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Get Me to the Gray, presented by COJA Services Inc., is a podcast about the conversations we’re told we shouldn’t have. Hosted by journalist and author Paula Lehman-Ewing, the show brings people with fundamentally different ways of seeing the world into honest dialogue—where we name what divides us and keep talking anyway.COJA Services Inc. works with mission-driven organizations and brands that are clear on their values but struggle to translate that clarity into public-facing language. We help teams align internal narratives, reduce confusion before it becomes mistrust, and translate complexity into public understanding without relying on scripts, rhetoric, or generic AI language that strips voice and judgment.
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Paula (Host): [00:00:00] Today I wanna welcome Josh Lewis to the show. Josh is a CPA and government auditor based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. With more than a decade of experience examining how public institutions function in practice. A former candidate for city auditor and lifelong Republican, Josh stepped away from party leadership in 2016 amid growing concerns about the direction of the GOP.
He now comments about how conservatism can evolve in the 21st century through his blog and corresponding podcast saving elephants. Welcome Josh.
Josh Lewis: It's good. Be here.
Paula (Host): So, just to be clear for listeners this, this isn't a debate about whether change is good or bad, it's a conversation about how change happens, what should restrain it, and what gets lost when we move , too quickly or too confidently in one direction.
So, you know, I wanna start by naming something pretty plainly, because I think it sits at the center of this conversation. When we talk about restraint or gradualism, or the wisdom of moving [00:01:00] slowly. That often assumes that time is neutral. Um, but for a lot of people, time isn't neutral. It's, it's something they experience as loss, as exposure, as harm.
So when we talk about waiting or preserving what exists while change happens slowly, I think it's important to acknowledge that waiting is a luxury that not everyone has. So I wanna ask you this directly. How does a philosophy built around restraint and continuity account for the fact that for many people, delay itself is a form of harm?
Josh Lewis: That's a great question and, and I, I like this topic overall. I, I think I should begin by saying, I appreciate you saying we're not here to debate if change is good or bad. Um, that's good because I don't know if I could say change is good or bad. Change is inevitable, right? It, it's, it's going to be there.
Some change. I think we could all agree is good. Some change I think we could all agree is bad and then we're gonna have a lot we disagree about in the middle. Um, it is true. You correctly observe that [00:02:00] change across structures, systems, social groups, impacts the individuals or the sub communities within those groups differently.
Um, I, I think that too is probably inevitable, just baked into the human experience that there's no, there's no true way to alleviate that in all cases. I, I think part of what we're dealing with here is questions of trade off. It might be that change would be beneficial for, say, subgroup a. But it would be harmful for subgroup B.
And so therefore we, we need some kind of working theory around the case of, well, what parameters do we set up to determine, um, at when does it make sense to potentially over the long haul harm someone out of a, again, let's say a truthful observation, that slow change can be, well, let's just call it delay justice for those currently experiencing harm.
Paula (Host): So, so let's go a step further because it does seem to always be the same people experiencing harm, right? Let's, it's kind of marginalized communities, immigrants, [00:03:00] indigenous people, um, and so, you know, it's not just. That the systems have failed them occasionally, they have never worked for them. Not historically, not now.
So when we think about conserving institutions or respecting tradition, I think there's an unspoken question underneath that, which is, what does it mean to conserve a system from the perspective of many people, which has always been exclusionary or harmful? And I don't mean that rhetorically, I mean it genuinely, because if tradition has historically protected.
Things like segregation, things like gender hierarchy. How do we distinguish between what's worth preserving and what's simply familiar?
Josh Lewis: It, it would be hard for me to come to up with say, like a one size fits all rule response. That was a very fair question. Um, I, I would say that it is also an equally true observation that there are, let's just strip it away of say, gender or race.
Let's say there have always been [00:04:00] vulnerable groups, typically minorities, not necessarily racial, but just minorities of some sort within any society. Um, I, but I think that there. Begets like it, it allows us to kind of peel back the layers. Say, okay, well if, if that has always existed and presumably always will exist.
