Gentlemen, welcome to gibsons. Thank you elizabeth, thanks for having us. Is an honor to be one of americas greatest dependable source. Thank you for saying that. I will mention as one of americas great independent bookstores this book is available from gibsons, we do happily ship books all over the country, all of the world, if you are local we offer instore browsing and ab tell me a little bit about this book. I knew i wanted to write a book i always wanted to write a book i have a lot of ideas for books. The first book to be abif you like this book i have a lot of in my head. I wrote it in different proposals to the publisher and i got rejected by lots of publishers like a lot of authors do but i had one publisher who came to me from st. Marks press he worked for thomas dunes books, if it wasnt for steve and i dont think the book wouldve began because he did what was unheard of in the Publishing Industry he actually edited my proposal, critiqued it and sent it back to me. Literally normally that does not happen. He said, rick, if you write this book i will publish it. I said, i dont have the stature to write that book. Just because i thought it was a really to me its a weighty heavy topic and for so many people so educated on conservative thought i didnt put myself in that category and he said you can do this book and going to help you do it. I put together a draft and i want to take this opportunity just, john clark, hes joining us from sunny florida. John or someone we normally meet in a coffee shop so a bookstore is sort of appropriate. We always discuss ideas and we have robust debate and collaboration about the ideas so we normally would be in a bookshop when i got the deal to do the book i approached him and said, what you think . He just really was engaged. John has been a partner in this whole book because i felt intimidated and having helping me think through the concepts and there really isnt a chapter here that john didnt help me shape but i wanted to write for two reasons, one is conservatism is often bashed in the media particularly to the centerleft and liberal left likes to bash conservatism and always hurts my feelings. The things that they say about it i knew that it wasnt true. I wanted to sit down a marker of conservatism is a rational philosophy thats actually attractive in government philosophy. I would have an olive branch to my friends and say progressivism is rational and can be presented as a very attractive governing philosophy. Is not my philosophy. I dont know that it serves anyone well to trash each others philosophy when in the end we have so much to agree on. Our country is a constitution every republic and that means to get anything done at all we have to compromise with people who have better ideas than you. In the same way if you want a book with somebody you agree with hundred percent of the time abthats one half of the audience, the other half are actually self identify as conservatives but seem to be more and more erasing policies that are just antithetical to conservatism. I want to lay down that marker as well. And of course people unfamiliar with conservatism at all either because they are young or never paid attention to governing philosophy. I think this book lays it out pretty well. I define conservatism, in the way that john does he says its order of liberty orbiter liberty in the sense that the take away the order you just get liberty and thats a libertarian philosophy which is not my philosophy, we dont automatically reject ideas because they are new, we test those ideas against established ideas and if they are better we can migrate to them but if they are not, we wouldnt draw something thats working very well for something that might not work very well or isnt working very well. I make that case on immigration, on trade, on healthcare, on the second amendment. And many of the other issues that are in the book. That was my motivation for writing, still right, john helped with the title too. We just couldnt think of a title we had all these ideas and he said you got a call it still right i said, i think that works. The reason its still right because msnbc political analyst i get accused often of going to the enemy. Im on msnbc. Although i dare say there are more conservatives who appear regularly on msnbc than i do on any other cable news networks. One of the reasons i like to be on msnbc as i had to learn how to present the conservative case to a leftwing audience. I think over time its been pretty successful. While i havent convinced everybody watches the network that they should embrace conservatism, i get a lot of comments i didnt really know what conservatism wives and at least now i understand it has a rationale. Being accused of being a lefty and im a trump critic, being a trump critic they say youve gone to the left i say im still right so i thought the title for. The immigrant lemon, hybrid driving, composting american, it was all true, i think we should be proimmigration country, i drive a hybrid and i love technologies that can do to protect the environment. I wrote a whole chapter on the environment. We compost here at the tyler household and we make 2 to 3 yards of dirt a year which are using are incorrect organic gardening. I never thought of that as a liberal idea, i thought it was a conservation idea. I will say our local town operates on a pay as you throw garbage removal where you pay per garbage bag and composting has reduced our household garbage output by 1 3. Isnt that amazing i will take this moment to say, you just given us your credentials, rick, tell us a little bit about yourself john and conservatism. Just briefly, rick and i met, i think we were working on a campaign and i have worked as a speechwriter for a few candidates, at a local level to the National Level. I think rick, we met we were working on the Campaign Working together my background i have a degree in Political Science and economic and i ran an Investment Firm for 18 years. I sold my company about 10 years ago as my Business Partner and wanted to get into more