Transcripts For CSPAN2 Conference 20240705 : vimarsana.com

People and opportunity. ■ r he was asked by a slave, what should we do . Should we only vote for republican facts should we feel free to vote for Frederick Douglas said you should vote your conscience because thats what we offer but i fee f emit republican. What happens to the republican . It used to be Republican Party and after fdr was elected wasit attracted majority couldnt get jobs. That president iall election republican nominee went right back to that. Where the content of our character and in those days it was controversial. There hasnt been a competition for the black vote. They care about freedom and progress. Of course, politics of course politics changed over time. As it comes to the next, millennials and gen z, the largest component at the highest ratest. In time, the views will reflect president ial elections is really important to understand millennials in general and a view of progress. Younger generations are religious. You have to understand is a big part of it. This is another way to think about it. What are your feelings . They say their work capitalism but if you have asked millennials the same question, it didnt used to be. Why is that . Pockets are educated today but there is another that is economics. Youve all heard ofg is is argue dangerous and that is what the i will show you here andrew spent a lot of. Heres what the Congressional Budget Office says to projected this sliver of the top, the 2023 production trillion dollarsthat. By the way call closed driving it . If you look at the healthcare spending, touring and federal spending. Spending on National Defense and education a planning was a great thing . Interest on the federal debt. This is the projectionf book saying is that changed do we really think federal health in florida have . With the federal debt six years, 2029 on interest than on national debt. Why does this matter . Its not like we need a mortgage in their, you ask to lend the money, they say yes or no. What do we do . 32 trillion into 100,000 no increments and if you buy a bond in the United States and by dividing. They will get paid if they lend too much money in the United States so whats happening the chair, about Lending Company for National Investors japan were theres but the share, what it means in the normal market does that give you have a bad credit score and Interest Rates go up, if your list credit working on people buying less of your funds our government doesnt want Interest Rates to go up so what do you do . How do we solve the problem . The Federal Reserve so why is it that the federal government since money to the federal government . The way the Federal Reserve does it, u. S. Air and heres money were going to lend you. How would that work instead of paying off your credit card so basically what the u. S. Is doing so how does that work when you increase the number of dollars in the company, how does it affect . In 2001 there was 5 trillion and in 2009 we had actually. 2022 we had 22 trillion about a lot of money and i say i am 12 feet tall, i am actually taller. It is argument the keeping to look at is how the economy is growing. When you look at in the 90s, he grew faster you want to know why is the economy faster when starting with the financial crisis er since massively increased dollars at a much fastert pace. The standard term is inflation. These are the components for urban consumers so some call this the turn of theen represent these components. What iswh showing you is the cot of living of americans increased in specific ways so like technology, cell phones, tvs they have gone down a lot in price. Those of a is of things, primarily healthcare. Childcare and a number of housing in particular is important because what happens, a lot goes to the housing market. Everyone and make housing more expensivesk doing,l you they are not far off. It hasa4 because of healthcare and housing. It was init that context we started keep officers. Individual liberty is our argument is you can solve the problem through more competition and freedom from increasing social abilities and thats obviously not for it will have a different view how they can address these but that is our perspective. One of the things we do is are scho exclusively using reforms that are pro economic and are structures out of a think tank. We are grateful for a lot of the work being done. It is noted that there are plenty of think tanks but none that blended the two. While we are the think tank out here on this, there are a lot of scholars and actors and they look at them the same so all of you can look at each other that emerges from this. We work on 12 major policy ars. Also work on k12 education. cm we are honor two of the leaders i want to panels we have today and what this is meant to do help us through all these questions, luckily decreased mobily . Reduce cost. If you make 40000 year and 40000 very different because the living is so much lower than. Its not just how much money youre making, is how much monee is left over after you p rent. As such so much for making today, is the opportunity through wage growth of the economics it is important to think about cultural and political. It seems like so many people involved, how do we persuade more people to believe in this . A lot of people how the founding fathers, the Great Unifying principles of america and he persuaded a lot of people. The rigid talk about Foreign Policy but as a movement we think about policy victories is how everything is falling apart. The charges