Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words 20240622

In people who want to go out and become entrepreneurship some day to do that. Even if you havent found that job yet, it is possible and i encourage them to get involved in politics. I want to get young people fired up about politics. We can really focus on that. This is book tv on cspan2. Thanks for being here. Is there a Nonfiction Author that you would like to see on tv . Send us an email at book tv at cspan. Com. Or. Or visit us on facebook and twitter. Now a book tv, Arthur Brooks discusses his book the conservative heart. For which he said it is time for a new kind of conservatism. Arthur brooks, while you have written and exciting, important new book, the conservative heart. How to build a fair, happier and more for spiritus america. I have read this book and you can tell ive started tabbing and making notes. You seem to have struck a chord here that i think is going to be an important one for the Republican Party at large. Specifically how to deal with some of the internal changes that are occurring within the party. You talk about the party becoming again a party of aspiration. What was that about . What do you mean by that and what brought you to that conclusion . People talk about republicans and conservatives as being angry all the time. You hear constantly. You guys are so angry all the time. If you look at television and you watch whats happening with the candidates, especially people like donald trump who right out of the gate sound really angry. You actually do sound like that. If do something that. If you dont know any conservatives, most liberals dont have that many conservatives in their family and they just know what they see on tv. They see these guys yelling and screaming and it makes it looks like they hate these people. When ice darted studying economics, i was was brought up in a liberal family, but i realized that conservative ideas are the best ideas for lifting people out of poverty. Weve lifted many people out of poverty since the 1970. If the conservatives themselves cant think to shout this from the rooftop, how else are we can get the word out . So the idea of putting on it different face, showing who we are in expressing ourselves in a manner that is welcoming and inviting. What are some of the steps that we can begin to take to do that . Youve got people out of the gate falling into these camps of this or that whether its donald trump or ted cruz or someone who has had strong things to say at the beginning of this cycle. How do you begin to change that within the body of the gop . We have to remember our purpose. Not just as republicans, im an independent, it doesnt matter. We need to remember our. We need to remember our purpose as people. Its never to fight against policies but as a person in a leadership position its not to fight against policies, its to fight for people. This is what all people have in common and all ethical people have in common. Who are you going to fight for . Who, not billionaires. How can we get a Better Capital gain for billionaires, that doesnt come up. What can we do to create greater opportunities for people who are being left behind. Thats thats what we actually talk about. Number one is remembering our purpose in fighting for people. Remembering the faces of those people and telling the stories of those people. In this book i have dozens of stories about people. That was fascinating. In one section, i made, i made a note of it, you talk about going, let me put up. It was an indian slum and austrian ghost town. You give these examples of how people live with their lives, deal with these issues and problems and you talk about it from a very human aspect, not political not calculating. Theres a section where you talk about grandma europe. I particularly enjoyed where you said it might start with monetary and fiscal policy plus a healthy dose of market labor. Then you talk about how the world is changing and how do you adapt to that change and what do you do to make that work . How do you explain that and how do you express that with these examples of peoples lives in the story . How do we as a party, as an institution, how does that relate to those individual lives and stories in this changing environment . To begin with we have to remember each one of us is in fact our brothers keeper. If we can remember that we can make Real Progress. The moral consensus is that we are supposed to be Good Samaritans in fighting for other people and the people we are supposed to be fighting for our those with less power than us. Then we can have ideas where liberals might talk about Less Government solutions and we on the other side can say i agree with you, but we need to serve these people with respect. There are ideas about the dignity of work. All the things that we do because we are trying to serve the poor better and thats where we start. I want to put a little checkpoint there because i want to get back to this idea that you lay out about the dignity of work and how all of that balances out in terms of lifting people up. You lay out lessons that we can begin to learn from and implement. To see this new party of aspiration and you talk about being a moralist, fighting for people and not against things, which youve touched on, get happy, which i loved and i always said thats a key part of it, and and you make the point, get happy and mean it. Its not just be happy for the sake of being happy but mean it. Still all all the best arguments which is something ive learned over the years. Go where you are not welcome which to me is a very important part because when i was chairman of the committee, i said every time we met you have to be where youre not wanted and not expected. We can talk about a couple guys doing that now. Say and 30 seconds and break your bad habits. I think those are pretty good lessons. Of those seven, not necessarily which is the most important, but what is the most