Transcripts For CSPAN2 Conference On James Burnhams Suicide Of The West 20141221

[applause] good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to the Fourth Annual conference and gala presented by the william s. Ugly program at yale. Attributed to winston churchill. He. He said, if you are not a liberal when youre 25, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative by the time you are 35, you have no brain. [laughter] a radical in the 1930s, became a leader. Later on he rejected marxism and moved to the right producing in 1941 the work for which he was best known, the managerial revolution published in 1941. 1941. He also became a red regular contributor to the conservative publication National Review. In 1933 along with sidney hook he had to organize the American Workers fund, supported its merger with the communist league of america to the United States Workers Party. In 1935 the allied with the wing of that party and defended offended no one less than leon trotsky himself. Writing for the partisan review, he was also an important influence on writers, such as Dwight Mcdonald and philip roth. In 1937 they were expelled from the socialist party, an action which led to the formation of the socialist Workers Party at the end of the year. I must say, this reminds me of a time in my life, about 16, paying careful attention to politics. I grew up in the brownsville section of brooklyn in which the extreme right wing party was the democratic party. One of the things that was a challenge was to go from Street Corner to Street Corner where on each corner there was a speaker a speaker and podium and try to figure out which party was which. We had every conceivable leftist party and the United States of america. Reading this brings back memories. The nazi soviet pact of 1939 and 1939 and invasion of poland left lithuania and estonia led him to argue. A new form of an imperialistic class society. They did not not deserve any support from the socialist movement. Soon he resigned from the socialist Workers Party and broke with the radical movement entirely. Rejected marxism in any form altogether he wrote, the general marxian theory of universal history to the extent that it has any empirical content seems to me this proven but more of a more probable outcome of the present sign. I think i skipped the page. This disproved by modern, historical, and probable outcomes of the present. I really believe that one. Marxian economics seems to me for the most part either false or obsolete or meaningless and application to contemporary economic phenomena. They do not seem to justify the theoretical structures of the economics. Not only do i believe i believe it is meaningless to say that socialism is inevitable and false that socialism is the only alternative to capitalism, i consider that on the basis of the evidence available to us, a knew form of exploitative society which i call managerial society. A more probable outcome of the present and socialism. That seems like like a remarkably perceptive remark. In 1941 1941 he wrote a book called the managerial revolution. William buckley called it a book about liberalism for which the world has been making. It is worth more than a years growth that Gross National product, more than all the planes and bombs. In 1983 people three he was presented with the foundations award for contributions to the conservative movement. The president ial medal of freedom. The freedom. The books include that managerial revolution, struggle for the world and the machiavellian and many others. During world war ii brennan worked for the office of strategic services, the forerunner of the cia, where he lived the political and Psychological Warfare Division of the office of policy coordination. A semi autonomous part of that agency. He helped William Buckley to found the National Review and became a lifelong contributor to the journal. The number one intellectual influence on National Review since the date of its founding. In 1983 president reagan awarded mr. Brennan that president ial medal of freedom. He died in his home in 1987. In 1964 he wrote the book that is the inspiration of our conference today. Suicide of the west, the definitive analysis of the pathology of liberalism. One reviewer said it was a warning that it would ultimately destroy all effluents and freedom. Another set, a realist rather than an optimist. A thinker rather than a careers. He never told you what you wanted to here all what it would make him rich and powerful to say. He gave you the truth as he saw it and went on to write another book. But of such matters we shall here more throughout the day beginning with our first panel. Thank you very much. The first panel on this conference discusses the life and political thought. Could afternoon. The deputy Operations Director for the William F Buckley junior program. We are honored to have with us Roger Kimball moderating on the topic. The editor and pub publisher of the knew criterion. A widely acclaimed author particularly well known for his book tenured radicals, how politics has corrupted higher education, and cultural and anarchy in the age of amnesia. National review, the wall street journal and literary review. We are grateful to have you here today. James brennan would come at the top of my short list. That might seem on. Outside this room in the corners of National Review, he has slipped into that gravitational exile. [laughter] if you consult amazon all of his books are out of print or limited availability. Bill buckley the foremost intellectual influence on National Review from its founding. You mentioned their revolution just as he was negotiating that perilous journey and astringent species of democratic realism. An anticommunist crusader. On the contrary, he understood that the impulse to tell totalitarian surrender comes in all manner of guises. That is part of what underwrites his contemporary relevance. The managerial revolution aims to repel freedom for the sake of bureaucratic efficiency and control. That was his real subject. That revolution is not yet succeeded in establishing the monolithic control or that George Orwell who referred often to the managerial, he wrote about it several times, and it was a major inspiration for his novel. That has is not quite come to pass. But i think as we gaze around the world today here in america and elsewhere, we can see the increasing rudeness is not life, your authorization of life shows that brennan was on the something very important. Over his long career he obviously changed his mind about a lot of things to go from leon trotsky to bill buckley he was mistaken as a youth he felt that freedom might be found in communist revolution. He devoted his career to fostering. There was the infrequent visible side of celebration of the trams were on view. And there was an oppositional side. Those opinions, policies, sentiments, and personalities that works to stymie freedom. This dual commitment made him an equal opportunity scourge, almost as hard on what was called the democratic despotism, and tendencies of democracies to partner freedom for the sake of equality even if it was only a spuriously quality. A a connoisseur of insidious myths, the way the benign or seemingly benign intentions can be enlisted. Accurately and western democracy as he did in communist tyranny and he was tireless in his excoriation of what he called, and i quote, that jellyfish brand of contemporary liberal liberalism, pious, guilt ridden, do getting some truth on both sides as if actual sales line. His biographer observed that he was the living embodiment of what could be later called Political Correctness he he was right. One example, the observation. Most african nations were half form pseudo nations. That is indisputably the case. But how many accredited intellectuals have the forthrightness with the courage to apprise Robert Mcgaughey about inconsiderate fact. Not least of which the united nations. The disapproving resolutions about us policy. While the world he wondered should any sensible person give a damn what some spokesman for cannibalistic tribes, slaveholding nomads think about nuclear tests. Easy to multiply crisp interventions. In many quarters calling someone politically incorrect has become a popular method of discounting his opinion without the inconvenience of allowing the rehearing. It is a clever, if cowardly rhetorical check allowing you to ignore someone as a simple expedient of declaring his arguments to be beyond the pale that is unworthy of the place in the form of public debate. A form of political ostracism, to silence someone but by denying him an audience. The technique is especially effective with writers like brennan who specialize in telling truths that most people would rather not here today we are gathered to discuss what i think is his most important book, suicide of the west which he described in his subtitle, it has two separate subtitles, the one we printed is an essay on the meaning of liberalism. John referred to the other subtitle. I suppose they come to more or less the same thing. I am pleased together it is hot off the press but can be yours for a modest consideration and possible that she is distributing copies for free. We would be delighted to publish the recognition that civilizations tend to die from suicide, not foreign imposition. He said more or less the same thing, as did lincoln. The destruction be our lot as an nation of free men we must live through all time or die by suicide. Of course, suicide is a dramatic word. The tenth of described not a single event but a process. There is rarely an existential equivalent more projected. Those who live through a revolution, especially 11 largely pacific generally cannot discern the radical changes taking place until it is nearly complete. Many of the basic assumptions about life, there place in the world had changed utterly. It happened, it happened. Today november 2014, the chief issue at stake is the great question. Fundamental renegotiation in a way that is unprecedented, i think how that negotiation concludes will determine many things about the wellbeing of our lives, from the way we get our health care and educate our children to the way in which we were allowed by our masters in washington to conduct business with the way the nation is constrained to conduct its Foreign Policy. The host of treating things to say about the question, and i am delighted we have three content is with us to reflect on this. Ronald reagans biographer and former editor of National Review. Alphabetical order seems the most compelling. Thank you very much, roger. Much, roger. Thanks especially to the Buckley Program at yale. As you might imagine this is really a wonderful occasion during which we considered down and discuss some of the ideas of my father and how they changed lives and policy. Give you a couple of perspectives as growing up. What was it like. Realistic on how the world works, ingrained in all three children at an early age. This is history. The color advances, stabilizes from one page to the next. Another color takes over, parts of africa or europe or asia. This is history right here. You can get a sense of that. The historical atlas which he kept buying side all the time, it was a high priest of realism. Its a useful bible sorts in doing that. Of of course it is insistent on orderly, logical thinking , making sure that you just did not go off without thinking about what to say. Unlike a lot of analysts, we analysts, we had a penchant for lifts. The 39 propositions to determine whether or not your a conservative or liberal, the 1950s or 1950s or ideas that make up the syndrome. Guess what, as a child i also learned early a list of known, too many of you probably familiar with it. Basic guidance of work to live by. It is clear, you have you have to be at least over 21 years of age to accept them, in part at least, because least, because the first one is the most important one. You should assume Everybody Knows everything. As a child to think that where did you get that candy were some miscreant using a cell phone today. They they still dont understand. Everyone knows everything. It actually is a cleansing, a cleansing, straightforward, and i would say moral way to live. The second flaw was used. You cannot go back. You are launched. Another one was especially difficult for children, just as good isnt. Abcaseven isnt. [laughter] and if you are an investor you had one, two areas this may have been derived from Canada Southern Petroleum forays at National Review. You cant invest in retrospect. [laughter] and then the one that all people should recognize and politicians, it takes us so long to do this. Whenever there is prohibition, there is a bootlegger. And then there is one that is easy to generalize but refers to a specific National Review situation with billy schwalm who was one of the other early, important editors, but hes a difficult man to get along with, especially. And every project. As always islam. Number seven was you cannot divorce itself. Face it. Every member must pay his dues. You join up and sign up for the dues. Number nine was no excuse, sir. Everybody should have that in their set of replies when they mess up. No excuse. The tenth tenth one, there is no alternative, no problem. More useless thinking. Finally, the west has one. Those of you who have read the book, the discussion of skid rows, there will always be a skid row. That is the way it really is. Finally Something Like that. Getting out of the navy a doctorate in economics. And my. Teefive my father said, why dont you get a job. My response job. My response was, im going to get a union card. Might have something to do with residual marxism in the sense that the idea that Economic Policymakers are always just pawns for nice in the chess game. A lot of people, a very grim view. There was a macro managerial resolution concept and the Economic Policy issues of the 70s, 60s and 70s. With that, let me turn it over to our second panelist. Thank you. [applauding] [applauding] it is a great honor to be here, and i want to thank the Buckley Program. This may sound may sound like an odd way to begin, but sometimes James Burnham began in similar ways. Many many of you will remember, the slogan was an army of one, the recruiting slogan. When you think about his place in the intellectual firmament of the postwar world is a school of one. He does not fit any of the usual categories. He was not a traditionalist, not, not a fusion asked my fellow National View editor, certainly a neoconservative, and his real wisdom is a fair enough term except that it is quite distinct from the usual figures we think of as the arch realist like kissinger. They seem like hardheaded realists, they conformed or yielded to the superficial tidies of the time. Time. And he never conformed to any of the superficial pieties. Unlike brand or friedman or hayek or kirk or strauss, he founded no Distinctive School of thought, did not have disciples or groupies. By the way, roger, you did him an insult by calling him a great political philosopher. He is a political thinker. The influence of the thought in fact in fact i will present presently an analysis of our present moment in washington non theoretical. Tends to be dominated by fears of various kinds. Two things marked him out. And more importantly he always saw in his works how he incorporated what you might call synoptic longwaves use of history he was always bringing up the longterm background something we can trace back 150, 200, 250 years and something that would play out which and something that would play out which is part of what the managerial revolution brought to our attention. Beloved of evolutionary biologists. The part you move from left to right, but i think that you can make out an essential continuity or consistency in his method of thought or mind. And most importantly the one word that ought to be used is, he was a prophet in many ways. He anticipated Political Trends and phenomenon that have only recently come into focus. One key to understanding James Burnham is, the is, the prophecy wrote to the 1963 edition of the machiavellian, 1943 book, a study on how power is sought reissuing the book he says, ive changed my mind, but i think it holds up. Having come to know something about gigantic ideology of bolshevism, i knew i was not going to be able to settle for the pygmy ideologies of liberalism, social democracy, refurbished, refurbished laissezfaire for the inverted great bolshevism called fascism. I began to understand more thoroughly what i had long felt. Only only by renouncing all ideology can we begin to see the world. I think you can make out what i am calling a comprehensive view of the world. The machiavellians already mentioned that that was a description of the full on political power retaken the modern world the later kent to be described as the new class in the 60s 60s and 70s and how this was not an economic phenomenon. Sociological or pathological portrait of liberalism is a dysfunctional selfdestructive family or maybe even a tumor, but in some ways the most important book for our present moment is a 1959 book that tends to get lost in the shuffle. 