economic but there have been real victories. Weve managed to persuade people of the value of our i children e ideas. It is not a lost progress, its the only way for our values. One argument you hear is you cant persuade anybody. You just have to win and defeat■ side or whatever it is is. It is possible to persuade people who arent already with you to support your ideas if they believe you are your brothers keeper. Under freedom because of this fi want your life and its only ourselves to make others lives better. So if you housekeeping items, if you havent already, download thispp on phone and scan the qr codeu. You can get the information about Breakout Sessions that. Wifi is available if you enter the code when the prompt comes up. If you want to tweet or ask about the event, we have the award dinner tonight, its sold out but if youre onhe w know and our teaml let you know. I want to thank our sponsors, the John William Pope foundation, independent womens , we are so grateful for many of whom are here. We are so grateful to all ofn ty idea that could come to fruition today and wld been a will to have some of the victories weve had. k. That everyone believed in. To persuade a lot of people. You think things are polarized now . They were pretty polarized in 1863. We have been far more polarized as a country in the past and we have been. If anyone in this room is feeling sorry for yourself about how hard things are or how hard it is to persuade i promise you there are lots of people in the world that have done harder things. In our country, in our own lifetimes for many one thing i want you to think about is how do we persuade people to come alongside us. How do we show that freedom can achieve progress for their lives. Help them achieve their aspirations. How do we address the genuine meaningful criticisms of the status quo that people are critical of a free society. It is important to engage those criticisms are not merely dismiss them. ■■u■ i think if we do that, we will come out of that debate stronger there is a lot of division right now among people on the right and people on the exactly what america should stand for. Most of the country wants freedom. The march that Martin Luther king gave was called the march on washington for jobs and freedom. We stand for jobs and freedom. Economic progress and he stand for economic progress and we stand for economic a message that a lot of people can believe in. Ifeople off because of their zip code or their fail. Dont give up on any single american inlet show that we are thinking about every Single Person that lives in this country and how to make their lives better. Thank you. [applause]. [ applause ] we have our next panel coming up at■b 10 00. Conservative case against fre market. Welcome, how are you. I thought you just lied to u. Well, its the reason why the panel is entitled against the free market. ■1■[■g republicanism that might not be the free market. A lot it gets translated. The problem of the conservative and freedom movement■ and centr left on the democratic side as well is people are too or he wanted towards free market. Social ct and economic cost. How significant costs are and remedies might be. You found a really interesting journal. You thought a lotboiz conservatd how you think about the issues. If i could id like to sort of categorize the direction and different motivations. I know i o have a short time so i wouldnt fuch. The first thing is the critiquel development. We are maximizing free trade under t economy. Undermind our defenses. Like industrial policy and things like that. I think, its important to recall i anticapitol, not antigross or business. I would actually successor. This is part of the supply side for various reasons. We go back to hamilton and lincoln and different means to similar ends. The second genre is marketm vert fundamentalism. This would argue that, conservatives over the last few decades built up an elaborate moral and physical around markets. The problem is outside of those they didnt care much about that. We saw it in8 salley bank when people were very excited when it benefited them, it changed when it was in the free market arguments tend to be selectively employed. You havent actually gone anywhere to build anything. Its goneards privatizing the gain. Another example, you mentioned the deficit, republicans love to point out the urgency of the deficit when they are out ofer o deficit enhanced tax cuts. They say dont will reduce the. That hasnt actually happened ever. Not under reagan, bush, trump, a lot stuff doesnt pass any more. Acknowledging that doesnt menu hate ms. You have to take it from reality. The last thing■ i mentioned is the view or markets this is a very old view not invented in the last five years. I dont think its susceptible. I wouldnt argue for or against it. Its important to ask why is this more prominent in resent ye two answers. One the behavior and rhetoric of big business. It doesnt seem very friendly for traditional values. I us spect one reason we have thisation is for many years people calling themselvese they are libertarian on economic issues. There is a sort of view with new ideas and just stamp them out the Republican Party goes back and share a heyday. Could litigation was fraying and doesnt hunt and people were■e. New ideas come along. It was fraying all ready and brought up new ideas. Those are the categories. I think thats a fair thing. One thdid i have a phenomenon about free markets. The other piece which is a more inherit or underline business interest or corporate