103
00:05:50,960 --> 00:05:53,520
Speaker 2: Frank in his youth, his parents had him when they

104
00:05:53,560 --> 00:05:56,400
Speaker 2: were both around forty years old. He comes into the

105
00:05:56,400 --> 00:05:59,560
Speaker 2: world into a family in which the parents think the

106
00:05:59,560 --> 00:06:02,159
Speaker 2: prospect of them having no kids is very real. So

107
00:06:02,240 --> 00:06:04,479
Speaker 2: he's not only an only child, but he might not exist,

108
00:06:04,960 --> 00:06:07,960
Speaker 2: so he's very valued from day one. He grows up

109
00:06:08,040 --> 00:06:10,880
Speaker 2: very wealthy and kind of a high hat hotel in Newark,

110
00:06:10,880 --> 00:06:13,520
Speaker 2: New Jersey. He goes to a fancy prep school. When

111
00:06:13,560 --> 00:06:16,800
Speaker 2: he's sixteen, he meets his best friend at Belgrade Lakes,

112
00:06:16,920 --> 00:06:19,919
Speaker 2: the inspiration for On Golden Pond, and his best friend

113
00:06:19,960 --> 00:06:23,080
Speaker 2: is Eugene O'Neil junior. And he meets Eugene O'Neil, the

114
00:06:23,120 --> 00:06:27,239
Speaker 2: greatest American playwright. And at sixteen, he's bombing a copy

115
00:06:27,279 --> 00:06:30,400
Speaker 2: of Tristram Shandy off of Eugene O'Neil. They're talking in

116
00:06:30,480 --> 00:06:33,520
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty six about the prospects of war between the

117
00:06:33,600 --> 00:06:36,719
Speaker 2: United States and Japan. They're playing kind of a Marco

118
00:06:36,920 --> 00:06:40,799
Speaker 2: Polo meets Risk game in the water at Belgrade Lakes,

119
00:06:40,880 --> 00:06:43,680
Speaker 2: so He's very comfortable around a guy that at that

120
00:06:43,800 --> 00:06:46,960
Speaker 2: point had already written two Politzer Prize winning plays. When

121
00:06:47,000 --> 00:06:50,039
Speaker 2: he meets Meyer, he's writing his third in Strange Interlude,

122
00:06:50,200 --> 00:06:53,719
Speaker 2: and so Meyer at sixteen to hang that comfort level

123
00:06:54,040 --> 00:06:58,560
Speaker 2: with the famous, the intelligent, the smart people like gen O'Neil.

124
00:06:58,800 --> 00:07:01,520
Speaker 2: I think it was a great bordering on sort of

125
00:07:01,560 --> 00:07:04,240
Speaker 2: an arrogance in Frank Meyer. And I think that's part

126
00:07:04,279 --> 00:07:06,680
Speaker 2: of the reason that he was able to convince as

127
00:07:06,680 --> 00:07:08,760
Speaker 2: many people to come over to his side when he

128
00:07:08,760 --> 00:07:09,680
Speaker 2: got to Oxford.

129
00:07:10,160 --> 00:07:14,840
Speaker 1: He's a passionate advocate of whatever it is. He's passionately advocating.

130
00:07:15,160 --> 00:07:16,960
Speaker 2: Yes, and when he's at Oxford, and one of the

131
00:07:17,000 --> 00:07:19,520
Speaker 2: things he's passionate about as a lot of summer is

132
00:07:19,600 --> 00:07:24,080
Speaker 2: whooman and as he is advocating the violent overthrow of

133
00:07:24,120 --> 00:07:27,600
Speaker 2: the government of Ramsey McDonald. When I found in these

134
00:07:27,640 --> 00:07:30,960
Speaker 2: papers is that he was secretly dating the youngest daughter

135
00:07:31,040 --> 00:07:34,320
Speaker 2: of Ramsey McDonald. I have a letter from Sheila McDonald,

136
00:07:34,440 --> 00:07:37,000
Speaker 2: his youngest daughter, and Ramsey McDonald was a winning and

137
00:07:37,040 --> 00:07:39,880
Speaker 2: she says, listen the cost dis kiddiment. My dad's not around.

138
00:07:40,080 --> 00:07:42,760
Speaker 2: I'm over to ten Downing Street, will have dinner the

139
00:07:42,840 --> 00:07:45,920
Speaker 2: thing about any romantic figure in the history of communism

140
00:07:45,920 --> 00:07:48,559
Speaker 2: that you can come up with Chae Guavera, John Reid,

141
00:07:49,040 --> 00:07:52,320
Speaker 2: there is nobody that had the stones to pull off

142
00:07:52,360 --> 00:07:55,120
Speaker 2: something like that. That you were calling for the violent

143
00:07:56,200 --> 00:07:58,320
Speaker 2: of the Prime Minister of Great Britain and at the

144
00:07:58,360 --> 00:08:01,520
Speaker 2: same time you were secretly danger his daughter. Well, he

145
00:08:01,680 --> 00:08:04,000
Speaker 2: wasn't long for Great Britain, you know. I have about

146
00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:07,360
Speaker 2: one hundred and sixty pages of five and mi sixty

147
00:08:07,440 --> 00:08:11,040
Speaker 2: classified notes on Meyer. They knew where he did his banking,

148
00:08:11,080 --> 00:08:13,640
Speaker 2: they knew where he drank. They did a black bag

149
00:08:13,760 --> 00:08:15,960
Speaker 2: job on his apartment. They did put a mail cover

150
00:08:16,120 --> 00:08:19,240
Speaker 2: on his correspondence. But we're supposed to believe that they

151
00:08:19,240 --> 00:08:22,720
Speaker 2: didn't realize that he was dating. They're Big Boss's daughter.

152
00:08:23,000 --> 00:08:25,760
Speaker 2: He was dating Ramsey McDonald's daughter. I find that hard

153
00:08:25,800 --> 00:08:28,280
Speaker 2: to believe. What I know is true. What I know

154
00:08:28,400 --> 00:08:31,080
Speaker 2: is concrete, is that there were moves in the spring,

155
00:08:31,200 --> 00:08:33,920
Speaker 2: in late winter of nineteen thirty four to de poor

156
00:08:34,040 --> 00:08:37,800
Speaker 2: Frank Meyer. And this brings in people like Clement Attlee,

157
00:08:37,840 --> 00:08:40,040
Speaker 2: who becomes the Prime Minister of Great Britain. He gives

158
00:08:40,040 --> 00:08:42,920
Speaker 2: a speech in Meyer's defense on the floor of Parliament

159
00:08:43,080 --> 00:08:46,439
Speaker 2: there's a petition that goes around with Ian Forster who

160
00:08:46,480 --> 00:08:50,200
Speaker 2: re passage to India, Bertrand and Russell the Philosopher, the

161
00:08:50,240 --> 00:08:53,240
Speaker 2: Dean of Canterbury. They're all signing a petition Keith Frank Myron.

162
00:08:53,400 --> 00:08:57,000
Speaker 2: In this country, there are petitions, there are rallies, there

163
00:08:57,040 --> 00:08:59,720
Speaker 2: are dances. There when flood raises held for frank Meyer.

164
00:09:00,320 --> 00:09:04,120
Speaker 2: And ultimately this is a battle. He loses. Michael Strait,

165
00:09:04,200 --> 00:09:06,760
Speaker 2: who later was the publisher of the New Republican much

166
00:09:06,800 --> 00:09:10,120
Speaker 2: later was revealed as a Communist spy. He remembers as

167
00:09:10,160 --> 00:09:14,280
Speaker 2: a teenager marching around London with other student activists, chanting

168
00:09:14,360 --> 00:09:17,880
Speaker 2: free frank Meyer. Free frank Meyer. And in June of

169
00:09:17,920 --> 00:09:20,600
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty four they couldn't free him. They kicked him

170
00:09:20,600 --> 00:09:23,120
Speaker 2: out of the country. He went to work as a

171
00:09:23,200 --> 00:09:26,640
Speaker 2: peace activist under a guy whose name you probably remember,

172
00:09:26,679 --> 00:09:30,720
Speaker 2: Walter Ulbricht, who was the longest surving dictator of East Germany.

173
00:09:31,000 --> 00:09:34,439
Speaker 2: Imagine that a guy who had already ordered the murderer

174
00:09:34,520 --> 00:09:38,160
Speaker 2: of a policeman in Germany, Meyer is working under him

175
00:09:38,440 --> 00:09:41,520
Speaker 2: to promote peace. Melayer. In nineteen sixty two, he was

176
00:09:41,520 --> 00:09:44,679
Speaker 2: giving speeches on American college campus, is saying mister Khrushcheff

177
00:09:44,960 --> 00:09:47,400
Speaker 2: tear down this wall. That's twenty five years before Reagan

178
00:09:47,520 --> 00:09:49,960
Speaker 2: was doing it. Here he was in nineteen thirty four

179
00:09:50,400 --> 00:09:53,839
Speaker 2: working for the guy who would later erect the Berlin Wall.

180
00:09:54,160 --> 00:09:57,160
Speaker 2: So we talk of on long strange trip. Frank Meyer

181
00:09:57,240 --> 00:10:00,040
Speaker 2: certainly had a long strange trip, and it started in

182
00:10:00,120 --> 00:10:02,479
Speaker 2: nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties as a Stalinist.

183
00:10:03,040 --> 00:10:05,160
Speaker 1: No, and he works for Olbricht. Is he working with

184
00:10:05,240 --> 00:10:06,320
Speaker 1: Rolbrooket in Germany?

185
00:10:06,600 --> 00:10:09,520
Speaker 2: Oh, he's working in France because Oldbrooks at that time

186
00:10:09,679 --> 00:10:13,520
Speaker 2: was already wanted or suspected for martyring these two policemen.