important drop off point for you . The one that i think the biggest mistake that we make on the conservative side a lot, the one that trips people are up the most is the one that should be the easiest which is to get happy. Its astonishing when im walking, its appalling. Think about it. This is the greatest country in the history of the world. We should wake up every day feeling lucky to be americans. This whole doomsday set of scenarios that everybody is looming under its almost like the zombie apocalypse. If the other guy wins its going to be a knock in the night. No its not. We have better ideas to help people and were happy to be here and delighted to have our values, not as a weapon or to hurt some of the else, but as a gift. We have to presented as a gift and be happy presenting of as a gift. We have a responsibility to this country. This country is a gift. It is ungrateful for us not to do that. How do you do that when youre talking about the back room conversations related to policy and all of the stuff you know goes into making up healthcare reform . How do you talk about these things . The party comes out and they say we want to appeal and replace and that may appeal amplify Big Government intrusion in healthcare but how do you talk about Something Like that and a happy way . You remember the reason for the policy. When you talk about obama care for example, it makes conservatives insane because it seems like such a departure from doing things simple and for themselves. Its bureaucratic and it twists all of these things around like a bureaucratic axle. Those are things conservatives hate so they find themselves fighting against obama care. Remember the thing you dont like and dont fight against it, fight for for the people who are being hurt by this. This is a reagan advantage for all intensive purposes. Reagan was a warrior. He was a warrior on behalf of people who needed him. There are a lot of people who are watching who still dont like reagan. Look nobody in my family voted for reagan. I grew up in seattle so like eight people voted for reagan in seattle. How he got elected, nobody knows. How does that happen . Its mathematically impossible. So they still say his ideas one good, but remember what was written on his heart. You could say the same thing about bill clinton, by the way. He fought against things and he fought for people who fought against things and he fought for people who needed him. He was a happy warrior. Which is why when he went through his travails, his numbers stayed relatively high because people remembered that he was the fighter for them. They saw the context of what was transpiring was truly political. Thats kind of how i look at what happened with benghazi. The seriousness of the matter, the way the party came out talking about it was much more political. We didnt personalize it. We didnt bring the emotion and the feeling of loss, we admittedly went to the political. Even along that spectrum of something thats really important, the loss of life and benghazi, to something thats really political, how you handle it and how you talk about it Still Matters. Lets go back to the bill clinton thing. He was going through a terrible time for sure. Conservatives will sure. Conservatives will say yeah, he brought it on himself which he did but remember the entire impeachment scandal. They were fighting against him and the things he stood for. This distraction he said was making it difficult for me to fight for the american people. In everything we do we have to remember fighting against things is not even interesting. Its not worthy of us as leaders but fighting for people for us that need us is never going to go away and nothing will ever be more important than that. We have to ask ourselves, do i care about the people who are being adversely affected or my using it as an excuse to hit someone or something that i dont like. We have to examine our own conscious at that point and reexamine our energies. Think about education reform. A lot of people care about that and theyre all over the spectrum on that thing. We can all agree we have an Education System that is inadequate to training people, kids, who grow up to be part of a workforce in a productive and meaningful way. Virtually all the kids are adversely affected are the poor kids. Somebody needs to fight for those kids. Choices important for those kids. You want to fight for education reform because children are being denied their civil rights. Thats a noble thing to direct your energies toward. It Still Matters what you say even in that fight. So for example its one thing for me to say i want to fight for you to reform education whether i want to bring Charter Schools or this or that. But then how you begin to express that and explain it and talk about that particularly when the political blowback and he begins to rise matters more than anything else, right . Absolutely. Remember the face of for the person of whom youre fighting. Remember the child, remember the mother who simply wants to send her child to the best school. Remember youre fighting for her. Its more important than your political future. Its more important than how people perceive you in the press. That mom is the most important thing and if you dont think so, you shouldnt be a leader. Let me shift a little bit. We have the broad scope of the book and the areas that you hit but i want to shift and talk about your journey. I think that animates the book and at least for me you can see at various points where a little bit of arthur is here. Theyre sort of relating back and you talk about your journey to the right. You talk about that movement in your 20s and you refer to, at one point the gap decade. Was that the moment of explosive recognition that wow, theres Something Else out there i need to be thinking about . How was that journey for you . How did you end up at the point where youre now telling the story and relating back to that journey . Two important