interest. Its the same thing as free markets. This is for himselfs and regulatory bars. The third piece is its not on a philosophical level. Is that fair. Its not just the Republican Party. Id say, in many cases the free market intellectuals a corporate lobby will write them a check and say this is the position. Maybe thats true. When its apple verses spotfy, i think a lot of free market answ. You will also see on healthcare and Prescription Drugs they are happy to take farm ma it comes to Prescription Drug costs and comes to the benefitdy support obamacare. They are not interested in repealing market. Its not just for the party but many of the intellectual. Stick around for the pharmaceutical pricing panel. I promise we will have that. Tim, you wrote a book where you explore the themes of communities that are struggling in the modern world. Yeah, thank you. Thank you julius. A quick note on that. One of my earlier books had a chapter about obamacare. It will meet your standard for consistency and big business. It started in 1955. The pitburgh Steel Company set up a mill that built nails. Building nails jumped out at me. Thats adam smith. Im not saying i loved it but it was a bit dry. The pages on nails were pointless. It was as a catholic guy. I love to look at how there are multiple catholic parishes. There was a hugewig pool it was by many the good life for the particular guy, the form of p on. The guy who gets a high school degree. Doesnt feel the need to go to college. Showsup at work everyday, gets married. Has kids. With overtime he can afford a nice and happy. Ods and marco rubio talks about this guy a lot in the 2016 campaign thats the sort of life a conservative like me thinks is the good life. Its a shame the people most likely to stay married these days rally the upper middleclass married, get a job. Being involved in your kiddies life is luxury this guy was the good life. What destroyed that wasnt the government but first we opened up the trading route. Trying to world of mexico and free trade agreement. Basically, that good life in 1965 south of pittsburgh he was protected from competition with china and europe. People who want to live in the u. S. A guy with women in the labor force and protect us from competition of black people and a lot of minorities. Morally, its complicated story for that guy. The hope is to have it for everybody here. Black, women, etc. Thats a tricky question. When trade opened with the classical model. Erybody will ger prices. The guys in the factory will move to slightly wage go to union town and they have slightly lower jobs. Go to union town and you find the neighborhood the churches are sow fayette city and everything is shutdown. Stories of despair. The unify collapsed and theh gs fell and dying from a drug overdosage. As a guy who believes in free market i think big business is the home game. Big government is a big home game for business. It doesnt provide the good life. Especially to the workingclass. I just want to put into prospective the experience within the last 14 to 15 years. The number of people in america that never attend Church Services increased between 2008 to by 40 Million People. 40 Million People in 14 years. We now have a population thats majority has more people now that say they never go to compared to those who go to weekly service. Thats a different country. Thats ryans testimony thats very solid from my prospective. Thats a different country. You have a certain assessment or underlining of whats going on. The■e rational, not just government provided one but the community provided one. Thats still there in theabsenc. We would be at the country because they were making less money if they were doing slightly less fulfilling for men if you look at the research in is service areas. Ey be underline and not fall below. Not to be te case. That to me is an underline as spect of whats missing from the conversation. I think a decade ago it was ly about conservative policy. Not necessarily free market. It benefited big entities to de. They can essentially navigate the idea thats been created. Small businesses toy collapse into themselves. If that was something that was bad. I think that was true to a extent. It missed the underline social aspect going on. The other thing thats interesting there was an increased awareness cultureally on different answer of prospective betwe specialized and skill based jobs and things called skilled based jobs i encourage you to watch the most resent special from south park. They have all of the skilled workers and the lawyers and therapist. Oh, they end up outside of home depot and the one person thats al success that happens to be the town plumber. Because hes the one person that can fix the guys toilet or reconnect the w supplies. They have a very Specialized Skill . Some instances we have thrown up a lot of barriers for them to function in the jobs by requiring College Degrees to do a lot of different things. So, thats a lot to throw at it. That underline cultural element was absent from the conversation. Let me try to boil it down iee t factors that are leading to discontent or middle income americans. One is what you described. If you look at the polls and how do you think america has gotten for people like you. If you ask that question they have gotten better over the last 50 years. Its white men gotten worst. There is a lot too that trend. There is the point you made about the lack of people going to church. Thats not about religion but social community. How many people bowling alone. How many people