Our speaker todd are today is you val levin. Its a privilege to introduce yuval today. He is a mentor to younger scholarships and all you need to know about yuval is that he has the wisdom not to use twitter. I should say more than the doesnt tweet, but more relevant today, yuval is better than anyone in america at defining what conservatism means, showing its relevant to modern society, and applying its principles to the challenges of today. Now he has written a book doing just that the fractured republic renewing americas social contract in the age of individualism. I think this book is an extraordinary accomplishment just as a diagnosis of our societys economic, cultural, and political maladies. Not since myron have we had such a thoughtle account of changes in society and the ultimate consequences of. The. But even more notably he didnt stop there. And for me the most important and maybe overlooked message of the book is the importance of presenting a positive vision for americas future. It brought me back to my former career as management consultant, and i you forgive me of consult tenant speak id like to quote something written by my form el colleagues. People get excited by imagining themselves on the beach or ski slope, not by reading the travel itinerary. Effective change requires leaders who can inspire people and provide them with the internal compass to align their scent behaviors, decisions and actions. This vision often works more through metaphors and stories than facts and emphasizes the destination as well as the journey. Successful change begins by asking, what is our beach . So maybe that sounds obvious but i have found it is universally ignored in business and politics. We have no shortage of writers telling us what is wrong, how great things used to be, why things used to work. Fewer but some focus on legislative reforms that might help going forward. I like to count myself in that last group and i think that work is important, but even for me, you yuvalys message was wakeup cal. And yuval forces everyone to think about the beach and provide a compelling one of his own. Many people will disagree with his particular vision, but i really believe he will force more of the debate to occur on those terms, and and that america will be better for it. So here to tell you more, you val levin. J yuval levin. [applause] thank you very much for that. I appreciate it enormously. The thought i would be a mentor to you is both scary and wonderful so i appreciate it. And thank you especially to the Manhattan Institute for inviting me to talk to you, for bringing you together and for offering you do. Aim a grateful consumer of so much of what m. I. Does, both in publishing anyone you let me publish in National Affairs and read youth publish and learning from it. Ive never before thought of what im doing is describing a beach, and from now on i will. Thank you. That said im going to start with something a little belt more depressing than a beach, alas. Will speak and give you an everview what the book is, and what it has to say, and then hear what youre interested in and what youre think can about and what you and what you take away from what im trying to offer. Ill start where the book starts, which is with the simple fact that american politics today, and in some respects american society, is drowning in a kind of frustration or at least anxiety. Were living through what seems to be a very uneasy time. Thats reflected in the tone and the tenor of our debate, in the kinds of candidates that are arising and appealing to voters and the sorts of concerns you hear people expressing. If you listen to our political conversations at this point you have to conclude that america is deeply frustrated. At first glance its not particularly hard to say why we should be frustrated. Its not that hard to explain the attitude. For one thing our economy has been very sluggish since the 21st century began and not only during the Great Recession or after it. The strongest year of Economic Performance in this century was 12 years ago, your, 2004, and that year we saw growth barely reach the average of the prior four decades, and the sluggishness of the economy leaves people feeling like theyre running in place, which i certainly part of the frustration that people are feeling. At the same time the century began with the worst terrorist attack in our countrys history and has left us with a sense, which has not changed or vetted, that the hope we midnight have had for a somewhat peaceful post cold war order in the 90s has been shattered out. Partisan politics has been very polarized and intensely divisive. Our cultural battle about very sensitive subjects, from stem cells to marriage and sexuality to religious liberty to National Identity have been fought at other fevered pitch that leaves everyone feel lying theyre bee sieged and offended at the same time and key indicators that cross the lines between politics and economics and cultural, family breakdown and inequality hayes pointed in the wrong direction for a long time and stood in the way of mobility and of the american dream. So the opening years of the 1st century have given americans a lot of reason to worry. But theres also plainly been more to the frustration of this time than just the straightforward response to circumstances. Our problems are very real but the way that we talk about them is such disconnected from often disconnected from reality so the kinds of doeses and prescriptions people offer us seem only to contribute to the kind of disorientation that so defines our public life. And when you listen carefully to what is being said in politics you realize its disconnected in a particular way. Our way of talking about our problems now is dominated by nostalgia, by powerful and widely shared sense that our country has lost ground, that we have fallen far and fast from a peak that a lot of americans can still remember. Ill give you an example that i think will strike you as very familiar, not because you have heard this particular line before, but because you hear it all the time. How often have you heard a politician in last few years Say Something like this. I will wrote a