things happen to me. To begin with, i dropped out of college when i was 19. I come from a lower middleclass in seattle. I left college when i was 19. I wasnt interested and i wanted to be a french horn horn player. I was a musician. I went on the road playing. Theres a lot of work for french horn players. [laughter] i played Chamber Music and jazz and then i wound up in the barcelona symphony. I married ago earl in barcelona and she had dropped out of high school. She wanted to sing with her rock band. We had a similar parallel pack. We plodded to move to the United States and she was gonna study and i was gonna get a job. We moved to the u. S. When i was in my 20s. Neither of us had skills, she didnt speak much english. She got three job offers in her first month. She said something to me, we were nonpolitical, and she said this is the greatest country in the world for people who want to work. It just hit me. She was inning immigrant in my own country. I didnt know anything about the u. S. Except for my preconceived notion. These were minimum what wage jobs by the way. She worked a minimum wage job for three years and we needed that money while we were trying to get on our feet. That had a profound impact on me because it was the optimism of the interim immigrant that i saw it my wife. I was seeing it through the eyes of someone who just came to the country. I started studying and im studying at night, and im working during the day teaching music. Im studying music. Im studying economics. The main question i had forever was about poverty. That is the most important thing to me. Ive always been keenly interested in it. I remember as a little kid, and you had this experience to probably, i grew up lower middleclass, none of us grew up rich but when you first saw real property. I saw a picture in National Grid geographic of a little boy who was starving. I thought how does is happen in this world . It was haunting to me. When i was studying economics i learned what was happening to that boy. I couldnt know for sure, but i could guess. I learned that 80 of starvation poverty had been eradicated since i was a child. I had no idea. Nobody knows. Its like this big secret. 80 of secret. 80 of the number of People Living on 1 dollar a day or less has gone away since i was a kid. I learned why. It was not United Nations or the world bank, it was globalization, free trade, Property Rights and entrepreneurship. It it was americanstyle Free Enterprise spreading around the world. It was american conservative ideas that pulled 2 billion people out of poverty since i was a child. To come to my country and experience real opportunity with no education effectively and then discovered the ideas of american conservatives lift up the world and then i listened and conservatives werent even saying it. They talked that all they cared about was money. I went on a quest. I became a political conservative and it led me where i am today which is to work with leaders and try to get this message out because you know what, we have a moral obligation to save the next 2 billion people and bring in a wave of immigrants to help. We currently have a problem with immigration. As i articulated today, you, you go back to what the bush administration, at least in a framework, laid out. That was in his state of the union which unfortunately dissipated and fell apart consequently. Then it was picked up again by the gang of eight in the house and senate to get to some compromise on Immigration Reform that all fell away. We seem to be in the space where the immigrant story is not one of aspirational entrepreneurialism and taking advantage of the opportunities this country offers but its from the opportunity of taking advantage of the country. Plotting the rule of law, avoiding avoiding your responsibility to come in the right way and follow the rules, trying to get welfare. How do you create a counter narrative of an aspirational story . The gop, were talking about the gop, once articulated itself as the party of aspiration. Given the trajectory we are currently on, how do you make that turn, that pivot in light of the narrative you just described that i think in the book, that speaks to this aspirational story that your wife had about america. There were a couple things. One is specific and one is general. At the general level the gop will be able to get its mind around how we think about immigration a lot better once it makes the turn from the party of anger to the party of aspiration. That will take a visionary leader who talks about aspiration as opposed to anger. Anger is easier than aspiration. Aspiration means you have to have hope and hope means are trying to make new friends. Anger is all about fear and fear is about firing up your base. Its its very easy and very lazy. Aspiration is the late way to go. An aspirational candidate will feed to my leader and that will feed through all sorts of different thing. Thats. Thats a systemic remedy that is necessary. We also have to have policies. The second thing is that republicans, and by the way democrats too, need to stop thinking about immigration as if it was one thing. Its not. Its 30 things. We needed incremental approach toward progress. They want to poison the well on immigration so we can pull the bandaid off all at once and all will go down the drain. Think about the 30 things we need to do over the five years. Lets do the easy important things first. High skill immigration, creates five jobs for nativeborn americans. The guest worker programs are important so the others will stop being exploited. We can make Real Progress going down the list understanding that it will take several years. This is a good way back from your personal journey and how that works in the book to the point where you talk about practical hope. You referenced hope just now. What is that . What is that for you . What does that mean . I had flashbacks to yes we can, keep hope alive, hope and change. We talk politicians, we talk in the political system that hope is almost just a . 