are in network and rely onto help you with something if you have a crisis in your neighborhood. Those are social trends. Some people blame on free markets. We can get into if free market is responsible. Theres the third piece thats has free trade lead to scarcity in blue collar work. This is something a lot of people talked about. When we started it in 2016 we were eag the thing we found if we talk to any manufacture and blue collar employer, they cant find people to work. Maybe they cant find people that can pass test, thats something you also hear. There is a truck stop like in texas and a lot of people heard of them. If you go to a buckees. They have a sign that says these are the jobs available. If manage a buckees you could make 200,000 per ill bring this up. In the■h north polling about lel of decrease and patriotism. The most interesting aspect steady decrease in faith and hard work and something people say is an important val withdrew. That speaks back to this. Wait a minute newt. I see them not having to work that hard. That becomes s underline or undercut the kind of dirt of american process parity that it feels automatice. Thats one of the things that creates real distance between conservative politicians. One me market and not Just International trade but domestic free markets. When downtown becomes a ghost town. Its quaint to walk into theitf downtown is good for people. Bumping into your neighbors caused nice feeling and community straight and safety and reduce crime and makes people more likely to have a rel community thats a short drive orchids bike ride away. Centralizing the economy has all sorts of dangers and have a walmart that serves four towns and four towns with no downtown is a badh a lot of external costs. That said, you can read either of my first two books on how walmart gets corporate welfare to do those things. They dont protectwith competit. We havent run that experience. Upper middleclass do . Martha vineyards. People who are able to pay for the niceness of a downtown. Thats what people with money do. Just quaint but it has value and increases the quality. Thats something defenders of me with that. Walmart, does a lot of greet things to. Increases the qualityt they of life and takeaway the ability of their kids and walk to the corner store a a roast beef shop. One of the criticisms we hear from the right andne comments. They end their addiction to cheep stuff. They need higher priorities in the cost of consumer goods. Two different questions. Ill start with the second one. To me, what actually happened in free trade is one part of this. Basically, this country was pror countries. Any sort of capitol intensive and labor intensive capitol. If you go back to the heyday american, you know, 30 glorious year 1960 the largest employer, the most Profitable Company in america were the lapitol investors today the most profitable have low needs and relatively low footprints. These are the Major Tech Companies apple, google, etc. All of the manufacturing. So the economy has shifted to one of basically intergraded manufacturing dominance to one of intellectual propey. The industry is not obsolete. Drone for example in the industry. Dont manufacture drones in america and few government supported programs the u. S. Government uses drones and most Police Forces use them. A lotf issues with that from the National Security standpoint. As you lost a lot of manufacturing jobs, those that, its the link between corporate process. Yes, they involve tradeoffs. Cheaper tvs and what have you verses losing your Defense Industrial bas losing your ability to compete in a lot of still Important Industries and lead innovation. To me, that tradeoff is not worth it. You try to correct that Consumer Prices will have to rise to some degree. We are in the mist of the degloballization process any way for multiple reasons. This might hapn regardless. Will you have your own proactive strategy to address the issues or an industrial policy. Is the solution is the problem we move from free tra cs to world trade organize ■■4 rageime. Is trade in general. Its an interesting hypothetical. What if in 2000 reducing thebar. Who if we actually made a bigger effort you know, to have political relations more trade with india. It might have been true countries that allow for their own mean, what we have done on environmental regulations. The environmental movenaid atte. Until the they are on generic pharma. For india or china. Expected less i think its certainly the case. ■h5 its much more beneficial to the u. S. Countries where you have the lowest they will make the most money. The running theme is other challenges things that are not actually about free market are defined as capitalism or free market. Both were part of the boom of lib tarn populism. What happened to that . Donald trump. Yes. We were calling for populism as a treatment and he main lined it into the veins. Lib tarn populism. Is that populism viable in the current political environment. I think there are moments when you try Something Else they can come ban a different form or renewed form. Thats true by the way when you look at Foreign Policy. One of the things i think is true the libertarian populism. You dont need to use a Big Government level approach or do so using other approaches. Natuf populism, you know, not just here in america but around the world is investing more■i per in government. We see this in mexico. If it doesnt work and breaks down. Given more power and make the problem worst. Personally, in america we reached the point and