1959,. 1959, a book that sounds like, and much of it reads like a fairly traditional Political Science approach to the first branch of government. Before you get very far you realize the book is a sequel to the managerial revolution the managers shift the locus of sovereignty, and here most theoretical, which is still not very theoretical. The understanding that the founders embraced. But from their there he triangulates and says, what is happening is congress is atrophying, losing its ability to operate as a political body like it should. Here is a call from the managerial revolution that he brought back. See if this does not sound strikingly accurate. Lost today and the United States, most laws are not being made by congress but by the nlrb, sec, icc, aaa, tba, fcc, the office of reduction management. The other leading executive agencies, how well lawyers know this to be the case, to keep up with contemporary law. How plainly it is reflected in the Enormous Growth of the executive branch of government no longer simply executive the legislative and judicial. In comparison with that, indeed, indeed, most of the important laws passed by congress have been laws to give up more of its sovereign powers to one or another agency largely outside of its control. The perfect description of the Affordable Care act. Lets not have any more. Over to you. What is distinctive which is now widely perceived and talked about is that he did not reduce this to the decay of the nondelegation doctrine by the Supreme Court or the decay of the breakdown of separation of powers. It is happening everywhere, not just the United States. Ill give you one more quote congress has led me to policy decisions by default to the unchecked will of the executive and bureaucracy. The 22 pound perfectly symbolizes. Loses control of basic decisions. That was mentioned from conservative orthodoxy. Reasons that are defensible. If he had been around he would have said all of the ruckus over earmarks, earmarks, that was a big mistake. The reasons people about earmarks, members of congress would stick in the appropriation. You want them to earmark the entire budget. The budget. The bureaucrats to run wild. Arguing against the conservative position. And i think right now we are told how, gosh, polarization and gridlock. Congress is held in low esteem. The staff and family, and im not even too sure about the staff. And we need to abolish midterm elections. That is the leading idea right now. Now. I can imagine youre dead to have your dad having that. That will be exactly the reverse of what ought to happen. The book on Congress Explains why the elections were so important. Having the mechanisms reflects changes in Public Opinion on a frequent basis which is against the interest of bureaucracy. So very short and looking at where things stand especially with a president who just last week openly embraced Woodrow Wilsons assault legislative branch by suggesting that he represents the people who did not vote. Amazing. He talked about that. Grover cleveland. We ought to be emphasizing revitalizing congress. I will stop there. Thanks. A great pleasure and privilege. I was attacked physically by a howling mob of intellectuals, and they were trying to break in that door to get me. We decided the exit. And you can here them all running around. They did in fact get him. And then finally in the back of that car the first time i had to get out of town fast. The longer agent totalitarianism. Only interpretation he advances the few that its an impossibility. , a little more than fraudulent devices once this harsh fact is faced we can devise or retain social arrangements to increase popular welfare. Continue doing so in and out of government greatly preferred to the extravagant promises. The underlying premise which is only power can check Power International affairs in four books. The managerial revolution, struggle for the world, world, coming defeat of communism and containment of liberation. An essay that in effect explains why liberalism does not understand these truths, indeed denies them in the reliable their reliable means of resistance to enemies. It is therefore highly topical. The managerial revolution precedes the machiavellians bears the marks of brendans recent marxism arguing that economic forces are giving birth to a knew form of society that is neither capitalist or communist but controlled by the managers, businessmen, bureaucrats. It will be centralized, collectivist. The managerial class will rely on economic planning and bureau press politics. Each based upon an area of advanced industry. Japan, germany, and the United States. The three strategic centers for world control. Aligning up with one side or another. Wars would continue to burst forth at intervals. Power would check power indefinitely. Five years later three things are changed, comprehensively defeated. The soviet union advanced into the heart of europe and the atomic bomb and been invented. Explicitly retracted his positions of a new world order and the managerial revolution and sketched out a different future in his new book the structure for the world which is his most controversial to have controversial and important book. What kind of power balancing that might have occurred had become impossible. The only two candidates with the soviet union and the United States. The ussr was the representative of communism his victory would reduce all society to the status of the subject colony. Resistance can only be made by an noncommunist World Federation dominated by the United States which would retain monopoly control of atomic weapons. There would have to be an American World empire. Left the powers and retain a considerable measure of internal autonomy and victory and individual citizens would retain the liberty. In 1946 he proposed three practical measures to achieve these things. The us should mount the friendly takeover of britain and its empire by offering full Constitutional Union of the englishspeaking countries. There should be strong american participation in the us should appeal to the soviet peoples. Those three things. You have to be struck by the degree to which they are similar. Delivered one year later. Influenced. I tried to find out whether this was the case but have not been able to. Whether or not it was a case or whether it was a case in which to clever people arrive at the same proposal independently. So within six years he produced two original analytical and controversy exercises of vast historical canvas was an inspiration for criticism. George orwell who based his 1984 with its three competing super states perpetually at war with each other. The managerial revolution. It appears as the. Of oligarchical collectivism. Hes subjected my thesis to an analysis that was ultimately mistaken. Right to. Out that their were possibilities in the situation of 1946 and 47. The mention that atomic weapons would prove too frightening to use, soviet politics would develop in the direction of greater freedom. Both those of been partly conformed and borne out by events, but it has to be said that reagans policies were a major factor in the final evolution and collapse of communism, and those policies followed the descriptions rather than orwells. His sole policy prescription in this criticism was to set against vendors proposal for american empire that would rob communism of its political appeal by offering Economic Security for that concentration camp. That that is an admirable idea, but as a political proposal, he admitted that it would take 20 years of piece to bring this about, yet any policy at the time, talking about 46 would have to be directed to securing the 20 years of piece that his alternative policy required. On top of that a proposal for european socialism was a distraction, and absurd distraction at a time when a frustrated a frustrated europe is living on loans capitalist america. It would have created better political divisions it was little more than partisan daydreaming. His second criticism was a famous one, namely that namely that at each. He is predicting a continuation of the thing that is happening. The tendency the tendency to do this is a major mental disease. Not fully separable. Now the best answer to this criticism is the struggle for the world which amounts to a program to reverse the thing that was happening at the time, namely the advance of soviet russia. Nothing can step kind of moral cowardice or intellectualism molests and foreign suicide the managerial revolution requires an expectation. Two months before he published, he wrote a letter whether we like it or not the trend is toward centralism and planning and it is more useful to try to humanize the collective society which is coming. Revert to a past phase. Guilty of what he accuses. Easily acquitted. Inevitable both men are socialists and have been economic determinists. It remained a a curious kind of cranky unsystematic socialist until his death. It evolved into a curious kind of american conservative. For a long time he retained his marxist contempt for american business. And as late as the late 40s he underestimated the flexibility of the free market arguing that europe will never recover because stalin had cut off the natural markets in the east. Europe was recovering rapidly. More important, his his economic determinism went into a serious intellectual error, political sovereignty must coincide with the common economic efficiency of scale. The three super states were required and organized managerial societies like nazi germany and soviet russia were likely to prevail because modern industry needed larger markets to exploit and Capital Markets on which to draw which would have to be larger. Assume that centralized economic planning and industrial interventionalists and are necessarily attributes of political sovereignty and larger markets can only be achieved in the framework of larger states. This is not only possible but desirable to combine economic integration with political decentralization. That is the promise of the american federalism. Almost two centuries before, i quote, all nations follow political system of the free exploitation and free implication. The different the different states were so far resembles the different provinces of a great empire. Almost all. The general direction would continue to be much more responsive. Promoting bureaucracies. The middle 1950s which brings us to orwells third and most telling criticism. To find, later believe in the processes of history will happen suddenly. Some truth in this criticism. It turns out to be style and timing. Great clarity. Sidney hook begged him to change it for that very reason. But it was the title that most people remembered, and its promise was not to be fulfilled for 40 years, two years after burnham died n. The meantime, burnham could give any answer to critics beginning with read the book. [laughter] later the spread of Nuclear Weapons to britain, france, china and so on which he had warned against in the struggle for the world imposed a restraint on american actions and a slowness of change on International Affairs that together helped the soviet empire to survive. The inability of liberalism to exist provided they spoke the language of progress and human rights which he diagnosed in the book were discussing today, the suicide of the west, led to fatal hesitation begun and again by western policymakers in the face of challenges or opportunities. And the embodiment of this his teation in the policy of containment, which he analyzed in containment or liberation, produced a longterm tendency to appeasement and retreat. In short, he could repeat what was the actual argument of the coming defeat of communism, that communism would be defeated in a surprisingly short time. It was [inaudible] his advise was followed, and his advice for most of the world was not followed. So his public reputation and his visibility suffered nonetheless. And when he refused to join the liberal jihad against joe mcaround car think in the mccarthy in the 50s, he found him excluded from the tea party of respected individuals. As a partisan reviewer remarked to william bare et, the lib barrett, the liberals now dominate all the cultural channels in the country. If you break with this atmosphere, youre a dead duck. James burnham has committed suicide. Well, that was true. Like lazarus, however, he was raised from the dead. [laughter] no other comparison is implied here, but he was raised from the dead by william f. Buckley. [laughter] he became an editor of National Review, and the principle influence on buckley as both my predecessors have mentioned. As bill straightforwardly said, in the position he has he exerted powerful influence directly and indirectly upon the rising new conservativism of Ronald Reagan and especially on his Foreign Policy. Reagans prosecution of the cold war owed an enormous amount of burnhams writings and thoughts which is reflected in the president giving him the award. If George Orwell, a generousminded man, had lived until 1989 or even until 1986 or so, it is hard to imagine that he wouldnt have it is hard to imagine he would not have accepted that his great adversary had in