187
00:10:13,760 --> 00:10:16,600
Speaker 2: And by nineteen thirty four Hitler Marrity has powers. So

188
00:10:16,960 --> 00:10:19,800
Speaker 2: the leading communists had already kind of scandal. I believe

189
00:10:19,880 --> 00:10:22,760
Speaker 2: during the Second World War, Oldbricht was safe and sound

190
00:10:22,800 --> 00:10:25,400
Speaker 2: in Moscow. But at this point he's in Paris.

191
00:10:25,880 --> 00:10:28,840
Speaker 1: What happens tomorrow? I mean here he is, he's a

192
00:10:29,000 --> 00:10:34,040
Speaker 1: internationally known celebrity among communists, and then something happens.

193
00:10:34,040 --> 00:10:37,040
Speaker 2: What happened, Well, he got to the United States, and

194
00:10:37,240 --> 00:10:39,840
Speaker 2: in the United States he's a communist for like ten years.

195
00:10:40,320 --> 00:10:42,280
Speaker 2: In Britain, he's on the board of the Communist Party

196
00:10:42,280 --> 00:10:44,600
Speaker 2: of Great Britain. He's the director of the student Bureau.

197
00:10:44,679 --> 00:10:47,160
Speaker 2: He's a big deal in Britain. In the United States,

198
00:10:47,360 --> 00:10:49,480
Speaker 2: he's sitting like a mid level manager. I mean, he

199
00:10:49,520 --> 00:10:52,480
Speaker 2: becomes the director of the Chicago Workers School. He's kind

200
00:10:52,520 --> 00:10:54,480
Speaker 2: of a big deal, but he's not at that higher

201
00:10:54,480 --> 00:10:56,280
Speaker 2: echelon in the property that he was in in Great

202
00:10:56,320 --> 00:11:00,360
Speaker 2: Britain until literally end. And so a couple of years

203
00:11:00,360 --> 00:11:02,840
Speaker 2: prior to the end of World War Two, Meyer gets

204
00:11:02,840 --> 00:11:05,160
Speaker 2: in the ear of Earl Brnoder, who was the head

205
00:11:05,160 --> 00:11:06,840
Speaker 2: of the Communist Plment in the United States, and he

206
00:11:06,920 --> 00:11:09,800
Speaker 2: splits in the lenum. He's frustrated, and he said, listen,

207
00:11:10,120 --> 00:11:14,239
Speaker 2: if we want to attract bowlers instead of these hardcore Marxists,

208
00:11:14,600 --> 00:11:18,600
Speaker 2: we need to fuse the American tradition with Marxism. And

209
00:11:18,640 --> 00:11:20,520
Speaker 2: we need to do this not just on the fourth

210
00:11:20,520 --> 00:11:22,680
Speaker 2: of July, we need to do this every day of

211
00:11:22,720 --> 00:11:26,240
Speaker 2: the year. Well, Browder went in that direction, The party

212
00:11:26,320 --> 00:11:28,800
Speaker 2: went in that direction. Whether Meyer was the one who

213
00:11:28,840 --> 00:11:31,280
Speaker 2: convinced him or not, I mean, that's just speculation. But

214
00:11:31,360 --> 00:11:34,040
Speaker 2: Broader went in that direction. And so Meyer had been

215
00:11:34,080 --> 00:11:36,520
Speaker 2: the director of Chogongo Worker School after he was teaching

216
00:11:36,559 --> 00:11:39,640
Speaker 2: at something called the Jefferson School. Browder was the general

217
00:11:39,720 --> 00:11:42,920
Speaker 2: secretary of the party. Now he was the president. They

218
00:11:43,000 --> 00:11:45,280
Speaker 2: used to sing the International when they started their meetings.

219
00:11:45,320 --> 00:11:47,719
Speaker 2: Now they sing the stump spangled Banning. So they try

220
00:11:47,800 --> 00:11:51,520
Speaker 2: to wrap up communism in the American flag and keeps

221
00:11:51,600 --> 00:11:55,480
Speaker 2: Meyer in the party. But in nineteen forty five there

222
00:11:55,520 --> 00:11:58,720
Speaker 2: comes from France something called the Duke close Slinner, which

223
00:11:58,880 --> 00:12:03,000
Speaker 2: Meyer and Browner and other communists interpreted as some guy

224
00:12:03,080 --> 00:12:07,440
Speaker 2: from France lecturing Americans on how toing the party, basically saying,

225
00:12:07,480 --> 00:12:09,920
Speaker 2: you can't be bunny buddy with capitalist anymore. You can't

226
00:12:09,920 --> 00:12:12,720
Speaker 2: support Roosevelt. There's going to be a Cold War coming

227
00:12:12,760 --> 00:12:14,880
Speaker 2: between the United States and the Soviet Union. You better

228
00:12:15,160 --> 00:12:17,200
Speaker 2: shape up and get on board and stop with this

229
00:12:17,280 --> 00:12:20,800
Speaker 2: all American communism stuff and made and broader or naive.

230
00:12:20,840 --> 00:12:22,679
Speaker 2: And they think, well, this is just this French goofball

231
00:12:22,760 --> 00:12:25,120
Speaker 2: running us this letter. It was the Kremlin. It was

232
00:12:25,160 --> 00:12:28,440
Speaker 2: Stalin telling them and warning them in not an overt way,

233
00:12:28,480 --> 00:12:31,840
Speaker 2: in a covert way, the Cold War is coming. This

234
00:12:32,000 --> 00:12:34,640
Speaker 2: temporary alliance that you have with Roosevelt in the United

235
00:12:34,679 --> 00:12:38,920
Speaker 2: States that's ending. Stop that Meyern Broader didn't want to

236
00:12:38,960 --> 00:12:41,920
Speaker 2: do that. The party dumps Brouter and they make a

237
00:12:42,000 --> 00:12:45,679
Speaker 2: villain of him, and frank Meyer kind of SLINKs out

238
00:12:45,720 --> 00:12:48,200
Speaker 2: of the party. But before he denies that, he comes

239
00:12:48,240 --> 00:12:50,240
Speaker 2: me part of a book called The Ruin to Sufican

240
00:12:50,320 --> 00:12:53,040
Speaker 2: by free Er Kayak, a guy he had known at

241
00:12:53,040 --> 00:12:56,120
Speaker 2: the London School of Economics. They both were Rockefeller funded

242
00:12:56,520 --> 00:12:59,520
Speaker 2: scholars there, and he reads this book and even as

243
00:12:59,520 --> 00:13:02,120
Speaker 2: a commune, that blows him away. He writes a review

244
00:13:02,160 --> 00:13:04,960
Speaker 2: of it. It's a positive review. It's a mixed to

245
00:13:04,960 --> 00:13:07,920
Speaker 2: positive review in a publication called The New Masses, which

246
00:13:07,960 --> 00:13:10,679
Speaker 2: was communist controlled, and at that time that's about the

247
00:13:10,720 --> 00:13:12,880
Speaker 2: only time in the history of Communist Party that you

248
00:13:12,920 --> 00:13:15,880
Speaker 2: can write a positive review of a right wing book,

249
00:13:15,920 --> 00:13:18,880
Speaker 2: of a conservative book, of a free market book. That

250
00:13:19,000 --> 00:13:21,800
Speaker 2: book the Road to Serve Them. You can not see

251
00:13:21,960 --> 00:13:24,280
Speaker 2: in his brain changing when he reviews the book in

252
00:13:24,320 --> 00:13:27,560
Speaker 2: The New Masses that he realizes that communism wasn't all

253
00:13:27,600 --> 00:13:30,000
Speaker 2: it's craped up to be. It was not democratic. What

254
00:13:30,160 --> 00:13:33,439
Speaker 2: was really democratic is the idea of freedom. I'm having

255
00:13:33,440 --> 00:13:36,240
Speaker 2: the freedom to choose what you wanted and not having

256
00:13:36,240 --> 00:13:40,199
Speaker 2: it driven down your throat by communist direct market controlled

257
00:13:40,440 --> 00:13:42,959
Speaker 2: by a few people, and so both you do close

258
00:13:43,040 --> 00:13:46,560
Speaker 2: letter and the road to serve them encourages Meyer to

259
00:13:46,640 --> 00:13:49,720
Speaker 2: leave the Communist Party. He does that in nineteen forty five.

260
00:13:50,080 --> 00:13:52,960
Speaker 2: He takes a break by nineteen fifty. When you read

261
00:13:53,000 --> 00:13:56,320
Speaker 2: what he's writing, it's clear that he has all the

262
00:13:56,440 --> 00:13:58,800
Speaker 2: language of a right winger. He is a conservative by

263
00:13:58,840 --> 00:14:02,040
Speaker 2: that point in the age had been complete by nineteen.

264
00:14:01,720 --> 00:14:23,720
Speaker 1: Fifty, having been as deep inside as you could in

265
00:14:23,800 --> 00:14:28,520
Speaker 1: the Western communist movement. He writes, Communist theory is powerful,

266
00:14:29,120 --> 00:14:32,920
Speaker 1: not because it is true most obviously is not. It

267
00:14:33,040 --> 00:14:35,400
Speaker 1: is powerful because it is believed.

