Come back from lunch put a pen on the board and well get started at 1 p. M. With elissa fair, cassidy and sam. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] all right. If people are standing up, maybe we can filter back into our seats here and i will introduce the next panel. This next discussion and they can make their way onto the stage, our panelists while im introducing them. This next discussion, i think, is really important, its on a lot of peoples minds and that the title of the panel is moral leadership in america. Principles for state, church, culture and community. You know, i think this is an issue that weve seen increasing in importance, you know, christian communities, faith communities, what has happened to them in the wake of all of this political turmoil that weve had in our country and the way that moral leadership matters, telling the truth matters, and how we form those morals in our country are important. And the panel we have here to discuss it with us here today is really second to none. This is exactly who you would want talking about these things at a principles first summit. Hosting the conversation will be the president of the trinity forum, if youre not aware of that organization, its a fantastic organization, great printed materials, i encourage you to check them out in all of their literature that they produce, mr. Michael weir. The president at the center for christianity and public life, and also, tackling these issues headon and doing some great work. Mona shine of the bulwark, she really needs no introduction, youre all familiar with her. Shes been at this a long time and has been focused on social policy and issues of family formation in the United States, has a lot of great thoughts on that. And then, were delighted to have, i think, for the first time appearance, also, at the summit. Mr. Robert a george, writer and speaker, youre probably all familiar with him from twitter. Formerly from bloomberg propose, but writes incisive commentary about our culture, the state of American Life and im thrilled to hear from all of them today. So, thank you. [applause] well, thank you very much, great to be with you all. I will confess its a bit intimidating to have to follow the courage of cassidy, elissa and Charlie Sikes with a panel on moral philosophy, but here we are and if nothing else, the last few years have proven the incredible importance of this topic. It shows the reason why this topic, moral formation, and moral leadership, preoccupy so many of the best minds throughout history, the historians, the moral philosophers, whether its plutark, aristotle. It shows why this preoccupies the minds of the founders and framers, why they wrestled with the federalist papers, what it meant to check and con strain and channel selfinterest, to check factions and to cultivate the better angels of ones nature. George washington in the farewell address talked about the political prosperity and to freedom itself, that moral leadership and moral character in citizens plays. And its also why we are at such an important and in many ways, unsettling crossroads right now. While its certainly true throughout history, its not like weve had one great moral leader after the other, there have been plenty of villains and scoundrels, who have been citizens and moral leaders, but weve retained a sense that a more Perfect Union is possible and we as a country have also faced, challenged and overcome some very significant, both moral failings and challenges in our past. Right now, we are at a point though of great challenge and peril. On both ideological and partisan polls, there are real challenges to the idea of moral formation and moral leadership, whether its on the left, where character and morality itself is seen largely as a smoke screen for power plays and virtue and blame are seen more likely to whether you belong to a colonizer class or based on the intersection ever our identities, as well as on the hard right where frankly, evil anilistic leader whose worst tendencies of cruelty, belligerent and disonty have not only been tolerated, but valorized what it means to win and to show strength. So, what does moral formation and moral leadership mean . What does it look like . How can we cultivate it and what difference does it make . It will be hard to get through all of this, but we certainly have a panel here, i think, who can make a huge dent in kind of our understanding of why this is so important, the attention we should be paying to it and how we can cultivate it for a more Perfect Union. So, just in starting off, i want to turn to my fellow panelists and michael, perhaps well start with you to say, when we speak about moral 0 formation and moral character in our leaders and in our citizens, what are we talking about . How is character formed . Great, im really happy to be here, really happy to be on this panel. I think part of the problem here right at the outset is that in politics morality, the sum of what it means to be moral has been taken up with having the right positions or the right answers and i think that that the way in which that conception of morality alone, the way that that can be misused has become really apparent. So when we talk about formation, and i talk about spiritual formation, in part because of that region, the spirit just refers to our character or our will. Formation is about the process by which our will takes on a specific defined character. And everyone has a formation. Theres no getting around it. One of the reasons i love the name of this gathering, i love principles first, is because it could just be the organization for the right principles. Principles first implies that we want to be the kind of people who can uphold our principles even when its difficult, even cassidy is a wonderful example, right . She didnt just have the right ideas. A lot of those people have the ideas. A lot of people if you ask them in a survey would say, yeah, rule of law, fantastic. The real test is are we the kind of people who can follow through on our intentions in the moment of crisis. And thats a real issue for us. Cf elliott once suggested by the way he wasnt positive about this, it was an observation, said that the great human endeavor has been to try to create a system so perfect that people