the end got the better of the historic argument. Thank you. [applause] we dont have an abundance of time, but id like to first ask the panelists if they have anything they would like to add by way of observation, criticism, comment . Yes. My father used to discuss his books occasionally in short form, and i know the managerial revolution he always consideredded sort of a midstream, ideological book very clearly on the road from marxism, trotzky into what you might call a more freedomlooking view of how politics at least should operate. Also i think he also considered and, indeed, it was in print for a long, long time, the machiavellians is really the apparatus that he uses to analyze problems of whatever age. And the machiavellians, its simply a series of essays on earlier political scientists starting with machiavelli, but sorrell and others. This is sort of this realistic, Realism School of a political analysis, and its the only one that really holds up over time. So ill just make those sort of two comments about those two books. I think trouble for the world holds up, and one of the most dramatic things i remember reading as a student, i think the first chapter is what we should do. Its a short chapter. Well, we should let the russians winker we should abandon all russians win. We should abandon all what would the great philosophers have recommended . They would have recommended submission. It is better to accept evil than to perpetrate one, and except we would be ruled by a Hostile Force until eventually it sowenned in some way. And while there are some people in europe, very serious people in europe, did, in fact, recommend such a policy. Hungarian who in the 1940s when he sees whats happening says the best thing we can do is pretend to ally with the russians and hope that well be ruled in a more friendly, indulgent way and eventually theyll lose. Then he ends this chapter, by the way, burnham ends this chapter by saying were not going to do that, of course, so what do we then have to do . Its a grippy opening because it takes you in the wrong direction for about three or four pages. [laughter] a quick comment since i dont see anybody at the microphone yet. Students never want to ask the first question, professors know that. If anything, john, i think you understate the extent to which reagans end game on the cold war emerges from burnhams i mean, you laid it out fairly well, but the one document that comes to mind its not so much the speeches that are so famous, but one of the five key documents of the cold war was the nsdd72, i think thats the right number from 1982. This is our strategy for the cold war. Were going to start any logical fight, were going to do all these things that really surround like what burnham was saying in the 40s ought to be done. And by the way, the last paragraph of that memo, you can find it online, they say essentially, ill summarize it this way theres going to be hell to pay for doing this. The actual language is were going to get a lot of criticism from our allies, from the media, from our political opponents at home. Well be pressured to adopt more, quoteunquote, normal attitudes like we had during the years of detente, things like that. So were going to have a lot of fortitude to see this through. That sounds very much like something burnham would have said. Ill observe what john was saying about burnhams little thought experiment, you know . Maybe we should just give in to the russians. I actually had a professor at this university who proposed that quite seriously, but well leave that to another day. [laughter] any questions . Are there microphones that go around . Yeah. [inaudible] why they think the realistic, freedomloving perspectives of folks like mr. Burnham are so lacking in stickiness, and we seem to be repeating the mistakes and doing them over and over. We have an administration whos about to hand the nuclear keys to the middle east to the Islamic Republic of iran. What accounts to our unability to get inability to get those down . To a very large extent, conservative inte lick chuls intellectuals, believe it or not, they have a large streak of idealism. That sort of dominates their first approach to political questions, and that explains conservatives reverence for the american founders, right . And so even though james burn ham would say burnham would say look what a realist James Madison was, i almost think its that simple. Most conservatives say, well, im pretty realistic, and thats true also, but i think burnham is absolutely without illusions about any sentimental idealism in the way it comes to sight. I think thats why. Its unfamiliar to so many people. I think burnham explains this himself in the machiavellians, i agree, i think thats the central book of his thought. The other books, em nations in a way. em nations, in a way. Of hes describing [inaudible] distinction between, and i can never remember the terms, but one is, manes a set means a settled disposition of people, desires, passions, you might say, and the other are rationalizations for these things. The rationalizations change all the time, but the decan sires desires remain fairly constant. Does anyone remember the terms . Its no, its not. I cant remember, sorry. But the point, however, is that there is permanent disposition which youve just called idealism, steven, but which certainly exists, and it recurs again and again. And you have to and events, it seems to me. Its not just arguments, its events have to concern burnhams analysis before people. Then begin to take it seriously. The suicide of the west has a discussion about guilt and how guilt motivates, motivates much of liberalism. And in one sense that liberalism replaces christianity in a sense that is right. Christianity resolves the guilt problem for individualings if they were truly professed christians which is an interesting aspect of the book, i think. And, but just simply emphasizes how, you know, if you feel guilty about things, then you want to help, you want to do something. It doesnt matter what you do as long as youre doing something that is intended to help people, and that helps yourself a great deal and assuages the guilt that you may feel about your relatively better off position. Other questions or comments . Hearing none, i declare this adjourned. [applause] this conference on the 50th anniversary of the publication of James Burnhams suicide of west continues with a Panel Discussion on liberalism at home and the challenges to western survival. [inaudible conversations] my name is carolyn hanson, and i am the speakers director of Buckley Program. It is with great pleasure that i am here to introduce a distinguished patron of the liberal arts and scholar of western civilization, professor noel valas. She is the director of graduate studies of spanish here at yale and also a professor of spanish and portuguese. Just spanish. Okay. No longer portuguese. [laughter] she is a recipient of the guggenheim fellowship and also a National Endowment for the humanities fellowship. Shes written on sacred realism, the spanish civil war and 19th century spanish novel. So without further ado, the moderator for this second panel, liberalism at home and the challenges to western survival. [applause] you hear me all right . Good. Welcome to this second panel on this conference on James Burnhams suicide of the west, which the william f. Buckley program at yale has so beautifully organized and put together. I should point out at once that, unfortunately, james was unable to attend. But wonderfully at the last moment we have a replacement who has stepped up and volunteered to fill in for him. So thank you. [applause] so our panel now consists of james toronto, r. R. mow and o vick roy. My role here after making introductory remarks is to introduce our speakers briefly, to turn the panel over to them, and after which well open up the floor for discussion. When i accepted rich and laurens kind invitation to moderate this panel, i was general winly delighted to have genuinely delighted to have the opportunity to revisit burnhams classic book. But as i started to read, i realized that i was absolutely dead wrong about it. Not about his classic status, but that i had actually read the book before. [laughter] because as i read further, i understood that had i once read his book, i would never have forgotten it. My false memory of having read it probably arose from recognizing the title, a title that truly i must have read decades ago. I would never have forgotten it because, as a professor of literature, the first thing i noticed was not so much what he was saying, but how he was saying it. In chapter one, the contraction of the west, he begins while working on this book one morning, i happened to come across lingering on a remote shelf an historical atlas left over from my school days long, long ago. I drew it out and began idly turning the pages for no particular reason other than to season an a occasion as a writer will, to escape for a moment from the lonely discipline of his craft. This atlas is current to 1914, he says. And a little bit later he writes leafing through an historical atlas of this sort, we see history as if through a multiple polarizing glass that reduces the infinite human variety to a single rigorous dimension, effective political control over acreage. This dimension is unambiguously represented by a single clear color; red, green, yellow blue. Imposed on a particular segment of the outlying world, the red on italy, spain, egypt means roman rule, the blue means [inaudible] rule, the uncolored fringes mean the amorphous anarchy of barbarism. Burnham as at once drawn us in first by using the classic [inaudible] in recalling his youth and then his alltoohuman yielding to the distractions all writers creigh. But crave. But, of course, this atlas is not a distraction, as mr. Burnhams son has also pointed out, for it represents the very core of his thought in this first chapter which introduces the theme of the rapid decline of western civilization. His ability to focus with unsentimental clarity on this image sets the stage for the rest of the book. Above all, i was struck by the sober and coldly objective way he went about outlining what can only be described as impending disaster. No four horsemen here, no beast of the apocalypse but still disaster. Indeed, the terms of engagement in this book are harsh and and unsparing. He speaks of the necessity of the will to survive, of the wests suicidal tendency and provocatively then and now of liberalism as the ideology of western suicide. So we have two extraordinarily drastic terms, suicide and survival. Roger kimball also noted some of this. Survival in particular suggests passage through something so terrible as to conjure up the image of the last standing man or the last man standing, to put it in the right order. I found myself asking is this what burnham is marching toward . Is that all there is, as the peggy lee song goes . How shall the west survive . What are the forms that survival will take . But then i returned to the epigraph from spencers the fairy queen that burnham carefully chose, though he does not identify or comment on the source of the quotation, at least not in the edition that i read. After describing the cave of despair, spencer has despair rebuked by the red cross night for provoking the suicide of [inaudible] and it is despair himself who speaks in this epigraph saying what if some little pain the passage have that makes frail flesh to [inaudible] is not short pain well born that brings long ease and lays the soul to sleep in quiet grave . Sleep after toil, port after stormy sea . Seas ease after war, death after life does greatly please. Hearing this insidious argument of selfdefeat, the knight nearly kills himself i but is saved by the spirit of faith whereupon despair hangs himself. That is the part that comes after. [laughter] my question is, what is the connection between spencers figure of despair and the liberalism that burnham identifies as the ideology of western suicide . Does he mean us to make this connection . If so, there is great irony and paradox to it or in it, for as burnham himself declares, liberalism is the optimistic espousal of the perfectibility of human nature, born of rationalism and secularism. But it is the consequences of such utopian thinking, its underlying nonrational basis that may lead us to the cave of despair. All of this tells us something about the moral compass of James Burnhams vision in this book. Now i am privileged to and very pleased to introduce our distinguished speakers. R. R. Reno is the editor of one of best journals being published today, first things, whose Public Square pages i especially love reading. I was amused to discover online, to read that after graduating high school he spent a year living in a tent in yosemite valley, and id like to know the story behind that one. [laughter] [inaudible] okay. Rusty is also a yalely. He received his ph. D. In religious studies from Yale University and taught theology and ethics at Creighton University in omaha for 20 years. And notable among his publications are the collection of essays fighting the noon day devil, in the ruins of the church, redemptive change, atonement and the cure of the soul, and the coauthored, an introduction to early interpretation of the bible. James toronto is editor of opinionjournal. Com and is responsible for itself popular best of today web column and very memorable for his sense of humor and pointed commentary. Hes a member of the wall street journals editorial board. Hes been with the journal since 1996 after spending five years as an editor at city journal. Hes also worked at the Heritage Foundation, united press international, reason magazine and elsewhere. And he coedited the book president ial leadership rating to be the best rating the best and the worst in the white house in 2004. [laughter] that would be a different story, wouldnt it . Your title was better. [laughter] and finally, iowa Vick Roy Avik roy, the forbes opinion editor and the author of the forbes blog, the apothecary. And many readers are familiar with his trenchant criticisms of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care act, otherwise known as obamacare. He has also served as an outside adviser to the Romney Campaign on health care issues. He is a contributor to National Review online and the author of thement counter encounter broadside how medicaid fails the poor. And he too is a yalie. Please join me now in welcoming our panelists. [applause] i guess i start out . Thank you very much for that wonderful meditation on penceer and the cave of despair. I never thought about liberalism hanging itself. [laughter] but i rather like that outcome. [laughter] when i read suicide of the west, its certainly a book that im very sympathetic with. After 9 11 i took to asking many of my friends who were very concerned about islamic terrorism and islamic extremism, i said what is the most, what is the greatest threat to the west . And when people would hem and haw, they would eventually agree that the west is the greatest threat to the west. [laughter] and that seems to me to be burnhams insight. But