268
00:14:35,960 --> 00:14:39,240
Speaker 2: Yes, And he started not believing it in the first

269
00:14:39,280 --> 00:14:41,840
Speaker 2: crack in his armor. He had sent men to their

270
00:14:41,880 --> 00:14:44,680
Speaker 2: deaths as a recruiter for the Spanish Civil War. One

271
00:14:44,720 --> 00:14:46,720
Speaker 2: of the men that he got into the Communist Party

272
00:14:46,760 --> 00:14:49,240
Speaker 2: are boys that he brought was a guy named John Cornford,

273
00:14:49,240 --> 00:14:52,480
Speaker 2: who was the great grandson of Charles Darwin. Cornford became

274
00:14:52,520 --> 00:14:56,440
Speaker 2: the mono icon of the UK Communist left. Meyer set

275
00:14:56,520 --> 00:14:59,000
Speaker 2: him up as a successor, and when Meyer left he

276
00:14:59,080 --> 00:15:02,000
Speaker 2: became the head of the Common His party of the university

277
00:15:02,040 --> 00:15:04,840
Speaker 2: students in Great Britain work for young guys in Spain

278
00:15:04,920 --> 00:15:07,400
Speaker 2: the day after his twenty for his birthday, and Meyer

279
00:15:07,480 --> 00:15:10,360
Speaker 2: feels great guilt for this. Charmies that join up World

280
00:15:10,360 --> 00:15:14,000
Speaker 2: War two and he Commists are exhorting everyone to join

281
00:15:14,080 --> 00:15:16,640
Speaker 2: up and fight Hitler, and when my turns to join,

282
00:15:16,760 --> 00:15:19,200
Speaker 2: they say no, no, no, you can't go. And Meyer's confused, Well,

283
00:15:19,240 --> 00:15:21,240
Speaker 2: you're telling everyone to go and fight Haitler. I want

284
00:15:21,280 --> 00:15:24,840
Speaker 2: to fight Aitler. And they say, look, you can't go,

285
00:15:24,880 --> 00:15:27,400
Speaker 2: and so they have a big fight. Finally they let

286
00:15:27,440 --> 00:15:30,720
Speaker 2: Meyer go. And when he joins the military. He joins

287
00:15:30,760 --> 00:15:33,320
Speaker 2: the army, he realizes the men in his squad bay

288
00:15:33,720 --> 00:15:36,480
Speaker 2: are not the proletariat that Marx had told him about.

289
00:15:36,560 --> 00:15:38,680
Speaker 2: This is something that lived in a lot of social insulation.

290
00:15:39,000 --> 00:15:42,000
Speaker 2: He was very wealthy, and he's meeting plumbers and electricians

291
00:15:42,000 --> 00:15:44,280
Speaker 2: for the first time, guys that work on assembly lines.

292
00:15:44,480 --> 00:15:46,600
Speaker 2: And he realized that what Manox had told him about

293
00:15:46,640 --> 00:15:49,360
Speaker 2: the working class was a complete lie. So there were

294
00:15:49,360 --> 00:15:51,720
Speaker 2: a number of things that led up to his departure

295
00:15:51,720 --> 00:15:54,920
Speaker 2: from the Commists party, his defection, and of course it

296
00:15:54,960 --> 00:15:57,960
Speaker 2: all ends up with him testifying at the longest, most

297
00:15:57,960 --> 00:16:00,200
Speaker 2: expensive trial in the history of the United States tip

298
00:16:00,360 --> 00:16:02,600
Speaker 2: to that point, which was the Smith Act triminial of

299
00:16:02,640 --> 00:16:05,760
Speaker 2: nineteen forty nine. Meyer was called a slow witness, a

300
00:16:05,800 --> 00:16:09,880
Speaker 2: mystery witness, and he helped send Gus Hall, Eugene Dennis,

301
00:16:09,920 --> 00:16:12,080
Speaker 2: a lot of the leaders of the Communist Party, eleven

302
00:16:12,160 --> 00:16:14,400
Speaker 2: leaders of the Communist Party. He helped send them to

303
00:16:14,400 --> 00:16:15,800
Speaker 2: federal prison for five years.

304
00:16:16,320 --> 00:16:18,800
Speaker 1: How did that transition to come into the FBI recruit

305
00:16:18,880 --> 00:16:19,280
Speaker 1: him or what?

306
00:16:20,080 --> 00:16:22,920
Speaker 2: Maer was friends in the party with a guy named

307
00:16:22,960 --> 00:16:28,160
Speaker 2: Louis Butdenz. Louis Budenz was Ultimately he deflects in a

308
00:16:28,240 --> 00:16:30,880
Speaker 2: much more polorful way than Meyer does. Mayer was a

309
00:16:30,880 --> 00:16:34,320
Speaker 2: really powerful character, but at Meyer's defection, he kind of

310
00:16:34,320 --> 00:16:38,000
Speaker 2: slinked out of the party. It was very nondescript. Wolfspudenz

311
00:16:38,040 --> 00:16:40,960
Speaker 2: did something on precedent in the history of the Communist Party.

312
00:16:41,000 --> 00:16:43,800
Speaker 2: Him and Meyer for years were talking about Americanizing the

313
00:16:43,840 --> 00:16:47,720
Speaker 2: party and Meyer had some success in doing that. And

314
00:16:47,760 --> 00:16:50,120
Speaker 2: so when he left the party, he tips my rof

315
00:16:50,160 --> 00:16:53,400
Speaker 2: I'm leaving, and Meyer doesn't rat him out. Meyer remains

316
00:16:53,400 --> 00:16:55,520
Speaker 2: his friend, which is unusual for someone in the party.

317
00:16:55,960 --> 00:16:58,360
Speaker 2: But Louis Pudenz at this point is the editor of

318
00:16:58,400 --> 00:17:01,840
Speaker 2: the Daily Worker. On the same day that he leaves

319
00:17:01,880 --> 00:17:04,320
Speaker 2: the party. He is on the masthead as the managing

320
00:17:04,400 --> 00:17:07,200
Speaker 2: editor of The Daily Worker. The most famous Catholic priest

321
00:17:07,280 --> 00:17:10,480
Speaker 2: in the United States, Fulton Sheen converts him to Catholicism

322
00:17:10,680 --> 00:17:13,480
Speaker 2: and Saint Patrick's Cathedral, and it's in every newspaper with

323
00:17:13,520 --> 00:17:15,840
Speaker 2: the country. But heame's heah of the Daily Worker, just

324
00:17:15,840 --> 00:17:18,880
Speaker 2: converted to Catholicism, and now he's an anti communist. Meier

325
00:17:19,000 --> 00:17:21,600
Speaker 2: didn't leave like that, but Budenz a few years later,

326
00:17:21,640 --> 00:17:24,040
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty seven, he says, Meyer, listen, there's some

327
00:17:24,080 --> 00:17:26,720
Speaker 2: guys I want you to talk to. They're FBI agents.

328
00:17:26,760 --> 00:17:28,720
Speaker 2: You don't have anything to worry about. Let them come up.

329
00:17:29,119 --> 00:17:31,800
Speaker 2: So over the course of a month in nineteen forty seven,

330
00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:35,080
Speaker 2: every week the FBI came to visit Frank Meyer, and

331
00:17:35,119 --> 00:17:38,240
Speaker 2: he told his wife that he realized at that moment

332
00:17:38,280 --> 00:17:41,280
Speaker 2: what grace meant, because there was no good choice open

333
00:17:41,359 --> 00:17:44,680
Speaker 2: to him. He could either betray his old comrades, he

334
00:17:44,720 --> 00:17:47,680
Speaker 2: could betray his friends, or he could betray his country.

335
00:17:47,880 --> 00:17:51,240
Speaker 2: And what he decided to do after March Agony was

336
00:17:51,560 --> 00:17:54,720
Speaker 2: to go with his country over his friends, or as

337
00:17:54,800 --> 00:17:57,439
Speaker 2: I think Angrisolo put it, I love truth and I

338
00:17:57,480 --> 00:18:00,360
Speaker 2: love Plato. But if these things are in conflict, I'm

339
00:18:00,359 --> 00:18:02,680
Speaker 2: going to pick truth over my friends. But I think

340
00:18:02,760 --> 00:18:06,440
Speaker 2: essentially that's what Frank Meyer did and testifying and Los Budenz,

341
00:18:06,480 --> 00:18:09,480
Speaker 2: who was one of the most prolific witnesses against the

342
00:18:09,480 --> 00:18:12,200
Speaker 2: Communist Party, he's really the guy that convinced Meyer to

343
00:18:12,240 --> 00:18:14,399
Speaker 2: testify against his old comrades.

344
00:18:14,840 --> 00:18:18,280
Speaker 1: At that point. And he clearly has decisively in his

345
00:18:18,320 --> 00:18:20,879
Speaker 1: own head broken with who he once was.

346
00:18:22,040 --> 00:18:24,879
Speaker 2: Yes, he did. The hard thing about that is he

347
00:18:24,920 --> 00:18:28,760
Speaker 2: had privatic affecting. He moved to, of all places, Woodstock,

348
00:18:28,840 --> 00:18:32,160
Speaker 2: New York. Now later Bob Dylan would move in next door.

349
00:18:32,440 --> 00:18:34,800
Speaker 2: You'd have members of the band live down the street.

350
00:18:34,920 --> 00:18:37,080
Speaker 2: Van Morrison lived down the street. In fact, now he's

351
00:18:37,080 --> 00:18:38,960
Speaker 2: the last person on earth to care about any of this.

352
00:18:39,440 --> 00:18:42,880
Speaker 2: But even in the nineteen forties, this was an artist colony.

353
00:18:43,200 --> 00:18:47,000
Speaker 2: This was a place where leftists from Grangenge Village retreated to,

354
00:18:47,520 --> 00:18:50,080
Speaker 2: and Frank chose that as a place to live, and

355
00:18:50,200 --> 00:18:52,880
Speaker 2: all sorts of people that had been his friends were

356
00:18:52,920 --> 00:18:54,879
Speaker 2: all of a sudden no longer as friends. To take

357
00:18:54,880 --> 00:18:56,959
Speaker 2: a guy like Philip Guston a few years ago, one

358
00:18:57,000 --> 00:18:59,600
Speaker 2: of his paintings went for twenty six million dollars. Well,

359
00:18:59,640 --> 00:19:02,520
Speaker 2: when I knew him in Woodstock, he was a starving artist.