10 word they threw around. You give it a new emphasis for the gop. You talk about it in terms of being a practical hope. What you mean by that . Hope as we come to understand, like hope and change from the obama campaign, it was all about i hope the government will help me is what it came down to. [laughter] thats very well put. Like i hope i hit the lottery. I hope i dont get hit by a car car today. You can hope all you want about events that are outside of your control. Thats not the traditional understanding of hope. Hope is empowering. There are good psychological studies that say when you talk about hope that are things that are out of your control is a problem for human welfare. We talk about hope is it can be done and i can do it. Thats the hope of my great grandparents who came to the United States thing my hope is that i can be rewarded for my hard work and merit for the first time. So thats the part of the book where you relay it to the american dream. Is that the pathway that youre taking their . The pursuit of happiness is intertwined with the concept of hope as in it can be done and i can do it. If i understand it can be done and i see how i can do it, that is where the pursuit of happiness starts. You talk about, and i was actually a little bit thrown off by this portion of the book, where you reference pope francis. You talk about, you know, this wariness and aging. This kind of goes back to, what i mentioned before about grandma europe in that part of the book. Is that also part of this hope narrative or is that a different approach that you are looking at with the pope francis idea of how we give of ourselves and others and how we make ourselves acceptable to others and how the thing plays itself out in a political context. Pope francis gets a lot of press for his capitalism in the environment. Im talking about a different different set of ideas from pope francis. He also talks about a society that effectively snuffs itself out. It stops having children, has no sense of aspiration, just too tired to carry on. He coined the phrase grandma europe. Its brutal. Grandma europe. When you think about it, i have a lot of family in europe because my wife is from barcelona. You meet these people in their 40s, their 30s and 40s and theres even a word for it that means not studying and not working. All of these adults that dont have jobs, they dont have education. They typically live with their parents and have no religion. They have no room romantic relationship. They have nothing. They have tv, they have video games, its horrible and depressing. Thank god for the internet. This is effectively what leads to a society to stop evolving and stop making problem entering progress. This is what pope francis is talking about. He had an audio of european leaders in brussels and they were giving this speech and it was a stony silence. He was wagging his finger that you people are not procreating and you dont have any religion. He does that quite a bit. Thats the side of him i dont think people understand or get. I listen to a lot of folks, particularly progressives who rail for him and those who rail against them and you realize neither one of them are getting what he is saying. He is consistent and then hes making a point that you just did. You need need to take a look at whats happening through the policy and the things in the actions youre taking are not taking. I thought that was pretty fascinating how you sort of worked that into this narrative of a political process and party changing itself. I thought that part was very well done. Im curious then, moving all of those pieces around that you have, and youre looking at the Political Landscape today, what it means and what its looking like, how does an institution like aei, American Enterprise institute American Enterprise institute that you run, how to those institutions feed the beast or not because weve seen, for example, number of organizations and i dont i dont need to name them, that have perpetrated this sort of negative narrative because it translates into money. Its a great fundraising tool. But then you have others that are trying to list the conversation into new spaces. Is that a ying and yang process . Thousands of people and are watching us now and theyre very frustrated with washington d. C. They say its really bitter, nothing is getting done, its gridlocked and people will say, what you have to do is the Political Parties need to agree with each other more. You need you need more liberal republicans than you need more conservative democrats that can overlap. Thats actually wrong and he gets back to what we talked about a minute ago. You you need a moral consensus on which sides both agree. We are fighting for opportunity for people who need it most. Thats the moral consensus. The think tank is to offer policy ideas that can actually help execute that idea that is the moral consensus. That is what they are supposed to do. If you dont have a moral consensus, if you dont discuss the moral consensuse those in less power than you, war and thats a problem. Lets not forget that these are policy differences and we are agreeing on something on the middle of it. If we can do that we can make a lot of progress without pretending that progressives and conservatives have to agree with each other. They. They dont. That does seem to be a stumbling block. The word you use that is important to me at least in my time as an elected official, as a political figure, the one word that ive always avoided using because its become so polarizing is compromised. All all the sudden people think when you use that term i have to give up something. The word that i think seems to work best in this political environment that were living in is consensus. Im not asking you to give up anything. Im. Im asking you to take what you believe in whats true to you and bring it to the table of conversation. Put