Guest we have serious challenges facing us want that affects everybody regardless of their political but rounder persuasion. Host if you have sean hannity i mean it seems to me that shone as a quite popular figure among hardline conservatives. Guest sure he is but we try to reach out in this book and naturally i believe conservative ideas provide the best solutions to the problems facing america that is ice in the book of the liberal comes up with an idea the works improved his health and lives up to its stated objectives im for it. I am for Social Security. Im for medicare and all these programs created mostly in liberal democrat administrations but i just want to look at them to see if they needs to be updated for modern age and improved if they are not working we need to revise them or get rd of them. Host in fact the thesis of this book and im going to come back to the idea pieces because its one you play within the book but the idea in this book is what works . What actually works and what we know has worked in the past Commonsense Solutions that come from the past and in some sense, not only from the political realm but for you from your deep faith. Guest theres a verse in ecclesiastics in the Old Testament there says theres nothing new under the sun. Everything you do has been done before. Im not talking about living in the past. Paid im talking about looking to the past to see what is worked up dating it as necessary in moving forward. If you go to another country for the first time you usually get a guide book or google paris france or something to find out where the best hotels are in the best restaurants places to be avoided. These are people who have gone before us to scope out the cities and to recommend the best places for us. We have the founders of our country who understood human nature at least as well as the creatures of their day and they created a constitution that established boundaries for government but unlimited life, liberty for its citizens. I believe that its gotten out of whack and we conceded those constitutional boundaries and that is why we have so many of the problems and challenges we have today. Host in previous books he had to remind readers that you were not saying disengage from public life in the Public Square but people get that perception given emphasis on simply focusing on the individual capacity and individual responsibility to look away from government. Dont look to government to meet your needs. Look to the individual and look to god. Host id. Guest thats where it all begins in the founders saw how we delegated from the people to the government not government overpowering us and that is why government has grown so big and dysfunctional. I dont think theres anybody including the biggest liberal who thinks everything is working well and we have to be pouring money into it and growing government ever bigger bigger bigger. Thomas sold a great writer and a friend has written and i have this card and i carry it around like abdul carries the 10th amendment in his pocket. He says much of the social history in the western world over the past three decades has evolved from placing what worked with what sounded good. Our friend bob medical on fox and i couldnt cowrote this book and did a column for usa today called Common Ground acknowledges that many of the social problems programs were done in good faith in London Johnson administration the socalled Great Society but he acknowledge is now that we didnt take into consideration human nature. Giving people a check and providing women with tax and they have babies out of wedlock was the only not good for them, it was an good for the country. We have moved a long way from John Kennedys inaugural admonition ask not what your country can do for you you, as we can do for your country. Host do you think people should remain engaged with the government and politics . Guest absolutely aarp wouldnt be writing my syndicated column for the last several years but im saying one you should expect or out of government then it can deliver less out out of yourself than it can deliver. Things like character and virtue and integrity cannot be instilled by government. Those are moral and spiritual issues like table manners. You have to be taught not to interrupt adults at the table. When i was growing up not to mix your peas with their mashed potatoes and ordered to e them with an eye for a spin. You have to be taught certain things. These manners are things that have to be taught. I think personal responsibility and integrity looking out for yourself looking to government as a last resort not a first resource is what will improve in the life and improve our country. Host somehow i get the impression that you think liberals are people who in fact who are openly reliant on government dont have some of these virtues that you just described, personal responsibility, wanting to work in wanting to succeed and american wanting to contribute. Guest i know many liberals including yourself who have these character qualities but the problem is so many of my liberal friends even though they may have those character qualities looked to government to repair what is wrong with people who dont have those character qualities. We know what the problems are. A Stable Family is the best guarantee of a stable home and of people being able to take care of themselves. We know this. Judith wallerstein who i quote in the book did a study of the effects of divorce on children. She studied it for 25 years. We know that divorce harms children. Some people survive that many of them dont. These are some of the things i explore in the book and began if its a liberal idea and it works and promotes the general welfare that im for it that i dont think we have to say just because a silly rule or conservative idea we shouldnt Pay Attention. In the book you write, you save president obama and i think you would describe him