Bonus Episode – The Burkean Conservative with Wes Siler

Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values

In this bonus episode, Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is interviewed by Wes Siler, director and founder of The Burkean Conservative. This conversation was originally broadcast on Facebook Live under The Burkean Conservative’s weekly video series Conservatism on Tap LIVE. The conversation centers around how Saving Elephants came to be and the ongoing project to reignite conservatism for Millennials in hopes of restoring the Republican party.

The Burkean Conservative is a website, social media presence, and series of frequently updated videos focused on educating and expanding the conservative movement on the basis of Edmund Burke's principles. They define a “Burkean Conservative” one who ascribes to conservative political philosophy in the tradition of Edmund Burke, an 18th century philosopher and statesman widely credited for developing classical conservatism.

According to The Burkean Conservative website, Edmund Burke took strong stances against the violence and progressivism of the French Revolution while also taking a position of sympathy and leniency towards the more justified impulses of the American Revolution. Today the ideas, speeches, and political stances of Edmund Burke serve to philosophically differentiate conservatism from other beliefs. However, Burke's ideas are still too often ignored and disregarded by leading American intellectuals today. Far too many conflate conservatism with libertarianism or simple nostalgia, and in doing so they ignore the true intellectual roots and maturity of the conservative perspective.