it on here and see where it lines up and matches. That is where i think institutions like yours play an important role, not just intellectually but also in setting those guidepost for the argument. Youre kind of putting it all on the table. Youre looking at exploring all of these complicated issues and a lot of times youre breaking them down and making them not just relevant, but understood. You avoid the confusion that leads me to not like you because you have a different position or to fight you because you have a different position. How do you see that playing itself out as we go into this president ial cycle where these folks are going to be taking some very hard cues, not necessarily from institutions like yours which they probably should, but from easier, lower common denominator spaces. We dont know whats going to happen. The great disappointment of the past that cade politically was not that president block Obama Barack Obama was elected, but that he missed the opportunity. Liberals will say yes but he was blockaded to do what he wanted to do by conservatives. You and i that have been chief executives of a organization know that you never blame people who are lower down the food chain whether you can fire them or not. Whether they are professors with tenure or elected officials, the boss is the boss. Lyndon b. Johnson didnt make that excuse. Ronald reagan didnt make that excuse. Both of those guys were pretty optimistic. Pessimism has led to pessimism and division. They kind of came from the obama era. They were reaction from the obama era. We need visionaries per visionaries. We need conservative visionaries who declare their independence and come out as optimist to say its a new day and we can have competing pessimisms or we can have competing optimisms. What is the formula you offer in the book for that conservative visionary . What are visionary . What are the elements in the 215 pages of this book that you would pull out and focus that visionary on to begin that process . Its all about the process of evolution and how you of all from where you are to this new space and new environment. Whether or not you are willing to do it. To help you get there, what are some of the things that you would pull out. We talked about the seven lessons. Maybe its elements of that. What other aspects of this book that you had in mind for that vision . The most important thing to remember is that we are fighting for people. Ive said this a whole bunch of times and i want to emphasize it one more time. If there is one thing that will help us be an optimist its realizing that were trying to create hope on behalf of people who currently dont have it. Thats our job. If we cant do that job we should do Something Else entirely. Thats the job of american leaders in politics. That is something that barack obama did. He he created the sense of hope. His campaign did but then you say he governed on pessimism. He governed on pessimism and division. How how we talked, he did what pessimists typically do which is they shift blame and dont take responsibility. They dont dig in they are basically distracted from the task at hand. How do you flip that script . How does that switch turnoff . You spent 18 months campaigning on hope and change. You see this gravitational pull do i have to keep that sense of hope myself . Probably. The way you do that is through the relationships you have with people. Youve done a lot of chief executive things. Look, look, i met you. The first time we met i didnt know you but you invited me over. Why . Because you are a relationship guy. Thats what good leaders do. They bring people in so they can develop relationships with people. The only way youre going to elicit flexibility from people is to have a human is to have a human to human relationship. If you dont do it, there are no campaign promises. Thats why the management that, in the leadership that come with being a member of the Political Class is hard work and we need to deal with other people which is a key thing. And remember why. There are all these people out there who are suffering. In the past seven years, think about how many poor people have been left behind that we need to fight for. Do we see them as liabilities to manage or do we see them as assets to develop . If youre optimist and you see them as things we need to develop, your gonna develop relationships and do everything you can to help them. You say in the book health is important, hope is essential. That really struck me in that section of the book we talk about that because it does seem to tie in to what youre saying in terms of that aspirational leader who will get out there and talk about that. That i think is where they get tripped up. That that is they get tripped up on the idea of health and so they get bogged down in the ways i have to help and lose sight of the fact that the hope is the essential element to all of that. Absolutely. Parents do this constantly. How megan help my kid. No. No, how my going to set my kid free. When you are really singing about it youre thinking what can i do to get the barriers out of the way of my childhood thats how the government should be thinking about their citizens as well. I been doing that for a while. Its time to go. [laughter] one of the things i talk about in the book is the four secrets to a happy life. I didnt make this up. The four secrets of the happiest life our faith, family, community and work. How can the government assist in those things . We dont need a Government Health project of the department of state family of community and work. No we need a president of the United States who gets up every day who says what can i do to get out of the way of americans practicing their faith , building their families, participating in their communities and having an incentive for hard, honest, ordinary work. Right now we we are bridging roads to freedom, were atomizing families and fragmenting communities. Were creating