today i would rather pursue some contentions and provocations with the book in order to stimulate thought and perhaps discussion. Im going to talk about what liberalism is, im going to take issue with the way that he treats communism, and then i want to talk about how i i think he may have underestimated liberalism. Okay. So what is liberalism . Now, i my memorys not so good, so im not, i dont like to boil things down to 39 principles. Three is better, to my mind. So i think reading suicide of the west, it crystallized for me what i think are the three features of liberalism. Theyre not quite the same as burnhams vision, and maybe we can talk about that. I think it was Richard Weaver who said that we operate at three different levels. We have specific beliefs, we have general principles, and we have metaphysical dreams. And i think liberalism is a metaphysical dream or perhaps more accurately, an antimetaphysical dream. It dreams of justice. Its political dream is a dream of Justice Without virtue. Its moral dream is a dream of virtue without discipline on censure. And spiritually, its a dream of selfrealization as salvation. To my mind, those are the thats the metaphysical, the threefold metaphysical or antimetaphysical dream of liberalism. Well, so that was a kind of maybe a provocation in light of his own account of liberalism. So the second issue i want to raise is, i think, the implausible way understandable given the book was written in the 1960s, but the implausible way in which burnham treats communism as antiwestern. I think its transparently the case that communism is a contend was a contending force in the west. It was a form of westernism that was actually extremely effective at conquering a great deal of the world. So i would submit that china today has been westernized by communism. Or was westernized by communism. And that was an ip dispensable stage indispensable stage into the development of this sort of authoritarian capitalist society. Certainly russia, i think, was westernized by communism. So i think that communism as we look back was not, in fact, an antiwestern ideology, it was one of the perversions of the west that was contending for the soul, well, for the future of the world to use his terminology and it did a great deal in the 20th century to westernize the political imaginations of nearly, of the part of the world where it had dominance. I think, like i said, i think we can see that in retrospect. Also he turned out to be wrong, i think, about the capacity of liberals to resist and defeat communism, and i think thats because he failed to see he saw but sometimes did and didnt see, certainly the managerial revolution helped me see that the commissar and the liberal technocrat are rivals competing for dominance in the posttraditional west. So its really the liberal technocrat and the commissar that were at war with each other for dominance after, in the postwar error. Era. And that liberalism has techniques for establishing and maintaining power that look weak, that seem weak but are, in fact, quite effective. A good example of this, i think, is decolonization. I think clearly decolonization served the interests of liberal technocrats in america. Not, our nonintervention in the suez canal crisis in 1956 clearly demonstrated to european nations that they were subservient to us and was an instrumental move, our nonaction was instrumental in establishing american supremacy globally. It demonstrated that the nonsoviet sphere could do nothing without american backing. So decolonization, i think, is actually serving the interests of specifically an american technocrat cantic elite which is why we supported it. So it didnt represent our defeat, it was actually part of our victory in establishing a very different kind of empire yum globally. And also the different kinds of ways of maintaining power. I think multiculturalism and domestically is a liberal strategy for managing and maintaining power in society, a kind of partitions of and a parceling out of goodies in a way of maintaining power. And these appear to be weak, they appear to be antiwestern, they appear to be destructive, they appear to be suicidal, but we know from experience that the institutions like yale that have adopted its multicultural ideology have not, in fact, been weakened but are able to actually redouble their strength. So i think this brings me to my final point. I think the way in which burnham underestimates liberalism. Hes right to say in a number of places that liberalism is not in touch with reality, and i think the example thats the most powerful here is the gauze city view of the soviet union in the 50s and 60s and into the 70s that it deceived itself about the true nature of communism for all kinds of reasons. We see this in Political Correctness which tends towards, quite frankly, the surreal. We all see that. It seems kind of bizarre in its lack of contact with reality, Political Correctness. But, in fact, it seems to me american liberalism has adjusted itself a great deal since his time, and its done so in ways to insure its ongoing viability. And i think understanding this capacity for adjustment is something we need to do. And i think perhaps this capacity for adjustment stems from the fact that contraburnham, american liberalism is not using the terminology he uses in the book it is not, in fact, rationalism in politics. It is instead a pragmatic mentality. Its committed to its metaphysical dreams, but its means and its principles are highly plastic. Its a quality except when its not. Its freedom except when its not. Its tolerance except when its not. Its standing strong except when it doesnt. Its being welcoming and, you know, welcoming and inclusive except when its not. Its very difficult, actually, to see what the principles are of contemporary american liberalism. Instead i think its a pragmatic set of sensibilities underwritten by or guided by a kind of pragmatic menialty. Mentality. Or to put it differently, i think liberalism is an establishment and ruling mentality more than it is a political philosophy. And i would add by way of sideline that i think burnham neglected to recognize that american liberalism is actually connected culturally with certain strands of mainline prague ma schism, that it became [inaudible] in the 70s and 80s. But nevertheless, it has a kind offed cultural base of cultural base that gives it a kind of stability and content and capacity to perpetuate itself that helps it overcome the weaknesses of its own principles. So finally, it seems to me that if liberalism triumphs globally, and it may nothing ever finally, completely triumphs, but it may succeed in becoming the dominant global mentality if it does that, this may represent the suicide of humanity, but it wont represent the suicide of the west, it will represent the triumph of a certain faction within the west, a certain tradition within the west. Thank you. [applause] well, thank you. I have a better memory when our moderator does, because when i was asked to be on this panel, i distibtly remember id never read suicide of the west. [laughter] so i did. And, of course, as i was reading, i was comparing burnhams description of the liberal of 1964 with the liberals that we see in 2014. And i think his description held up probably on the whole better than i would have expected. But there were two very glaring differences that i noticed. And one of them is that in the past 50 years liberalism has completely rejected freedom of speech as a principle. Now, if you think thats an exaggeration, i suggest you read the text of Senate Joint Resolution 19. This is a constitutional amendment introduced by senator tom udall of new mexico. He has 48 cosponsored, all democrats, a 49th democrat voted for it in the judiciary committee, and all 55 democrats currently in the senate have voted for it at least on procedural motions. Those numbers are going to decline some next year, but not because any of the democrats have changed their minds. [laughter] all right, this amendment is a response to the Citizens United case which held that independent expenditures could not be regulated which is a case of Campaign Finance law coming up head on against the rights of free speech. And particularly upsetting to the left, that corporations have the same free speech rights as slippings. This pro individuals. This proposed amendment would go far beyond reversing Citizens United. What it says is congress or state legislatures can pass any reasonable regulation on the spending of money by individuals or organizations to influence an election. Now, the crucial thing here is the evil that the Supreme Court has always recognized as justifying some restrictions on Campaign Finance is corruption; buying politicians or buying access. This is not about corruption. This is about persuasion. This is about seeking to change the minds of the voters. Its core political speech. And i think that the democrats are for this not because they think it will be to their advantage as democrats, i think theyre for it on ideological grounds. So i think this makes the rejection of free speech total. Now, Roger Kimball talked earlier about Political Correctness, and that is a better way of examining the psychology of the rejection of free speech. Because what you see is, you know, somebody i think it was robert frost who said that a liberal is, a liberal is a man too broad mieppedded to take his own side in a quarrel. [laughter] nobody would say that. Nobody would say that about liberals in 2014, right . And its not just the understanding of free speech that burnham describes that the liberals in his day had and a few old ones do today was not just a legalistic understanding, it was a social and cultural understanding. It was the idea that everyones entitled to his opinion. The other fellow has a right to speak his peace and, you know, the answer to speech is more speech and all that. Well, they dont believe that anymore. I mean, look at what happened to brandon eich, the guy who was driven out of his job because he supported the initiative against samesex marriage in california. Look the at the tax on [inaudible] or the incident that John Osullivan described earlier, which i assume had something to do with his political speech, although he didnt specify what the provocation was. All right, and so, you know, i guess the question is why, and i suppose i would say there are two reasons. One is, its a show of dominance, you know . If you have the power to shut your opponents up, youre going to use it. If you dont have the power, youll appeal to free speech. The left, they may not have the political power, the legal power, but they have the cultural power. On the other hand, i think its also a sign of vulnerability because they feel threatened by the expression of dissenting views. And i think weve seen that quite a bit particularly during the Obama Administration where, you know, all critics of the president are denounced as racist and so on and so forth. The other area in which i should say burnham did foretell that liberals might eventually abandon free speech, and ill go into that a bit after i talk about the second way in which todays liberals are very different, and that is burnham said almost nothing about sex. Now, i mean that in both senses of the word sex. The roles of men and women in society and also in sexual relationships and sexual freedom and so forth. And there has obviously been vast social change in both of these areas in the past 50 years, and i would pinpoint two policy decisions more or less contemporaneous with the publication of the book that were really the spirit of this social change. I dont think this was driven by liberalism, and burnhams omission of it is an indication of that. But i think liberalism has adapted to it and made it really central to the ideology. One is the fdas approval of the pill as a form of contraception in 1960 which, it seems to me, enabled the sexual revolution. It enabled sexual freedom in a way that was just not possible before. And the other is the Civil Rights Act which included an amendment that extended its protections to women. It was originally intended as a bar to racial discrimination. The sex amendment was introduced mischievously by a congressman named howard w. Smith who was a v segregation virginia segregationist. Some people argue he was sincere in his principles, but its pretty well agreed that one of his aims was to scuttle the bill because he thought he would embarrass people into either voting against it, or they would vote for it, and then they would be embarrassed into voting down the bill. Instead they voted for it and they approved the bill, so perhaps he was too clever by half. But weve had vast emergent social change ever since then to which the liberals have adapted, and this has really become, it seems to me, the central core of liberalism. And i think that it has been the most, that these two changes in tandem have had more of an effect on our culture and our politics than anything else thats happened domestically in the past 50 years because it affects the structure of the family, it affects the welfare state, it affects fertility rates, legitimacy rates which in turn place more demands for expanding the welfare state and puts strains on the welfare state. Its just been overwhelming. And burnham failed to foresee that, and i dont know that anyone could have. Ill close by coming back to the lee case which i was talking about with noel before the panel began. Noel said to me i dont understand how feminists cannot support somebody like [inaudible] ali whos speaking up for womens equality and womens freedom in muslim countries. And i said, well, i think burnham explained that, and ill explain it in my talk which is he has this chapter, you may recall, in which he talks about the four sort of broad political values and how the differences in world views come down to a difference in how one ranks these value ises. We all value values. We all value these things but some of us value some of them more than others. And his ranking for the liberal was as follows, the uppermost priority was peace followed by justice followed by freedom followed by liberty. And the distinction between liberty and freedom is freedom is personal freedom, liberty is National Freedom or sovereignty. So liberty is beside the point. But lets think about this. So the left used to embrace free speech. That was their idea of freedom. Now their idea of freedom is sexual freedom. We have competing claims of justice which is their second most important value. Ali is speaking on behalf of justice for women, her detractors are speaking on behalf of justice for muslims who were a supposedly oppressed minority. And the reason that the claim on behalf of muslims ends up trumping in the liberal mind the claim on behalf of women is because of that topmost value, peace, because the claim of justice on behalf of a potential or actual adversary of america or west outweighs the claim of justice on behalf of half of humanity, some of whom are are westerners and some of whom arent. And so theres the answer to your question. [laughter] and ill pass it over to avik, and hopefully