Live saturday, beginning at 9 a. M. Eastern on cspan2. All right, good evening and welcome, everyone. Very excited for you to be here for our modern aged panel on patricks new book, regime change. This is part of a new initiative at isi taking place in and around the country, look forward to many more of these evenings with you. First and foremost i wanted to share history about the modern age in case some of you arent familiar. Modern age was founded by russell kirk in 1959, but he actually had the idea for modern age in 1951. And in 1951, he began to kirk late a perspective to various investors in the midwest and his target readership was quote, professors, clergymen, leaders of business, men in government and, and this is important, those reflective people in obscure walks of life who preserve the equilibrium of any society. So, i will leave it to you, whether you are the, you know, the titans of industry and the powerful men of government or whether youre the obscure people preserving the balance. Well, the same is amusing, but i think its sort of a fundamentally its a statement about the dignity of ordinary people. Because who is preserving the equilibrium in society. Its not the elites, its the populous, people in obscure places who care about the most important things. What are the principles he said would animate modern age. Precipitative judgment, wisdom of ancestors, manliness of thoughts in society, but not being afraid to address the problem of our age. The disposition would be national, Even International in ambition, but ought to have a profound middle western sensibility. He says america cannot afford to relinquish control of media expression to a small circle of elites in two or three cities who cannot truly claim to speak for the whole nation. So dan mccarthy does live in alexandria, so hes to some extent a creature of d. C. Although better than most if not the best in terms of truly understanding the interests of the common good, the interests of the people. He hales from the midwest and so i think he has this beautiful way of bringing together these very constituencies and trying to order conservatism and hopefully america towards the common good. I think that no one is better than dad and hanna rowen, our new editor, we have new modern age online website that will be launching in the fall, and were going to have a big party for that, and we have other exciting things i dont have the liberty of sharing with you this evening, but those will be coming down the pike so please stay tuned. On the topic of tonights event, patrick has been a friend of mine over five years, but even longer, a friend and lecturer at isi, i think hes one of the great political philosophers of our day and i was dismayed when someone sent me perhaps an illegal copy of his new book, forwarding a pdf because i few for the next week i wouldnt be able to sleep and id have to read this book and pondering the provocation inside the book. Profound questions being asked about the nature of americas Leadership Class and restoring virtue, the common good, subsidiary and solidarity to america. Its fitting that a journal with a midwestern sensibility would have a philosopher from the midwest come to address this this evening and of course, weve assembled an esteemed group of panelists to respond. Of course, we have senator j. D. Vance, Kevin Roberts and christine emba. Thank you all for being here and id like to welcome my colleague, the editor of modern age, dan mccarthy to the stage. [applause] im Daniel Mccarthy and i am indeed the editor of modern age and i hail originally from the midwest. I now live, as johnnie, alluded to, within the d. C. Beltway in alexandria, virginia. Which intellectually at least a target rich environment. I have to preference with the adjective lest anyone get the wrong idea, but plenty of injustice within the environs to comment about. Im honored to be introducing one of tonights sponsors. Louise oliver is a woman of many achievements not least of which for iais board. Ambassador oliver served as permanent representative of the United States, unesco, the president of the American Diplomacy Foundation which were honored to have as a sponsor of this event. Louise, please come up. [applause] thank you, dan. It is, in fact, a great honor and a pleasure for me to be here with you all this evening, but before i say anything else, i want congratulate you, dan, on the extraordinary job youre doing on modern age. Its just, its fantastic. [applause] and i dont want to stop there. Johnnie, i want to congratulate you on the incredible job youre doing with isi. Its a pleasure watching isi just rolling along under your leadership. [applause] now, there are certain words or combination of words that can evoke an instant recognition of what they stand for. When i was at unesco, two words that fell into that category were marshal plan. Ambassadors from struggling countries all over the world kept insisting they needed an martial plan. Few knew, they didnt know how it worked or why it worked they knew it played a role in helping people recover from the devastation of world war ii and convince that had a Marshall Plan could help their country achieve prosperity as well. This evening, the two words that are most relevant to our discussion are cold war. Those of us of a certain age know exactly what those words mean because we lived through them. Those years. But what about those of you born after 1990 . After the infamous berlin wall came down, after borders were reopened, after the iron curtain, so named by winston churchill, was lifted. What do the words cold war mean to you . The official definition of cold war is that its a state of conflict between nations that does not involve direct military action, but is pursued primarily through economic and political actions, propaganda, acts of espionage or proxy wars waged by surrogates. The state of war that the world experienced after world war ii, that cold war, was a decade long struggle against the global revolutionary ideology, communism. A communist ideology was aggressively antinationalists, communists sought to overthrow not only governments, but National Borders and religious institutions everywhere. Faith fought back. So did