increasinh the movement. We wonder how long it will take to run into a brick wall. A lot of that happened d covid19. Yeah, part of what julius was pointing out they talked about free super prize and capitalism. Its an inevitable thing. Look at how you play in the so, we see some of love the idea in addition to industrial policy. That started mng. Why are they forcing inhouse daycare. What does that have to do with any of this. Why is politics getting into my industrial politics. Thats a great argument for when involved the big guys win. Government gets involved. It wonte for the community. That win. I would think in 2012 we spoke about how, when you were found in 2015 people want to writeoff the whole demographics. We have a republican nominee moving off 40 of country not making enough money. Think about how of wack that looks. Said they wont take responsibility for their life. They are trying to push populism. The tea party showedg and triede head and shove it under water and it popped backup as an orange haired monster and steam rolled t republican establishment . The ruins of that we have fun discussions like this. They are realions. Government rigs the game in favor of the powerful. This was when tucker was echoing elizabeth warren. There is a market for it andnd e person that provided that best was trump. He didnt feel need to have it. Y political point a well kn come off. Point on the panel for higher level policies. I think we all had to acknowledge this happening and we seey number of different tendencies by a certain member of congress. Most recently, i say, this is something that was anticipating where this is going. Of small dollars donations on republican candidates will be extremely policy. Its the money8; that came from the corporate side in the past. As corporations become less and less powerful. Smaller donations for driving your■o priorities. The prospective on polities and prospectively, its interesting they left the nonprofit. The traditional republicans and big business approach. What are they really saying. No. We dont expect them to be our friend. Thats going to have something and run into the arena policy in a way, i dont necesrily know yet but have an effect. Id like to get questions fromag t audience. Before we do that, what is the top idea you have in terms of a policy to restore confidence. Do you think we should be doing or not doing. I dont want to name a specific policy but say this not to be a jerk. As a friendly interlock we have our panel and have an industrial panel. For the most part a lot of the. Everybody knows there is a problem and we dont want to admit it. Think, there are a lot of ways in which big it should be, has been a major republican and libertarian aid. Major drivers of it. I think, its person reasonable. That would be mine. That concept a lot. Are there any questions from the audience . All right, i see a hand over there. Marshall. Please introduce yourselves because weve got cspan here. Marshall, hudson institute. It will always just always fail. That would be my recommendation the chips act wouldnt focus in that direction. So, what is your trying to address actual the semiconductor and independence issue. The cost of restoring we have daycares and reasonable price to pay . Well, by taking julius advice there, which is to say, whether insights and one is that governments, the public choice insights, government will be corrupted and taken over by powerful people and for the more complicated the policy is, the more we rely on subsidies, r instance, or double bank shots that they love, direct exportimport banks oh, were thats away from the stated purpose. A more direct policy is what we need to do. If we need the chips f military purposes, either the Defense Budget should include a su were importing chips, then have a tariff on chips. Tariff is aadmany economic circles, but its a simpler policy. Think of all the things were subsidizing, green energ o u. S. Exporters or chips in this case and it ends up getting all megs messed up. Make as simple as directly aimed as the necessity that we have there. Ill mention that we do have a free trade panel up tomorrow with orrin and others that wellek■e discuss im sure. All right. Other questions . Is there one over great. And please introduce yourself. Hi, im patricia, i work at enterprise stitute. He so i see like the material is an issue, life style, at college mirroring the delayed marriage and option, im a young woman, im 25 and went to college and im not married. Maybe in a Different Society i would be married, have more children and replacement for wa with the tradeoff of delayed family formation, going to college to young people or even just through like things that controls, which is like public schools, even like some requirements so people understand the tradeoffs theyre making, w that they have the option, but are kind of leading to some problems in society, gdp, needs to continue to go up and we need to have like two children per family unit. So i know ive got the last question, but i literally justk ill be quick. The book is called family unfriendly comes out in march, that its dragging young people away from having children because you need the whole culture to support family and this is a way in which sort of the capitalist capitalism, but mindset people say, oh, well you should only have kids you can take care of. Its not myesns care of your kids, thats a broader cultural thing. The Community Institutions that ben was referring to earlier arent there to support people having children, but certainly