[applause] my name is maggie garnet. It is my privilege to introduce erythroid guests today for what i am confident will be an energized discussion and debate. Introduction has no implicit meaning. No tweets necessary. Ahmari has been an editor with the wall street journal and opinion pages in london. His spiritual memoir about his conversion to roman catholicism was published by Nations Press this year. It is our privilege to invite him to the Catholic Disney world here in disney notre dame. Is a best selling author. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School. He is also a former lecturer at cornell law school. He has served as senior counsel for the Alliance Defending freedom. Finally, dr. Charles kessler. Kesler. Of americanlar constitutionalism and the intellectual history of american conservatism. He is the author of i and the change, barack obama and the crisis of liberalism. The bestselling addition in the country. Editionaddition that he assigned it to his class that i am taking the spot. You gentlemen will speak for approximately 10 minutes. Mr. French will speak first, followed by mr. Ohmari and then mr. Kesler. What is conservatism in the age of trump . [applause] i want to thank notre dame for hosting. His is the second time you guys are fantastic post. My only regret is that i cannot go to the game on saturday to see what football is like outside of the sec. Is it 80 as good . 90 as good . I thought it would just go ahead and lose the room right off. I want to thank you for hosting me, this is a first for me. This is like three of my calvinist tour of catholic colleges. I was at georgetown last week. I understand there was some dissent on that point. I am here today and i will be at Benedict College in this two weeks. This is a treat for me. What is conservatism in the age of trump . That is the question. I would also like the answer. I am not quite sure what it is. There are competing conflicting strains of conservatism in the age of trump. Program, we read from federalist 10. That is my favorite federalist paper. I have no life if i have a favorite federalist paper. What is conservatism in the age of trump . Let me back up and say what is the strand of conservatism to which i have blonde that still exists in the age of trump. Belonged that still exists in the age of trump. One of these is the words from the declaration of independence. We have an l. A. Inalienable rights. Instituted among men to secure these liberties. A principal purpose of government. Not the only purpose by any stretch but the principle purpose of government to ensure these liberties. After the constitution was drafted and ratified, john adams was said something to the messages militia. The it is holy constitution is wholly inadequate for any other. He describes this as a constitutional structure that k to deal with widespread fight. The level of liberty in our culture was so great that that was all exercised if that was all exercised in a libertine way, america would be an unfit inhabitation. You create nondelegable responsibilities that are at the foundation of this republic. There is a nondelegable duty of the government to defend liberty, protect liberty of its citizens. Oxygen has been used to describe the role of liberty in the american republic. That is how essential it is. At the same time, it wont work. This wont work unless the people have a reciprocal commitment to exercise that liberty for virtuous ends. We are not always going to do that perfectly. The Founding Fathers knew that. They built in all checks and balances vertically and horizontally in the system so that no one set of bad people could wreck this place. We had internal resilience. I think that is an incredibly to build this country. Ourselves facing in 2019 in the United States of america . A lot of people would say that we face the horrible left. Others would say is it is a horrible right. One thing i think we can all agree on is that we face a tremendously negatively polarized country. What negative polarization means is that i have less affection for my own side that i have hatred for the other side. For example, even in the obama era, we can say negative polarization again with trump. Not even close, it has been arcing upward for a while. If you pulled the average republican, 82 would say the strongly dislike the democrats. If you pulled the average were far more tolerant, 78 . Hated the average republican. We have an incredibly divided country. We have an enormous amount of animosity. One of the things that i look at, i think it is a time in our country to rediscover the wisdom of the founders in the sense. Exaggerate uniformity. We apply modern standards of diversity to the whole country. We said they are all landholding white men. Tweedledee and tweedledum. We are so much more diverse now. If you run down the eastern in 1971,of america youll see a puritan ofsachusetts, rhode island people fleeing from puritan massachusetts. Youll see a heavily catholic maryland, pennsylvania, heavily criminal georgia. [applause] some things have not changed. What do you have there . How do you knit that thing together . You do it by giving people the think, express and act according to their deepest beliefs. If you move the threat to their deepest beliefs from the table, we can build a republic together. Of the foundational wisdom of the First Amendment. What was another way that you knit that together . Give them were autonomy over their lives and their ability to self govern. What is the say is project of the conservative movement now . One of our most urgent projects is to diffuse negative polarization. How do you do that . Reconnect with the wisdom of the founders. Grant people the rights that you would like to exercise yourself and defend those rights. What do you do about different communities with different questions opinions about how to govern themselves . You let them govern themselves. You try to ameliorate the tragedies and the consequences of the departures from that constitutional wisdom. The embraces we have made of Big