as a liberal. Guest no question. Host you say he took advantage of the human instinct for in the end greed in order to get elected . Guest yeah. I think the unholy trinity is envy greed and entitlement and we see this in his constant statements about income inequality is running down of large corporations and businesses to report a lot of people who themselves pay a lot of taxes instead of telling people up. Calvin coolidge once said you dont improve the week by tearing down the strong. I want more people to be rich. I want our people to be independent. I want more families to be stable. All of these things i am four. Who could be against that the president is out there and a lot of democrats frankly are out there constantly bashing success penalizing success and subsidizing failure. What you penalize you get less of in what you subsidize you get more of. Its interesting you have a background working with the moral majority in this book you talk about Joshua Dubois who was at the white house says the president s spiritual advisor but also head of the office of faith in Public Service and i might he miss quoting the exact title. He has written a book and he talks about how the president reads daily meditations and scripture and talks about other people in washington d. C. In the federal government to do the same thing that you say to blot is off when he comes to his message because what he talks about is the idea that government should care for people who are in need as opposed to individuals. You make it seem as if he is saying while god wants us to have compassion and therefore dubois, obama and the liberals thanks oh that means government should be compassion and you are saying no. Guest im saving government ought to be of last resort. Government can become addictive like a drug relying on a government check rather than yourself. I spend a lot of time in the u. K. The daily mail did a story a few months ago and the family three generations of people who had never worked to it than on their version of welfare public assistance. Not only have they never works they didnt expect to have a job and when they were told by David Camerons administrative that they should start looking for work they were offended. Thats the kind of addiction that too many people that government brings. I dont question the president s faith. Thats not my business but i do think in certain areas there ought to be connection. If he reads the scriptures every day about human life and about marriage you can disagree and general on taxes and the Defense Budget and still not be in danger of going to hell but i think there are certain basic things that if you are serious believer and an Orthodox Jewish that ought to carry over into public policy. Mario cuomo for merck governor of new york caught himself in a trap where he said i accept my churchs teaching when it comes to the Death Penalty or convicted murderers but he doesnt accept that when it comes to abortion for the innocent unborn. I find that to be an incredible inconsistency. Host of course many people on the writer for the Death Penalty even as they oppose abortion. So they are caught in this trap. Guest the differences when you have a convicted murderer someone who is taking the life of another person thats a whole lot different morally from an innocent unborn child who never had the chance to take a breath of life. Host this conversation could go on and i think people would talk about the right of the woman. Let a ask you going back to president obama is lets say the quintessential or prototype is a literal in your book your point is that while the government can be compassionate but you really dont want to be compassionate. You want to focus on what works and therefore you are talking about individuals having responsibility or i guess christian jewish or muslim or whatever their belief having a sense that they should be compassionate but its up to the individual fdutpa government to take care of the poor. Guest let me go back to another book written in the early 80s that the speaker of the house handed out to everybody in Congress Called the tragedy of american compassion written by umar vernell lasky. He went back in history and looked at the major religious institutions, the jewish, the christian groups who care for the poor as a first responsibility. In their caring for the poor they required some kind of response. Afterwards if you were a drug addict or alcoholic you had to be in a program to get rid of your addiction. We are not going to sustain you and your bad lifestyle choices. If you are having babies out of wedlock with no husband and a father in the home we are not going to send you a check to continue to do that. We will help you with us kids because it wasnt their fault that we are not going to allow you to continue to get out of wedlock and send you a check. The whole point of the jewish and christian institutions at the time was to reform these people so they would lead a better life that would be better in the end for themselves. They have been replaced. They have retreated to the sidelines by government and it has become what i call a perversion of the 23rd psalm. The government is my keeper. I shall not want. They may a while for the shadow of poverty with government comforting me with the ebt card. Host in looking at this you talk about the expansion of the Entitlement Society is something that is up republican refrain. As im reading theres no reference that we went through this horrible recession and really people call it the Great Recession in a reference to the Great Depression and as a consequence of that not only has there have been more reliance on the Public Safety net including entitlement that we have done things like a lot the rich. Guest i agree with that one. I am all for a safety net. Nancy pelosi said if you give democrats the power back and we are going to drain the swamp. They got the