brief paragraph. Many peep watch canning tonight can remember a time when finding a good job meant showing up a nearby factory or business. You didnt always need a degree. Your competition was limited to your neighbors. If you worked hard, chances are you would have a job for life with a decent paycheck and good benefits and the occasionol promotion. Maybe even have the pride of seeing your kids work at the same company. That world has changed and for many the change has been painful. End quote. That happens to be president obama in the state of the Union Address a couple years ago but could be any politician in either party. With a little bit more emphasis on the cultural cohesion of that time that everyone so misses, it might have been a republican. Might have been mitt romney in the last election, any one of the candidate in this election, with more explicit emphasis on low inequality could have been hillary clinton, could have been elizabeth warren, often is, if with poorer grammar and more anger could have been donald trump. Calling back globalization and trade and recovering what we lost. America isnt what it used to. We thats the theme of contemporary american politics and its speaks to a pock action site that often comes down too a question that is asked in anguish. What has happened to our country . And you know, its not a bad question. Something big and significant certainly has happened to our country. And its less cartoonish forms the nostalgia we see in politic is understandable. The america that our existed and wistful politics m mys, the nation as it remerged from the second world war, great depression, and evolved, what exception sigh unified and cohesive. It hatted first amazing confidence in big institutions, Big Government and big labor and big business, managing the nation together in and meeting its needs. That confidence is just stunning when you look at what people were saying and thinking thinkin midCentury America from our vantage point. Americas cultural life in midcenter was not much less consolidated. Was dominate bade broad traditionalist moral consensus, religious attendance was at a peak. Families strongbirth rights hey, divorce rates low, and in the wake of a war in which most of its competitors literally burned each others economies to at the ground the United States dominated the World Economy which for a while allowed it to offer Economic Opportunities to all kinds of workers with all kinds of skill levels. But almost immediately after the war, that consolidated nation started a long process of unwinding. Of fragmenting. Over the subsequent decade the cultural labellized and diversified as struggles against racism coincided with a massive increase in immigration, its important to recognize the lat cher we dont think about the scale of it quite enough. Because of immigration restrictions that have been enacted in the 1920s, midCentury America had incredibly low level of Cultural Diversity until those restrictions were lifted in the mid1960s. In the 1970 census the percentage of People Living in america who had been born abroad was at an alltime low of 4. 5 . Today its back near an alltime high of almost 20 . That is certainly part of what happened to tower country. Meanwhile, some key parts of the economy, some were deregulated, to keep up with rising competitors and 0 our labor market was forced by the pressures of globalization to specialize in higher skill work that dim mingered opportunities for some americans with lower levels of education, and in politics, a very unusual midcentury elite consensus on some important issues gave way we the 70s to new divisions that have only been getting sharper since in one area after another, america in the immediate post war years was a mod of consolidation and consensus, but through the following decade that consensus fractured. By the end of the 20th 20th century, the fracturing of consensus grew from diffusion into polarization, of political views, of Economic Opportunities, of incomes of family pattern, ways of life. We have grown less conformist but more fragmented. More diverse but less unified. More dynamic but less secure. And all of this has minute gains for america which we shouldnt overlook in prosperity, personal liberty and Cultural Diversity and Technological Progress and just in options and choices in every part of life. But over time its also meant a loss of faith in institutions. A loss of social order and structure. A loss of National Cohesion or lot of security and stability for a lot of workers. A lot of cultural and political consensus. And those losses have piled up in ways that now often seem to overwhelm the gains and that have made our 21st century politics distinctly backward looking and unhappy. Consecutives and liberals emphasize different facets of these changes. Liberals treasure the social liberation, the greg well tyler do is very to but to lament the economic dislocation, the loss of social solidarity, the rise in inequality, conservatives celebrate the economic liberalization, but lament the moral disorder, the breakdown of families and other institutions. The trouble is these changes are all tied together. The liberalization that the left celebrates is the fragmentation that the right laments and vice versa. That set of forces liberalizing and fragmenting, diversifying and fracturing, are all functions to the driving force of American Police officer since the end of the second world war, individualism in very broad terms the first hall of the 20th century through the soaked world would was an age of growing consolidation and cohesion in american life, as our economy industrialized, the government grew more centralized, the culture became aggregated through truly mass media, and National Identity and cohesion often were valued above individuality and diversity in those years a great many of the most powerful forces in our country were pushing every american to become more like everyone else. And the country that emerged from world war ii was therefore highly incredibly exceptionally cohesive. The second half of the 240th 240th century, and these early decade of the 21st century have marked on age of agreeing deconsolidation