patriotism, and despite communist attempts to promote worldwide revolution through military interventions and occupations, through the construction of puppet regimes, through persistent propaganda and subversion, even in the heart of the free world, the cold war did not turn into world war iii. The west won with diplomacy, not only with ronald reagan, but Public Diplomacy that expanded decades that promoted western ideas and culture. Our diplomacy and statecraft were picket effective because we were not promoting a global ideology, we were promoting freedom. Our allies in the cold war trusted us to uphold the very pillars of civilization that the communists sought to destroy, the nation and religion. How is it then that today, 30 years after the end of the soviet union, american diplomacy has become so ideological and revolutionary in aspirations . Today regime change is the watch word of our Foreign Policy establishment and liberalism is no longer a he gaugement of socialism or communism. Instead, it now means a Cultural Program promoted through revolution everywhere beginning at home. We won the cold war against communism abroad, but at home, a culture war is establishing, or has established a revolutionary ideology in our own institutions. Those of you who participate in isi programs and activities know what this culture war has done to our colleges and universities. The results have been disasterous for our nation, politically, economically, strategically, diplomatically and culturally. And theyve been disastrous for the world as well. America has waged war for decades without enjoying any of the success that we achieved through diplomacy in the cold war and now europe is a battlefield and at the same time communist china is stronger. The world needs america to recover what it lost after the cold war, the strength to resist ideology in the name of god and country. To regain our strength as a nation we have to bring an end to the revolutionary ideology that occupies our institutions at home. Just as eastern europeans and russians brought down the revolutionary communism that occupied their nations. Patrick understands the conflict were in. And his book turning the table on our revolutionary idealogs, this is to restore our country and restore peace and stability around the world. Please join me in welcoming on behalf of isi, American Diplomacy Foundation and modern age, Patrick Deneen and all of our distinguished panelists. Thank you. [applause] thank you, louise. So i will be acting as emcee and moderator today. Before we begin with our panel, we first will have remarks by Patrick Deneen. Patrick deneen is the professor of Political Science at university of notre dame. Many books, and with that well bring patrick out. [applause] thank you so much. Thank you, johnnie. Thank you dan, thank you louise for those remarkable comments and thank you, all of you who are here tonight on a beautiful night, one of those rare nights in washington d. C. Where youre not sweating to death from the weather that i remember all too well. Im deeply honored by the gathering here, and those of you here by senator, by founders of the foundation, christine emba, and the Washington Post. I would be remiss if i wouldnt mention that i was honored by generations of students who i was able to mingle with and as a teacher and someone who is maybe moving toward, slightly more toward the end of my career, this is really what gives me hope is to have these just numbers of students, these growing number of students who i saw launching into the world and having an impact and i just want to thank you, all of you, from princeton days, from georgetown days and now from notre dame days for coming out tonight. You know who you are and im really grateful. So were all aware of the dynamics of the current political divide, not only in the United States, but around the world. What weve seen and what has been perhaps endlessly discussed is the rise of a kind of new political dynamic in the west, seen in various forms in brecks brexit, with the election of donald trump, in italy with the prime minister. And in other words, the word of populism as a force in our political world. One of the things that struck me about this phenomenon, how many people regard this as something new, that we have to get our heads around because of how des distinct and someone had reads greek and romans and ploss if i, that doesnt seem surprising. What surprises me, there was a time in the history of world where we would think this is not the nature and the fundamental division of politics. Going all the way back to antiquity, if we read plato and aristotle and aristotles name ill probably mention a few times tonight. Aristotle in particular states outright that all political regimes, and i use this word advisedly, all political orders are divided in one fundamental way, between the few and the many. All political regimes have a kind of tension built into them and that everywhere this seems to be a truth, that aristotle with his empirical Political Science hat on, says that one sees this in the fact when he looks around contemporary greece of his day. There seem to be two predominant regime types, democracy, which is true of his athens where he was living and writing, and oligarchy, the regime of the many and the regime of the few. And aristotle, if you studied some aristotle, you can remember back to your days in introduction to political theory, aristotle regarded both of these regimes as vicious, as reflecting a kind of vice. They werent one of the regimes he regarded as good, as a sort of exemplary, and democracy, the many, and oligarchy, the few, they were not constituted in order to realize the common good, the good of everyone in society. They were regimes of a certain kind of party, the party of the many or the party of the few. And because of this fact, aristotle said, because of these regimes, oligarchy or democracy, were always constituted to favor some number and some limited number of people within the regime, based upon typically class. It meant that these regimes were prone to two likely projection tris, and in fact, these two likely trajectories, were likely to follow one upon the other. The first was civil war, that in the pursuit of