disincentives for people to work. I understand whats going on and officials are trying to do something they think will be helpful but theyre not helping because theyre not providing hope by placing those barriers. You talk about lifting people up and then you focus on jobs and pack witty and things like that. In the section section of the book i thought was very interesting in chapter three, you title it pushing the bucket. What is that . I saw the title and then i read through the chapter and i thought what is that. So i did a lot of fieldwork for this book. As a social scientist, im ordinarily looking at data. This is based on fieldwork. I told dozens of stories of people have built their life. There is there is one place i went to and it was homeless shelter in new york for men mostly in their 30s and 40s. A a lot of them had spent time in prison. This is the population of people that we throw away in our society. These are the people that are the hardest to deal with. Men without families who have been imprisoned and are currently homeless. If theres anybody a liability to society its these guys. This place was started by a couple in new york city and they looked at everybody and said do we believe that people are assets or not . Okay if we do we need to look at the hardest cases and through the ministry of honest sanctified work we need to help them put their lives together. What they do is these guys come in and they are held to strict behavioral stand standards. Similar to the standards you and i were held to and you hold your children too. The first job they have is pushing the bucket down fifth avenue. They are cleaning the street in this blue uniform and its not degrading because they get paid for it and it goes into a savings account and they have to pay Child Support because a lot of these guys have kids. Then they migrate into other work programs. I met a guy named richard who had been in the program for one year after being in prison for 18 years. He never had never had a job and apartment, cell phone, a car, nothing. After one year he pushes the bucket and he learns how to be an exterminator. I said i said to him, after one year, yet first gotten his first job. I said are you happy . Mike he said no, look at this email and and he showed me an email from his boss and the boss said to him emergency bedbug job i need you now. I said so. He said look at this is as i need you now. He said that is the pursuit of happiness to be needed to create real value. To have your value recognize. Again going back to one of the underlying themes in the book, thats what we used to talk about as gop. That is that is something that was of value that we put out there and we pushed. So you take that story and you take this chapter we talk about pushing the button and viewing people as assets, not liabilities. Then you Flash Forward into the recent conversation and jeb bush has gotten criticism for it unnecessarily so, i think because i got what he was saying, but let me get your take where you talk about work as a blessing. This is a Value Proposition that the parties should understand and link it to a lot of other things. Then you have jeb bush a couple weeks ago talking about people wanting or needing to work more. A lot of folks, particularly the progressives took it the wrong way sort of casting it as something of a negative when in fact thats not what it is. I think he he was trying to get around to the point about recognizing the value, the fact that you have employers that are cutting back on time. You have employers who are changing the definition of fulltime work to meet arbitrary federal standards now so they dont get penalized and they dont have to pay extra or whatever. At the end of the day people want to work. They they value that work. Jeb bush. He was on fairly penalized. Unfairly penalize. We have two big organizations in america. We have people who are looking for jobs and cant find him. That is going down. The problem is the Unemployed People who are underemployed. Think about this. These are people who want to work more but cant. This is the problem we have in our country today. People who want to work harder and want to get ahead cant do it and somebodys got to fight for these people. We need a system that allows people to work harder and theres more opportunity for these people. How do we get ahead. We got a head by working harder. Of people that are welleducated and come from families that valued education and have good at the coal standards and all the good things that our parents gave us, if its just for us, the poor people cant get ahead by working harder, what kind of country is that . A lot of that work work ethic is rooted. I know my mom was a laundry worker here in washington d. C. For 45 years making minimum wage raising her kids but that worth work ethic never dissipated and was instilled in me and my sister and its amazing how we transition to a point now where that ethic is not recognized or appreciated. Where we have people who think the poor are just lazy and they want to stay that way. As i like to say, say, i dont know about you, but how many people woke up this morning and said all i want to do today is be poor. Who said i want my kids see me get a welfare check instead of a paycheck . I know this is not the bigotry of low expectations and i know the left has been guilty of holding them to lower expectations but the right has to examine their conscious as well. Too many times i have heard people just want their free stuff as if poor people, i would prefer to get well chair welfare welfare then collect a paycheck. Ive never heard of anyone who would rather have welfare than a paycheck. We should uphold the same standards of dignity for everybody it is wrong for us to say they simply dont want to work because one its not true and too its not helpful and three its going to kill the Republican Party. I agree on that point. Exactly. That is a perfect transition to what i thought