as the culture became diverse, the economy gradually diversified and some respects deregulated and individualism and personal identity have tom to be held up bon cop formity or national unity. And these years lot of the most powerful forces in our country have driven people not to be more like everyone else but have driven each of to us be more like himself or herself. Mid20th Century America, especially. The 1950s and 60s stood between the two dish distinguishable periods and for a time they were able to keep one foot in each, combining dinism with cohesion, to an extraordinary degree. That kind of straddling of cohesion and diffusion, unity and diversity, was a wonder to behold. Its not surprising we miss that time. It offered us a stable backdrop for different kind of libballization, be it cultural liberation or freer economics but that liberalization now has done itself work and our country, our society, is its result. Were a highly individualistic, diverse, fragmented country, economic clerks politically, and culturally, and none of that is about to be undone. So were going to have to solve the problems we have as that kind of society. Both our strengths and our weaknesses are functionses 0 the path we have traveled together and will now have to draw on the strengths to address the weaknesses. This in one important sense is what has happened to our country. Its the essential challenge of the politics of 21st Century America, how to use the advantages of a diverse Dynamic Society to address the disadvantages of a fractured and insecure society. But if that doesnt sound like the question that our politics is asking itself now, its because it isnt. Our political culture has not been very good at grasping either the challenges we face or the strength we have in facing them. Its instead been overwhelmedded by nose stall. By design to reverse the process of liberalization and diffusion that has transportation forward our society, and whether in economic terms for the left or in cultural terms for the right to recrate a consolidated centralized consensusdriven society that we were not all that long ago. The first step toward a constructive 21st Center Politics would have to be to see that the that kind of reversal is not an option and we wouldnt want to do it anyway. Instead we have to think about how to address the alcohol of dissolution and diffusion, challenges look the breakdown of the family, the loss of worker security, growing polarization, by making the most of strengths like diversity, like dynamism, like specializeddation, that question could help to point the way towards the next set of constructive political and policy debates. Not this. Apparently, but when are politics is ready to face reality. How do we use our fragmentation as a strength . For all of our troubles in this Election Year, conservatives ultimately are actually uniquely well positioned to offer a plausible sit of answers. Using that diversification would require approach to government that empowers problem solvers throughout our society rather than hope that just one in washington could get things right. It means bringing to Public Policy the kind of disperse e burrs evidence imkennedyam approach to progress that you increasing he see in every other part over american life, an approach that solves problems by giving people options and letting their choices drive the process. That vision of problem solving is not what the social democratic ideal of the left looks like. That idea looks more like the Old Industrial economy but this more distributed decentralized is problem solving what what the conservatives have to off. How logic of federal recallism elm bo i bodied in our constitutional order, the lodge skiff offsub saidairity. Its how a revitalized controversy tim could be a tool of moored concernization and revival. That kind of approach is what conservatives hey propose inside some policy arenas where we or you or the Manhattan Institute have been most active. Thats what School Choice looks like as opposed to centralized mod of Public School stilled. The what the conservative approach to health care looks like what conservative ideas on welfare or higher outside caution look like. Now, as those kinds of examples would suggest this bottom, up approach has been championed by conservatives in some areas to a long time. Though with limited success against a very entrenched progressive welfare state. But as the old progressive model plain live exhausts itself and our politics of midcentury not stall gentleman is inadequate the time is ripe for gnaw conservative approach to make its case more boltly, both in familiar arenas and in new ones. That kind of modernized conservatism would also have a lot to offer our troubled cultural debate. The fragmentation of our society is an enormous challenge for social conservatives who over the past half century have frequently been able to imagine that they represented a kind of moral consensus that they were a moral majority, defending commonly held views from a tiny but very aggressive liberal minority. That consensus was always shakier than it seemed and depended on the support of loosely affiliated moral and religious traditionalist and as every National Consensus ick weakened this moral ma j. Is unsustainable. The lucilia physicalitied traditional lists have become unaffiliated and social conservatives need to get used to being a minority in a fractured country in that kind of society, moral extra differencal lists would be wise to emphasis building cohesive and attract tub subculture rather than struggle for dominance of the weakened institutions of the mainstream culture and while some National Political battles, especially those about religious liberty, will remain essential to reserve at the spails for moral traditionalism to thrive, social conservatives anymore to focus on how best to built that space in communities. Thats how a traditionallively moral majority can thrive by offering itself nothings at path back to an old consensus than doesnt exist as an an alternative to at the demoralizing chaos of a Permissive Society in this sense, and in general, the revival of the immediate institutions of