Is it true then that some societies have done a better job at protecting the rights of minorities or those who are vulnerable? And I would argue that historically speaking, while there are lots of institutions that have perpetuated harm, uh, it is usually chiefly through some of these institutions, IE the state religious institutions, families, sort of social structures.
That actually do create some sort of a break on the otherwise, uh, just blatant desires of the strong to overpower the weak. Um, it is absolutely true that, you know, humanity has had a horrible checkered past, but we've also done good things too. And when you look around and say, okay, well, which societies have been able to elevate, say, those who would otherwise be [00:05:00] oppressed by the strong, it is in my view, those who have had the most functioning institutions that, uh.
That are allowed to grow slowly over time and are allowed to grow from what I would call the bottom up that they, they graph themselves onto our. Um, you know what, what Edmund Burke called our little platoons. That first the things we first form affections with. I might have a great heart, uh, for the indigenous people of a third world country, but hopefully my first and foremost obligation or to my children or to my immediate family.
And from that I can expand outward, uh, and, and have a generous and charitable spirit to others. And so. A society that finds a way to institute or to build its institutions around those affections and feelings, I think is going to be one that ultimately protects those very minority groups that are usually vulnerable among us.
Paula (Host): So it, but it seems like we're already kind of behind in that, right? Because our institutions were built at a [00:06:00] time. Very close to the slave trade.
So if those institutions were born and bred in a yeah, all men are kind of creative, equal set setting. And let 200 years go by and now we're, just getting out of Jim Crow segregation. How can you make the argument that's just , an evolutionary process that should be endured when it doesn't seem like the values are something that we want in the first place.
Josh Lewis: Well, I think there's two things going on here. One is a person can always say, look. Um, if we're progressing in a certain direction, that's maybe preferable. It's not happening fast enough. That's one line of thinking, right? It ought to happen faster. Another is, is it even possible to progress from where we're starting?
And that may be another area we might disagree on both points, but lemme start with that latter point. It is true that much of the United States institutionally was wed within a slavery tradition. I would also argue much of the United States was. We [00:07:00] within the very traditions that emancipated the slaves in a matter that the United Kingdom and the United States of America, um, did so more so than most of the rest of the world, even most of the rest of the civilized world faster.
I don't mean we get like an a plus for our treatment of slaves. I mean, rather, I think it needs to be recognized that they're. We don't choose the cultures we're born into or the families or the nations we're born into, and we enter this world that's very messy. And we begin to look around to say, okay, our institutions yes, have odious things in their past.
They also have things that individuals have used to enact. Great. Good. Uh, and so using these tools, would that progress us further, faster and more endurably? Then say, dismantling the tools and sort of starting over from whole cloth. And, and I do think this is maybe a worldview difference between, broadly speaking, the right and the left.
I would say as a conservative, yes, using the tools as messy as they are, is always going to have a more durable, lasting change that would bring about more justice and equity. Um, [00:08:00] rather than, than saying, well, because these things are embedded in some sort of a racial or discriminatory past, we need to dismantle them and then pretend as if we humans have the capacity to just invent institution's whole cloth that would, uh, institute justice.
Paula (Host): So, and I, I wanna do that for a moment because I think we're getting to that, that deeper political divide that we're talking about. So on one end of the spectrum, you have. A mindset that I'm probably closer to. You know, the Angela Davis line, which I know you've written about. I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change.
I'm changing the things I cannot accept. That way of thinking starts from the idea that if a system causes harm, it shouldn't preserve. So like, yes, we emancipated the slaves and then we sort of. Made it unequal housing and unequal job opportunities up until still. So, it's something that you have to confront and disrupt or reimagine.
On the other side of the spectrum, and I don't mean [00:09:00] this as your position, but as a, as the political current you're grouped with often is that there's this very different instinct. The instinct behind Make America Great again, right? The idea that something essential has been lost, and the answer is to restore or reclaim it, to go back to conserve.
So I'm curious how you think about that tension. If on one hand you have a demand to change what's unacceptable and on the other you have a desire to preserve what's been lost, where does conservatism actually sit?