well have some time for questions. [applause] thanks, james. Its great to be here, and i also want to thank the Buckley Program for that beautiful moment earlier this semester when we all got to watch ayaan ali come to this campus do [applause] to scuttle that invitation or water it down in some way. We all, i think all of us, were very appreciative of that. And i also want to thank John Osullivan for bringing up that moment from, what was it, 16 years ago when he got carted out of the room, i was there. [laughter] his hair was flopping in the wind, and i was actually tasked that day or that evening by the speaker of the Yale Political Union with preventing a mob of marauding koreans from breaking that door down with 2x4s to get into this hall and attack mr. Osullivan. So that was North Koreans . South koreans. [laughter] it was not a day that youd ever forget. It doesnt happen every day. But, of course, today were not expecting mobs of marauding koreans to break down the door. But thats actually kind of relevant to our subject for today. I actually want to echo something that some of the earlier panelists on the stage mentioned which is that burnhams book, the managerial revolution, is, in my mind, the book that has the most profound implications for today. If you think about how the state has grown in the United States and across the west, what has been the drive of course its been government spending, federal and state involvement in the economy. But i think our movement has done a reasonably good job of holding the line on, say, taxes. If you look at tax revenue to the government, to the federal government at least as a percentage of economic output, gdp, its been relatively constant over the last 50, 60 years, since world war ii. Spending has certainly gone up. But the biggest growth in the scale and scope of state activity has been, actually, regulation. And its something that the conservative movement has not really done a good job of addressing. Weve had weeks like burnhams books like burnhams that talk about it, we complain it, and we express skepticism about regulation, but there has been no coherent approach or i a tack or action attack or action against the growth of the regulatory state. And i think theres a reason for that. I think that if we think about the conservative Movement Since world world war ii, weve done a great job of producing thinkers and philosophers. I know theres an argument as to which term you want to use between steve and roger [laughter] take your pick. And theres been, you know, a lot of great prose stylists, but we have not necessarily done a great job of producing people who are able to fight on the battlefield of how to change regulations and steer the regulatory state in a freer direction. And i think theres an understandable reason why. Its really, really, really boring. Laugh right . [laughter] right . In 1926 the federal register, which is the book that the federal government puts out every year with all the lists of regulatory notes, is about 2600 pages n. 2012 it was 78,900 pages. And obamacare alone has Something Like 20,000 pages of regulation. People talk about the bill being 2800 pages, its actually the regulations or that are another 20,000, 30,000 pages that are the bulk of how obamacare changes america. The federal spending in obamacares what we all talk about, but actually the federal government so heavily involved in the Health Care System already through the Great Society programs of head care and medicaid, obamacares impact is relatively modest. It actually only increases federal spending on health care by about 15 . Which is not nothing, its not the right direction, but where obamacare is a step change there the old system is that it introduces a layer of regulation, federal regulation into the Health Insurance market that dramatically changes the way Health Insurers can operate in this country and the kinds of choices that we can all have in how we pay for and consume health care. So the regulatory state is a huge, huge problem. And its been a huge deficiency in our movement. Im not sure how we reorient our movement or try to do something to make sure that were building a cadre of regulatory ninjas who can go out there and fight these battles. And maybe ninjas is not the right metaphor, right . In a sense what weve done on our side is we tend to say, well, we shouldnt even if we produce our own regulatory experts who can fight that bale, theyre technocrats too, and theyre going to be technocrats of the right, and thats just bad. The government has no role in this stuff, and we should just keep saying that. While we keep saying that, the regulatory state keeps advancing. And so we havent found a way to navigate that divide between saying, you know what . Were in principle against regulation, we know that regulation tends to be economically inefficient, and yet we have to actually have a plan, a game plan or an approach to actually rolling back or reforming the regulatory state and making that regulatory state smaller. So you can say its fine and well to say, well the federal government should have no role in health care. Thats great, you know . Ive read the constitution too. But the problem is the federal government is spending 1 trillion a year on health care driven by 50,000 pages of regulations. And unless we figure out a politically plausible way to address that problem, were never going to actually enjoy a freer Health Care System, the kind that we all want and espouse. And this leads me to the second half of what i want to talk about which is this issue of is the, should there be a suicide watch for the west. And, you know, i thought that rusty brought up a beautiful point about how communisms actually a western idea. We have to step back and define our terms. What is the west . Is the west the ideas that come out of the west . If so, the entire world western in one form or another, most of it, at least. Yes, maybe you could say that isis is not really western in its politics, but certainly in their use of technology theyre quite western, actually. Capitalism, yes, its an idea that originated in the west, but you could argue that its actually asian citystates that are the preeminent practitioners of capitalism around the world. If you look at the Heritage Foundation index of Economic Freedom, the two countries at the top of that list are hong kong and singapore, right . So we actually have a lot to learn perhaps from the geographic east when we think about how to awe ply and apply and advance the values and interests of the west. If were talking about the west in terms of a set of countries where historically white europeans have inhabited, well, i guess we can express concern about that, but thats i dont think thats why were here. I think were here not to talk about particular ethnic groups and whether they will continue to be the most prosperous in the world, were here to talk about a set of ideas. And i think those ideas are not only advancing around the world, but are triumphant because and i think this is something that burnham reminds us of burnham writing about the future of the west is a bit like say john locke writing about the future of the west in the late 18th century or perhaps earlier. At the time, in the time of the enlightenment which, of course, was a liberal movement, small l, rebelling against the conservativism of, say, you know, roman catholicism or more a risk accurate cantic forms of finish aristocratic forms of government, we did not know what the Industrial Revolution was going to do to the west. And i think today were at a similar point. The Information Age, the information revolution that were undergoing is transforming the whole world in a way that those of us who have been brought up to think about the world in an industrialized sense have not fully grasped. And those, those in our movement who fought the battles against communism in the 20th century, lets not forget that debate between capitalism and communism in the 20th century was a battle about industrial societies, right . And a society, the society that were evolving towards, a society in which the information economy is more important than the industrial economy is one thats going to advance not in a straight line, not some straight lines, its going to evolve in ways we cant predict. I think one thing thats very interesting is, if you think about it, some of the greatest capitalists of our era, people like steve jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are political liberals. So the greatest capitalists, why is it that some of the greatest capitalists of our time are political liberals . Remember, these are also people who are globalists typically. Theyre internationallyoriented. James burnham critiqued liberalism as being something that looked down on nationalism and displays of patriotism. Most of the super successful capitalists that i know are the same way. Actually. They, theyre not rah, rah america americans. They have a global perspective in which they look at each country, and they look at the pluses and minuses of each and are trying to do business everywhere, including red china, okay . Of course, the peoples republic of china is moving in a more capitalist direction in certain ways, perhaps a crony capitalist direction. But its not at all clear that the west is failing. If anything, if we were at a similar conference on the left, they would be fulminating about the triumph of the west and the triumph of capitalism and how capitalists and corporatist ideas have taken over the world and how ideas of equality are being demolished as a result. Right . So, yes, is the state trying to do more to enforce a kind of economic equality . Yes. But under in this president under this president economic inequality has increased. Part of the reason is his policies, but part of the reason is the information economy. So we live in a world where successful entrepreneurs, because of global markets, can now make billions of or dollars when before they might make tens of millions of dollars. Where the people who were very successful and who can actually navigate the information economy, collegeeducated elites, are doing extremely well. But the socalled blue Collar Worker that we knew so much about or talked so much about in the 20th century, his role in this new economy is not clear. And so as we think about burnhams thought process, and if burnham were writing a similar book today, what would he be concerned about . I would argue he would be very concerned about the regulatory state, and he would also be trying to think hard about how the information economy is transforming political orders around the world in ways that both advance our values in ways that may work against our values, but principally id say the set of political problems we have today are very different. Because liberalism in the john Stewart Mills sense has some limitations in a world where it used to be in the industrial economy if you worked hard, youd get ahead, right . You worked hard, you just applied yourself, anyone could get a good job. Thats still true, we till believe this still believe in that concept. But in a world where surgeon people are going certain people are going to have a fundamental advantage in an information economy, we have to think about how we are going to address those disparities. Is it really going to be true . Are average people going to believe in 2030 that if you work hard, you have an equal chance of getting ahead as someone who has a degree from yale . Its not exactly clear. But broadly speaking, i think we have a lot of reason to be optimistic. The world is different today than it was then. As james mentioned, sexual mores are different than they were, but Economic Prosperity is advancing because of western values. Just in the last 0 years, a 20 years, a billion people around the world have been lifted out of poverty because of western values, hundreds of millions of people have been liberated from totalitarian political systems. Were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the suicide of the west, also the 25th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall. And efforts by governments to regulate the information economy have proven thus far not to be thatting. That successful. That could change, but that is at least a source for us to be optimistic that western values not only are growing around the world, but that they will remain and become even more triumphant a generation from now than they were a generation ago. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much for that most interesting and stimulating panel. Now, were open with the time that remains we do have some time for questions, and maybe i could just start and then you could also pitch in. [laughter] to this discussion. I had a number of questions, but i guess one that i wanted to ask was, um, i think it was adams who said there was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. [laughter] and he goes on to say that all forms of government are subject to the same vulnerabilities because of human frailty. His comment, nevertheless, it certainly resonates with me, and when i think of it as juxtaposed to burnhams understanding of liberalism, i dont think burnham quotes adams in the book on this matter, but my question is to what degree are they speaking of the same thing or not speaking of the same thing . And i leave this to any one of you if youd like to comment on it. [laughter] well, its interesting that american democracy hasnt committed suicide 200 plus years later. It, i i think it, its a testimony to fact that, um, that theres we have a society with a lot of social capital, and we have, we have a democratic system that right now is paralyzed because, in my analysis, it accurately reflects the ambivalence of the country with respect to very deep questions about what kind of society we want to be. So i think we have a system thats actually pretty darn representative, and its dysfunctional because our society is at kind of an equi poise between two different visions of the future. Its easy in a place like yale to feel like the liberals have run everything. [laughter] but i was with a friend of mine in new york, it was really just down, down, down. I said, man, youve got to go to texas sometime. [laughter] yeah, i would agree with that. I actually just got back a couple of weeks ago from a trip to singapore, and it was eye yoaping. The capitalist energy in asia right now is absolutely incredible. Their sense of the possibility of what they can do to make the people around them more prosperous is just, i cant even describe it. It made me feel like our arguments and our debates in this country are so petty and so small relative to whats going on there. Their political orders are not generally democratic, right . So that leads us, we dont have to get into a side discussion of Political Freedom and Economic Freedom are necessarily correlated and coexistent, but i would say the problem we have is actually not so much a democratic problem, its a madisonian problem, all right . We have a system that was designed and has succeeded in making it very hard to change laws in terms of statutory laws passed