Community Life would be an essential feature of this modernizing conservative. Institutions from families to churches and civic and fraternal organizations and labor and business groups, local government, can help to balance dynamism with cohesion and help us live out our freedom and keep our diversity from devolving into adamism or dangerous and help us use our multiplicity to address our modern challenges. That is ultimately what the path out of overpowering frustration that now dominates or politics can look like. A mere decentralized, reverse, bottomup politics that lowers the stakes of National Debate and use our societys diversetive as means of solving problem ends that kind of politics can help dues more than that. By revitalizing the lives society imcan help to us draw us back into the vital space between the individual and she state and counteraction the aisles late can vividdism that increasingly characterizes our culture and the overbearing centralization that rather natural live accompanies and it, whichizes our politics. In the process it could help to us reunite or fractured run. To build in our communities the virtues necessary for american citizenship. Were also looking in those virtues and that senses of common purpose. This Election Year has shown us that and has been leaving up increasingly concerned for the faith of cower run tri. This frustration on display and the crude and angry populism that is working to channel it forces us to ask what happened to our country . But they do not define what will happen next. This sorry Election Year is not the beginning of a new phase in american politics but the owned. An old onthis exhaustion of mid20th center babyboomer model that cant meet americas needs anymore. Im afraid the exhaustion of that babyboomer order is really what will be on display this fall. Two 70yearold president ial candidates yell at each other about how best to go backward. To see the way forward, we need to open our eyes to americas 21st century circumstances. To grasp both the challenges and the opportunities that they represent and to see how again applying our enduring american principles to novel circumstances can be the recipe for an american revival. Thank you. [applause] well take questions from the audience. Think i get the prerogative to and the first question was i was in the audience. I guess i would ask you to say at built more about the mediating institutions that you were describing, and the one iowa listed as examplars are ones that were prominent in the 50s and 60,fraternal organizations, churches, labor organizations and so do you see a role for those in future or is to there a whole new wave of mediating institutions that you can are more likely to succeed . Thank you. Its a great question. First of all, i think its sometimes can seem like these were the institutionses that were prominent in midCentury America but really by then those institutions had already been subject to a half century of assault from a kind of centralizing politics that took away a lot of what they were doing. Its very interesting now to read the sociology of the 1950s about the mediating institutions. Robert nisbete. The quest for community, timely book, written in 1953. And at a time that we think of also the peak of this kind of Civil Society america. He was writing the that Civil Society has been undone by progressivism for a half century, and he worried that the next step after centralizing would be a kind of adamism, radical individualism that would ultimately break these a part. He was right in a lot of ways but wouldnt necessarily look to that period to solve that problem. In a lot of respects, the challenges we face now are like the challenges that the United States faced in the 19th 19th century. Almost at any point in the 19th century, maybe putting aside the 1860s, if you had looked at america wo you would have found a country that vs. Very diverse, intensely divide, had no confidence in its institutions. If you could have taken a poll in 19 . Century america the approval rate for congress would have been two percent. You dont have to read a lot of mark twain to get a sense of what people thought of american institutions, and for many of the same reasons that were in this situation now, now we have reached this point as the country that lived through the midcentury moment, that lift loud progressivism, lived through the era of individualism. We want go back and cant assume those institutions have just been sitting there waiting for us to come back. That the rooms where they met are sitting empty and we can go back and do it again. Ill will take a diskind of revival and above all, what it requires is making those kinds of institutions significant, giving them some authority, making what they do matter. And that means giving them a role in trying to solve the problem wes have which to the extent that Public Policy can do much about that would require some decentralization of our welfare system, our education system, Healthcare System other, things, transportation. And it seems to me there is a big role for a kind of decentralizing conservatism in helping that happen. We do also have other kinds of mediating institutions which i think is what youre getting at. That are creature 0 the internet age for one thing, or that have come up in more recent times to try to help us solve the kinds of problems we have now. Those are, like everything else, mixed bag. The internet in a lot of ways accelerates the kind of adammism and hyper individualism that we suffer from because it allows to us be very selective about the experiences we have and the people we enter act with and lefts us be more and more like who we already are all the time. Thats not a bad thing. We all do it because we like it. But it does mean that the effect is has on our social life can be can tend to weaken communities. But those can be portland of what it would take to bring people back into the genuinely mediating institutions of american life. [inaudible] i think were headed towards a more fragmented future. However, looking become over the last 50 years, a thing Major Development you have not mentioned is called the end of history. The