Come and hear what i have to say. I thought i would begin with the 2012 election and im sure you are aware come after that election, many people proclaimed the death of modern american conservatism. One commentator said the titanic is sinking, referring to american conservatism. Another observe the conservative arguments we heard in this election are going to be relics in museums very shortly. Lots of people said conservatism really its message and its methods if it was ever going to win an election again. Its still being debated today. I noticed in this mornings wall street journal scott walker has a piece about what he needs to do to be relevant. His thought is they dont need to give up their principles, they need to be stronger on their principles and people are looking for that kind of leadership. In this book, we talk about this in the public in the final chapter of this book. My coauthor and i talked about the future of conservatism in the last chapter. But we begin elsewhere and the great writer him up roebuck, said if you want to understand today, you have two search yesterday. In this book, our thought is to go back historically to come back to today. Its not really a history book in the sense that we go back to live in an earlier area earlier era, but we go back to understand the roots to come back to Public Policy and politics today. The question is where do we go back to find the roots of modern american conservatism . The conventional wisdom as you go to the 1950s. Russell kirk, a great conservative political philosopher, William F Buckley, National Review magazine was launched during the 50s, so the conventional wisdom is that is where you find the beginning of modern american conservatism. Slays wrote a very interesting book on Calvin Coolidge and propose we ought to go further to the 1920s because Calvin Coolidge was the beginning of modern american conservatism. I saw her a week or so ago and i said you have launched a coolidge is cool movement. That probably was not easy to do because you see the cover of the book and hes not really a 21st century kind of guy. Think thes book, we place to go is to the 1930s view, modernr american conservatism is a response to the new deal of the 1930s, to Franklin Roosevelt. , the conservative response in the 1930s was the beginning of modern american conservatism. Came from former president Herbert Hoover. Lots of people debate how conservative hoover was as a president and secretary of commerce in 1920s, im happy to talk about that in the q a if you like, but we are looking at him in the 1930s when he was shocked by the excesses of the new deal. The new deal was really the height of progressivism and we argue in this book that just as edmund burke, the english political philosopher began modern conservatism as a response to the french revolution, we think theres a distinctive rand of modern american conservatism. In effect, the new deal was our french revolution. It changed politics, changed governance, and so responding to our own french revolution, Herbert Hoover starts, we think to stake out the case for modern american conservatism. If you think about it, and our view, we are operating under the new deal paradigm today. We argue that politics, american domestic policy, Economic Policy today are just continuations of the new deal. This debate that started 80 years ago between progressives and conservatives, between roosevelt and hoover in the 1930s is the frame of the 2012 debate. We think it is still the frame for today. Theact, if you listen to debates in the 2012 election, you heard echoes of all of the themes we are going to talk about today. In our book, we look at three areas where Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt debated in the 30s and where we think that is still a key debate today the first of those is liberty versus equality. This is one of the fundamental debates between progressives and conservatives. If you have read some of your American History you will remember that when the french journalist de tocqueville came to america in the 19th century he observed one of the main differences between the french revolution and republic and the American Revolution republic is the french were really all about equality. They talked about liberty but they were really all about equality. He said by contrast the americans in the American Revolution is about liberty. They also talk about equality but with they are really after in americas liberty. This is one of Herbert Hoovers biggest complaints about the new deal is that it was turning america into a form of european totalitarianism. Hoover had spent the early part of his career as a mining engineer doing huge mining projects abroad and he had continued to live in europe when he did relief efforts. Food relief efforts during world war i and the postworld era. Herbert hoover is a hero for essentially saving the belgian people from starvation as well as in other countries. One of the things hoover noticed during all that time in europe was that it was giving way to various forms of totalitarianism, socialism, communism eventually nazism and fascism and then he came back to this country. He was shocked because in the 1930s he thought roosevelt was voluntarily turning us over two forms of totalitarianism. In fact if you look at to cartoon icons of the 1930s if you will Herbert Hoover like to talk about the rugged individual and Franklin Roosevelt said no which really about the forgotten man. These are really two great cartoon icons of the 1930s. Hoover argued america is about equality of opportunity and its about individuals having the freedom to decide how they want to live their lives and to pursue that and so america is about equality of opportunity. Franklin roosevelt said and this is actually a little shocking to me, he said straight out in the 1930s the equality of opportunity is dead in america. You cant get it anymore. So what we have to be about in this