no longer have to be good and that is the political conseit that we have, that we can have the right answers and back them up and thats why the formation is so critical. I want to invite my fellow panelists to jump in. If there are other thoughts, feel free. I just want to thank all of you to be here and all the people i was able to greet and talk with last night during the day so far here. Its so gratifying to see you in the flesh. You are, you know, im old enough to remember george h. W. Bushs expression about the Great Civil Society that was out there. He called it a thousand points of light. He called it 1000 points of light. That is what i see in this group and it is unbelievably moving so thank you for being here. [applause] i love what you said, michael. So i love what you said, michael. I was thinking before this panel i was thinking about moral formation and that its very important morality is key to a thriving democratic republic and with all. Kinds of expressions f this from the founders where, for example, john adams said our constitution was made for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the governance of any other. And yet, look, we have to be realistic. The people on the maga side and the people on the far left, they also feel that they are the moral ones. They think we are evil and they will say that very clearly. So kristi noem at cpac said there are two kinds of americans, two kinds of people in this country, she said right now. There are people who love america, and there are people who hate america. And i would like [inaudible] i want reflect on this for a moment because its important to understand i think, or at least try to understand the moral reasoning that can lead people to embrace what we think is one of theof most wicked, evil forcs that has darkened americas doorstep in our lifetimes. And so we have to think about the fact that they argue that the house is on fire. The country is in dire, its in a dire emergency, and because of that we have to turn to a strong man like trump. And they say after all, if your house were on fire and your neighbor came along with a garden hose, you wouldnt turn his help away because he was a sex offender, right . You would accept the garden hose. You would accept the help. And then you would think in very kindly. Now, of course in that analogy you would thank him but then you wouldnt elect him president of the neighborhood association. F [laughing] that is i think so key to why the maga people always need to say this is an emergency. The country is burning. Biden is destroying america. It is, it is all hands on deck, because they know that they have embraced this really morally compromised, horrible leader. And so there is never a time when they can acknowledge that the country is actually just fine. That we are not in any kind of dire emergency. That is the secri dont know if it is a secret but it is my interpretation for their justification. A great Science Fiction writer once said man is not a rational, but a rationalizing creature. And they do rationalize their support for trump, so they need to make the other side seem evil. That is why we have all of this nonsense about the biden crime family. Biden is many things. A master criminal, he is not. But, thats the key to their moral universe. Whether we can puncture that, whether we can appeal as cherie says to the better angels of their nature, i dont know. Certainly not for the maga hardcore, but potentially for people who are not quite at that level, but who are in the more persuadable category. Mona, i get what you are saying on the robert line. It is a real honor to be on this panel. I should tell everyone here, i signed up for this conference about seven or eight days ago. Then, the next day, i got an email saying would you like to be on a panel . What i am saying is, this could also happen to you. Whether that is good or bad is up for you to decide. I would slightly disagree with something mona said. While its true that maga is saying the country is on fire, and you said ultimately that they overstated the case that the country is fine, i would say the country is not fine. Maga and donald trump are reflections of the fact how far the country has gone off course. Right. The thing is though, it is not just that. As you were saying before, this view that we pat ourselves on the back and say we are the somewhat sane middle, those on the left and those on the right that call us evil because either we are not woke enough or not maga enough for them. We cannot rise to the moment that is required. Just in the context of where we have gotten to and where this moment of amorality, i sort of see it in a spectrum of a 25year, quartercentury kind of decline. Just so we can get a little bit of old school here, i would bring up a name that is not been mentioned much so far and that is bill clinton. I think when you go back to that moment of well, it depends on what sex is. It was at that moment where you have the president of the United States that is in a sense putting moral relativism into the public sphere. And while there was bipartisan consensus at the time that the president had done something wrong, the question was what was the solution about that . Republicans thought it was impeachment and democrats said censure and move on and so on. But what ultimately came out of that, the democrats, in almost any other moment in our history, the bipartisan consensus, the pressure would have been Strong Enough to get the president of the United States to resign. But, what we ended up with was a decision by the democrats and allies in the media and so forth that what he had done was not so bad that it required resignation, and instead, there was a powering through. The first principle, if you will, at that point was kind of power. How can we push through against these usual ethical and moral barriers that historically would have been enough to move the president out of the way and allow the Vice President to take over . Instead, the president pushed through. He survived, within the question is but then the question is at what cost and what lesson was learned . I think one of the residual lessons is that forget about ethics, forget about actual morality. The number one principal in politics is power. I think thats a lesson