by congress. But because in those few brief moments where progressives had overwhelming power such as in 2010 and in 1965, they have passed laws that have become entrenched. Its been very, very hard to unravel those laws, and the willing la story managerial regulatory managerial state has taken over, and thats something we have to think about hard. In a world where i dont think the framers believed that the system they were devising would put limited government at a disadvantage. But arguably it has because in those few moments, the progressives have been able to stall their system, and conservatives have not been able to reverse that because of madisonian checks and balances on their temporary moments of power. Well, they did. The future of america. The reagan years as well. In terms of this question i think that we are stuck with it, it is going to get bigger, and the real question is, who gets to run it. We can make it somewhat less burdensome. Traditional norms recede. They have to impose the bureaucratic, bureaucratic, therapeutic, Legal Mechanism and see this in a small way on university campuses. We talked out the norms. Bad things happen. Now we have to have a legalized system in order to impose order. As the family declines in the United States we we will get a resulting growth in government to compensate. Prosthetics for the family, and they and they have to be administered. It is complicated. Compensating for deregulation. I would like to open this up. I see one of the major problems is education. The people really do not have an understanding or appreciation of capitalism, the free market. Education falls into two broad categories, academic and what people get from the media. Why in both quadrants the predominant thinking is so liberal. Correctional just jump in here. I think that i would disagree with the premise of the question. Question. Extremely capitalistic. Very much Everyone Wants to go to stanford in terms of colleges because Everyone Wants to become a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. I think that has become an exciting development. Where there is deficiency is in the sense of classical education, civic education, that is where our education and the western intellectual condition, the things where we are suffering. At least on the issue of entrepreneurship there is lot of reason to believe and have optimism. The ones that make the decision. I think the university is easy to explain. It is the Progressive Church because progressives dont go to church. It is if they want to transmit there values, how values, how are they going to do with . They have to control educational systems. There are profound structural reasons why the University Structure is left of left and not centerleft because i am a conservative catholic. If i want to transmit my values i can give money to the church, identified traditionalist catholic organizations to give money to, knights of columbus or the masonic lodge. Almost all on the conservative side. They dont have institutions people who appreciate capitalism by and large become capitalists, go and do business. Theres a selfselection issue. I am a bit of an oddball. I know other people, but i am an outlier. The question of regulations. I think that their are three problems. I think that their are a lot of regulatory benches. Not enough, but they but they do have an effect. The broader difficulty is number two. And that has not been any serious thinking of development of a broad political thought on how to resist it. This it. This is the future. He did not have an answer. Shouldnt there be some kind of conservative regulatory philosophy utopian libertarians. But the forms, it seems to me that that is the big challenge for conservative political leaders. It is not being very well done. We can have a whole conference. A couple of things. It goes back. Regulation is an attractive mechanism. I will Say Something else. Our movement and in the United States could learn a lot more as opposed to purely being about economic liberalism. How would they inform thinking. We have to be gradual and the way we reform things, but we have to be rigorously empirical. How does that frame your philosophy . A a bunch of people say lets just regulate sex. They are not required by law. Wonky and technocratic but one of the few ways that we can govern regulation and order in order to think through and have empirical framework. Destroying the economy or encourage more competition. We have to think about the and use it as a way to address. Another lesson for us. We think about conservatism, small fee. A lot of it means elitism. Western European Countries resulted in not so much aristocrats as these capitalists or economic families that have down their big gigantic differences. Where the regulatory state, they can think through things. Part of what we are now fighting against is a kind of conservatism. We just dont no. We can we can never have a free Health Care System. So much better. Although stupid American Voters who do not understand. That elitism, a conservative impulse, liberal elitism, something we have to think about. Populism alone does never succeed. They have more resources, influence, and power. They cannot always easily fight back. We have to figure out some sort of language that allows it to appeal to that elite class. Freedom is better. I dont have that. These are hard problems. There is actually an office. Supposed to apply task benefit analysis. The kibosh on regulation. I happen to have been reading an article by Robert Kuttner outraged the whole concept. He said that the office was greater during the carter administration, administration, and the Reagan Administration put it to good use or bad use. I am afraid we dont have any more time. We can do one more. Thank you very much. Two trends that they have touched on recently. The contraction of religious faith in the collapse of the family. Are family. Are they as robust as they seem to be . The percent of people who go to church every sunday has not changed. It it is around 25 to 35 percent. One of my sociologist friends says what has changed dramatically as the number of people who consider themselves to have no religious affiliation, driving the culture war, the religious left, the equivalent of the religious right. They are tired of having to put up with the residual nation and wont do it anymore. That creates the impression of a decline of religious faith. It really is a transformation of people who were not really religious but acquiesced to the dominance of christian values in america. It is a decline in the influence of religious faith it is a decline. You mentioned the religious. The evangelical side has been growing. Becoming more polarized. I dont think that the trend away from the Nuclear Family is going away anytime soon, technological and economic changes. Separate from the religious question. If you look, he points out, as he called them, religious in terms of going to church and also much likelier to have intact families. More religious. I think they have a greater concentration. Certainly more liberal in their political. As one of my friends said , doing just fine. They talk the talk of the 60s but walk the walk of the 50s, and i think one of the great problems in our society is not income inequality, but it is the marriage inequality that is problem. I think think gay marriage is a luxury for the rich. Cannot help but undermine the symbolic meaning of marriage because it puts in its a controversial thing to say, but say, but i believe that this is a serious problem. A. Very worried about the future of the family and marriage because the family is the ultimate social safety net. If that is not functional than government will intervene. People will demand that someone take care of them. Single single women vote democrat so strongly because they feel vulnerable. They dont feel as though they have a network or a reliable basis for the future of their lives. They do not feel secure, and we should be concerned. You should you should be concerned about the future of the family. I want to be more pessimistic and more optimistic. If you look at western europe. The. About disparities. An interesting divorce rate for College Level couples is 10 percent. The bride and groom have college degrees. There have been theories as to why that is, but among the elites the family has not broken down. In europe it definitely has. Scandinavia where actually they have social order and Economic Prosperity and Economic Freedom, there has been a complete breakdown. You are more likely to grow up with your natural parents and the United States. They stay together. There is a breakdown in formal marriage, marriage, but often cohabitating couples with children to stay together. The reason the reason i bring that up is precisely to say that while the formal characteristic of how we think about a Traditional Community in which people go to church on sunday and have a formal marriage and live in a legal entity, that may be wrote over time. Western europe, norway, denmark, people pay taxes to the church yet there is this family breakdown, breakdown, but there has not been one in social order. We assumed family breakdown necessarily leads to social order. It may be a a way out, and the reason i make that argument, think about this, the fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals. Liberals believe in the perfectibility of humanity and the nature whereas conservatives believe it is constant and immutable. Its human nature and people have been living in Family Structures since time immemorial and the reason why religious truth has been sewing new line is for that reason. Every reason to be optimistic. Optimistic. Whatever conditions we endure or face 50 years from now people need and desire to be in families and communities because that is ingrained in who we are. The breakdown of this family, a formal breakdown, breakdown, living together more or less as if they were married, i dont know that that suggests a way out if the breakdown is more than formal. That suggests a remedy, a disease that we have that they dont have. The formal problem that we describe is going to get worse, the worse, but the consequences may not be as catastrophic as we fear. Thank you very much. [inaudible conversations] from this conference and essay on the meeting and destiny of liberalism, the drift of us Foreign Policy and the challenges to western survival. It is my pleasure to introduce the moderator for our final panel. The diplomat and resident. He served as the senior advisor. Also a Research Fellow and during the 2,008 president ial election served as the chief Foreign Policy adviser. Author of the book brand strategies, he committee teaches in the Brady Johnson program, one of the most popular and rigorous disciplinary programs. He also teaches studies freshman year program. Without further at you join me in welcoming our moderator. [applauding] thank you and good afternoon. My first job forgetting to the panel is to waive this in front of you. This is just out, available, amazon. It is for the handful of you that have not read this, erie, uncanny how relevant this work is to what we are talking about here today. I recommend you get it online. Today is the panel on the drift in us foreignpolicy. We have three remarkable public intellectuals of wideranging influence on the panel. I will introduce them. Leaving us time for questions. National security expert, columnist, served in the nixon, ford, and Reagan Administrations, as i was once, and aid to henry kissinger, a speechwriter for secretary of defense weinberger, run for office for the senate and generally someone who really knows the Foreign Affairs business. My second who i have known for some time, he is the classic Foreign Correspondent of the kind we do not see much of a more. He he has been most recently with the radio free europe, radio liberty. His publication list, as i say, unmatched in its wide range. The new republic weekly standard, the wall street journal, new york times, daily beast, australian, it is really something. Talking mostly about his youth to five about his views on europe. And then founder of the institute for the secularization of Islamic Society and Vice President of the world counter institute. He has written on all things about the quran, secularization of islam, his own life as a muslim and a fundamentally important critique of orientalism. You can imagine from his work that he has concerns about his personal security. This title, the drift may not be exactly on target. It could very well be and perhaps is the course of american policy is exactly what president obama want to be. He is not disengaged, not incompetent, going exactly as he hoped. But it is in his view his finest hour. He hour. He stands up to the critics of his foreignpolicy. We will we will begin with kt mcfarland. Thank you very much. First, first, many of you watch fox news . Forget all of the stuff he said. I am the brunette. America and decline. The majority of americans believe that the best days are over, his attitude is contagious. The president feels strongly that we we will be left behind. The world has not been a better place. He looks at the last ten ten or 15 years, and the president honestly feels that the world is a better place if america takes a step down. The Global Community is somehow going to run things, and i dont think think he has thought through what tends to happen. It tends to be dictatorships, dictatorships, monarchies, authoritarian governments who do not necessarily wish as well but then take charge. If not that it is global chaos. I want to ask you, how many of you have bought into americas best days are over , it has been great, but great, but like all empires america had its beginning and its rise, day in the sun and decline. Americas best days are behind. Come on. Okay. Outside of this room. They are wrong. He you are right. I will tell you why. We have had it since the beginning of time. In my lifetime it was the soviet union. Ever going to take over the world. Japan in the 1980s. That did not work out so well. The 1990s, the european union. There was a model we were all looking for. And so now it is china. China will take over the world. Last week president obama was in beijing, and he was treated like a lameduck leader of a hasbeen nation. Full of all sorts of articles. Americas days are over. Again, they agree with some of the leaders of our country. Let me tell you why. America is just a few political decisions in the couple of years away. I dont say that the way republicans who stand up debating in the primary, where they all say i believe america is a great country. Peter pan sprinkles fairy dust. No. No. I dont think that. The next Great American century. If you look at the history of the world since the Industrial Revolution wars have been filed over energy. Countries and regions which have had called, will, natural gas, the countries which have not have tried to fight to get them. World war i was to determine who would control the coalfields of central europe. Hitler invaded russia. Japan attacked pearl harbor because they wanted to continue the flow of oil through the pacific. We went to two wars. They may have been disguised but were in effect about oil whoever has whoever has oil and Energy Controls the Economic Prosperity of the world. We have a president who a few years ago was talking about peak oil, and decline. We now have had a revolution a revolution which is just starting to come into the national consciousness. Our people have looked underground, developed 3d mapping and realize that not only do we have energy but oil and natural gas in such abundance. The second thing is developed the technology to bring it out of the ground safely and abundantly and securely. Mapping has been horizontal drilling or fracturing, all those things of myth that their are parts of this country and offshore which have the ability to get oil out of the ground. When. When i say a couple of key decisions away what will happen if we make the correct decisions, and i would would say they are things like the keystone pipeline, allowing the Energy Companies to drill on federal and state land, Corporate Tax reforms reform so that we lower the Corporate Tax rate investment that would come back to the United States. Here is what i think. Take those decisions. Here decisions. Here is where we are. Directly related to the energy industry. We have already seen that. The lowest Unemployment Rate is in north dakota. Connecticut, you have embraced cracking. Pennsylvania even more so, to the. Where if i live in new york state and then moving across the border because they can get jobs there. Embracing in new york state, not embracing it. A direct number of jobs in the entire country. That is just directly related to energy. And then the second wave of jobs, as United States manufacturing becomes competitive our energy we will be 25 25 percent cheaper than energy in japan. 