360
00:19:02,800 --> 00:19:05,480
Speaker 2: But the moment Frank goes over to the other side,

361
00:19:05,520 --> 00:19:08,560
Speaker 2: becomes a conservative, Gustin won't have anything to do with him.

362
00:19:08,600 --> 00:19:10,880
Speaker 2: And there are a lot of people in Woodstock that

363
00:19:11,560 --> 00:19:15,199
Speaker 2: Frank becomes a pariaetu. So he's living isolated up on

364
00:19:15,240 --> 00:19:18,439
Speaker 2: this hill in Woodstock. He starts changing his hours. Frank

365
00:19:18,480 --> 00:19:22,160
Speaker 2: becomes a nocturnal creature. He buys a gun. I think

366
00:19:22,520 --> 00:19:25,480
Speaker 2: without reason, he is worried about the prospect of the

367
00:19:25,520 --> 00:19:29,800
Speaker 2: Communist Party exacting retribution. The Party obviously had killed a

368
00:19:29,840 --> 00:19:31,919
Speaker 2: lot of people. They didn't kill a lot of Americans,

369
00:19:31,920 --> 00:19:34,679
Speaker 2: but they had killed some Americans. And I think Frank,

370
00:19:34,720 --> 00:19:37,920
Speaker 2: with some justification bought this gun. And for the last

371
00:19:38,000 --> 00:19:40,520
Speaker 2: quarter century of his life. One of the things that

372
00:19:40,560 --> 00:19:43,240
Speaker 2: identified Frank Meyer was this was a guy that got

373
00:19:43,359 --> 00:19:45,520
Speaker 2: up in the afternoon and he slept till seven in

374
00:19:45,560 --> 00:19:47,840
Speaker 2: the morning, and these were his hours for the rest

375
00:19:47,840 --> 00:19:48,439
Speaker 2: of his life.

376
00:19:48,920 --> 00:19:53,640
Speaker 1: The way that he operated from your perspective is he's

377
00:19:53,640 --> 00:19:56,119
Speaker 1: as comfortable being alone.

378
00:19:56,320 --> 00:19:58,640
Speaker 2: Well, his wife and he has two kids, I mean

379
00:19:58,680 --> 00:20:02,440
Speaker 2: one of his kids. You're listeners probably know Eugene Meyer.

380
00:20:02,480 --> 00:20:06,119
Speaker 2: Eugene Meyer was longtime president of the Federal of Society

381
00:20:06,600 --> 00:20:09,760
Speaker 2: and his youngest son John, both of them extremely successful

382
00:20:09,840 --> 00:20:12,760
Speaker 2: chess players, guys who graduated from Yale, very bright guys,

383
00:20:12,800 --> 00:20:15,600
Speaker 2: and also guys that cooperated a great deal with this book.

384
00:20:15,960 --> 00:20:18,000
Speaker 2: So he has his two kids, he has his wife.

385
00:20:18,160 --> 00:20:21,679
Speaker 2: He's kind of a strange hermit. He's living isolated up

386
00:20:21,720 --> 00:20:24,680
Speaker 2: on this hill in Woodstock, up on this mount in Woodstock.

387
00:20:24,680 --> 00:20:27,000
Speaker 2: And in fact, when Bob Dylan moved next door to him,

388
00:20:27,240 --> 00:20:29,560
Speaker 2: Dylan's whole reason for moving there was he was fed

389
00:20:29,640 --> 00:20:31,680
Speaker 2: up with the hippies. He wanted to go to some

390
00:20:31,720 --> 00:20:34,680
Speaker 2: place where people couldn't find him, and the best place

391
00:20:34,720 --> 00:20:37,520
Speaker 2: he could think of was Ohao Mountain Road in Woodstock.

392
00:20:37,640 --> 00:20:40,879
Speaker 2: So he moves back next to Meyer, but the properties touched.

393
00:20:40,880 --> 00:20:43,439
Speaker 2: But they're basically like a quarter mile away their houses,

394
00:20:43,440 --> 00:20:46,119
Speaker 2: but their properties are touching. And some moves to a

395
00:20:46,160 --> 00:20:50,280
Speaker 2: place where people really can't find him. Yet he is

396
00:20:50,320 --> 00:20:54,040
Speaker 2: a social animal, and he starts to do something after

397
00:20:54,119 --> 00:20:56,399
Speaker 2: he leaves the Communist Party, which is to make phone

398
00:20:56,440 --> 00:21:00,200
Speaker 2: calls and AM's tax returns from nineteen forty nineteen seventy two,

399
00:21:00,600 --> 00:21:05,439
Speaker 2: so his vook calls become so legendary that by the

400
00:21:05,520 --> 00:21:08,280
Speaker 2: early nineteen sixties he's spending about his corner of his

401
00:21:08,359 --> 00:21:12,600
Speaker 2: income on telephone bills and he's calling people. I interviewed

402
00:21:12,640 --> 00:21:14,320
Speaker 2: a lot of people and they talked about him calling

403
00:21:14,400 --> 00:21:16,080
Speaker 2: at all times of the night, and of course he

404
00:21:16,160 --> 00:21:18,359
Speaker 2: did do that. You'd get a call from frank Meyer

405
00:21:18,400 --> 00:21:20,560
Speaker 2: maybe at two in the morning or midnight. One of

406
00:21:20,560 --> 00:21:22,680
Speaker 2: his kids emailed me last night said, well, that wasn't

407
00:21:22,880 --> 00:21:26,280
Speaker 2: that common, So maybe those people were remembering the unusual

408
00:21:26,400 --> 00:21:28,879
Speaker 2: rather than the quote vigan. But he didn't call people

409
00:21:28,920 --> 00:21:31,600
Speaker 2: in all hours of the night. And people told me, well,

410
00:21:31,680 --> 00:21:34,280
Speaker 2: it wasn't unusual for him to have multi hour long

411
00:21:34,359 --> 00:21:37,679
Speaker 2: conversations with people. So he was a strange social animal

412
00:21:37,680 --> 00:21:40,680
Speaker 2: that he was living isolated on this mountain in Wouldstop

413
00:21:40,800 --> 00:21:42,920
Speaker 2: New York. But at the same time he created that

414
00:21:43,040 --> 00:21:45,400
Speaker 2: social connection. And the way he did that was from

415
00:21:45,400 --> 00:21:48,880
Speaker 2: the telephone, the iatola comane. He had his revolution through

416
00:21:48,920 --> 00:21:51,720
Speaker 2: cassette tapes. You had the people in Egypt, they did

417
00:21:51,720 --> 00:21:55,400
Speaker 2: it through Twitter. Frank Meyer's revolution was gone through at

418
00:21:55,520 --> 00:21:57,000
Speaker 2: and t That's wild.

419
00:21:57,320 --> 00:22:01,879
Speaker 1: No, he creates a fusion through what that means because

420
00:22:01,920 --> 00:22:03,040
Speaker 1: Reagan cites him for that.

421
00:22:04,119 --> 00:22:07,239
Speaker 2: He certainly did. And I think if fusionism was so

422
00:22:07,320 --> 00:22:10,240
Speaker 2: influential that even people that had never heard of the

423
00:22:10,280 --> 00:22:14,280
Speaker 2: word fusionism, Fuchists, even people that hadn't heard of Frank

424
00:22:14,320 --> 00:22:18,119
Speaker 2: Meyer's name, were effectively my rights. And basically what fusionism

425
00:22:18,400 --> 00:22:23,359
Speaker 2: was was a marriage of traditionalism and freedom. And Meyer

426
00:22:23,960 --> 00:22:27,600
Speaker 2: essentially said that listen, if you're a conservative in Great Britain,

427
00:22:27,840 --> 00:22:31,159
Speaker 2: maybe you're conserving the royalty or the arist democracy. If

428
00:22:31,160 --> 00:22:33,879
Speaker 2: you're conservative in Italy, maybe you're conserving the Catholic Church.

429
00:22:34,160 --> 00:22:36,879
Speaker 2: If you're a conservative in Ronca, the tradition that you

430
00:22:37,000 --> 00:22:40,879
Speaker 2: conserveerve is the American Founding, the Declaration of Independence, the

431
00:22:40,920 --> 00:22:44,840
Speaker 2: Freederalist papers, the Constitution, maybe Washington's phenologists, whole lot of

432
00:22:44,840 --> 00:22:48,399
Speaker 2: other things. As one of Frank's acolytes, Stan Evans put it,

433
00:22:48,440 --> 00:22:50,679
Speaker 2: on the cover of a book, the theme is freedom.

434
00:22:50,800 --> 00:22:53,479
Speaker 2: And I think what Stand meant in his book is

435
00:22:53,520 --> 00:22:57,600
Speaker 2: that you had thousands of years of Western civilization propping

436
00:22:57,720 --> 00:23:00,320
Speaker 2: up this liberty that we enjoy in the United States,

437
00:23:00,440 --> 00:23:02,320
Speaker 2: and if you take away our heritage, if you take

438
00:23:02,359 --> 00:23:05,960
Speaker 2: away that tradition, you will not have freedom. And so

439
00:23:06,040 --> 00:23:08,359
Speaker 2: there was this tension between tradition and virtue in the

440
00:23:08,359 --> 00:23:10,520
Speaker 2: one hand, and freedom on the other. And if you

441
00:23:10,560 --> 00:23:13,720
Speaker 2: take one away, the other is meaningless because flip the

442
00:23:13,800 --> 00:23:16,399
Speaker 2: quint in there. If you think about it, if you

443
00:23:16,520 --> 00:23:19,520
Speaker 2: have compulsory virtue, that's not virtue at all. You have

444
00:23:19,560 --> 00:23:22,159
Speaker 2: to have free choice to have true virtue. So there

445
00:23:22,440 --> 00:23:27,040
Speaker 2: is fusionism in a nutshell, the marriage of traditionalism and freedom.