in our schooling system were very career oriented, we dontl patriarchal to talk about that and there are things that need more sidewalks, more bike trails. We need to allow women who want to stay at home part of the day because we have children, permitting reform would h that. And we have tons of cultural problems that are leading to this collapse in birth rate. Having kids and gen z sounds like they dont want to have kids. Its across e spectrum. Largely a cultural thing. I dont think we can subsidize our way into driving up the birth rate. I completely agree with him point. If i was going to have a policy in place, it would be isolationism when it comes to the nfl. The europe games are terrible and played on sunday mornings. Bring them all back right here. Its actually the downside of bar stool conservativism which im not naturally opposed to, is that it goes on too long and its become acceptable for it to go on too long, to the poi ke who men who are in their 40s acting like they were acting when they were 25, in should not be culturally acceptable and thats something that i think that actually has to come from within and to a certain extent is some of them are starting to recognize this and recollect kind of what theyve missed in a way that i am hopeful will turn into something that resembles the kind of reconsideration that we saw within feminism and the kind of post sex and the city wait a minute, thats not the way that it takes to live thisway, from lena dunham and others. And its more important that we could achieve with the policy change certainly on the cultural level and be driven into, i think, the minds of a lot of men who are currently wandering and trying to find■■ some nd of this and turning occasionally to the darkest forms of the internet. Some of them are turning to things like stoicism, different reality theyre trying to fill something, i think personally they would fill if they had an actual faith and church tims point ovh the idea of family and community being built to support the family formation as opposed to being this disaggregated group of cogs, i important than watching the kids in the afternoon, and thats is some that that the question makes meaning about, theoretical look at free mke which isnt often directly made. As women entered the work force, and some have talked about this to some degree, as won labor force, the marriage market is different than it used to be when only men were workingce■■, theres at least a theory, ll marriageable men hypothesis. In general when a woman is making more than a men, men in that environment dont get worried as often and led to dis i dont think any of us, maybe, i dont want to speak for anyone, but if were not going to be against women being in the work force, how do you change that dynamic . Were not going to undo that and so sometimes conservativism has to look forward and support ch think that work places need to change. I think a lot of the flexibility of that allows people to work from home and work 20ou needs to be improved. A lot of our labor Law Regulation prevents that. Youre either fulltime or parttime and that gets in the way and echo what ben thing arg the end of my next book, men need to become dads and own their dadliness. 50 years that wasnt the idea. The men were the breadwinner. And now it means getting home for dinner and taking care of the kids and playing football with them in the front yard. Ill give you the final rdn to that, as the u. S. Economy transformed over the years we developed this idea of human capital, which basically you send kids to college forever, and this is supposed to, you know, be beneficial. [laughter] this is new chicago idea. But i think one thing that free market advocates today, i think would probably i would love to work with them on, is its fixing the education system. Simply extending out education forever. Most College Degrees do not add much value to peoples working productivity. Accelera have been talking about Community College my whole life and nothing seems to happen, but findingple educated more quickly and into the labor force more quickly would be beneficial. We will have a Higher Education panel as well, ioday around for that. Thank you, julius, ben, really appreciate the conversation. [applau [applause] thank you. All right. Next up, we have george will and benp ben, george will and matt. I need my coffee this morning. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]s trul to have our two next guests on the stage, matt will, two people who need no introduction. I want to start with something that i remember you saying, geor you know, when you used to reminisce about the goldwater election of 1964 and say goldwater may have lost 44 states in 1964, but he won the future and your reference the r things that came after goldwaters defeat. With m hind sight, the great society, the entitlements and the charts, you werent her, b goldwater led to racial polarization between the Political Parties. Do you still believe he won the future . And i question whether goldwater led to the racial polarization. That might be the post doc fallacy. What i said goldwater in 64 and took 16 years to count the votes. I think a lot of Political Science and history so far indicates what drove the goldwater vote particularly in the south was Foreign Policy and that the sou■th■ had been trending republican, really, with eisenhower in 52, again in 56 and pogoldwater came alog not starting the wave, but cresting the wave. He won the futurehis is a dubio achievement, perhaps, we began to have what