of the writing side because i thought conservatism wasnt getting a very fair hearing and i thought i could maybe help a little bit with that. So i can bring my finance what i learned in that to the economic side of these arguments and i dont think they are presented well, im hoping what this book can accomplish is that we start a conversation because we used to try to win the hearts and minds, we wanted to really know what it is we believed one of the fun things to me about writing is stress testing my own ideas, do they work . But im hoping what this does is starts conversation. I think right now the political environment is such that we just shot each other down. That doesnt help anybody. I dont claim to have all the answers by far. I think over time i think my ideas have changed and i think thats a healthy thing, i think thats a positive sign, and hoping that that does start a conversation, what im edified by seeing in the reviews for ricks book is that people that are saying im a lifelong democrat but i disagree i dont see much i disagree with in this book. I think its a good sign that starting the conversation whats being willing to have a conversation is a very good thing whereas shutting herself off making your choices emotionally on a rational subject can be problematic. Does conservatism need to be redefined, for peace into maybe joining us seeking to learn, can you briefly define conservatism for people who may have had a different idea about it . In a nutshell, William F Buckley never actually define conservatism. You go back to the writings of William Burke and a lot of great conservative writers, as i mentioned before, its a little intimidating to write this book because i didnt feel the stature to be in the zone but i did really wanted to lay down i dont to find conservatism per se conservatism as we talked about earlier his order of liberties, the idea that individual freedom matters. Its in our declaration of independence, jefferson wrote, life, liberty, the pursuit of happyness. He puts it in that order because liberty is a precious little use to people who dont have life and very hard to pursue happiness if you know youre not free. That combination that government was supposed to protect those things in those order in that order. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happyness. That protection and particularly the pursuit has made america by far one of the most wealthiest prosper nations in the world peace that we have an argument about that. We dont explain how conservatism addresses some of the problematic sides of our american society. People who are in need, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, be independent and work hard and all those things are true but there are people who are just never going to be independent. We dont often explain the idea of decentralized government can help people. Roosevelt was running right after Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson was a democrat and he was loyal to Woodrow Wilson he was going to run as a democrat, his fifth cousin he modeled his political career after that was teddy roosevelt. That he was a progressive. Fdr was also progressive but he had a problem, he couldnt run as a republican because hoover was a republican and hoover was in the middle of an economic collapse so that was out. You couldnt run as a progressive because under Woodrow Wilson progressivism took a really ugly turn and stems from eugenics, which was the socalled settled science we could actually decide who gets to procreate and who didnt and that was a very ugly con. Progressivism also brought us the womens right to vote so that was a good thing but it also brought us popular elections of u. S. Senators and i think on balance is a bad thing because it cut the responsibility or leverage the state legislature is used to have over u. S. Congress just eliminated it. So state Legislators Congress could pass all these laws of the state legislatures continue have to deal with and they have no leverage to push back in the old days they wouldve said, keep asking and we will bring you right back home. Thats not the case anymore. Finally, they passed prohibition right in the middle of a prosperous times, the roaring 20s fdr couldnt run as a progressive as he wanted to and wilson was progressive, teddy and Woodrow Wilson ran against each other both with competing progressive agendas but from different parties. Will send claimed to talk, ab. Liberals in the pre roosevelt signs, bu that he called its liberal and its stock. The conservatives ended up calling themselves conservatives and thats been the Major Political philosophies in the country ever since and i would argue whats happening now is demonstrable and many people call themselves conservative and they are not. Consider the Republican Party just had their convention and the First Time Since 1856 in which nine of the six and a platform for civil rights for the next hundred years the Republican Party was pro civil rights party. They lost that and this year they didnt put a platform at all. They simply passed the resolution that says we are with the big guy whatever he says, we are behind. That is a sad thing because parties cant sustain themselves on the personality in the same way that parties come and go with their leaders if netanyahu were to pass from the public stage does nothing except into the Republican Party is now the trump party and when he moves on one way or the other it will collapse because it is based on one person. Parties need to be based on the ideas. I spent my career helping the republicans when. My question now is what do we actually get and if the answer is higher deficits and trade tariffs, mismanagement of the National PublicHealth Crisis that ends up costing trillions of dollars, millions of lost jobs that isnt winning to me. I would like to return to try to. They put john and i are talking about coming to dinner is a. My goal is to sa stay here know what at least i understand why and he is thinking of how it works, whether i believe it works or not