country is equality of the outcomes. We have to design Public Policy around the forgotten man were sometimes he said around every man not around individual freedom. This i think is precisely the debate today. When people talk about income inequality and how we need to raise taxes on the wealthiest and we need to raise the minimum wage, what they are really arguing for is this a quality of outcomes in society. This is the way, the form in which that debate is continuing today. And so we go into this in our book. I dont have enough time to go into it in depth today but if you look at the data, the data is not as clearly supportive that there are massive income inequality problems as it sometimes claims. Im i am sure you all brushed up to see robert reischs documentary about income inequality. Its hot in california and its maybe not quite as hot here in washington d. C. We also argue more importantly is income inequality is the right question to be asking and inequality of opportunity and society isnt the right question income mobility. Are people able to move up and down the income scale not whether their incomes are actually equal. When you look at studies of income mobility what you find is we still have a great deal of mobility of income in this country. Unfortunately these studies lag timewise. Their conference have been difficult to do but studies of income mobility from 199,016,005. Out that we have a great deal of income mobility. It divides income into five quintiles and from that study what you find is half of the taxpayers during that tenure period move from one quintile to another. You find that half of the people in the bottom quintile of income during the tenure period move up to a higher quintile income which i think you wouldnt normally believe if you were just listening to the inequality debates today and then even a fourth of the people in that top quintile dropped out. There is even mobility going down. Its not like the upper 1 as they always call them get their and stay there. Even they experience mobility so its sort of forks up and down the scale. Thats really the question we should be asking about income. Our people in this Society Still able to find their place and move up and down and the evidence suggests that is the case. And then of course the very fundamental question, is it really the governments business to be regulating peoples individual income . As Herbert Hoover pointed out the big problem in government tries to do equality of outcomes is that people become economically dependent on the government and sort of loose the american spirit of entrepreneurism, of liberty and choosing what you want to go after. This book that came out by lucas eberstadt in which he points out that mitt romneys inartful political statement about 47 of the people being dependent on government is actually pretty accurate. Its 49 are receiving government payments of some form. I think we should have exactly what does it do to this spirit and the will of the people in there have fully dependent on the government and the think again this is precisely the debate that we are having today. And so we feel like one of the problems that conservatism has is that its not really getting out the liberty message the way it was articulated in the 1930s. I think progressives would like to turn the liberty bell into the equality bill. Sorry my artisan at her. I couldnt find a good equality bill but i think one of our problems today is that liberty has become a bit of an abstraction and when you ask people what about liberty, what about liberty . You dont know that we have any loss of that and im going to talk a little bit more at the end of the talk about how we address that. This whole idea of liberty and equality is one of the big debates post then and now. He second topic of debate is limited government versus and theres a wonderful quotation reminding us that has always been part of the American Republic from the declaration of and then its about king george iii. Jefferson writes he has erected a multitude of new offices and swarms of officers to rest our people and and i think that can be well set today of a big government. We suggest in her book that thereve probably two ways to look at the governmengovernmen t versus limited government. There is a quantitative way and in fact there are several clock clock quantitative poison and there are qualitative issues. On the quantitative side there are lots of ways to add a puppet government has become or how far away we are getting from limited government. One would be to simply add up the number of federal employees or especially nonmilitary civilians which of course is that an alltime high. You could add up the pages of the federal register. Government regulation obviously again in an alltime high and frankly in the last few years growing at an exponential rate. The most traditional way to do the quantitative analysis is this chart that i have here which is the federal Government Spending as a of gdp. And in the early days of the republic from the founding say to the new deal it was generally two or 3 . Government spent two or three of gdp although they were the spikes during wartime and as you can see now we have gone to the 25 or send level. When my generation the baby boomer generation really gets on the entitlement trained on Social Security and medicare and medicaid and health care that number is going to go up much further. In fact to a range that is untenable for government. We are talking about greece levels of debt and spending. So, i think from a quantitative angle this is really a concern. Hoover on the other hand was really more concerned about the qualitative aspects of the government. Government in his day wasnt all that his concern was how much of our life is government running . How much is the quality of nature of our life really impacting and controlled by government . And so one way i look at that is well, how is the federal