446
00:23:27,480 --> 00:23:30,760
Speaker 2: And I think the reason it worked is one because

447
00:23:30,800 --> 00:23:35,120
Speaker 2: at its base distilled level, it's essentially true, that it's

448
00:23:35,200 --> 00:23:40,760
Speaker 2: easy to understand, and three that it had utility applications

449
00:23:40,760 --> 00:23:42,879
Speaker 2: for politics. I mean, if you read a book like

450
00:23:43,359 --> 00:23:46,760
Speaker 2: The Concernative Mind, which is a beautiful book by Russell Krumerk,

451
00:23:46,960 --> 00:23:50,160
Speaker 2: there's not a lot of political applications there. It might

452
00:23:50,200 --> 00:23:51,919
Speaker 2: train you how to think, it might give you an

453
00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:54,680
Speaker 2: appreciation for history, but it doesn't have a lot of

454
00:23:54,680 --> 00:23:58,400
Speaker 2: political applications. I think the reason why in Defensive Freedom

455
00:23:58,840 --> 00:24:01,800
Speaker 2: worked as a book and fusionism worked as a philosophy

456
00:24:02,280 --> 00:24:04,440
Speaker 2: was because it did have political applications.

457
00:24:04,760 --> 00:24:08,240
Speaker 1: To what extent do you think Reagan became am I right?

458
00:24:09,560 --> 00:24:13,159
Speaker 2: I think that Reagan was the embodiment of frank Meyer's

459
00:24:13,200 --> 00:24:20,199
Speaker 2: political dreams in nineteen sixty, Reagan successfully coursed the editors

460
00:24:20,200 --> 00:24:23,400
Speaker 2: of National Review not to endorse Richard Nixon. He viewed

461
00:24:23,440 --> 00:24:26,000
Speaker 2: Nixon as an opportunist, and he said, why don't we

462
00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:29,760
Speaker 2: just symbolically endorse Goldwater. We know he's not running for president,

463
00:24:30,080 --> 00:24:32,880
Speaker 2: but let's just symbolically endorse him and put all our

464
00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:36,800
Speaker 2: efforts into electing good conservatives at the congrucial level. It

465
00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:40,000
Speaker 2: may take, and it's probably going to take twenty years

466
00:24:40,280 --> 00:24:42,359
Speaker 2: before we elect one of our own person the United States.

467
00:24:42,440 --> 00:24:45,160
Speaker 2: It's going to take until nineteen eighty. And of course

468
00:24:45,160 --> 00:24:49,639
Speaker 2: he was prophetic about that immediately after Barry Goldwater, and

469
00:24:49,680 --> 00:24:53,840
Speaker 2: even before Barry Goldwater loses in nineteen sixty four, Meyer's

470
00:24:53,880 --> 00:24:57,480
Speaker 2: eyes get diverted to Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan, of course,

471
00:24:57,520 --> 00:24:59,920
Speaker 2: gave that great speech which was kind of an infomerci

472
00:25:00,520 --> 00:25:04,160
Speaker 2: for Goldwater, and I think Meyer, like a lot of people, thought,

473
00:25:04,280 --> 00:25:06,760
Speaker 2: why isn't this guy running for president rather than this

474
00:25:06,880 --> 00:25:10,440
Speaker 2: creaky guy over here? The stars done with the ballot time,

475
00:25:10,680 --> 00:25:13,320
Speaker 2: why not we got inves city rooting for president. And

476
00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:16,240
Speaker 2: so Mayan became associated with from y old Reagan so

477
00:25:16,480 --> 00:25:19,120
Speaker 2: much so then in nineteen sixty eight, when the new

478
00:25:19,200 --> 00:25:23,800
Speaker 2: Republic asked various prominent figures to write about what candidate

479
00:25:23,880 --> 00:25:26,760
Speaker 2: they were supporting. They naturally picked Meyer as the guy

480
00:25:26,760 --> 00:25:29,959
Speaker 2: to write about Ronald Reagan that his association as an

481
00:25:29,960 --> 00:25:32,480
Speaker 2: intellectual was at least connected with him, and this had

482
00:25:32,560 --> 00:25:33,480
Speaker 2: costs for Meyer.

483
00:25:33,840 --> 00:25:34,000
Speaker 1: You know.

484
00:25:34,040 --> 00:25:36,399
Speaker 2: One of the things Mayn did at nashery View was

485
00:25:36,440 --> 00:25:39,280
Speaker 2: he was the literary editor of Nasher Review. He was

486
00:25:39,320 --> 00:25:43,680
Speaker 2: the person who actually discotled John Didion, no parmenttal. Her

487
00:25:43,720 --> 00:25:46,960
Speaker 2: boyfriend was pushing her to all these editors around New

488
00:25:47,040 --> 00:25:49,479
Speaker 2: York and no one would take her, and Didon credits

489
00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:52,640
Speaker 2: Meyer as the first editor to publish her freelance work.

490
00:25:52,720 --> 00:25:55,240
Speaker 2: He was really a mentor to Joan Didion. He had

491
00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:58,640
Speaker 2: a guy named third Theodore Sturgeon ultimately became a writer

492
00:25:58,720 --> 00:26:01,119
Speaker 2: for Star Trek, came up with of Long and prosper

493
00:26:01,560 --> 00:26:03,440
Speaker 2: is the guy that came up with the prime directive

494
00:26:03,440 --> 00:26:07,119
Speaker 2: and Star tunk right the Ankerson where Leonard Nimoy invented

495
00:26:07,119 --> 00:26:10,040
Speaker 2: that split fingered salute that I can't do, but many

496
00:26:10,080 --> 00:26:12,440
Speaker 2: people can, you know, split their fingers down the middle.

497
00:26:12,680 --> 00:26:15,280
Speaker 2: So he had that guy writing reviews of science fiction

498
00:26:15,440 --> 00:26:19,119
Speaker 2: for Nash Review. Hugh Kenner guy Davenport, Gary Wills, all

499
00:26:19,160 --> 00:26:22,320
Speaker 2: these literary heavy hitters he had reviewing books and making

500
00:26:22,320 --> 00:26:25,000
Speaker 2: it early the best book review section in the United States. Now,

501
00:26:25,200 --> 00:26:28,440
Speaker 2: but tell me he's pushing Reagan. Hugh Kenner writes a

502
00:26:28,480 --> 00:26:31,800
Speaker 2: critical piece on Reagan and Nash are you so mocking

503
00:26:31,800 --> 00:26:34,679
Speaker 2: the idea that he would be president? Meyer, who was

504
00:26:34,800 --> 00:26:38,600
Speaker 2: great friends with Kenner, engineered behind the scenes a rebuttal

505
00:26:38,720 --> 00:26:42,399
Speaker 2: that was written by Jeffrey Hart and cost Hugh Kenner

506
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:45,400
Speaker 2: to resign from Nasher. Hugh, So Kevin was a bunch

507
00:26:45,400 --> 00:26:47,480
Speaker 2: of friends with a guy named Guy to Avenport and

508
00:26:47,520 --> 00:26:51,120
Speaker 2: Guy Davenport were Nickson says, listen, Hugh from Mayer thinks

509
00:26:51,160 --> 00:26:53,960
Speaker 2: that Ronald Reagan should be president of the US. And

510
00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:56,560
Speaker 2: he puts a bunch of exhalation points because at that point,

511
00:26:56,640 --> 00:26:59,359
Speaker 2: the idea of anyone supporting Ronald Reagan as president, he's

512
00:26:59,359 --> 00:27:01,679
Speaker 2: thinking of him as as a movie actor. Frank is

513
00:27:01,720 --> 00:27:04,159
Speaker 2: cleitarly thinking him as president the United States, and he

514
00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:08,160
Speaker 2: loses arguably his best book reviewer, Hugh Kenninger, who resigns

515
00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:11,840
Speaker 2: from the magazine because Meyer engineered this takedown of his

516
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:15,600
Speaker 2: criticism of Reagan. So Meyer, very early on was a

517
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:18,400
Speaker 2: Reagan supporter, and of course, if you look at Reagan's

518
00:27:18,400 --> 00:27:22,120
Speaker 2: speech at nineteen eighty one at Sea Pack, which by

519
00:27:22,160 --> 00:27:24,720
Speaker 2: the way, Meyer came up with the idea for Seatpack

520
00:27:24,760 --> 00:27:26,920
Speaker 2: in the nineteen sixties he was a founder of the

521
00:27:26,960 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 2: American Conservative Union. He kept pushing the idea of this

522
00:27:29,720 --> 00:27:33,719
Speaker 2: conference that would sort of marry activism in the intellectual right. Well,

523
00:27:33,760 --> 00:27:35,320
Speaker 2: they didn't do it at the time, but they later

524
00:27:35,400 --> 00:27:38,280
Speaker 2: created Seatpack, and I think Meyer should be credited as

525
00:27:38,280 --> 00:27:41,639
Speaker 2: a founding father of it. In Navy One, Reagan is

526
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:43,720
Speaker 2: sort of giving a hat tip to James Burnham and

527
00:27:43,760 --> 00:27:46,520
Speaker 2: William of Buckley and Rustil Kirk, but he stillops for

528
00:27:46,520 --> 00:27:50,280
Speaker 2: an extraordinary long time talking about Frank Meyer and how

529
00:27:50,280 --> 00:27:52,320
Speaker 2: he had paved the way for this moment. And I

530
00:27:52,320 --> 00:27:54,919
Speaker 2: think more than any of those thinkers on the post

531
00:27:54,960 --> 00:27:58,520
Speaker 2: war conservative right, you have to look at Frank Meyer

532
00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:02,679
Speaker 2: as someone who intellects actually is most sympatico with the

533
00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:03,520
Speaker 2: Reagan Revolution.