that the maga people have learned. Their standardbearer has taken the clinton model and amped it up to 10. Cherie just riffing off of that a little bit. I want to ask you each your thoughts on what has gone awry. Part of what i mean about this is not just a political analysis. We will hearken way back, thousands of years to Saint Augustine who talked about how virtue is largely properly ordering your loves and desires. Ordering your values that accords with reality, wise and prudent, as well as love. Loving things in the right way. When you think about that, you think something has gone on dion just beyond just the political. The former president does not fill stadiums for people looking forward relishing seeing their enemies humiliated because they want to see a win in the next election. There is something that we the people are starting to value the wrong things. Starting to love domination and humiliation of our enemies too much. What has gone on . Mona, we can start with you. Mona nice, small topic. There are many things that are tearing us apart. We have a radical change in Family Structure where many people now are living alone. A Record Number of people are living alone and Record Numbers of people are lonely, which is not exactly the same thing in every case. You have lots of kids growing up with very chaotic home environments, where they not only see their parents split up, but then the parents have new relationships and the kids are shunted around two different homes with different stepsiblings and all of that. We know that is not good for the stability and Mental Health of the kids raised in those environments. This has been going on for several decades. We also have the rise of the internet and the information silo, which gets mentioned a lot but it is crucial. When i was growing up, people say you are what you eat. I think now, we are what news we consume. New can tell everything you need to know about a random, 70yearold, single man who lives in central pennsylvania by whether you walk into his house if fox news is on all the time or something else. People have become so insulated and into their own bespoke realities. They create their own realities and it is unbelievably disruptive of a country that is by its very nature large, pluralistic. We have lots of different communities. Huge geographic diversity. Religious, racial, every kind of diversity. And we need to be able to have certain things that we agree on. We have to have certain facts that we all except as true so we can compromise with one another and we can say, ok, you like more immigration, we like less immigration, lets meet in the middle. That has become practically impossible in our age of bespoke realities where people on the right dont just think that democrats want more immigration or have more liberal views about it. They think that democrats have a scheme, a plot run by jews to import more dark skinned people into the country in the great replacement. So, how do you compromise with such a terrible [laughter] and so, those are its both a technological challenge that was brought to us by the internet and also by cable television. So, the technological challenge is part of our problem and the social challenge, as i mentioned, with more and more People Living alone. Lets say this last thing about being lonely and being alone. I cannot prove this, but i think people are more easily led into extremism when they are not living face to face with other humans. And having the ability to bounce off ideas. Get a reality check, right . Sam saw something on the internet that says there is a scheme to run an underground railroad from mexico through canada. Which by the way was on the internet. When he goes online and puts this in, you get all kinds of people who say yes, we heard that too. You are right, we agree. Whereas if he said it to his wife or his livein lover or whoever, she would say what you talk about . No. That does not sound right. There are fewer and fewer of those in real life sort of reality checks for a lot of americans. I think that is part of life we are seeing that the crazy gets more traction. Michael the state of our politics is a reflection of the state of our souls. This is the beauty and weakness of democracy. There is no getting around the kind of people we are. If our ultimate principles derived from politics, then our ultimate principles will be subject to circumstances. That is a lot of what weve seen. In 2020, a group of social scientists came up for a framework for thinking about the particular kind of polarization we have today. They called it political sectarianism. They said it is a toxic cocktail of three ingredients. First, a version aversion. The tendency to dislike and distrust a political opponent. Othering. The tendency to place as other or essentially different from those who are political partisans. And then the tendency of a misplaced moralization. The elevation of political disagreement to that of good and evil. When that is the fuel of our politics, then all kinds of rationalizations can take place, similar to what robert was talking about. The problem is not that we take politics to seriously, but that we take it seriously and all of the wrong ways. If you think politics is not just about power, then that is what is going to guide your political actions. Part of what we need to do is provide a vision for a politics that is not solely about who has the power, who can impose their will . That is a chief challenge because frankly, that is how our politics has operated for quite some time. We need to have a different source. This is the issue with liberalism onboard from a higher philosophy which is that liberalism allows for decisions that are made on the basis of power. But if that is your only construction of reality, yeah, everything becomes you have one opinion about january 6, i have another. There is a truth. There is a reality. It is not just who thinks january 6 was a bunch of patriots fighting for a fair election. It was a disgraceful affront to democracy. There is an actual reality and we dont need to be insecure just because theres a difference of opinion. We actually need to understand that we can name a truth. Robert exactly. Some of us look at this partly in a political context, but we can also see this