Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Philip K. Howard, Chair of Common Good, to discuss his latest book, Saving Can-Do: How to Revive the Spirit of America. They chat about how nothing works as it should because red tape has strangled common sense, how bureaucracy makes people go brain dead, how the United States is flailing in legal quicksand, and what we can do about it.

Get the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Saving-Can-Do-Revive-Spirit-America/dp/1957588403

Show Notes:

The Atlantic: Philip K. Howard – “Americans Are Afraid of Authority”

Law & Liberty: Philip K. Howard – “The Need for Judgment”

Law & Liberty: Mark Pulliam – “A Post-Trump Era Common Sense?”

The Wall Street Journal: Yuval Levin – “‘Saving Can-Do’ Review: How to Stop Dragging Feet”

The Washington Post: George F. Will – “America’s can-do spirit needs liberation from can’t-do regulation”

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined once again by Daniel J. Mahoney, professor emeritus at Assumption University and senior fellow at the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, to discuss his latest book, The Persistence of the Ideological Lie: The Totalitarian Impulse Then and Now. They chat about what is the “Ideological Lie,” how the totalitarians from the Jacobins onward have relied on it, and how our failure to learn from the totalitarian tragedy of the twentieth century allowed the ideological virus to metastasize in new and alarming ways.

Get the book here: https://www.encounterbooks.com/books/persistence-ideological-lie/

Show Notes:

The American Mind: Daniel J. Mahoney – “Fighting the Ideological Lie”

https://americanmind.org/salvo/fighting-the-ideological-lie/

City Journal: Daniel DiSalvo – “The Destructiveness of Ideological Thinking”

https://www.city-journal.org/article/daniel-j-mahoney-persistence-ideological-lie

Fusion: Juliana Geran Pilon – “To Lie or Not to Lie”

https://fusionaier.org/2025/to-lie-or-not-to-lie/

Law & Liberty: Theodore Dalrymple – “Diagnosing the Ideological Mind”

https://lawliberty.org/book-review/diagnosing-the-ideological-mind/

Law & Liberty: Daniel J. Mahoney – “The Persistence of the Lie”

https://lawliberty.org/the-persistence-of-the-lie/

National Review: John O’Sullivan – “Lies, Damned Lies, and Ideology”

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2025/06/lies-damned-lies-and-ideology/

The University Bookman: Jeffrey Folks – “Unmasking the Ideological Lie”

https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/unmasking-the-ideological-lie/

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Harold Holzer, director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, to discuss his latest book, Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration. They chat about the immigration situation in the United States in the 30 years leading up the Civil War, how immigrants forever altered the country’s demographics, culture, and voting patterns, how tensions over immigration broke apart the Whig Party and lead to the formation of the Republican Party, and how Lincoln evolved into a champion for immigration.

Get the book here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/558372/brought-forth-on-this-continent-by-harold-holzer/