Know Your Enemy

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.

Last month, on May 14th, we were joined by nearly 800 listeners in New York City for the first ever Know Your Enemy live show, "Decline and Fall." The event was a fundraiser for Dissent, so we called in the big guns, our great friend Mike Duncan, to join us on stage. Many KYE listeners will be familiar with Mike, the brilliant and prolific host of the Revolutions and, especially relevant for the purposes of this conversation, History of Rome podcasts. We discuss how the right talks about decline, their hilariously ignorant invocations of Rome, our very symptomatic obsession with political decline and dissolution, the power of nostalgia and declension narrative—and then answer audience questions!

Thank you again to everyone who joined us in person, to Mike Duncan, to Patrick Iber and Rosalie Ryan and everyone at Dissent, to our intrepid producer Jesse Brenneman (who was able to fly in from Montana to join us), to listeners near and far who so generously continue to support Know Your Enemy!

Donate to Dissent here.

Photo credit: Jack Califano

Sources:

For quotes from conservatives about Rome's decline: Reagan, Nixon, Buchanan, Vance

Mike Duncan, The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic (2017)

James J. Walsh, The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries (1907)

Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962)

Kate Wagner, "Fear of a Breakdown," Late Review, May 11, 2026.

D.W. Winnicott, "Fear of a Breakdown," Intl. Review of Psychoanalysis, (1974)

In this episode we have a conversation with reporter Jasper Craven about his new book, God Forgives, Brothers Don't: The Long March of Military Education and the Making of American Manhood, which is a made-for-KYE feat of research that offers a fascinating way into perennial themes of this show: masculinity, U.S. empire, the relationship between violence and civilization, and the surprising camp of conservatism. Along the way we discuss Donald Trump, the mob, Peter Brian Hegseth, Graham Platner, and more.

Sources:

Jasper Craven, God Forgives, Brothers Don't: The Long March of Military Education and the Making of American Manhood (2026)

— "Battle of the Sexes: Pete Hegseth's War on Women," The Baffler, Sept 2025

Dan Gilgoth, The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America Are Winning the Culture War (2007)

Dr. James Dobson, Dare to Discipline: A Pyschologist Offers Urgent Advice to Parents and Teachers (1970)

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.

As always, listeners asked more mailbag questions than we could respond to in one episode, so we continue answering them here for subscribers. In this second round we take up: a playlist of KYE's Straussian-related episodes; (Straussian) esoteric writing versus (French) death of the author and the art of writing (and interpretation); prose style—what it is, why it matters, its relationship to poetry, and the rhythms of Norman Maclean; a "Straussian" reading of Steely Dan; and why liberalism is (mostly) worth defending.

Thank you to everyone who attended our live event in NYC on Thursday! We had a great time. 

Sources:

Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952)

— Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958)

Stanley Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics (1987)

Wallace Stevens, "The Snow Man," Poetry, Oct 1921

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories (1976)

— The Norman Maclean Reader (2008)

Edmund White, Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978)

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (2004)

W.H. Auden, "Friday's Child," (1958)

Sam Adler-Bell, "Can Liberalism Stop Being So Darn Liberal?" The New Republic, June 20, 2024.

Not only was May 6th the seven-year anniversary of Know Your Enemy, an occasion to celebrate your support of our work, but it's been nearly a year since we last opened the mailbag and answered listener questions. As always, we loved thinking about the topics you so thoughtfully and intelligently asked us to consider, and we take up a number of them in this episode: the future of the MAGA coalition and GOP politics post-Trump, the promise and perils of graduate school, novels we unexpectedly loved, our favorite places to read, how the left should understand liberalism, among others!

* BUY TICKETS FOR KYE x MIKE DUNCAN LIVE IN NYC *

Sources:

Katherine Miller, Margie Omero, & Adrian J. Rivera, "'Disappointed,' 'Surprised,' 'Betrayed': 11 Trump Voters on What Has Gone Wrong," New York Times, April 27, 2026

Christopher Caldwell, "The End of Trumpism," The Spectator, Mar 30, 2026

Helena Rosenblatt, The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century (2018)

Daniel Schlozman & Sam Rosenfeld, The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics (2024)

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (1981)

William T. Kavanaugh, "Killing for the Telephone Company: Why the Nation-State is Not the Keeper of the Common Good," Modern Theology, April 2004

Roger Scruton, Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life (2005)

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.

REMINDER: COME SEE KYE x MIKE DUNCAN LIVE IN NYC

Given the string of recent episodes that, in various ways, grappled with religion we wanted to take a step back and offer a rather personal conversation about believing in God, or not, and what difference it might makes. The discussion begins by revisiting when we first met over a decade ago and talked a lot about faith, then ranges widely, including: atheism vs agnosticism, W.H. Auden, why we're not experiencing a religious revival in the United States (but could be soon), and more.

Sources:

Christopher Beha, Why I Am Not an Atheist (2026)

Edward Mendelson, "The Secret Auden," New York Review of Books, March 20, 2014

David Martin, w/ a reply from Edward Mendelson, "Why Auden Married," New York Review of Books, April 24, 2014

Matthew Sitman, "Saving Calvin from Clichés: An Interview with Marilynne Robinson," Commonweal, Oct 5, 2017

Ryan Burge, "Religion Has Become A Luxury Good For The Middle Class, Married College Graduate With Children," Religion Unplugged, July 12, 2023

Daniel Cox, "The Illusion of America's Religious Revival," American Storylines, Nov 13, 2025

Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (1983)

— The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other (1975)

The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard, edited & with an introduction by W.H. Auden (1999)

W.H. Auden, "In Praise of Limestone," in Nones (1951)

"Jill Lepore on Nationalism, Populism, and the State of America," EconTalk, April 15, 2019