Thank you so very much for coming. My name is Arthur Milikh. Im the executive director of the Claremont Institute center for the american way of life here in washington, dc. The right has gone through, lets say, three phases over the past ten years. First, it was laughter at the left, laughing, thinking that this or that policy, this or that outrage can be solved just with laughter that steadily turned in to a kind of hopelessness. One saw how pervasive everything was that . We were laughing at, and the hopelessness led to a kind of dejection that has only been rehabilitated. And i think that thats what everybody this room shares, which is a new a renewed a new seriousness that i havent seen in my lifetime. Im about engaging in politics, in a way that isnt just about marketing and advertising, but is about owning the that were partly here to discuss to celebrate is a book that was put together by a lot of writers, some of whom are in this audience that maps out the rights errors over the last Generation Point by point issue by issue the right is not good in many ways at doing autopsies on itself, looking at itself in the mirror and looking at its own loss as if a doesnt learn from its mistakes. It goes out of business. If a doctor doesnt learn from his mistakes and his patients get hurt, he loses his license, goes out of business. Take that to every single profession. It applies everywhere except for the establishment, right . Nobody has ever punished. Only the country suffers on of it. On immigration on universities, on the Administrative State, on various funding that fund the right enemies directly. Nothing ever seems to change, no matter how hard you vote and a moment when the left possesses nearly all of major institutional powers in the country, much of the right pretends, like its still business as usual. Its not sometimes a country or, a party can lose and, never recover itself once and for all. And we always forget that. But things it feels are changing in the air. You feel it and its to some of the people in this room, a lot of people in dc when you when confront them with the bad situation in the country with the almost total institution control of the left say you still have to hope fair enough its bad to without hope and simply be passive mystic. But its also a vice can be a vice in that it implies that something somewhere will rescue you eventually and that may not be true. You be the ones or your representatives serious. Political people may be the ones that rescue you from. The situation i would like to quickly introduce one of our special guests here, senator j d vance. Unlike a lot of republicans, he doesnt forget where he came from and who is here for may will one day revoke his degree because hes been so effective. Hes the most intelligent and thoughtful u. S. Senator and the only one set on actually restraining the power of the left nationally. Please welcome, senator j d vance. Thanks, arthur. Good to see everybody. I was told, because were in the capitols visitor center, that i cannot encourage anyone to purchase this book. I can only say that its very well done and it has great, great seeds of wisdom purchase it if you would like to, but dont purchase it if you would not like to. But congratulations on. Such a great on such a great book. Thanks for getting such a good crew together. Obviously many of you are my friends, people who ive listened to and debated with for many years as we try to figure out how to save the country. You know, i thought i could do here that would be most useful is actually offer some practical insights into ive actually seen being in government nearly a year now we talk a lot how to fix washington dc. Ive been doing the very practical work for the past year of trying to figure out what that actually means and how to put it into practice. And so i thought that id offer just a few observations here and then i know we running a little short on time, but if you guys to ask me a few questions afterwards, ill try to be relatively brief here. Wells my great, great staffer and has prepared these remarks is going to be disappointed in me because never actually look at my remarks as theyre prepared i just kind of say whatever i think and so that hasnt got me into too much trouble i guess its got me here so maybe it has gotten me into a fair amount of trouble. Here goes so. So three three broad insights id like to leave you with as i have been a u. S. Senator all of a year now, not even quite a year. The first is that i think that, you know, those of us you call it, its called the new right. And i think its called the new right, because those of us in the conservative movement are trying to do something new with, the old institutions, something new with old ideas and something new with, the old tradition of american conservative and i hate to say it, but that is the defining inheritance of american conservatism. For the past 30 years, it has been that we have largely failed at the that we have set out to accomplish. I like a lot of american conservatives, a great amount of attention to what goes across the pond in the united kingdom. And i to ask myself, Margaret Thatcher was a very Prime Minister electorally. But is there a single thing that margaret actually fought for that has proven successful . In 2023, britain . Or if you go back to the reagan revolution in the 1980s and asked, what is it that you want . If you ask the voters what it that you want out of this presidency, did any of it actually maybe the enduring of Ronald Reagans tenure . Washington was the 1986 immigration reform, which set about the greatest change in American Immigration policy in a generation. And the consequence of what were still feeling today, the consequences of by the way have turned multiple red states. Blue and i think have transformed our country in very ways. Thats not a criticism of ronald reagan, i think was genuinely a great president. Its