Josh Lewis: That, that's a great question. That's why I had already mentioned Edmund Burke. I call myself a burkin conservative.
Um, you know, in this stupid binary age we live, yeah. It, we all fit in weird boxes. If you have to shove us into one, you know, team Red or Team Blue, right. Um, I would argue conservatism, classical conservatism, the type I'm trying to advocate properly understood is most concerned with the present moment.
It's not about trying to. [00:10:00] Go back to an imaginary utopic past, just as it's not trying to go to some sort of utopian future that has not occurred yet. I think both of those can take into an extreme anyway. It can be very harmful. I think what it's trying to do rather is saying, look. The past gives us building blocks and clues, and there's embedded information in it, uh, that we can't just completely shake off.
We owe some allegiance or duties to this nation we're born into, to the families we're born into. Doesn't mean they did uh things right or perfect. It doesn't even mean we can't ultimately conclude. They did some things pretty horrible not to be condemned for it. It does however, mean that our first obligation is a prejudice to understand why did they do these things the way they did?
And let me be clear, I'm not saying here that we're gonna have some sort of conversation of, well, maybe they were okay to enslave, you know, uh, Africans in, in the southern colonies. I don't mean that, I just mean as in totality. We ought not to assume that we're somehow. Spiritually or morally superior to our ancestors just 'cause of the moment we accidentally happened to be born [00:11:00] into, they made decisions right and wrong in the, in the, the way that they did at the time that they did.
That means we can stretch back in the past and hopefully find heroes, individuals who are in deeply inspirational, uh, who stood up to systems of oppression and injustice in, in a manner that, um, you, you know, it's, it's hard, it's impossible to know, but I'm sure you've heard of these before where somebody who asked the question, look, supposing you grew up at the beginning of Jim Crow era, uh, you know, in, in, in the South, you might like to think you would've been there.
Marching with those, you know, for civil rights, but how do you know you might have been the biggest bigot of them all? And so those who, those who born into the movements, they are recognize the, the rights or the wrongs, I think necessarily need to figure out, okay, what am I past? Can I hold onto, um, so there is a, i, I am arguing, I guess, that there is a moral order that is irrespective of whatever moment we have to be living in.
However, whatever moment we happen to be living in. Affords us [00:12:00] certain tools or denies us certain tools where we can tap into these moral orders and, and seek to establish justice.
Paula (Host): So, all right, let's go. I, I have a couple of questions based on that. One is that, you know, you're saying we are, we are born into this nation.
Some people were not born into this nation. They were captured and taken to this nation.
Josh Lewis: Sure.
Paula (Host): And so how does that work as a building block? Is it a sort of lesson of what not to do, or is it a. Uh, what I'm, what I'm getting at is it feels like those stories in the nostalgia of this country often just get ignored or retold.
Josh Lewis: Yeah. It's messy. Well, I mean, let's just acknowledge that, right? Um, some people are not born to this nation, but thankfully as an American, I, I consider them to be just as much Americans. If they came here and they wholeheartedly accept the premise of the American founding and say, I am, I'm an American.
You know, maybe I'm ethnically something else, but I'm not. You're talking of course about those who. We're not born in here. They were forced into here. Um, [00:13:00] and, and maybe I'm to be clear when I say we're born into certain obligations, the nation is a single example. Those slaves born here very unjustly. Uh, were also born into families in certain cultures.
You know, there was a lot of ways in which most American communities within the South have a deep abiding sense of Christianity that was grafted into them and didn't originate in Africa. But it was something that. Was melded into their culture later. Uh, now far be it for me to say, well, because that doesn't originate in Africa.
It's, you know, you're misappropriating say white culture to express a Christian view. Um, it, these things get really messy in a hurry. And that's why I'm saying each of us, I think, can look around. I don't honestly know the full story of my ancestry. I can go back a couple of generations say, and I can say, yeah, I'm pretty much Heinz 57 American, but.