government doing in terms of taking over more of our lifes . One example he mentioned the look is the classic local state issue has always been education. Everybody would agree whats the one thing thats local and yet today if you ask teachers and educators whats the primary influence on k12 education especially on k12 reform, education reform they will say the federal government. Starting i would say with no child left behind in the last decade in continuing with race to the top grants today. What the federal government has essentially done is tried, they cant force them but they can bribe them with cash to follow their federal approaches. So we have essentially the last decade federalized education. Health and welfare was always part of the states purview but once again with obamacare is and i cant call it that now. Its the aca now, obviously health care is now essentially better lives. So, this would have been hoovers concern, how much of government control and this was roosevelts big thing. We need more regulation or economic regimentation. If you look at areas of our lives and areas of state and local policy taken over by the fed that really is a serious problem. The last issue we take up that we think is very much a then and now comparison is constitutionalism. In this part of the book, we founded our research to great speeches. One given by Herbert Hoover on Constitution Day in 1935 in one given by Franklin Roosevelt on Constitution Day in 1937 so two years apart. Its just a classic comparison and contrast. Roosevelt begins his speech by pointing out that the constitution opens with the expression, we the people. And he said so, this reminds us that the constitution is a peep olds document. Its not a lawyers document, to peoples document. It was done by the people and for the people and what that means is according to roosevelt when the constitution gets antiquated and a little out of date and he was giving us a 150 year constitution we the people can fix that. We can take it over and change that in any way we want and accommodate it to today. If we need regulation and people ask if thats unconstitutional we shouldnt have to worry about that. You will remember he tried to pac the Supreme Court to get more judges on their to quit slowing down his centralization and regulation agenda, unsuccessfully it turned out that he finally got enough judges to go along to begin the cycle of increased regulation and the regimentation. So this was roosevelt. In the iron is if you look back on the new deal there were no constitutional amendments that were part of this new deal revolution. Of course the constitution says this is how youre supposed to change it. You are supposed to change it by passing and adopting amendments. There were no of amendments in the rep to share new deal. The only amendment in that timeframe was to say the president can only have two terms after roosevelt had multiple terms. It was all done by reinterpretation or by workarounds and i will talk in a moment about how we do that today. Hoover speech is quite. Hoover starts with the first 10 amendments of the constitution and he says what this reminds us of is one of the main purposes of the constitution is to protect the people from their own government. Its the exact opposite of the roosevelt view. The rest of his speeches about federalism and he says we have this great system of federalism. Checks and balances, balances of power making sure nobody can get behind the wheel of the government and start running over people or running headlong in one particular direction. He said all of this apparatus and here is to make sure that the founders called it the cool deliberate sense of the communities carried out, not some minority or majority faction of the people. Of course if you look at the debate today this is exactly the debate we are having today. Roosevelts we the people in the constitution may call today the living constitution. Theyre all kinds of claims out there that the constitution is antiquated and prevents us from tackling the Serious Problems of the day. It calls for constitutional prevention and it calls for just ignoring sort of the checks and balances because that is really slowing government down. There are workarounds and i dont know if you followed the National Popular vote act where people who dont like the Electoral College say we know we can never get an amendment to eliminate the Electoral College so we will just do a work around it and we will say that if enough states pass a law requiring electors to vote for the winner of the National Popular vote than we have effectively won the Electoral College and that is getting a fair amount of traction. Again residence manning up if you will and amending the institution we do these workarounds and we make it a living constitution get rid of the acronym sums. So our final chapter then is about the future of conservatism. At the beginning of this chapter we have two authors in this book and we have written lots of offense together over the years. When we sat down after the 2012 election which is when we were fishing this look we had a disagreement about the effect of the 2012 election. One of us thought that this was a no country for old men Tommy Lee Jones as the rural sheriff texas sheriff. As he comes up against the drug money, the amazing weaponry if you will and the drug. And traffic in this area. He just said you know this is too much. I can cant handle this anymore. He was overwhelmed. That is how one of us felt in 2012. Effectively a new majority that come together, a majority that was progressive and not conservative majority that had younger voters, that had a lot of people who were receiving government assistance in one form or another constituting them new majority that essentially wanted government to pick up the tab for what they wanted government to do. And if that is the new majority in his view he wasnt sure how we would put a stop to progressivism.