Government and coalition that have heard so many lives. And what that looks like in specific policies, i probably agree with a number of policy changes i would like to see. I think the tax cuts were too heavily weighted toward corporations. I am open to things about family leave. This can repair some of the damage the government has done. In that circumstance, i think there is a lot to talk about. What i dont think we should do is abandon this concept of nondelegable duties. The government protects liberty. The people exercise liberty. This puts a special burden on conservatives. It really does. Theve long considered conservatives who say i dont think government can fix everything for everybody everywhere. The government can do more harm than good. This makes me walk my talk and be part of an energetic community that is remaking the culture from the ground up. If we change that and we try to remake culture from the top down, we will not only fail, we will further divide this country. [applause] i want to start by thanking the Notre Dame Press is organizing this and all of you for coming to this. This is my first time at notre dame. It is a place that is special to the priest that presided over the sacraments when i was accepted into the not a member of the congregation of the holy cross. It is really special to finally be here. Let me start by saying that this is broadly a debate between American Social conservatives. I have the utmost respect for the men and women who defend our liberties and the men and women who defend the nation by wearing the uniform of broad. I think you at the beginning of our last debate. I meant it. I want to thank you again for both of those things. Even in the notorious essay that set off this debate, i know that david french has devoted considerable and a long part of to the coalition square. We have profound disagreements. I would say that youll conservatives have a desire to renegotiation renegotiate some of this. The impetus to that is an immigrants love for his adopted homeland. I recall the line from this , this is basically a dystopian france not too far off in the future. The protagonist is a professor and he has a jewish girlfriend. As things go south she says i will go to israel. He says i dont have an israel. In my case, that is cool that is true. I have the anxious love of the father for my son. Last week i was joined by my daughter. The bottom line is that what i think about the american that my children will inherit, despite ,eing an aspirational immigrant i mostly just feel anxiety. I feel anxious about the boulder culture. Most people would have thought is a nonsensical. The fact that so many young men stay home and play video games, a massive pornography is asian of the culture, that is my impetus. They lead to some strategic disagreements beginning with my sense of how deep the crisis goes and how deep the crisis goes. When i see certain events where withren are interacting contentious behavior, i dont see that as the blessing of liberty that our founders had in mind. I see license with which they aboard. That assessment of they abhored. Orred. The battleground has shifted. Consensus conservatism has not kept up. For two generations, the left and the right of this country have pursued deregulation. The left, it has been moral and sexual deregulation. Phenomena itself is a symptom of those crises. It led to the rise of a woke corporation. Consensus conservatism defended cultural actors because theyre not from the state, they are private actors. Reach thedont often courtroom for that type of traditional religious litigation. They happen in a matter of hours or someone says something and a private actor destroys their lives. If mario lopez has to kiss the ring of woke special revolutionaries because he said a threeyearold has begun to transition or if drew breeze as to apologize for focusing on the fourecause he telling kids to focus on bringing her bible to school day. Rigid publichas a private distinction. Some of the social media companies, that is where free speech happens. Get them intion trouble. I had to much respect for market autonomy as a good in itself. That leads me to the special critique. This is mainly a sense of procedural posture. The woke left seek to systematically impose good on campus at the university, in the corporation, and the work lace, in the law, in politics workplace, in the law, in politics. We as conservatives meet them with procedural answers. We say just give me the right to talk. I want to tie you how good procedures are. See the substance procedure mismatch there. We dont offer a vision of the good. Conservatives would say that is the system we inherited from the founders. They just wanted to create neutral rules. I dont think that is the case. And themble constitution says this document aims to secure justice. It aims to secure the general welfare. That is the common good as catholics understand it. It is not a neutral document. Not authorize license. That view has held until recently. We need to advance a moral vision of the good. People where they are with the challenges we have today. We can do that if we insist on autonomy. We cant turn neutrality into a high principle. That is poison to a constitutional order. On a mans right to liberty. If we as the constitution as a neutral fundament and shift away from that, we cant allow liberals and i mean that in the broad sense to undo vote or demand that has been expressed. People want the politics of the common good as conservative nationalist movements around the world arts person that desire. Are expressing the desire. Have joineds liberals in seeking to undo the outcome of elections by various procedural means. I dont have all the answers to these problems. In newr you are present vision of conservatism, you will be met with the vision well established. The reason it is wellestablished is because it has worked for a long time. Nevertheless, i think we have to go back to this idea of promoting a nonneutral vision. We stand for a vision of the good. Our state should not be