Uh, you know, there, there's a lot of, um, gaps, let's say in my history. For all I know, I'm the descendant of the, in I, I know I'm Native American, so I'm sure there's plenty [00:14:00] of, uh, injustices that were suffered upon, some of my ancestors. Um, and, and, and so I think there's a way in which I can rightly hold those views in tension.
Um, I'm not a big fan of Andrew Jackson. I don't know why we have his face on the $20 bill. The dude that started, you know, so, so much massacre of, of Native Americans. You have the same, while I understand the contributions he made to say the Democratic Party and the populous movement within the United States.
Paula (Host): And I wanna be careful here because when you tell, so the example that you gave about the. Movement of Christianity among black communities in the south.
If we're looking at that as an example in the world of gradualism, of gradual change, it could just be a way of coping.
Like, what's happening to us. You're asking to me to endure an injustice. Even after emancipation, there's still, slave labor. There's still segregation, there's still hatred. Obviously, [00:15:00] vigilante retribution was happening, so how much of it is.
Well, if you want a God, you, you can use ours.
And how much of it is like a decision to be in the American culture to make it easier? Like again I think what it comes down to for me is that I think our positions are easy. It's easy to say we should.
Proceed with caution because it doesn't feel like someone's stabbing us in the back right now. You know what I mean?
Josh Lewis: Sure. No, and that, and that makes sense and I want to be, I always wanna be mindful of that because yeah, it is easy for someone who, um. Uh, let, and I'll just frankly say real or imagined does not feel oppressed by any outside society or system.
It is easy for that person to take a more, let's call it small c conservative position. Doesn't even have to be, um, you know, intellectually thought through, just, just sort of a, uh, a gut [00:16:00] feeling of things ought to remain the same, and that I can be happy that they're progressing. . I, I think though, um, any society is going to have to at some capacity convince all of its, I shouldn't say all 'cause I think that's impossible. The overwhelming majority of its members, which is not just those who see themselves doing well, but.
Those members in society that are still struggling, um, to make it, it's going to have to convince them that you fit here somehow. That you find a place here somehow, that, not only that, but you find within the society. The means of your preservation, the means of your emancipation. The means of your progress, let's call it.
Um, and, and that could look different. You know, the speed or the degree to which progress occurs can be different per each group. I, I'm not here to just try to define that for everybody. I think part of the problem is just that, that we have a large number of individuals who rightly or wrongly do not see that.
They don't take a Frederick Douglass view, say of the American Constitution. They don't take even, I would say a Martin Luther King view of the American [00:17:00] Constitution that I'm here to cash the blank check that was written.
It's more of a there is no home for me in this society. It has been nothing but discrimination, nor could it be anything but that. And therefore it something needs to fundamentally change.
Paula (Host): Yeah. And I'm having trouble with that because when you say people should have the autonomy to be in charge of their destiny here in the United States, that is not taking to account systems that deny them that opportunity.
So whether it's disenfranchisement, whether it's you know you're familiar with indigenous communities and where is their autonomy in all of this? So it's kind of like, yeah, that would be great if everyone could just bootstrap their way to freedom. But that is again, gets us back into systems, systems that are designed to not allow that to happen.
Josh Lewis: Yeah, and and I think obviously this is a huge disagreement oftentimes between the left and the right. When we [00:18:00] say systems and when we say they're designed in such a way and, and that, that can mean one of two things, right? One can be a kind of Machiavellian, you know, you know, the, the villain twirling their mustache of deliberately dumb things to hold people down.
Uh, another argument I've heard. Can be, well, it's not necessarily anybody's fault, it's just those in power are naturally going to behave in such a way that prevent any sort of progress from, you know, taking over their station, if you will. And design, you know, uh, some of the, let's say, critical race theory arguments that may be, it may not be intentional, but we live in such a world that's graphed onto, naturally discriminate against others.
I, I think it is. Uh, good and right for all humans to look around and say, look, things are unjust and not all people are equal. But then that opens a lot of other questions. Well, why is that? Is it chiefly because of systems or is it chiefly because of something else? Are there other things that are causing, um, let's say to put a constraint upon us?