the political find in the early 50s, why cant we sort out our Political Parties and have crisp clean profile and politics more like europe. Well, we did it and i dont think that everyone is happy. When i came here to work in the senate staff in 1970, it was completely such as fullbright of arkansas and mcclennen of arkansas, easton of mississippi. From alabama, these were all the Committee Chairs in the house were basically southern segregationists and there arent any more conservative democrats anymore, there arent any liberal republicans anymore. And what has that meant for the thing that were now calling freedom conservativism, the statement of priiples that you signed onto . What is the state of freedom and the conservative movement . Well there are two things gogon. One is, let me get pedantic for a moment. We are witnessing a retreat from isaiah berlins 1958 lecture called the two concepts of liberty. Building off Franklin Rose relates statement, men are not free. People are now saying freedom is the absence of necessity in life, which means its really elusive and its coming tomorrow and tomorrow is always a day away. We see more and more americans saying liberty means if you have health care youre freer. If you have this is basically e chinese social compact. We will give you material goods that you need you will be obedient. And thats the tradeoff. 2 on the other hand, there is, it seems to me, a need to revitalize, i hope your organization does this, our organization does this, berlins insistence on the negative concept of berties. Liberty is absence of others and not to say there should never be restraints, but that we should but that bishop barkley said everything is what it is and not another thing and liberty should be called liberty and nothing else. In todays particular context, what amazes me is the extent to which no argument is ever settled in this country. Well, is it t. S. Elliott who said theres no such thing as a lost cause because theres no such thing as a gained cause. All the■ arguments over industrial policy. It a little bit disheartening to have to do it over and over again, but the alternative is to not live very lo im 82 and thats right, youve probably, right . Rd cycle now, you wrote this book called the right, a new history of the conservative movement and not just the conrvative mo the rise of trump and many other things. Where are we in the scheme ofs between freedom and conservativism . Sure, thank you. Its such an honor to be on the same panel as george has been writing his Washington Post column for 50 years and continues to break barriers. Just the other week he had i believe to be the best columnist disclosure note in the history of the newspaper columnists calling on tim scott to drop out of the republican primary race. And columnists wife disagrees with this george is where he i. The important thing about the american conservativism, the adjective modifies the noun. American conservativism is distinct because we begin with the crter of liberty, the declaration of independence and that was institutionalized in another document, the constitution was explained in andocuments, the federalists, and together these three inaugurate the american tradition, frederick Martin Luther king, ronald reagan, Franklin Delano roosevelt. And the American People are struggling to define and eye chief selfgovernance, right, out of reflection and choice, not accident and and so american conservativism is always going to be distinctly with aneedom because national dna. You cannot have an American Conservative Movement that rejects americas founding principles and documents, thats not the thing. You can have other forms of conservativism that do that and many of them are on display in the world, but we have to understand that american conservativism begins with our charters of liberty. Right now though, i think whatm george says is a way to respond to your question. America is having to relearn essayist, tom wolf wrote a piece in the 1980s called the great relearning. I think that was about relearning how to brush your teeth it was about relearnin of the facts of life after having lived through the derangement of the 60s and the 70s. I think were just at the beginning of our great relearning, unfortunately, and when i look at the world today, i see that not a willingness to face facts, but in fact the flight from them and the flight from reason in nyf our key cultural institutions. Our job, i think, for believers in freedom, believers in order, believers in the constitution and the declaration, is to make people face the facts of the world and also, one of those facts, a key fact distinctiveness of american conservativism. What if youre not a conservative . If youre not a conservative . You mentioned fdr and mlk and many would not say that they were conservatives, but argue. Role for them, for say the center left of this conversation . My view is that this is a dialog. If you look at the americans political tradition as a ol that argued that they were alone ofafter the american tradition. What is a role fornl them . This is a dialogue. If you look at the american political tra there are some figures that will lead towards the side. When the phrase is equal freedom there will be other political the side of freedom. We are all looking for equal freedom. That has to be a dialogue and it has to be an acceptanc either side of this dialogue has something to contribute. When i look at the political scene today, i see a closing off i see a demonization and i see forces at work on the