neutral. That will mean trying to reerect carriers that were destroyed over the past two generations. Disagreements, i am sure they will agree that the most fundamental limit of all is that mans destiny is in the hand of his creator. Thank you very much. [applause] it is a great pleasure to be here and to see my old charles it is a great pleasure to be here. It is great see my old and new friends here today. I started my trip here yesterday driverlouis where my van taken me from the hotel to the airport asked me where i was going. I said i was going to notre dame. He said ah, they have alot of teams. i said yes teams. I said yes. They have famous football teams. He said is it ivy league . Tholic. No, it is ca [applause] i will bill for therefore tell a joke about an irishman. It is a joke that Ronald Reagan told. An irishman finds himself in a suddenly a fight breaks out, a tv fight, people breaking chairs overheads and things. The irishman asks the bartender if this is a private fight or can anyone join in . I am coming inke the middle of this private fight that is going on but in the spirit of the fighting irish, i will join in. I wanted to start by saying something about trump since this will be a discussion about conservatism in the age of donald trump. There has never been a president like donald trump. For good or ill. The situation conservatives find themselves in is not so unprecedented. In many ways, the situation conservatives find themselves in they resembles that in 1950s when bill buckley was Founding National review in 1955 when the conservative movement was just beginning. We have forgotten that one of the major crusades of the conservative movement in its origins from 1955 to the next concentratedas attack on dwight eisenhower. Thathis new republicanism drove his administration as president. Magazineley in the attacked what they call the age of modulation. Meaning the age of moderation. The gop under eisenhower had accepted almost everything in the new deal and were treating world communism as a nonurgent or gardenvariety political problem. Buckley and the early conservatives were worried there on theense of crisis standard republican right. Sense that the fate of the world was involved in the next couple of years. Buckley saw that the magazine endorsed eisenhowers reelection, the official slogan was i like ike. The National Reviews version of that was i prefer ike. That was an attitude that many conservatives today would recognize. They have warmed to the example of President Trump. Preferable to the alternative to trump which was a continuation of you might say the age of bush. The bush era of conservatism and republicanism. That stretched from george h. W. Ush through george w. Bush it would have included jeb bush. They could have included jeb bush if donald trump had not famously come down that escalator in trump tower. There was a sense widespread theg conservatives that mainstream movement of the Republican Party had become interested in just running the machinery of government as it was. Anlacked a sense of accelerating moral crisis, the moral dissolution of American Society and of a certain kind of constitutional decay. The constitution is not very healthy right now. One of the things conservatism has to do is come to the rescue of our own constitution, i think. That is why one of the unifying factors among the conservatives that endorsed donald trump was that this was an emergency. This was a crisis in our politics. The single most famous essay, the flight 93 essay by Michael Anton in favor of trump and calling for the election of trump. It sounded that note of emergency. This is not just another election. The stakes are very high. In this trump election between trump and hillary. The second point i would like to make is that the trump policy agenda is not unprecedented or uncalled for. In some ways, what the Trump Administration has been pursuing to thes a return republican norm. The historicack to Republican Party from Abraham Lincoln to William Mckinley to herbert hoover, you will see an agenda that is very familiar when compared to President Trumps agenda. Here were the five biggest principles of comparison. First, protectionism. Through all those years, the Republican Party was the party of high tariffs. Trumps protectionism is a return to that policy. Why protectionism . To allow the working class to live a healthy and prosperous life, to protect them from what we would call third world standards of globalized competition. That was the gop as argument. Conjoined with an argument for the protection of Critical Industries either from a National Security point of view or an Economic Development point of view. A very familiar, oldfashioned republican theme, second issue, immigration. There are both in party was in favor of immigration through those years but they were concerned to keep the levels of immigration to the numbers that could be assimilated or americanized. It was possible to have too much diversity and to have it too fast. Even liberal social scientists have to admit that is true. Diversity can be good for a liberal democracy but too much adversity can be a problem for liberal democracy because people need to be able to identify with one another and trust one another. It may take time for those kinds of friendly ties to develop between people who are very different in their background and customs and so forth. Old Republican Party had a much more modest view of foreign policy. Its view was that we should pursue the national interest. There were not heavily invested at all. Whether it was exporting democracy or democratizing part of the world. They were very resistant to that trend. Teddy roosevelts famous slogan was speak softly and carry a big stick. That is not exactly john boltons program or even Donald Trumps program. But i think it is where the party and the movement are headed. One has to say that americas strategic position is very different. Some there will have to be real changes and accommodations. Lower taxes, calvin coolidge, one of the most famous ac