534
00:28:20,359 --> 00:28:25,919
Speaker 1: In that context, Meyer is quid essentially intellectual. His impact

535
00:28:26,040 --> 00:28:29,480
Speaker 1: is about ideas and about writing. And one of the

536
00:28:29,480 --> 00:28:32,679
Speaker 1: things that really makes your book come alive is you

537
00:28:32,720 --> 00:28:37,040
Speaker 1: actually found a whole bunch of letters. Can you walk us.

538
00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:40,960
Speaker 2: Through the My plan was to read a bunch of books,

539
00:28:41,040 --> 00:28:43,960
Speaker 2: read all issues of National Review, and then I would

540
00:28:43,960 --> 00:28:46,920
Speaker 2: know what questions to ask when I interview people. I

541
00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:50,000
Speaker 2: probably did about one hundred interviews. I would know where

542
00:28:50,040 --> 00:28:53,000
Speaker 2: to look when I would go into archives. But something

543
00:28:53,080 --> 00:28:56,680
Speaker 2: happened in twenty twenty that your listeners probably remember. COVID

544
00:28:56,720 --> 00:29:00,400
Speaker 2: shut everything down, particularly universities. They shut down for single years,

545
00:29:00,760 --> 00:29:03,200
Speaker 2: so I couldn't do any of archival work. I did

546
00:29:03,200 --> 00:29:05,840
Speaker 2: a Freedom of Information Act request from the friederal government

547
00:29:05,880 --> 00:29:07,920
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one. They came back to me in

548
00:29:07,960 --> 00:29:11,120
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two and they said, well, we're now processing

549
00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:14,680
Speaker 2: requests from twenty fourteen, but your request, because it comes

550
00:29:14,720 --> 00:29:16,719
Speaker 2: after COVID, it's going to take a little bit longer.

551
00:29:16,760 --> 00:29:19,600
Speaker 2: In other words, come back to us in the twenty thirties.

552
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:22,920
Speaker 2: That's the efficiency of the National Archives. And when I

553
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:25,760
Speaker 2: looked at his papers at the Hoover Institution. I'm a

554
00:29:26,040 --> 00:29:28,600
Speaker 2: visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. I love going out there,

555
00:29:28,640 --> 00:29:30,720
Speaker 2: I love the archives. The ro Ar Chives was a

556
00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:33,400
Speaker 2: tremendous help for this book. But when I looked at

557
00:29:33,440 --> 00:29:36,880
Speaker 2: Meyer's papers out there, I noticed something was missing. I've

558
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:39,200
Speaker 2: been doing archival work for about twenty five years and

559
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:42,800
Speaker 2: the rhythm was off. So I, out of desperation, I

560
00:29:42,880 --> 00:29:45,480
Speaker 2: wished his papers into existence. I just needed to calling

561
00:29:45,520 --> 00:29:48,960
Speaker 2: people and saying, where's Frank's papers? And I got material

562
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:52,880
Speaker 2: that was helpful for private collections, letterers, some property deeds,

563
00:29:52,880 --> 00:29:55,760
Speaker 2: things like that, but I still didn't have his papers.

564
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:59,200
Speaker 2: And at a certain point John Meyer, about a year

565
00:29:59,200 --> 00:30:01,200
Speaker 2: and a half into search, I said, well, we did

566
00:30:01,280 --> 00:30:04,400
Speaker 2: sell the house to this couple, David's In Cabbage and

567
00:30:04,480 --> 00:30:07,360
Speaker 2: Karen Myers, and they bought all the color tents. So

568
00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:09,240
Speaker 2: I said, we told me about these people. At first

569
00:30:09,240 --> 00:30:11,360
Speaker 2: I went to Zink Cabbage and Myers and said, you

570
00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:13,760
Speaker 2: have Frank's papers and they said no, we donated them,

571
00:30:13,800 --> 00:30:16,800
Speaker 2: at least David did. And I said, no, you kept

572
00:30:16,880 --> 00:30:18,800
Speaker 2: some of them and they said no Jonatan, I said, no,

573
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:20,800
Speaker 2: you don't know. You even do it on GROUPUS, but

574
00:30:20,880 --> 00:30:22,640
Speaker 2: you kept some of them. You just don't know it.

575
00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:26,000
Speaker 2: And this won a undrel period of months, and finally

576
00:30:26,040 --> 00:30:28,200
Speaker 2: they said, well, we have a warehouse and they said,

577
00:30:28,200 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 2: but there's a thousand boxes and there's nothing in there.

578
00:30:30,360 --> 00:30:32,120
Speaker 2: And even if there was something in there, you couldn't

579
00:30:32,120 --> 00:30:33,840
Speaker 2: go through all thousand of the box. I said, yes,

580
00:30:33,880 --> 00:30:37,320
Speaker 2: I could take me to your warehouse. So in August

581
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:40,120
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty two, I drove at four in the

582
00:30:40,120 --> 00:30:42,920
Speaker 2: morning to Eltuna, Pennsylvania. I went through six hundred and

583
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:47,840
Speaker 2: sixty three boxes and therein I found fifteen large moving

584
00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:51,680
Speaker 2: boxes that contained the papers of Frank Meyer. There's probably

585
00:30:51,680 --> 00:30:55,120
Speaker 2: over one hundred thousand letters there. There's letters from Tolkien, C. S. Lewis,

586
00:30:55,480 --> 00:30:58,480
Speaker 2: Joan Didion, William F. Buckley. There's one thousand letters from

587
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:01,960
Speaker 2: Wilm We're Kendall, one thousand letters from Frent Bizzell, letters

588
00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:04,720
Speaker 2: from Jaguar Whover Battles, a lot of letters from Barry Goldwater.

589
00:31:05,040 --> 00:31:07,360
Speaker 2: And for the most part, these are letters that nobody

590
00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:09,840
Speaker 2: has ever seen before, or at least they haven't been

591
00:31:09,880 --> 00:31:13,160
Speaker 2: seen since Sender and Receiver. You know, I just read

592
00:31:13,200 --> 00:31:16,440
Speaker 2: a piece on Leo Strauss's back and forth with Frank Meyer.

593
00:31:16,480 --> 00:31:19,760
Speaker 2: That's completely fascinating. And these are letters that don't exist

594
00:31:19,760 --> 00:31:23,800
Speaker 2: in Stroums's papers. So there's pretty famous guy. I just

595
00:31:23,800 --> 00:31:26,600
Speaker 2: did a piece for the journal Libertarian Studies. It didn't

596
00:31:26,600 --> 00:31:29,240
Speaker 2: make it into the book, but Lotston thing was important

597
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:31,920
Speaker 2: that didn't make in the book. But here is Maury Rothbard,

598
00:31:31,960 --> 00:31:36,000
Speaker 2: one of the leading figures of libertarianism, talking about Ein

599
00:31:36,080 --> 00:31:38,240
Speaker 2: Rand in real time when he's a member of her

600
00:31:38,320 --> 00:31:41,080
Speaker 2: inner circle and complaining about her, saying she's crazy or

601
00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:43,840
Speaker 2: saying she's brilliant. And so I was able to write

602
00:31:43,920 --> 00:31:46,840
Speaker 2: an article based on that. But really what this did

603
00:31:46,960 --> 00:31:50,959
Speaker 2: obviously was allow me to tell Frank Meyer's story in

604
00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:53,120
Speaker 2: his own words. I mean the idea that you have

605
00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:57,760
Speaker 2: the siphantic letter from James Mitchger or these love letters

606
00:31:57,760 --> 00:32:01,480
Speaker 2: of sorts from Prime Minister Ramsey Donald's daughter, other women,

607
00:32:01,560 --> 00:32:04,480
Speaker 2: you know, I find out that Meyer loses his virginity

608
00:32:04,560 --> 00:32:07,240
Speaker 2: to one of the great women in American aren't in

609
00:32:07,240 --> 00:32:10,320
Speaker 2: the twentieth century? Dorothy Canning Miller, for the longest time

610
00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:13,400
Speaker 2: was the curator of the Museum of Modern Art in

611
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:16,200
Speaker 2: New York. There's all sorts of love letters in there,

612
00:32:16,240 --> 00:32:19,000
Speaker 2: there's all sorts of friendships, and really what it is

613
00:32:19,040 --> 00:32:21,240
Speaker 2: I think the book A guy named Robert D. Lourie

614
00:32:21,480 --> 00:32:24,760
Speaker 2: in the Spectator World, the UK Spectator just threw a

615
00:32:24,800 --> 00:32:27,000
Speaker 2: review that came out today and I was blown over

616
00:32:27,040 --> 00:32:29,360
Speaker 2: by it because he really got the book. He said

617
00:32:29,360 --> 00:32:33,720
Speaker 2: this book, it's really about friendships. It's really about why

618
00:32:34,240 --> 00:32:36,320
Speaker 2: we fall in love with people and then why we

619
00:32:36,360 --> 00:32:38,680
Speaker 2: fall out in love with people. And surely you get

620
00:32:38,680 --> 00:32:41,920
Speaker 2: that with Frank Meyer and Gary Wills. Garry Wills goes

621
00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:45,200
Speaker 2: in the opposite direction. Frank Meyer mentors him. Will says

622
00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:47,400
Speaker 2: he spent more time with Meyer than anyone out of

623
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:49,640
Speaker 2: his family in the late fifties and early sixties, but

624
00:32:49,640 --> 00:32:52,360
Speaker 2: by in the early nineteen sethonies, he's a left winger.