end of deeply seeded ideological conflict about to the role of government. The truth is, the traditional left has been defeated. Its dead. Even in europe. Were not going to see a large government of the future in that sense where government takes over the management of the economy. Not going to happen. Opened the right has accepted the welfare state and may differ how to organize it but how much we should have, but in my time in washington, i have not seen very many consecutives who are truly lib tearan who want to eliminate the welfare state. So were talking about at future without ideological visions. What wear having i instead is fragmentation, compared to 50 years ago. But that future that youre imagining is above all an individualist future in which people somehow take on what i call the burdens of freedom. The very many, heavy responsibilities that go with living in a free society, and the scary danger isnt so much the fragmentation will be too much but that major parts of america will cease to be individualist. They will lay down the burdens of freedom. And take up another set of burdens, having to do with necessity. Those burdens dominate the entire outside world. The entire world outside the west. And that world is falling apart. They are coming to our borders, seeking entry as immigrants and also yeah, okay, the question is, the question is, how you would assert this contrary analysis which is the think we should fear about is the loss of individualism rather than the logs of unity as you have been describing. Thank you, larry. Was almost afraid you were going to ask a question without getting people getting upset. I dont quite agree. In asons i came to write this book out of a question that is a little bit like that question. The book i wrote before this was a somewhat different kind of book can more historical, philosophical book, about the roots of the leftright divide which you suggest has come to an end, and therefore really the nature or the leftright diamond i thought about what the basic questions were, and the premise of that i think its also ultimately demonstrated in that argument in looking at that history, is that the leftright divide in genuinely liberal societies is not an extreme divide between radical libertarianism and socialism. The leftright divide is a disagreement between two kinded on liberalism. Two kind libballism that actually differ spore foundly in their an throw polling and sense of what anthropology and how we know things and how problems can be solved. The differences are within the 40yard lines and american politics has really always shown that. So, the history that fukuyama says ended never really happened in america anyway. We have always lived in a different way, and i think the anglo sphere that hotter and experienced the fascism communism and libertarianism get a truly totalizing kind of socialism, and so the trouble that i see looking at our politics now throughout that kind of lens is not that our politics is small but that its totally disconnected from todays problems. There is a kind of leftright debate we can have that would be an american left right debate. Not two radical ends but a protectsive sense of what to do about the progressive since of what to do and both would have something to contribute. One would be better than the other but we dont have that debate at all. Thats not even what is going on. And in a sense the question of why that is was the question i was left with the end of the last book i wrote and led me to this one, because i think that the reason fundamentally is that neither of our parties, neither of our large ideological coalitions, is looking at the 21st under in its own terms, and if they did theyd actually both have a lot more to offer than they now have. And the leaders of both seem totally unaware of what they might have to offer the public. And instead of reelection is a choice between 1965 and 1981, and the public looks at that and just thinks, what is this . And so im not sure that the end of history is really that big a change for america. Whatever you make ultimately of the argument about global politics, think that kind of middling politics in our countries what we have when things are working and its not what we have now, not in the sense that our politics is terribly radical but the sense its totally disoriented and not looking at the problems that it might have something to say about. The problem i see is we have had eight years of increasing centralization and increasing power to the Central Government, and the way the betting markets are saying well have another four or eight years of that. So, how are these intermediating institutions to grow as the Central Government is healthcare is now much more centralized. Just every day you read in paper about another agency squeezing out some of these middle level things. So how is it actually going to happen when we have this huge Central Government growing and growing and taking over things . Yeah. We have had more than eight years of centralization, we have had 80 years of centralization. And i think that puts the question in a slightly different light ball it seems to me that the last eight years have not been particularly the most successful time for american progressivism. The last 80 years have been a pretty successful time for american progressivism and we do stand now at a point where our way of thinking about politics and government is awfully centralized and dont see that in fact as intention with the dynamic of individualism that has been northwest our culture. Those two thing goods to together. A lot of people have made that argue. Thats the argue. That toke veils argue tocquevilles argument that individualism moral individualism and administrative centralization are two sides of one coin. One needs the other. And makes the possible. And so conservatism doesnt take doesnt choose one of those. It offers an alternative to the combination of the two of. The and has to focus itself on that middle space between the individual and the state. The how its not hard to persuade americans now that this isnt working. The problem americans had in the 1960s the problem consecutives had