a criticism of the approach of the conservative movement, which i think has been structurally flawed for a very time. How is it that we keep on winning elections and keep on losing countrys most important battles . Thats something that we have to be honest with ourselves and not just sort of point to the past and say these, are great people. Many of them were great people, but many of them failed despite being people. I think if we want to succeed where they failed it will require us to think about those failures in new ways. The first thing that ive learned, having been a senator all of a year, is that we need to remember who we serve. We get way too abstract think all of us here are mostly pretty smart people. We care a lot about ideas. We read things like the American Mind or up from and we think and care a lot about the life of the mind. But most the people that we represent and most of the people that we serve, theyre human beings. Theyre worried about really important things like raising their children or figuring out how to pay the mortgage which quite frankly, thanks. The Biden Administrations policies has gotten a lot harder in the last few months. What the people that were serving are very very different even from the think tank intellectuals that we sort of think of as aligned here in washington, d. C. In fact, theyre very different from the think tank intellectuals that we of as aligned here in washington, dc. So i think a lot of us, a lot of people who work in this town, their instinct is to sort of view them as this distant group of people. And yet it the american constitution that gives those the power to decide what our government ultimately looks like. Weve to know who were actually represented there. Theyre not conservatives primarily of the mind, because like i said, theyve got more important things going on. But they are conservatives of the heart. They love the country. They love the community that they came. They dont see this place as some distant abstract set of ideas. They see it as the place their grandfathers or their great grandfathers set down roots. They built a business where theyve tried to build community that doesnt make them, in my view, unsophisticated. What it does is it makes them actually wise . Because they realize that this country is not primarily about the ideas that bounce the minds of intellectuals and of senators and of congresspeople. They realize that this country is about the lived experiences. Borrow a term from the left of the people who, actually occupy it. We shouldnt be afraid of that word. By the way, the lived experiences of the people that we represent are, i think, where the greatest source of strength our movement actually comes from. When i when i was first elected, its sort of a crazy thing that happened. I was much a new senator mode. I was still figuring out where the where the hell all the doors were riding, had no idea where to go around it. My credit to Jamaal Bowman for showing us were one of the most important exits were in these but i saw all kidding aside had no idea how to get around building and yet we had this terrible crash in East Palestine, ohio. And you all saw the mushroom cloud, the chemicals burning and so forth. And there were two sort of very quick insights that i gleaned from spending so much time in these palestine. The first is that this is a town that the train crash was really bad, but East Palestine had been left behind by this country for 40 or 50 years. It had suffered terribly from waves in the industrial ization. There were people there who were trying figure out how to piece together their community how to create wealth and create jobs and opportunity in East Palestine, ohio this train crash was just another in a long line of of leadership that kicked these people in the teeth. It was bad and i dont mean to understate it, but it was it was it was a it came as part of a long of really bad things that had happened. East palestine, ohio, if you had visited it the day before the train crash, you would have said this is a community that has been left behind by policymakers in washington dc and it had been left behind by in washington dc. Now, the second thing i learned is that after the train crash, its quite how much public in this town is driven by lobbyists. I mean, we talk this all the time, but in reality, when you try to do something to help the people of East Palestine, there are ten layers of lobbyists, ten layers of bureaucracy and, then ten layers of of on top of that. So 30 layers that you have to deal with before. You can actually get the people of East Palestine any i actually heard from republican congressman senators and by the way, remember that most of the rail lines our country go through less densely populated areas. The very types of areas that we represent. The Republican Party and i heard that if we did to try to call the railroads to account, if we tried to do anything to make it less likely that trains would crash and set off bombs in our communities, that we were somehow violating tenets of conservatism, well, i think the sacred tenet of conservative ism is to remember who we serve, to defend the people who actually make our communities what they are not, to railroad companies, by the way, many of whom were donating hundreds, thousands of dollars to democrats in the run up to the election of 2022. Many whom have actively leaned into the most left wing take the culture wars over the last two decades. Is it really our job to defend the railroads and not the people who had a chemical explosion set off in their community . If thats your attitude about whats going on in this country that, i think that youve got a very screwed up notion of american conservatism. Remember who we serve. We are elected to do a job. Of course, most importantly, to uphold the constitution of country. And after that, to do something meaningful for the people who elected us. Dont forget