power back and said she build a hot tub. I dont think government is the first resource. If you take a look at the recession what was the primary reason for the recession . Government was spending too much. It allowed Big Companies like gm and others because of the Union Pressure to ratchet up the benefits and entitlements that they have no hope in pain because of what the Union Pressure and the threats of strikes and so when you got to a point where gm lets lets take one example could no longer afford based on how many cars they were selling to pay out these benefits it crisis ensued. The same way with the treasury department. Print more money, print more money never come to the point where you tell people we can do this anymore. Its like a College Student who goes off to college and he or she is on the budget in the low it in the wild living in the first weekend at fraternity or Sorority Parties and call mom and dad with a hangover and monday in say hey a mall out of money, send more. If you do you are a fool kiss you are indulging in behavior that is not in the best interest and that is what our federal government has done for too many years. Host as i understand the cost of the great refresh recession will we had a great housing bubble and people on wall street were engaging in highrisk maneuvers that proved to be faulty and caused wall street to implode. Guest Lustig Fannie and freddie is an example since you brought that up. Why did the housing bubble occur . Its because president s over several of administrations of both parties wanted to be able to get up and say under my administration more people on own their own homes than ever before. If you are handing out money to people with bad credit and you have income levels that cannot sustain ballooning mortgages after seven years thats the problem. Too many people came to expect that they should be able to live in a nice big house when they didnt have the income to sustain it. Part of this is a political problem and part of it is a moral problem and part of it is an economic problem. You are right about wall street as well. Anybody that saw the hbo film and i cant remember the name of and now that portrayed all of this everybody was living beyond their means. Everybody was greedy. Everybody wanted to make more money and then everybody was willing to cut whatever corners to do so. So yes this is just a left right republican democrat thing. As they used to say in world war ii where on this together and we have a certain amount of ability for what happened. Host s the if you presented was initially about government overspending individuals making bad decisions and if you look at the Housing Market and industry and what happened there and you look at what we know happened on wall street it seems to me that you have a lot of very wealthy people and people who are acting as lone wolves and individuals. Im out for myself. I will get the charity that i want to make a lot of money. A lot of that self obsessed behavior hurt the country. Hurt the country because the government buildout aig i would have let them collapse. Its not just indulging in subsidizing the poor. Its indulging in subsidizing the rich. I dont see that in this book i say this in my cones and drink at aig failure. In the last interview one of the last interviews the president george w. Bush did with me before he left office he said at least i stuck to my principles. I said but what about bailing out aig . How is that sticking to your principles. If failure is a great teacher. I have failed a lot and ive learned a lot from failure. I was fired and i went to the Unemployment Office for a couple of weeks to get an unemployment check failures a great teacher for those who learn from it and the best thing that couldve happened to wall street and gm in my view is for them to have failed and to restructure under the Bankruptcy Law and to reestablish themselves. Host you understand that when wall street implodes you are impacting pensions and 401 k s, the entire financial structure of america. It would have been cratered. People in the congress the bush of administrations good republicans as well as the Obama Administration were told we are in a financial calamity. We have American People have to come together to resolve it. Guest on the lefty of the trial lawyers in the groups to send lots of money to democratic politicians. On the right republicans, you have wall street and you have big corporations to send a lot of money to politicians. When the objective is to only get reelected as is so often is with 97 reelection rate when thats the objective instead of doing the business of the people you are going to have dysfunctional nonworking government. I have become a political environmentalists. I believe in recycling trash and politicians for the same reason because each left in one place too long leads to a foul smell. You come here with the highest motives in beths ethics it doesnt take long to get corrupted. Get them out before they catch it. Host i think is a pair of americans agree and there was a wall street journal poll thats a 54 of americans throw all the bums out. Thats not the reality. You do speak about term limits in this book what works sub five and when it comes to the basis of the financial structure and the government taxes what you say is what has worked is always low taxes because according to cal thomas what happens is that if you lower taxes it results in more receipts for the government. In fact the government gets more money. What about the contrary point which would be that well taxes are pretty low right now under the Obama Administration. Taxes were low under the Clinton Administration and the bush administration. Guest and the Reagan Administration. Its not just the taxes. Suspending. That is what has gotten us out of whack here. Even when the republicans are office and they hold all three branches of government is Spendi