was that a lot of americans believed it could work, that the Great Society would succeed in solving the nations problems. The sheer confidence in that when you look at opinion polls, when you look at what politicians said in the 50s in and early 60s is just amazing. No one talks like that now. Bernie sanders doesnt talk like that now. The notion that poverty is behind us, Lyndon Johnson tells the student Fez University of michigan in 1964. Now we have to figure out how not to get bored in a society that doesnt have any problems. Thats now how we think now. And so if you begin your approach to the pock by telling people, this doesnt work, and in fact what we can offer you is something that it is much more likely to work, and that would be persuasive because in part it looks like what does work in american life. Its not it doesnt make the assumption that somebody in the head office has all the answers. It makes the assumptions that by giving people a lot of choices you can gradually and incrementally improve things. That makes sense in 21st 21st Century America. Its an old idea and what conservatism has said and a new idea how the 21st center works. So i think conservatives are in a strong place than we give ourselves credit for and theres no way to find out if we can succeed except by trying, which for the moment is just not what were doing. Brilliant review. Breathtaking. Be that candidate. Lets hear the candidate you would recommend rather than these two 70yearolds that are screaming at each. So tell us, sir, as wannabe president what you would say. Well, look, the last thing i would if want to be is president. I used to work for a president and i dont know why anybody wants to be president. You have to be truly crazy so we shouldnt be surprised that crazy people are running for president. I think that what that candidate would have to say to the public would have to begin from a kind of humility about the nature of what he or she could do as president in solving problems. Would have to begin from a recognition that not everything in 21st Century America is a problem. Not every fact of our contemporary National Life is a problem but we face some discrete problems. Some of them are economics, some cultural and moral, and that to varying degree thursday ways for government to be helpful or less harmful. Ty think the kind of policy agenda attached that would be dr. By the sense that Solutions Work best when they work from the bottom up, and so you can take any sort of issue talk about health care. The healthcare debate in the last few years has been the epitomy of the left are right divide on how to solve problems so that theres a certain amount of agreement about the nature of the problem, that our Healthcare System is incredibly inefficient and lets costs run out of control, and what there is it disagreement how you solve that kind of problem, and from the leftout get a centralizing answer that says the solution is get just the right m. I. T. Professor to set it up for you and make sure everybody has to buy what he is selling, and the rights answer is give people more choices. Allow for more kind of products to be sold as insurance, allow for more Kinds Services to be sold and allow people to have the resources that need to become consumers in that kind of system. And gradually youll make your way toward a better system. I dont think you can find a lot of americans who have any idea that thats what conservatives say about health care. I dont think that conservatives have done a very good job of explaining the basic difference in how we think about how to solve problems. And so whether you use health care as an illustration or again, education or welfare or any of the massive problems we have, it seems to me as a practical matter a candidate inclined to think that way is in a pretty good position to have a lot to draw on from the Manhattan Institute, from what we try to publish in National Affairs and a lot of people have been doing. We have more of the kind of programattic policy ideas than we do of the vision of how this is different and white makes sense. Thats part of what this book is about. What a lot of people are trying to do, but i think the American Public doesnt have the faintest idea that there is this basic difference about how to solve problems and that conservatives are on the side of that question they might find attractive. So, to begin with, i think you want a politician who is capable of making that kind of argument. There arent a lot of them there are some. They do tend to be younger. Republicans now do have some more promising younger members of congress, for example. One of them is speaker of the house, few in the senate. Not a lot. But it doesnt take that men and i think the change, the tone of how you approach the public, change the substance how you approach the public, and frankly, to put aside the kind of cataclysmic rhetoric at the very core how conservatives talk to the problem. When we try Tire Solutions we save with dont turn this around right now its owned the American Public. Thats not true. Also not helpful. And it is not the way to persuade anybody of anything. You listen to somebody say that and you save thats probably crazy. And it probably is. The probable we have is worth than nat. We dont do something well face a cataclysmic moment when everything changes. The problem is if we dont change things now well gradually decline. We can keep doing that for a long time. And we better not. Thats a harder case to make to people who just want to be angry but closer to the truth and ultimate my more persuasive. Ill ask you the Charles Murray question; which is thinking about all these communities and decentralization across america, did you find in researching for the book evidence or things we could count on for optimism that some of these communities are actually up to the task of decentralization . Up to Building Communities if you read mothery and others, seems like these communities have just decayed so much there isnt the social capital there to revive these communities, especially as the wealthy segue gray gait off into super zips and elsewhere. So, did you find anything that would be a