I, I have, uh, I probably had just as much [00:19:00] of an opportunity to, to become a, uh, you know, a pro athlete as, as Michael Jordan. But I lacked the talent. That was not a system of oppression preventing me from that. It was sort of the, the, the variations found in nature that made it impossible. And so I think both things were in play at once.
Um. All of us have different abilities, talents, and opportunities say, and some of us live in more oppressive systems than others. But again, I would argue if you look around the world, and if you look around history, I would not describe much of the West as perpetrating systems of injustice and oppression.
Yes, we can talk about slavery, we can talk about Jim Crow. I don't wanna deny those things happen, and I certainly don't wanna whitewash 'em as if it was okay. I just mean compared to what? What are we comparing this to? And I would say we still stand a better chance. Beginning with the building blocks we've been given, uh, then say, if, if you and I were, and I'm, I'm gonna go to an extreme example here, say born in North Korea, trying to say, well, how do we, how do we use this particular [00:20:00] system to institute, uh, social justice?
Paula (Host): Yeah. I just, you know, it just doesn't hit home with me because it's one thing when you don't have Michael Jordan's talent, which very few people do. Um, and it's another thing when you have, you know, weights placed on you so that you can't grow tall, so that you can't be in the basketball.
You mentioned immigrants. My family was also immigrants. We all had to get here somewhow right.
But when they came over, they were, they had this sort of deal where they were saying. You might be white. We'll see if you like acclimate to our culture, and if you don't, you'll be black.
Speaker: And if we have a tradition of conserving values that have historically, not just for subgroup A, but for the very same groups, mainly black and brown people, if we keep [00:21:00] building with those blocks, I don't see how change is possible.
Josh Lewis: I and and I, and maybe that's just a disagreement we would have among us, is that I. I don't think we live in an ideal world. Um, let, let's just stick with say, racial discrimination, um, of that way. Let's, because there's all sorts of ways in which we could say the world is not ideal. Um, but I would see progress as having happened.
Um, now one might argue it's not been fast enough or enduring enough, or long enough, um, or deep enough. I mean, we could have those conversations. Um, but I, I don't see the alternative, which is coming up with a, let's say a priori theoretical building blocks that we were not born into. Um, as any examples in history of that actually producing the kind of justices you and I might both agree, we would hope, uh, would exist in this world.
Paula (Host): Well, yeah, but you've, you've mentioned [00:22:00] things like capitalism as revolutionary, so, and that. I assume you didn't mean in a negative way. So what is revolutionary in a conservative gradual view? Because what I consider revolutionary is redesigning those building blocks.
Mm-hmm. Is saying, these are better systems now that we know more, now that we have that history, these are better systems. And so what would the revolutionary idea look like? In this sense because i'm trying to look at the arguments that you've made in terms of moving slowly conserving building blocks, but you also acknowledge that some of the things that have arisen out of revolutionary ideas have been beneficial.
Josh Lewis: So the word revolutionary is, uh, holds a lot of baggage. Um, and so it, it's a little careful. I think we need to dice through that, just a hair, which is that when, when I La Revolutions as a good thing, I'm almost always speaking of them in a, [00:23:00] say a pre.
Uh, Jacobin French revolutionary sense of the word. Um, it's not everything that French did was bad, but as a burkin conservative, I have to think most of what the revolutionary views was was a little outta kilter. Um, when I say revolution, in that sense, it oftentimes can look more like what we might refer to as a reformation.
And if we juxtapose, say, the American Revolution with the French Revolution, I think there's a very strong argument to be had that much of what the founding fathers in the United States were attempting to do is saying. Not so much we're inventing something entirely new, even though you kind of get that idea by reading your Thomas Jeffersons or your Thomas Paynes.
But rather we're saying, look, we come from a long line of tradition of ordered liberty that we, uh, believe we have rights as faithful subjects of the British monarch that are being denied us, and so therefore us trying to do this air quotes new revolutionary thing. Is in effect a reformation of our older ancient understandings of what it means to live in a free [00:24:00] society.