15 percent, 10 percent cheaper. They come back and the traditional manufacturing that we have had, maybe not the same things, new version of things, but they we will be made in the United States more cheaply. Then there is a third wave, cheap energy we will marry up with the money coming from overseas. They will invest in new Technology Like 3d printing, robotics, nanotechnology, bioengineering. A whole Industrial Revolution came akin to what we have the first time and probably better with the internet Information Age revolution. Probably a generation of Economic Prosperity. Once we get our own energy exporting his kickstarting. Kickstarting. We will start exporting oil. What does that do . Is already dropping without us even exporting because we are using our own natural resources. But once it goes below 80 per barrel could bankrupt that guys. Russia is predicated on a budget. A budget was drawn up predicated on hundred dollars a barrel oil. When he he took it to the community and they said, thats, thats a little optimistic. He basically fired the community and sent it to others. The the russians have rainy day funds to compensate for a lower price of oil, but they are not implement and probably last 18 18 months to two years. They have to compensate. They may not be at 80. They may go to 90. They will have below 100. If oil does not get to 100 per barrel they dont make payroll. The next fiveyear goals are infrastructure rebuilding and the defense buildup. He will have unhappy russian military, unhappy russian retirees and unhappy aggressions russians of all ages. The second thing is other countries start to run into trouble. They had spent the last 15 years, windfall profits not investing. Investing. They have not filled infrastructures, alternative industries for their people. They have taken the money and in most cases they subsidize. Once subsidize. Once the prices of oil and natural gas go down we have nothing which is exactly where we were in the late 1980s where Ronald Reagan helped push the price of oil down. It bankrupted the then soviet union. One union. One of the key factors of the fall of the soviet empire. The United States will have a manufacturing renaissance at the same time that the bad guys will go broke. China will take over the world. At demographic time bomb. Bomb. I was in china, beijing in the spring. A beautiful, sunny day. When. When i go to central park what do i see one little boy child is three years old and for them is sometimes six hovering adults. Those adults are looking at that little child. Little emperors. The chinese have a much higher percentage. I have three sons and two daughters and can tell you, boys who have nothing to do, the girlfriend, the maid, they are, they are in trouble. That is where china is headed. They dont have a significant population. Economy is on the downside. The chinese are looking at not only a time a time when they we will have demographic problems, six adults hovering over the way amber, demographic problems with the aging population, demographic problems, and they are going to have social unrest problems because they cannot keep the lid on social media forever. They reacted in the middle east and other parts of the world, very nervous that that could come to china. They started trying to crush exposure to the outside world. I think we look ahead and it we will be a lousy couple of years because the president is now on his jihadist and will do whatever he thinks. Emigration, all of the things he has been dreaming of doing. A doing. A couple of really tough years. Eventually change in. The American People are not adults. Anyway, if you dont watch fox news you dont even realize the professor said the only reason they would sell obama care is because the American People are stupid. The market we will take over, and over, and the United States is in for an absolute boom time for the rest of our days. Im telling my children, you got jobs. I will be able to retire because you we will be working for me, me, and its going to be great. Thank you very much. [applauding] i hate to be the halfempty glass. I blame it on the last three and half years i spent living in europe. I would recommend as an a coup, or in addition to the suicide of the west, John Francois rebels how democracies perish. Also the way that they deal with the russian threat. The remarkable similarities that existed between the two today. I just got back from berlin two days ago where i was there for the 25th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall. It was an ominous occasion, although most of the people there did not seem to understand why for only several hundred miles east of the russians are militarily dividing europe once again. Something that no one ever thought possible. It is really what it should be called. The european continent took place earlier this year, and there was still more. For the past several years i was working for John Osullivan, polish and baltic colleagues would repeatedly warned us about russian aggression, the spirit of russian influence, and they were always derided as being these silly cold war people stuck in the past dont you understand we have a new relationship. Now those people have been proven right. Their worst nightmares, they could have said even worse things. Defended the Hitler Stalin pact. This is scary stuff, and, and i do not think most people in europe have come to terms with it. How unpredictable this regime is. The past year has shown some very discomforting fishers. Countries we had thought or expected to have been a very firm supporters of nato, the unified western response to western aggression have proven to be very weak links the defense minister of the Czech Republic likened the stationing of nato troops and their territory as being a cam to the 1968 warsaw pact pact invasion of czechoslovakia, leaders of the democratic allies. Hungry will not be able to join given the democratic backsliding that we have seen. The russians have been expert at using edwards noted. However you think you got to moscow, russian agent from the beginning or just ended up miraculously in moscow. They used him remarkably well in counting european Public Opinion, particularly in germany where most of the most embarrassing leaks have been directed. German Public Opinion. When i was in germany i i told my german friends, im sorry, but the chancellor should not have been discussing anything other than potato soup recipes. But but that has provoked very strong anti american sentiment in germany, and unprecedented step of having your cia station chief kicked out of an allied embassy. It is easy to lament european pacifism. We pacifism. We have been doing that for decades since the end of world war ii and the start of the cold war and calling on europeans to pay for more of there own defense, but there is lot of blame that must be laid at the feet of the administration in washington. When you take a policy of leading from behind, particularly in europe, the first post europe president we have ever had with no real connections, no affinity for europe. This was an asian president. This is this is what happens when you lead from behind and leave allies to do as they please. A small country in the middle of europe, often times they we will be some form of accommodation with the bear. I am i was in estonia the couple at couple of weeks ago. A real possibility that you could have a crimea type situation in estonia where there is no russian soldier going and, literally a handful of Russian Special Operations Forces taking over a government building. All you would need was to have the government invoke article five which mandates an attack on one is an attack on all and of the portuguese and spanish say we dont consider this an invasion. The most Successful International Security Alliance of the world would be destroyed in one simple step. And the middle east what happens when you leave allies to there own devices . No one believes president obama when he says that people prevent the iranians from getting a nuclear weapon, certainly not after the red line was announced and then promptly ignored. The saudis will have pretty much say openly they we will develop there own nuclear program. You now have a rather remarkable alliance with israel and egypt and jordan and saudi arabia and the sunni arab status quo powers basically taking on the role of what the United States used to play, which was that of the regional hegemon. Because we have pretty much announced we have no interest in the middle east anymore we have basically left these countries to sort it out for themselves. Two months two months ago egypt and the uae launched airstrikes in libya. Do you remember that country . They launched airstrikes to prevent islamist militias and taking over the country. We left libya behind. This was he considered this the single foreignpolicy achievement of his administration. It says something now that he would consider this. If you look at the state of the country. The egyptians and United Arab Emirates are launching strikes. Behavior like this would have never been tolerated. He would not have been able to get away with it, but now it is just what happens. I i think one of the key lessons we take is how vulnerable democracies are to being manipulated, coopted by authoritarian powers. Its its easy to spread disinformation, propaganda, lies, and i am interested in what the russians are doing and the disinformation. If any of you have ever seen the network rt, it is a thing to behold. Horrible, evil, sinister, but brilliant. It is not soviet style propaganda. This is real, hightech stuff that appeals to people of all political stripes from the far left of the far right, and it works because we have a democratic society. We do not kick out journalists or censor them. That is a major challenge. I i hate to be so pessimistic, but i am very worried about the state of europe. The next two years will be difficult, but i do ultimately agree that in the end america will most likely endure. [applauding] thank you. I should like to thank William F Buckley for inviting me. I was i was a little bit puzzled as to why i had been invited. I will make a few comments. Keep that door open. Somebody has done their homework. I did not send this to the organizers, but the professor mentioned i found something called the institute for the democratization, secularization of islamic societies which gives you the acronym isis. [laughter] i had to abandon that. I should like to thank my friends. Now full of insight which i find relevant. Realized their continuing pertinence. I shall limit myself to an observation. The the communist divide the world into a zone of piece and war. The the region that is already subject to communist rule and within their region the communists will not permit political tendencies, violent or nonviolent to challenge there rule. A region where communist is not yet but in due course we will be established, and within the zone of war the communists lead political tendencies, violent tendencies, violent or nonviolent, democratic or revolutionary that operate against noncommunist rule. Clear enough for these definitions. Hungarians, freedom fighters. Fighters. You know where you are going. The above could easily have been a dictionary definition of the islamic doctrine of jihad and its notions of islam. Now on to my main. I have broken them down into numbers. Perhaps i can develop these questions. We are engaged in a war of ideas without principal enemy and ideology , and ideology that we will not collapse of the economic incompetence. The ideology of the terrorist is a religiously based and derived from islam. The history of the early caliphate. One but not the only one way of knowing is because they tell us so. If you want to understand the enemy, enemy, read what they say. They constantly justify their ask with accurate and apt citations from the quran and refer to works, the defense of the muslim land, the concept of power and nights under the profits better. Some of the latter, but to here john kerry trying to tell them is comical. Islamic terrorism is not caused by poverty, lack poverty, lack of education, sexual deprivation, psychological problems or lack of Economic Opportunity western imperialism or decadence or even the arabisraeli conflict. There are two kinds of jihadist, terrorism and slope in the tradition of western institutions subverting western laws and the customs from within. Ignorance, naivete, arrogance, arrogance, Political Correctness, sheer laziness, sentimentality and on top of that saudi, qatari, and a rainy and money have led to islamist successes and penetrating western institutions from voice of america, the pentagon, the cia. I have documentation to back that all of. The pentagon, cia, fbi, d hs, d hs, the universities and colleges were islamic propaganda is the same. Well groups such as isis are nonstate actors they are funded by states. These three countries also provide the necessary islamic support, framework, propaganda that spews forth anti western and anti american hatred. They should be warned at least or face the consequences. It is also important to. Out that it is not something we have done that is compelling the islamists. Constantly apologizing is not going to help at all. It is pointless. We must learn the lessons of the cold war. Striking similarities. This is pointed out even in the 1920s by