source of optimism on that score . Well, thank you, dan. I would never want to be accused of optimism. Thats not a good thing. Optimism is just expecting good things to happen. Thats crazy. I would, though, want to be accused of being hopeful and thats very different. To be hopeful is to believe that there are the resources for improvement. And whether those are Material Resources or moral or spiritual resources it takes all of them and i do think those are there. Now, obviously in the place of the most need help, those resources are most lacking. Thats how they got into the situation anywhere and why theyve remained in and it what it means to be in the most trouble. So, its true that in a lot of communities, a lot of those that Charles Murray describes and a lot that you find not far at all from here, there are problems that arent going to be resolved by someone on the outside just saying, figure it out. Have a meeting. Thats not what it means to have a little more faith in Civil Society. But i think that when you ask yourself how do i help, how do we make a difference . The answer needs to involve ways of building things up within those communities rather than ways of mailing checks to just the right address. And that is hard to do from the center. That just the difficulty youre going to have with a cash welfare state in a country as vast as ours. And so i think that the diversity of problem wed have requires an enormous diversity of solutions. When you think about welfare, you always think of the opening loin of anna could where toll toy says all happy families are alike and its true that secret service has a certain look it to but that doesnt help when youre trying to deal with failure which has its own look to it and people who try to think about how to help the most troubled places have to begin in those places. And so thats an argument for a kind of devolved welfare policy. Its not an argue argument that psalming all the resources are there. Its an argument for helping to build those and believing that building those can make a difference. Anna. Uber in san antonio or austin, get. Uber is a not exactly a bottom up solution but a technological, social, transformation of how people get around, and then you have people using the means, levers of government, to block the progress that is itself entirely extra governmental, like came out simply as a matter of people owning phones, having wifi and gpss and cars talking to them. Flash forward 25, 30 years and you have a selfdriving car which means you dont have own a car. You can order a car to take you somewhere. Thats a kind of gigantic social Economic Transformation that you can say coming and you can also see a colassal number of forces that will do whatever they took impedes the progress to that point, and the question is, is there is it a political matter that a combined set of forces, voices, people, have to build the case to help when those forces arise to make Technological Progress impossible . Or does one live in a tech tech know thattic society and it will happen the way hollywood took over vaudeville. But in political terms we can see the transformation youre talking about see how it will be how the levers of government can be used to make it impossible or at least to make slow it down so that the transition will be the worst possible kind of transition, flow, unwieldy, costly, painful, and without much benefit. When its all done. Thank you. A great question. I think in a way the story of uber that all of us in our world are so obsessed with, helps to tell every angle of the story. Theres a reason why we like so it much. Uber is a great example how to overcome the limitations. They in large cities is just kind of do it. They didnt get any permission from any. They knew theyd would get in trouble but just went in, and became popular pretty quickly and in a lot of places that meant they then couldnt be stopped. Thats what happened in washington where theres a very strong cab drivers lobby but it just got to a point where it would be crazy for the city council to do anything about uber because there would be a revolution. Thats one way to think about this kind of problem youre describing. But theres no question that there will beas there always is, resistance to changes to a system that helps incumbent actors, and that means theres no question that any kind of reforms along these lines are going to be messy and slow and not ideal. Im not of the view that messy and slow is the worst way for change to happen. I think in some ways messy and slow might be the best way for change to happen. Because if its too quick its very likely to involve the embodiment of terrible ideas. If its slower it can try to weed out the terrible ideas. Messy were a complicated society and so a change that fits us is going to be messy. The problem is, the essence of the question is oh, do you deal with the inherent cronyism of the status quo thats going to try to prevent improvement . I think that is one of the great challenges for people who whatnot to advance this kind of vision and one of the great challenges for conservatives is to become sworn enemies of cronyism which if you look at the Republican Party would you would not say is now the case. I think its very important for people who try to influence the politicians on the right to talk a lot about this, and to make much of it because its extremely important. Ultimately, it becomes impossible for the sorts changes we want to happen if we allow the people who are now in the system to have so much control of the process of changing it, and its more than cronyism is not just a way of trying to sort of send the populist message and show people were on their side. The notification that theres a lot of political gain from that has always struck me as overstated. I think cronyism exists because it benefits people and people ten to look it. But its an enormous problem to anybody who believes that the way to advance progress is through competition because cronyism is anticompetitive. And so its really cuts to he heart of what i would want to see happen. So i do think thats a question to constantly ask and constantly wrestle with and think about