and dont forget the people who actually gave us that power in the first place. Now, on that, the second insight i want to leave you with is republicans conservatives were still of wielding power, of actually doing the job that the people sent us here to do. You heard arthur say this earlier, that so many of the institutions have been captured by the left. How many of us have been worried about this problem that the media, the Financial Institutions some of our corporations, the Technology Sector and the censorship that comes along with it and of course, the universities and the institutions of education have been captured by the left, some of them, for generations in this country. And yet the thing that our voters can actually get the one institution that our voters can win in this country is when they go and vote and elect republicans. And then when they elect republicans, do all of us say we all say we dont. The government should do anything. How is that anything other than a lose lose proposition for the people who sell us . If on one hand, you have nearly every and powerful cultural and Financial Institution in this country aligned with the left and the other hand, you occasionally have the Peoples Democratic government that answers to the right. Why shouldnt we be doing something with the peoples elected government when they give us the opportunity to do so . Or does it make common . Isnt it just common sense that when were given we should actually do something with . It i hear this all the time and critiques of the Administrative State that come from the American Conservative Movement and a lot of the critiques of course i agree with the Administrative State is too big. It does do too much. It is really hard. I mean. I was an investor and a business before i got into politics. Try to something in this country and run into layers of nepa certifications and environmental regulations that have nothing do with protecting the environment. But they have a lot to do with employing bureaucrats are critiques of the Administrative State are very often correct. But our answer to this cant be every single time the American People give us power, the only thing that we try to do is to trim down the thing that gave us control over. Sometimes we ought to say, you know, instead of just trimming thing down, why dont we actually make it more responsive to the will of the people the most in my view, the most egregious and out of part of the deep state in this country is the department of justice. The leadership. The department of justice is actively its political opponents. Im not just talking about donald trump, of course, we know that Douglas Mackey is is almost at the brink of being sort of serving prison time. I understand that federal court stepped in and prevented him from going to prison. Why . For posting a meme for posting a joke. Merrick garland is trying to throw this guy in for, what, close to a year . Because he posted a joke on the internet. And yet our response to this is, is as far i can tell, that we should have the of justice doing less well i agree we should be doing less but maybe he should actually do something good too. Maybe we should actually be appointing attorneys to the Department Justice who investigate the corruption in our own government. Maybe we should be appointing people, the department of justice, who actually take a side side in the culture war, the side of the people who elected us and not just pretend we dont have to take sides at all. This is crazy me. Every single time the American People give us an opportunity we tell them we dont deserve the opportunity. We just want to make this thing smaller. We should be much more focused on making responsive to the will of the people. I there are a lot of articles in, this book about that very topic, but weve to get comfortable with wielding power. Thats thats something our voters is expecting us. I remember a conversation i was having with a guy after a Campaign Rally was more of a town hall in the early days of my republican primary campaign. This is probably. Summer of 2021. And i gave this sort of thunderous speech against big tech. And i argued, weve got to stop the technology. Oligarchs from censoring american conservatives. Weve got be willing to break these companies up. Use the Teddy Roosevelt option. There are too theyre too powerful and that theyre preventing from participating meaningfully in the public debate. Weve got to be willing use power to stop them, to stop that power and to push back in the other direction. And i remember this guy came up and was a very nice suit. Afterwards, he came up in his in his nice suit. And it was it was clear that he was a guy of high and good education . Probably a very job. And any any said i really agree with everything that you said, but i had to push back with what you said about the Technology Companies as say oh, no, here we go. This is a david french critique that these are private companies. We cant do anything to the Technology Companies because they are private companies. We should let the market decide what is and what is part of our public debate. He said, look, why do you want to break these up . Why dont we just throw all their ceos in and my is that our voters are much, much more willing to invest us with ability to do something. And frankly a lot of them are willing to go much further than even willing to go. And im probably willing to go much further than pretty much anybody else in this building. Point is the voters, they give us power. We have to be willing to wield it. This is not a high class society. This is the United States congress. And it ought to actually respond to the people who give it all of authority. The third point that i want to make here is we have to be less ideological. What do i mean by that again, i sort of point this out. Many of us are concerned is of the mind. We read things like hayek and Arthur Milikh, all these