bert russell and in the 50s and more recently by maxine. We must speak out in support of the christians who are being persecuted and killed almost every day. There are all sorts of reasons which are to do with what i hope would be the secularization of Islamic Society. In order to succeed we need urgently to recover our civilizational selfconfidence. One way we can fight ideology is to undermine certainty. One can accomplish this with criticism. His book hastened the enlightenment by biblical criticism. His three enormous volumes on the enlightenment begins with spinoza and his importance for getting the enlightenment agenda going. Okay. Some more comments. There is an an obvious need to understand the islamic ideology. Terrorism is not controlled by poverty. The ideology that motivates them and is the source of moral legitimacy. Without it terrorism cannot exist. Exist. Terrorists are produced by a totalitarian ideology justifying terrorism. Impressive tactical successes and has managed to kill a solid bin laden, it fails to understand the goals. The reasons are many. There is a reluctance to address the religious inspiration of the act of terrorism, to admit that the ideology is derived from islam and its founding text, the crew on and the early history of the caliphate. The present administration exalts us to use euphemisms to quote my friend. Whereas the Commission Report published in the presidency of george bush as a bipartisan product used the word islam 322 times, muslim 145 times, jihadist 126 times, jihadist 126 times, jihadist 32 times. The National Intelligence strategy in august 2009 used the term islam zero times, muslim zero times, jihadist zero times. Obamas policy applies to the internal government documents which can only have disastrous consequences for our understanding of political groups and events. Afghanistan, pakistan, southeast asia. How can we possibly analyze the ideology, why it is such a huge menace, any reference to the islamic religion and its text or doctrine is not permitted. Perhaps it was only in 1946 1946 when George Kennan wrote his classified long telegram that america began to understand the nature of the soviet union and why it acted the way it did and how the kremlin thought and why the ussr was a great threat to america. It took three decades to understand the mind of the enemy. To complicate matters today their are two enemies, noneuropean religiously informed nonstate terrorist groups, second and equally dangerous states that in fact fund and support them. There is evidence that just recently forensic reports in june of this year, two of the most successful factions fighting the assigned forces are islamist extremist groups, and their success is due to the support they have received. That was a quote from the atlantic. Our ability to fight would depend upon our capacity to communicate to our own citizens of the world what it is were fighting for and what it is the ideology of jihadist threatens in terms of the values we hold so dear. And wore it is not enough to no the enemy in order to win. One must first know ones self. With the end of the cold war america and the west understandably lost clarity. Exemplary clarity, the reasons for the loss of selfconfidence. What he wrote he wrote is still relevant. Judging a group of human beings considered to possess less, the level is hard put to condemn that group morally for acts he would not hesitate to condemn in his fellows. When the western liberals feeling of guilt and associated feeling of moral vulnerability, the sorrows and demands of the wretched he often develops a generalized hatred of western civilization and of his own country as a part of the west. He can frequently sends the hatred and journals. In order to succeed this is my last point. We need urgently to recover our civilizational selfconfidence. Ronald reagan was able to succeed because he was supremely confident of the moral and spiritual superiority of his cause and thus was able to state with certainty and without hesitation that the soviet empire was evil, not afraid to confront reality, able to defend our values because he believed in the totally. He told an audience going to any school in america. They are endowed by their creator with unalienable rights. Describes what reagan advocated unapologetically. He works for reagan. Altogether altogether the various ideas of freedom, democracy, and human rights, promoted not only by the president s rhetoric. Articles in the United States Information Agency, published magazines, targeted at soviet bloc populations, the us ai billboards on the sidewalk, american diplomats, the distribution of books. A recent book just came out on the cia distributing doctor zhivago, and the impact that it had. To to quote asian columnist from the economies couple of weeks ago, the flaw and missteps, america represents not just economic and military might, but an ideal to aspire to in a way that china does not. What american leaders appear to give less weight to that ideal they not only diminish americas attractions but lend more credence to the idea of its relative economic and military decline. The rest of the world recognizes the virtue of the west. When the Chinese Students cried and died for democracy they brought with them about representations of confucius or buddha but a model a model of the statue of liberty. Thank you. [applauding] [inaudible conversations] thank you all. We have time for a few questions. If you raise your hand. Thank you for being here. My question goes to the characterization of islam and islamic extremists. I remember clearly when president bush said, this is not an attack. We are not enemies of islam. We islam. We are only against a small percentage of islamic extremists. I know for a fact that he did not believe it because the Bush Administration did not act on that mythology. A former diplomat, i thought it was good tactical strategy, strategy, the very beginning of what everyone knew would be a long war. As you pointed out, our Current Administration does believe, and there is an enormous pressure toward the Political Correctness that islam is a peaceful religion. I know something. You can find peaceful mentions, mentions, but basically, as you say, islam and islamic terrorism feed on each other. All you had had to do was find the worldwide polls of september 2001 that showed how many muslims around the world support of the attack on the United States. Given all of these years of Political Correctness, given the kinds of things that they hail Muslim Students association were saying in their unsuccessful attempt to squash the appearance, how long is it going to take . What will it take to convince the American People to understand where were going. You mentioned it took 30 years for americans to understand soviet communism. I dont think we can wait for americans to understand the true nature of islam. What will it take . I think the distinction might be a fiction. It does not hold water. The American Public is far better informed than it was ten ten years ago, and i do not think that they buy the administrations line about islam being a religion of piece. How how can we get them mobilized . I am not certain, but i know that within the Republican Party they also dont buy into this idea of islam being hijacked by minorities Michele Bachmann and others, but allen west, no, no longer in congress, but the former house of representatives. I have no, continuing to write books and giving talks, i have no grand strategy. I do think that you have to distinguish between islam and islamism or islamic extremism. I do not have the figures, but their are obviously millions, hundreds of millions of people who are islamic and practice that faith peacefully. They may support terrorism, but that is an important distinction to make. In tunisia is the Worlds Largest islamic democracy,s largest islamic democracy, over 200 million people. Certainly we cannot ascribe these years the majority of People Living in that country. That is the case for many islamic countries around the world and we must be careful in distinguishing between those who seek to use violence against civilians to enact political agendas and the many, if not most people who identify as muslims and dont support similar tactics. I do not think that you can set every person i was who is a member of the muslim faith as a potential terrorist. Also, if you look at the numbers, if their are 1 billion muslims in the world and only 1 are sympathetic, youre talking about 1 million a million people. But the answer to when we wake up, my guess is im sorry. So pedantic. I think think one of two ways. People will wake up, there we will be another terrorist attack, but the other, there is a 30 year war coming. The sock puppet government and what we will be a crescent. That will that we will be opposed to by isis and 70, various sunni groups, any moderates are squashed. It will dawn on people in the rest of the world. Most likely it we will be another terrorist attack. I think that is inevitable. Thank you all for coming. So i guess i guess i want to see a theoretical question. Perhaps this is unhelpful. Considering the way conservatives are split on this issue, a practical question of only considering foreignpolicy in the sense of what we will be best for the nation. This is the more libertarian approach. Being concerned about setting the precedent of the supernatural kind of focus on human rights being the main concern versus seeing kind of a moral obligation to carry forth the message of liberty to the world and to basically in our power and in our opportunity try to do good things for the international community, the christians in syria, the people who are under authoritarian regimes. Is it a serious tension that needs to be confronted with an conservatism . And how should reframe this issue . I would love to answer that. That. You said it well and expressed it very well. Just by way of example, i will be the chairman of the National Security foreignpolicy community. This is a conference in late february in washington, and i am trying hard to get people from make a big tent. We need to get involved, go back everybody in between. There is it is not an unusual debate. When i was in the Reagan Administration we have the same debate on one answer you want to get involved and injuring or not want to get involved in those areas and use Economic Warfare it has always been in the conservative movement , but now it we will be a major and probably the major issue in the republican primaries. They agree on everything else. But the National Security issue is the one that their will be a very wide and raucous debate over. The middle east will be a war. There will be increased conflict in europe, and estonia is next. A very roiling world in the sense of conflict. I disagree that this is going to be a big fight within the party. Actually followed the statements of rand paul, all of the place. He is evolving. Thinks he is. At the end of the day the Republican Party is the party of the National Security. He has realized realized that, and if you followed his public statements over the week that that first journalist was beheaded it was like night and day. He had to attend his views. Personally rand paul is similar to his father and his world outlook, but he is smarter. He wants to be president of the United States. And so i really think that this kind of he has hired some ostensibly mainstream advisers. The the former head of the International Republican institute, but i dont think that most conservative republican primary voters are going to agree with what rand paul is presenting. I i disagree. All right. One more question. I have a question. You mentioned that you think that a problem likely in chinas future growth is going to be the aging population. Do you think that there is way to try to prevent that problem or tackle it while keeping in mind the population growth issues. The demographic thing is definite. One is between the more militant, militarist, armed forces community. In china that religion is is gone, communism is gone, the religion in the late 70s has been get rich, make money. Now that is slowing down. There is no glue holding them together except nationalism, the chip on your shoulder. We used to be great. We are great again. You are starting to see it. Where they are headed as a place where they we will have a lot of internal the mystic problem, expansionism because last time someone tried that asia at large. Can challenge it. Probably more up to them. [applauding] for those of you who rsvp it begins at 630. And Nonfiction Author or book, send us an email. Youre watching 16 on t1. Talking with with local authors and touring literary sites. We speak with glenn sparks a false sense of closeness. I became interested along the way studying media several years ago back in the 1990s and got interested in the project that some of my colleagues were working on. They were they were interested in figuring out for College Friends who were close what predicted whether or not they would remain close over their lifespan. Im from lafayette. What do you plan on doing after college . I plan on moving away and hopefully going to chicago. Am planning on moving to the east coast. Maybe virginia, north carolina. I like that lifestyle. A lot of times people get into situations, maybe after college. They get into situations where they start feeling anxious, depressed, offkilter, and dont really know whats going on. Harder for you when you leave college knowing that you are leaving a. I think so. If you are good enough friends you we will be able to make the effort to stay in touch. Small schools. Having . We both have practice. How to keep in touch with people. It will be fun. Fun. I got involved in the study, and that really set the stage for the collaborative project. We did not no each other at that time. After i worked on that project we met. Will have done a phd doctoral work and was thinking about Community Life in america. We started talking to each other. I had interest in media. Had interest in culture. We just started a conversation which led to our interest in writing this book which really was revolving around the thesis of Relational Health and american culture. The basic idea, that term was coined by miller. It popped out of his mouth one day, his desire to capture a way to describe close family cultural relationships that we believe america is a difficult time sustaining and cultivating over the last 50 to 75 years. Relationships are characterized by the luxury of coming into a friends house and being able to open a refrigerator without asking and help yourself to the food while you have casual conversation. You have to have a kind of close relationship with that person in order to have the right to do that, and that is the kind of relationship that we were interested in and focused on and talked about in this book. We became convinced first of all the these kinds of Close Relationships were becoming more challenging for americans to sustain and cultivate. I became involved in the project in terms of trying to research and see whether there was any Research Evidence to support. The more i researched