and the only answer is to fight it, and knowing that you wont always win but you can make some progress if what your eaverring is attractive. Im president of the new york civil rights coalition. My question relates to the proposition that you put out that america is not what used to be and for at love 0 americans the answer would be, thank god. You have blacks, you have other racial minorities, women, you have gays, lesbian, labor ewan unions so Many Americans who feel that america is not and should not ever be what it used to be, and so my question is, with respect to social change movement in america, that was not wrought through a leftright lens. It had people on the left, people on the right, on n the mid. Butout had a consensus, they brought based on Public Opinion and public change and the congresstive, legislative, executive, and the judicial branch. How do you move us to a position where we can continue to protect, as Benjamin Frank frank said, keep our to run based on not seeing a divide month americans between left and right. Lets try to bridge the left and right divide through really address serious, real problems in our society. Im critical of the notion that america is not whatted used to be. Thats the wrong way to think about the present. And things have gotten both better and worse and theyre always getting both better and worse. Thats what makes it so frustrating to be in and around politics. Theres no easy argument to make about the direction of change. Theres always a cost of progress and always a cost to resisting progress. To your more general question, it does seem to me that in a lot of ways we are having to many of the most important fights in our political life at the National Level and part of what mean by arguing that our politics needs to be somewhat decentralizes it some arguments need to be had by people who are looking at one another. And that is surely one way to get around that divide. Thats a lot easier to sustain in the abstract than when its you and your neighbor. And so i cannot for the life of me see why we have to decide who gets to go to what bathroom in the white house. I just dont think thats necessary to do that. And it would be a lot easier to live with one another if we didnt have to have one answer for the entire country to that question decided by the president. And so i think there are lot of issues like that, and that for both practical reasons and these kinds of civic peace reasons and social progress reasons would be better taken up now at a level closer to the ground for the most part. Not every question is like that there are questions that we just have to resolve as a people. But i think we take way too many questions to that level now, and what it does is just rates the temperature of our politics such a degree it becomes unsustainable and that all we ever do is yell about how the whole world hinges on the results of this next election. We can change that and i think we ought to. I think were out of time. Thank you for your questions. And for the fantastic discussion. Heres a look at the books at that time president obama is reading this summer. The list includes two nonfiction titles barbarian days in the now,er row cooperates his life as a surfer in the 1960s, and h is for hawk. Hellline mcmcdonalds account of raising a hawk happened her drove the death of her father. And he is raiding the examination of the slavery paula hawkins, the girl on the train and a Science Fiction title. And thats a look at what is on president obamas reading list this summer. And he served with ed white, who is from apollo one died in the apollo one fire. A year behind men at west point and on the track team and when photo nat squadron, the two of us represented the squadron in nato gunnery exercises. So i do he kales you up and says im going apply for astronaut practice jets. Thats after he left and went to michigan. He calls me up and this is 1962. Nasa is looking for astronauts. They have seven, mercury seven. And ed said im qualified, and so im going to apply. I said, well, i can do gunnery better than you can and, i was m. I. T. , and im working on rendevous in space, and i think that nasa would like to know how to do that. Maybe i can help them out. So, i am youre pretty stubborn so you tried again. If at first you dont succeed, try, try again. Hes on to something. But you got accepted. Third group of astronauts. And, yeah, your microphone is getting wonky so just be careful. And, yes, you bill an astronaut. We all know that. So, lets talk about gemini. Originally you almost werent going to fly in gemini because well, helped to train the guys, Mcdonald Douglas built the mercury spacecraft, and they built it a little bigger so you could put two people in it and became the gemini spacecraft so the the figured out different ways of rendevous, and neither of those were very good but mine was better. Than theirs. We know the details but it was a Fighter Pilot type rendevous, and i worked training, some of them. So i went to the boss and said, you know, would like to really fly in one of these gemini flights. To rendevous. He said nothing. The list comes out and, hmm, jim lovele and i are on the backup true for germany 10. Okay. Now, when that flies have a crew for 11 and 12 so the backup crew becomes the prime crew on 13. But there wasnt any 13. A deadhead assignment. Hold on now. Buzz is the first to train underwater to when did you do that . Was that when you knew no. My backyard neighbor, charlie bassett, really top notch test pilot in our class, he was on the prime crew for gemini 9, and the snowstorm in st. Louis, they didnt quite make the turn, the final, and the crashed into the hangar where the spacecraft was. Eye around ironically they were killed. Thats the primary crew. The backup true cakes over. Now, the crew is who is going fly on gemini 9 doesnt have a backup crew but heres lovell and aldrin and we became the backup crew. Now that means theres a crew for 10 and 11 and were going to fly on the last one. Thats the way things happened sometimes. You can watch this and other programs online at book. Org. [inaudible conversations] okay. Good each can everyone hear me . Yeah, okay