625
00:32:52,400 --> 00:32:54,480
Speaker 2: He gets in the opposite direction of Meyer. So they

626
00:32:54,480 --> 00:32:58,000
Speaker 2: have this falling out. Wilmore Kendall, who's a guy who

627
00:32:58,040 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 2: was the mentor of Bill Buckley. You've seen your editor.

628
00:33:01,880 --> 00:33:04,959
Speaker 2: It's real behind the scenes stuff that you're getting from

629
00:33:05,040 --> 00:33:07,640
Speaker 2: these letters that you wouldn't get anywhere else. And then

630
00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:10,880
Speaker 2: of course you see Kendall falling out with Meyer, falling

631
00:33:10,920 --> 00:33:13,880
Speaker 2: out with Bill Buckley. At a certain point, Elsie Meyer says,

632
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:17,200
Speaker 2: quit finding the following your friends to Wilmor Kendall, who

633
00:33:17,240 --> 00:33:20,160
Speaker 2: was a notoriously difficult man, and he says, I don't

634
00:33:20,320 --> 00:33:22,040
Speaker 2: know if any friend I'm in a fight with now

635
00:33:22,120 --> 00:33:25,560
Speaker 2: except Frank S. Meyer. If you're talking about William F. Buckley,

636
00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:28,640
Speaker 2: and he was William F. Buckley's teacher, He was his mentor.

637
00:33:28,800 --> 00:33:31,760
Speaker 2: He says, if you're talking about William F. Buckley, nobody

638
00:33:31,760 --> 00:33:33,800
Speaker 2: hasn't heard me Paul him a friend in at least

639
00:33:33,840 --> 00:33:37,160
Speaker 2: five years. He is not my friend. He is my enemy.

640
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:40,000
Speaker 2: So this is hy drama stunt that you get these

641
00:33:40,080 --> 00:33:42,480
Speaker 2: letters that you're not going to get in any other book,

642
00:33:42,520 --> 00:33:45,520
Speaker 2: because there's no other scholar that has access to I

643
00:33:45,560 --> 00:33:47,520
Speaker 2: don't know, there's probably a hundred thousand looks than I

644
00:33:47,640 --> 00:33:51,040
Speaker 2: have here all sitting around my best overing my house

645
00:33:51,080 --> 00:33:53,160
Speaker 2: for the last three years. And I think best part

646
00:33:53,160 --> 00:33:55,480
Speaker 2: of the reason why this is an exciting book because

647
00:33:55,520 --> 00:33:57,800
Speaker 2: it is some original. It has so much strength that

648
00:33:57,920 --> 00:34:01,280
Speaker 2: came from this warehouse that nobody has had access to.

649
00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:04,960
Speaker 1: Given on this, how much you've immerged yourself in him.

650
00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:08,200
Speaker 1: If Meyer were alive today, how do you think he

651
00:34:08,239 --> 00:34:10,640
Speaker 1: would view the current conservative movement?

652
00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:14,880
Speaker 2: That's a very interesting question. On the one hand, Meyer

653
00:34:15,600 --> 00:34:19,440
Speaker 2: was decidedly not a populist in some ways without admitting it.

654
00:34:19,480 --> 00:34:21,239
Speaker 2: I mean, he was a big fan of Joe McCarthy,

655
00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:24,400
Speaker 2: and when James Buckley ran for Senate in nineteen seventy,

656
00:34:24,400 --> 00:34:26,640
Speaker 2: he was an advisor to him and his adrox to

657
00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:28,680
Speaker 2: Buckley was really populist. He said, listen, you're going to

658
00:34:28,680 --> 00:34:31,239
Speaker 2: reach him to these blue collar democrats. You can't win,

659
00:34:31,520 --> 00:34:34,080
Speaker 2: and you'll look in a three way race even you know,

660
00:34:34,160 --> 00:34:36,120
Speaker 2: as a Republican, even in a three way race, you've

661
00:34:36,160 --> 00:34:38,439
Speaker 2: got to reach out to these union people. Get union votes,

662
00:34:38,480 --> 00:34:41,440
Speaker 2: get blue call roads. So in some ways he'd be

663
00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:44,200
Speaker 2: fine with it, but he was not a populist. I

664
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:47,200
Speaker 2: think the one way in which he would fit in

665
00:34:47,640 --> 00:34:50,000
Speaker 2: with what Trump is doing, with the maggot people are

666
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:53,320
Speaker 2: doing is on foreign policy, and that seems very peculiar

667
00:34:53,360 --> 00:34:56,160
Speaker 2: because Meyer is a guy when one point was talking

668
00:34:56,160 --> 00:34:59,080
Speaker 2: about a preemptive nuclear streaming in the Soviet Union. I

669
00:34:59,120 --> 00:35:01,840
Speaker 2: mean he is so though it was a pulled warrior

670
00:35:02,239 --> 00:35:04,799
Speaker 2: down to the bone. He hated communism because he was

671
00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:07,160
Speaker 2: a communist. I mean the guy who brought him to

672
00:35:07,200 --> 00:35:09,319
Speaker 2: sign up as a member of the Communist Party in

673
00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:11,759
Speaker 2: Great Britain, a guy named Prince Mursky. He dies in

674
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:14,680
Speaker 2: a gulag by the end of that decade. Meyer has

675
00:35:14,719 --> 00:35:17,320
Speaker 2: friends that get killed. Meyer has friends who are mumbered people.

676
00:35:17,560 --> 00:35:20,880
Speaker 2: He knows how evil communism is. So he was really

677
00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:25,719
Speaker 2: supportive of an active US foreign policy during the Cold War.

678
00:35:26,320 --> 00:35:28,719
Speaker 2: Henry Kissinger writes him a letter in nineteen sixty eight.

679
00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:30,719
Speaker 2: Kissinger says, and this is that one of the letters

680
00:35:30,760 --> 00:35:32,920
Speaker 2: in the collection. Kissinger says, you know, listen, I'm going

681
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:36,239
Speaker 2: to be the national securityism under Richard Nixon. And so

682
00:35:36,320 --> 00:35:37,680
Speaker 2: we asked him what should do? What should we do

683
00:35:37,719 --> 00:35:40,879
Speaker 2: with foreign policy? And Myer says, well, of course, there's

684
00:35:40,960 --> 00:35:44,840
Speaker 2: this messianic crusader state that is an existential threat to

685
00:35:44,840 --> 00:35:46,440
Speaker 2: the United States and a lot of other nations in

686
00:35:46,440 --> 00:35:49,279
Speaker 2: the world. So our main should be to stop them,

687
00:35:49,320 --> 00:35:53,200
Speaker 2: to roll them back, to defeat them by whatever absent

688
00:35:53,320 --> 00:35:56,359
Speaker 2: this messianic crusader state. If there's a world in which

689
00:35:56,360 --> 00:35:58,920
Speaker 2: they no longer exist, of course, the idea of the

690
00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:02,319
Speaker 2: United Nations, the idea of foreign aid, the idea of

691
00:36:02,360 --> 00:36:05,759
Speaker 2: all these entangling alliances, they would be forsical. Even the

692
00:36:05,800 --> 00:36:08,560
Speaker 2: idea of the Vietnam War would be in complete farce.

693
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:10,880
Speaker 2: If there were no Soviet Union, it would be no

694
00:36:11,040 --> 00:36:14,000
Speaker 2: business of ours with the social system of any other nation,

695
00:36:14,040 --> 00:36:17,840
Speaker 2: would be if it were not for communism trying to

696
00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:20,560
Speaker 2: take over this world. You think about today, I mean

697
00:36:20,600 --> 00:36:24,160
Speaker 2: the Russia, I mean think about how Ronald Russia has

698
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:26,080
Speaker 2: been with Ukraine and they take over I don't know,

699
00:36:26,120 --> 00:36:30,480
Speaker 2: twenty percent of Ukraine, and people, justifiably you think that

700
00:36:30,560 --> 00:36:32,520
Speaker 2: this is madness, that this guy is a sort of

701
00:36:32,520 --> 00:36:35,400
Speaker 2: a hold order from the KGB. It's twenty percent of

702
00:36:35,440 --> 00:36:37,719
Speaker 2: one country. You come out of World War two and

703
00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:40,480
Speaker 2: they take over what twelve countries or something like that Europe.

704
00:36:40,880 --> 00:36:44,120
Speaker 2: And so the guy that Meyer was obsessed with in

705
00:36:44,120 --> 00:36:46,920
Speaker 2: those days, Stalin or his successors, I mean, they were

706
00:36:47,000 --> 00:36:49,520
Speaker 2: really doing bad business all around the world, and of

707
00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:52,120
Speaker 2: course he wanted to stop that. But he saw a

708
00:36:52,160 --> 00:36:54,960
Speaker 2: world in which they didn't exist, and he thought, in

709
00:36:55,000 --> 00:36:58,920
Speaker 2: that world, it doesn't make sense to manage the social

710
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:01,840
Speaker 2: systems and make sure that every country was sort of

711
00:37:01,840 --> 00:37:04,920
Speaker 2: a democracy like we are. And he seems explicitly in

712
00:37:04,960 --> 00:37:08,040
Speaker 2: a debate with Alan Lowenstein at Yale he said this

713
00:37:08,120 --> 00:37:10,240
Speaker 2: with Kissing Jr. And he seved this in his last

714
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:14,080
Speaker 2: column in Nationer Review, which he wrote in December nineteen

715
00:37:14,120 --> 00:37:16,359
Speaker 2: seventy one. And at that point he didn't know it.