the interest of the party that governed, the other party would rise up and seek to assume power from them. And the other result was likely tyranny, and one would be over the other side. Here is an ancient philosopher, a theme repeated over and over again in political thought, saying that every political order is essentially destined, it would seem, to two outcomes, civil war or tyranny. If you read the papers today, you read the opeds, you read the columns, these are two words we see a lot these days. America is in the midst of a new civil war or were being governed in a tyrannical fashion. These ancient words have made their way back into our vocabulary. Aristotle wasnt pessimistic about this. In fact, he thought there might be a way to address or redress this basic problem of politics. He said if youre really blessed and fortunate, you night have a good king or aristocracy, but these are kind of hard to find. What most regimes allow you to do is to create what he called a mixed regime, a mixed constitution, to blend the various features and qualities of the many and the few. And in this tradition, theres actually a lot of really interesting discussion. Respective virtues of the people, of the populous. And the respective virtues of the few, of those who are likely to benefit from the class advantages of being in the party of the few. The few, those who perhaps reflect the virtues of the oligarchs, they tend to have morel evaluated taste. They like nice restaurants. If you live in washington d. C. , even if youre not rich, you benefit from the cuisine here. I can tell you living in south bend,way dont have quite the selection of restaurants, not as many oligarchs. And the few that we have now work in the department of transportation. [laughter] the oligarchs or the few have the advantages of leisure, of education, of refinement, and of high culture. These are the things that are rightly admired among the aristocrats of old or even among the oligarchs, i just passed the blayne mansion on Dupont Circle and im glad it exists even if im not able to buy it for what, 30 million. On the other hand, the many, the people looking at you jd, reflect different kinds of virtues, theyre ordinary virtues, these are people who tend to be close to the earth. They know the work of hands. They often are do things themselves, fix their own cars, plant their own crops. They know how to make it electric circuit close. They understand the reality of limits, a world of limitation. You have to have a budget and you have to live within it. They understand often that we cant do it on our own. People who have money sometimes think they can do it on their own, but people who dont have money often have to rely on friends and neighbors. There are people often rooted and they have memory and they often, as described, theyre people of piety. Maybe because of their condition of being limited and recognizing the way in which we have reliance beyond themselves. But each of these parties also has certain vices are that kind of endemic to their condition. The few find it easier to dominate the many, they just have more tools at their hands. They can control the media. They can control the financial system. They control the institutions, the educational institutions. They are demarked by a kind of elitism, a scorn or condescension toward the many. They have the ability to live separately and often in far nicer places than the many. And the many we can say also have their vices. They tend toward being coarse, especially when theyre not led by leaders. Their resentments can be manipulated by demagogues. The proposal of someone like aristotle or the whole series of thinkers, was to take the elements 6 these two groups that are found in nearly every political order, and to mix them in the hopes and with the intention that the virtues of each side would counter act and cancel out the vices of each side. And that this would actually have the result of creating a good political order, that this would actually, because of the respective virtues of each, some would contain the vices of each. This wasnt merely checks and balances, this was actually a kind of aspiration to a certain kind of virtue and a virtue that achieved a kind of moderation, a moderation now of mixing of extremes, to use the language. Now, one of the hallmarks of this tradition was a stretch to create such a constitution was difficult, such a regime was difficult, but once it was realized or to the extent that it was realized, it required order and stability and literally, a kind of balance. What it actually would be a source of danger to such achievement of such a regime, would be instability, rapid change, imbalance, and transformation. For as long as possible then, aristotle writes, if someone has such a regime, one should seek to continue it forward into time by retaining the balance and in the same way that if you ever walk with a plank on your head or something, you dont run, you walk with a certain kind of care to keep it balanced as youre moving forward. Now, in the book, i make the following argument and claim and ive been thinking a lot about this tradition as it relates to our contemporary politics and it seems to me that theres a way in which the modern world, modern age, im not so sure im as fond of it as russell kirk seemed to have been. Im not sure that russell kirk was either. And part of which constitute modernity, we can describe it in many ways, is to describe the ancient resolution of the divide between the many and the few, and to replace it with what we might describe as a politics of progress, a politics of change, often rapid change, transformation. That rather than seeking order and stability and constancy and consideration, the modern solution of the problem between the many and the few, maybe constantly increasing change and transformation. The liberal tradition itself, beginning with the liberal tradition, overturns this ideal of classical mixed regime, mixed constitution, in favor of a modern philosophy that argues in favor of those who will bear the responsibility of generating a society of rapid and even increasingly rapid change. And the earliest of the liberal thinkers who prepare this was especially those who argued for t