radical side theadical left in the radical right to reject the american experiment. And, so, if anything people that identifies conservatives, as a conservative this is what i believe. We see this on ourmost every fr. The arguments, youve writncolumn, george, that have landed with people who are skeptical of the role individual economic freedoms. I think its this. That to the extent that you do not focus your political philosophy and hence, your political practice on individuals, to that extent youre going to willynilly wind up focusing on groups withd an accidental outcome. To the extend and then marts nod opportunity but to the extent that it doesnt it would be done by politics but to the extent of politics will arise in as the stakes of politics rise the bitterness ofallest politics will arise commence early among people who feel their upcoming life is not fair. Is that why now . Thats part of it and i think we talk much too much abouthh material outcomes. Wester tests pennsylvania Steel Industry free trade and all that and whats really changed is the allocation not wealth but of status. The fact that a great Many Americans used to be part of the working class that was in some ways valorized and particularly during and after the second world war. Now we live in a society in which only a third of americans go to ended Democratic Administration run by lou koller joe biden is obsessed with Student Loans. You looked at the cross paths in the New York Times siena poll that just came out i think they asked each of us think what percentage of people the resentment i suspect that those people of■ te obsession with Student Loans on the part of bluecollar joe is considerable. Thats a great poin this dimension on the earlier panel we have a panel on Higher Education that will be diving into and talking about that the student loanou bailouts. With that said we havent a l■4 of time talking about the president ial race, the 2024 president ial race yet this morning. Give us your thoughts on where stands a thing to the typical political observer, the proof freedom site of the republican part is losing but maybe thats not the case. What do you say . George wrote about this in the past wk the subject of military assistance to ukraine and the skepticism towards such assistance on the part of some prominent senators primarily j. D. Fans of ohio refld■ Republican Party, potential turning back of the Republican Party back to its world war ii self. This is one of the themes of my major book the rights which you are so generous to have outside when i look at the Republican Party■m today if it resembles me closely Republican Party of the 1920s than it does the Republican Party of the 1880s and the 1990s. Why is that nobody think it is a made that trend happen . In many ways we are living through another gilded age and soapy look atyo the 1920s as the long tail of the first gildedn h century you can see some similarities. One is a remarkable influx of immigration into this country af foreignborn americans characterized in the first gilded age and now and levels of inequality. Both in the first gilded age and now in the second. And interestingly enough and this isre only has reappeared in the last 10 years or so i levels of political in the first gilded age who was the Labor Movement and the haymarket strike in anarchism. In a corset with violence against in the south as well. There was a large level of just generall civil unrest during the first gilded age and i think were beginning to see that again in the United States in the Second Period soount of historil sense and you can see it in the historical analogy at work that the parties would begin to reflect over coalitions. I think the largest reason the Republican Party may be taking the turn thahis column is the ae soviet union. When i think about the history of the Republican Party inca the 20th century the postworld war ii Republican Party is very exceptional because its a party governed by internationalists. They are cst but they are nonetheless internationalist and they believe america ought to be engaged in the world and i thine movement and the Republican Party adopted this internationalist position after world war ii was the threat from global communism as personified in the soviet union was unique. It was and one was the religious angle to beware social or religious conservative he the soviet union cause it would have meant about atheism and the second was the ethnic angle. Many people who became part of the Reagan Coalition had relatives some distance from close in a captive nation. This is why he got in troubleity carter when he said there was no soviet domination in eastern europe. People knew that in their bones that there was. The third was the ideological challenge. It was a real intellectual fight between freedom and world today none of those conditions apply. Were only to view china in the same way that for much of the 20th century the right viewed the soviet union. Even thenhough we were stl not there in so on one level you see the parallels with the first gilded age and on the other level you see what happens when the conservative movement the Republican Party cannot unite around a common enemy and thatct communism. You both are brought up points about the state of our rr politics that are not directly about economics and your point about the dignity y f workers and how ahead. I mischaractized, please. Youas are onto it. Mark twain began the gilded age is one of his less successful novels. Inconveniently one of his best friends was a hugely successful