716
00:37:16,400 --> 00:37:19,440
Speaker 2: But the cancer that he got and he was a chainsmoker,

717
00:37:19,560 --> 00:37:21,359
Speaker 2: like a lot of these guys, they really lived mad

718
00:37:21,440 --> 00:37:24,359
Speaker 2: met existence back then. The cancer that was eating away

719
00:37:24,400 --> 00:37:27,000
Speaker 2: at him. The last column, he writes, a National Review

720
00:37:27,680 --> 00:37:29,960
Speaker 2: is a view of the world without the Soviet Union

721
00:37:30,080 --> 00:37:31,880
Speaker 2: and what our foreign policy would be. And so in

722
00:37:31,880 --> 00:37:34,320
Speaker 2: that sense, I think he would be recomfortable with the

723
00:37:34,360 --> 00:37:37,399
Speaker 2: Trump people. I think on trade, sort of the more

724
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:40,680
Speaker 2: populous aspect of it. On the bigger government aspect of it,

725
00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:41,759
Speaker 2: I think could be horrified.

726
00:37:42,239 --> 00:37:43,400
Speaker 1: What's your next project?

727
00:37:44,800 --> 00:37:45,080
Speaker 2: Wow?

728
00:37:45,160 --> 00:37:45,200
Speaker 1: Not.

729
00:37:45,360 --> 00:37:47,360
Speaker 2: There was a guy that I was writing about here,

730
00:37:47,680 --> 00:37:50,160
Speaker 2: and I used to call him my oldest friend because

731
00:37:50,160 --> 00:37:52,000
Speaker 2: I met him when he was ninety six years old,

732
00:37:52,480 --> 00:37:54,759
Speaker 2: and his name was Noah par Mattel. He was the

733
00:37:54,760 --> 00:37:57,240
Speaker 2: boyfriend of Joan Didion for six years, and I interviewed

734
00:37:57,320 --> 00:37:59,880
Speaker 2: him a series of times, and I thought, Wow, this

735
00:37:59,920 --> 00:38:02,040
Speaker 2: is one of the more interesting guys that I've ever

736
00:38:02,080 --> 00:38:04,839
Speaker 2: come across. And he had a bit of a con

737
00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:06,960
Speaker 2: man at him, but like a lot of Cohn men,

738
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:10,600
Speaker 2: he was very charming. And so I think about beginning

739
00:38:10,640 --> 00:38:13,279
Speaker 2: about him, maybe in a long form article. I don't

740
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:15,439
Speaker 2: know that people will go for a book, but that's

741
00:38:15,440 --> 00:38:18,759
Speaker 2: what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about some of these

742
00:38:18,920 --> 00:38:21,959
Speaker 2: wrongly Nasher Review people. In the first ten years, first

743
00:38:22,040 --> 00:38:25,000
Speaker 2: seven years of the publication, they were these three amigos,

744
00:38:25,040 --> 00:38:30,720
Speaker 2: these three musketeers, Frank Meyer, Brent Bozell, and Wilmer Kendall,

745
00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:33,399
Speaker 2: and they were sort of Nash Reviews great wing. When

746
00:38:33,440 --> 00:38:35,560
Speaker 2: Meyer came in there there was a guy named Billy Schlam.

747
00:38:35,760 --> 00:38:37,880
Speaker 2: He's the idea man behind Nash Review. He came up

748
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:41,000
Speaker 2: with the idea. Schlam was a Communist who had met

749
00:38:41,080 --> 00:38:45,080
Speaker 2: Lennon at sixteen, turned like Meyer did, became an anti

750
00:38:45,160 --> 00:38:47,760
Speaker 2: Commuist conservative in the post war year, and his idea

751
00:38:48,080 --> 00:38:50,799
Speaker 2: was Nash Review. Bill Buckley did the heavy lifting, he

752
00:38:50,840 --> 00:38:54,399
Speaker 2: executed the idea, did the free raising. But early on

753
00:38:54,800 --> 00:38:57,200
Speaker 2: Shlam was sort of the leader of the right wing

754
00:38:57,440 --> 00:39:00,719
Speaker 2: in nasher review. He gets defenestrated because he's a big

755
00:39:00,760 --> 00:39:02,560
Speaker 2: pain in the neck and everyone thinks he's a pain

756
00:39:02,600 --> 00:39:05,640
Speaker 2: in the neck. And so Meyer takes over his role,

757
00:39:05,719 --> 00:39:08,320
Speaker 2: not only his book review editor, but it's sort of

758
00:39:08,360 --> 00:39:12,200
Speaker 2: the anti James Burnham in Nash Review. James Burnham was

759
00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:14,200
Speaker 2: an anti communist. But I don't know if I said

760
00:39:14,200 --> 00:39:15,600
Speaker 2: it or someone else said it, but his Paul, his

761
00:39:15,640 --> 00:39:19,040
Speaker 2: conspiratism essentially stopped at the water's edge. And so Meyer

762
00:39:19,280 --> 00:39:22,520
Speaker 2: was the leader of Nash Review's right wing faction. And

763
00:39:23,080 --> 00:39:28,239
Speaker 2: people like Meyer, Wilmore, Kendall, Brent Bazell to agree they

764
00:39:28,320 --> 00:39:30,400
Speaker 2: were living. If you've ever seen the show mad Men,

765
00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:33,520
Speaker 2: they were living sort of a mad Men existence. Kendall

766
00:39:33,600 --> 00:39:35,600
Speaker 2: writes Meyer a letter at one point saying, listen, I'm

767
00:39:35,600 --> 00:39:38,520
Speaker 2: talking about a heath kick my normal intake of seventy

768
00:39:38,680 --> 00:39:42,359
Speaker 2: sigarettes Sidenny from now down to a pack. I think

769
00:39:42,400 --> 00:39:44,799
Speaker 2: nowadays you look at a guy like Wilmer Pennell and say, well,

770
00:39:44,800 --> 00:39:49,040
Speaker 2: here personality disorder. And Meyer is up in Woodstock sort

771
00:39:49,080 --> 00:39:52,000
Speaker 2: of leading the battle of Nash Review's right wing. He

772
00:39:52,120 --> 00:39:55,400
Speaker 2: loses the battle within Nasher Review, but he wins the

773
00:39:55,400 --> 00:39:58,280
Speaker 2: broader war for the conservative movement. In other words, Nasher

774
00:39:58,280 --> 00:40:01,800
Speaker 2: Review increasingly takes on the look of what James Bernlan

775
00:40:01,920 --> 00:40:03,840
Speaker 2: wanted for it, which is still of an opinion a

776
00:40:03,920 --> 00:40:08,480
Speaker 2: regular opinion magazine. Myer means like a philosophical journal. So

777
00:40:08,520 --> 00:40:11,000
Speaker 2: he learns it's not battle of Nation Review, but this

778
00:40:11,440 --> 00:40:13,920
Speaker 2: wing and Nation Review they win the broader battle for

779
00:40:14,040 --> 00:40:17,120
Speaker 2: the soul of the conservative movement. It's interesting that as well.

780
00:40:17,400 --> 00:40:19,800
Speaker 1: It's amazing. I want to thank you for joining me.

781
00:40:19,880 --> 00:40:23,239
Speaker 1: I'm frankly amazed both by your own career and the

782
00:40:23,440 --> 00:40:26,320
Speaker 1: range of people you've written about, and by your new book,

783
00:40:26,680 --> 00:40:29,680
Speaker 1: which I think is really badly needed, The Man who

784
00:40:29,719 --> 00:40:34,280
Speaker 1: invented Conservatism, The Unlikely Life of Frank Smer. It's available

785
00:40:34,280 --> 00:40:37,040
Speaker 1: now in Amazon and in bookstores everywhere. No one to

786
00:40:37,080 --> 00:40:39,799
Speaker 1: let our listeners know they can find out more about

787
00:40:39,840 --> 00:40:43,760
Speaker 1: the work you're doing by visiting the American Spectator website

788
00:40:43,840 --> 00:40:48,479
Speaker 1: at Spectator dot org. And I really appreciate you sharing.

789
00:40:48,520 --> 00:40:49,600
Speaker 1: This has been fascinating.

790
00:40:50,000 --> 00:40:52,000
Speaker 2: This is the privilege to talk to you, mister speaker.

791
00:40:52,080 --> 00:40:53,440
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me on.

792
00:40:58,200 --> 00:41:00,839
Speaker 1: Thank you to my guest Daniel J. You can get

793
00:41:00,840 --> 00:41:03,200
Speaker 1: a link to buy his new book, The Man who

794
00:41:03,239 --> 00:41:07,440
Speaker 1: Invented Conservatism on our show page at Newtsworld dot com.

795
00:41:07,600 --> 00:41:10,840
Speaker 1: News World is produced by Gingrish three sixty and iHeartMedia.

796
00:41:10,960 --> 00:41:16,000
Speaker 1: Our executive producer his Guarnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson.

797
00:41:16,360 --> 00:41:19,240
Speaker 1: The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley.

798
00:41:19,760 --> 00:41:22,719
Speaker 1: Special thanks to the team at Gingish three sixty. If

799
00:41:22,719 --> 00:41:25,160
Speaker 1: you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple

800
00:41:25,200 --> 00:41:28,279
Speaker 1: Podcasts and both rate us with five stars and give

801
00:41:28,360 --> 00:41:30,880
Speaker 1: us a review so others can learn what it's all about.

802
00:41:31,320 --> 00:41:34,120
Speaker 1: Right now, Listeners of Newtsworld can sign up for my

803
00:41:34,239 --> 00:41:39,560
Speaker 1: three free weekly columns at gingrashtree sixty dot com slash newsletter.

804
00:41:39,880 --> 00:41:42,000
Speaker 1: I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newsworld