is one thing, but it is a rational theory forced you to examine your own beliefs and they do say that to teach is to learn. So for yourself as well, does teaching people that reinforced your own beliefs or did it change them . Its funny because i have nine children and ive homeschooled all of them. Whats interesting is one of the greatest preparations for writing speeches is teaching my children and explaining. When they had these conversations from the conservative perspective is the private sector has come up with Many Solutions and i think that really is an amazing job in the environmental chapter because hes explaining that is the way that hes living in life and the reality is that conservatives are sort of painted with a brush we dont care about the environment. That is clearly not the case. We are making the argument that the private sector might simply be the best way to address this. Its not that we dont care about these things. Of course we do. We are trying to achieve the common good, the same as the political progressives. We are just arguing about how to get there if that makes sense. Reexamining your own belief, does that help to reinforce your own belief . When you have to explain to people what you believe, and i will give you two examples, when i first went on msnbc i started going on the Chris Matthews show. Jojohn and i have been watching Chris Matthews for literally as long as theres been cabletelevision. Like he was a legend. He actually worked on the hill and he was a Capitol Hill Police officer before he actually worked on the hill in politics and i have respect for him because he doesnt pontificate because he just pontificate, but because he worked as the speaker of the house. Thats the experience you cant trade. So i was invited on the show hardball for the first time and it was very intimidating so my goal on hardball was get invited back. He was a very generous and over the years i got invited back more and more. I was the person people loved to hate. We watch because you cant take your eyes off them. They are just enjoyable and entertaining. That was me. I would argue that i wasnt very likable. Then over time i decided and ive worked on several president ial campaigns that if i was ever going to be effective i was going to have to convince people that it was reasonable so i had to learn to speak to people that didnt believe what i believe and find a common ground. As john said they are just very surprised. Ive had conversations with people who dragged the puck and senators so much i do not understand and i didnt know and that has been very gratifying. Its all about starting the conversation. I also talked people how to run for elected office all over the world that israel, rome, greece, the United States really have to think it through. That is the Cooper Union Speech line question its hard because i had to think very deeply about healthcare. People who dont have insurance, people with preexisting conditions. It wasnt my intention to i wanted to answer questions that have been asked of me so i tried to take a. That i might have the chance to get to the ideas of a. They might read the rest of the chapter where it might get a little hard going. And i think that strategy paid off we are including signed the plebookplates with the purchasef the books. Can you tell me your biggest frustrations about how to put on the Republican Party. Well, yeah, theres a lot of issues there. But we start with a trade then move to healthcare and immigration. Those are the three topics that are illustrative of the conservative thought and the way that they decided to go instead. The here is the heart of trade. But human beings designed to create the most precious gift to be creative. It is what has made great artwork and great books but it also makes great products and services. Peoples ability to create, to try to get people to part with their dollars to buy their product or service over somebody else and that has led to in the aggregate trillions of transactions of all people competing for those dollars in the free market. What trade does is says your government decides they dont want you to buy these kind of products or those kinds because of whatever reason because they have different labor practices owere forms of government etc. Its one thing. Because of the labor camps, but in the broad sense we have trade deficits with mostly china precisely the reason the u. S. Trade deficit was here with the supermarket. You keep buying stuff from them voluntarily. No one forces you to buy every freemarket transaction. A. Of those products became a crisis in the British Empire because they were literally running out of silver because they were sending over sulfur to hong kong. So, the british came up with an idea and what it was was they were going to sell something to the chinese that they couldnt resist. And it was opium and they sold opium to the chinese and they said that if you buy the opium, we are so sorry but they only take sulfur. And then began the great outflow of migration back to england and meanwhile millions of chinese became addicted which led to two separate opium wars. Dont get all upset that im advocating it what we are seeing today. Hong kong has become one of the wealthiest places in the world they elected leadership and the freedom of the press and religion. It offered them something significantly better than what the agreement had displayed to the contrary. The one thing i could find in it that was more significant was that americans are not allowed to buy south korean pickup trucks until 1332. And i thought to myself what if i wanted to buy a south korean pickup truck. I mean, what if the south korean got truck is the truck that i need. What if it is the truck that i want. Why does my government want to keep me from buying the south korean pickup trucks. When the government interferes in the market in that way, they are propping up picking winners and losers. They will give you an example, also our trade policy by the way with china has led to the greatest Welfare Program we hav