And, and I think now in terms of capitalism, that may be a bit difficult. 'cause I think capitalism is such a messy term that may have been again, another reformation of ideas of how we honor contracts, of how we, uh, how we understand trade to be a net benefit across people.
Um. Which, which I mean in all fairness, capitalism was an improvement over, say its older forms of economic systems, even though we had many criticisms about it, um, that it was sort of a, it might be fair to say, over centuries, a revolution in the way we conduct a trade that allowed for, for the first time in human history, the actual abolition of impoverishment in large sectors that we had just never experienced before.
I, I don't know if I've answered your question there.
Paula (Host): Yeah, I, I, I think I, I think we're getting there. You know, and, and this is kind of where I want the, the conversation to end up. 'cause I, I think this is where it gets obviously hard, but also the most honest, which is, [00:25:00] you know, we've talked about urgency, we've talked about restraint, we've talked about systems that harm people and that systems people are afraid to lose.
And what I keep coming back to is, is this. You know, both of these impulses exist because people are trying pro to protect something they care about. You know, like in this conversation you said, my first instinct isn't to think about subgroup, it's to think about my kids. And I can totally relate to that.
As a mother, you know, I the desire to change what's unacceptable comes from a real moral place. The desire to preserve what's been built comes from a real fear of loss and maybe. The problem isn't that one side is right and the other's wrong, but that our politics have trained us in that binary thinking, that they've trained us to treat those instincts as mutually exclusive.
And so, you know, I came to this conversation sort of thinking we would have a tension between speed and and caution. But I'm wondering if the real [00:26:00] gray, so to speak, is somewhere else, um, in the fact that, you know, we're always making choices. With incomplete information under imperfect conditions on behalf of people who don't experiences tho those choices equally.
So, so I'll ask you this as a way of closing. If we accept that no system is perfect, which it sounds like we can agree on that. Mm-hmm. Um, that no change is without cost and no tradition beyond critique, how do we move forward in a way that takes responsibility for both? What we change and what we choose to keep.
And what does that responsibility look like to you?
Josh Lewis: Uh, that I, I don't know that I'm gonna be able to give you a succinct answer to that Excellent question, but, but let me, I
Paula (Host): mean, it, it wasn't a succinct question right, either, so I totally understand.
Josh Lewis: Right. So let, let me offer this, this first is that as a general [00:27:00] role, and I'm sure there can be some exceptions, but as a general role, I would encourage the listener, um.
That whatever say system of change, um, they want to operate within, it ought to require something of you. And I would even go so far as to say it ought to require something of you first. That I really think true change comes not by a bunch of people saying, let's tear down the existing system. I'm not saying that can't happen Occasionally, good change can come by you.
The institution of slavery. I have no problem with the fact we tore that one down.
Uh, that being said, I think that any true movement that's actually going to endure in a way that, you know, hundreds or thousands of years from now, people could look back and say, that was true.
Progress is going to demand of its followers. Some change within them. First, some recognition that they are imperfect, some sort of appeal to their. Better natures. Um, and from that we can move the universe from that, we can change the world. But if we begin with the notion that we're fine and the only thing that [00:28:00] is possibly wrong out there is some outside force or entity, I think that's when you can, you can run into trouble very quickly.
Paula (Host): Okay. Well, I, I think we can leave there. I think we're, I think we're both. Sitting uncomfortably in the grace. Um, Josh, before we sign off, if listeners wanna look you up, uh, after this, after hearing this, where would you like them to go?
Josh Lewis: Yeah, if you wanna look me up on Google, I compete with people's saving actual elephants, so go to saving elephants blog.com.
But if you're on a podcast platform saving elephants, you can find me there.
Paula (Host): Okay, great. I could just imagine the, the crossover here.
Speaker: All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Josh. It's been, uh, truly uncomfortable and also, um, thought provoking, so thank you.
Josh Lewis: Awesome. Thank you, Paula.