was kind of a fun part of the book because i self identified in so many ways in this section on this chapter of protest movement. I think the readers will enjoy the way you tell the story here in the way you create the narrative. You start out talking about our early founders and this whole revenue should revolutionary sense. Im a revolutionary. I like to mix it up. I believe in pushing the envelope sometimes to my own detriment and thats another show. Ill interview you. I love this quote and i think it sets up and i want to tie it in to adam, rosa parks, new gingrich, tea party. Those are all revolutionary and it starts with sam adams. As you know he was the original tea party organizer. It does not require the majority to prevail but an irate minority to start brushfires in peoples mind. I thought that described so much of that revolutionary spirit. You go on and talk about how the tea party jolted the Republican Party and that whole movement in this part of the century. But then you go on and you get into the conversation about building a social movement and looking at elements of the civil rights struggle of which the gop plays an important role. Youre looking at the story of rosa parks and i get through the new gingrich piece because we are working to give power back to the people. Walk us through your thinking in the book where you are getting to the sense of social movement in created out of a protest movement. The arab spring is a protest movement. You can have a protest movement against an unjust law. It was hugely important to do so because it was based on rebellion against injustice. A lot of good things start this way but they fizzle out if they dont actually go to fighting against the injustice to fighting for the people who are the object of that injustice. Thats a really important distinction and how do you do it . By actually changing the locust of your attention to who you are fighting for and having a strong moral overlay for it. Its us against the world and us against the machine. If its not david against goliath its not that interesting. Thats how protest movements fail. Ultimate your goal should be to be a majority. It has to move on to understand how society will be better as a result of that. A couple examples of that, one was the Civil Rights Movement where it started out like rosa parks and the march and the important elements of a protest movement. Dr. King was such a visionary because he understood that his goal was for everybody in america to say i cant believe we used to do that which is where weve gotten in america today. Not entirely, but almost. We cant believe the end antidiscrimination law. A woman governor together with an africanamerican senator that was born poor, together lowered the confederate battle flag and thats how things have changed. Thats what Martin Luther king did by moving from protest movement to social movement. He is fighting for all people in the common interest. So what is a conservative social justice agenda. What what does that look like for you in the context that weve got the Voting Rights and nothing is done in the senate. Youve got concerns about Voting Rights and how states are implementing. Youve got the shootings that have occurred, the tensions that have risen. How does a party in flux begin to address these issues. Then you have rand paul who is lead in this area or is trying to lead in this area but how do you see this playing out . Social social justice is on the right begin by recognizing that its on the left wing turf. When you say social justice its like automatically youre a liberal, just, just saying that. But its important to appropriate the language and decide whether they are good ideas. Social justice is very good idea and they need a bid in that but it basically starts with one thing which is values. That is faith Family Community and work. Its its very important that we talk about these things as a gift rather than a cultural war. They say to beat you over the head with my morals until you are submitting. You have to say no i hold my kids to high standards because i want them to have the best life. Your kids, they are all of our kids too. Poor. Poor children are our children to because we rr brothers keepers. We need to declare peace right now on the safety net. Not the whole thing, i know its messy government spending, i get it, but, but the idea that we can actually help people that we dont even know because of capitalism and its the first time in Human History that its possible and thats a great achievement. Second, only for the poor and poor and needy. It moves everybody up and everybody is taking in a sense which is unsustainable which we have seen in greece for example. You have a president ial candidate in Bernie Sanders who is actively in articulating redistribution of wealth. So if that becomes the agenda, how do you then put into play and keep in place all those other value systems that youre talking about because clearly what i value has no value because youre going to take it and give it to someone else. It doesnt work. Bernie sanders wants the United States to be norway. If we did what he wanted us to do we would become greece. The greek system in the norway system is very similar but its what would happen to us. The third part of the social justice agenda is the hope agenda. That means education reform, radical work creation and entrepreneurship pushed all the way down to the bottom. Republicans have been obsessed with entrepreneurship for rich people. Thats not about rich people. Its not about making 1 billion. Its about building a life in the book is full of design details. We havent gotten too far into the weeds in this conversation. There is lots of weeds in this book. I talked about getting away from the licensing that hurt poor people. When i look at washington d. C. Like you and i know real well, if you want to be a realtor it takes hundred and 35 hours of education. Thats a typical job, if you want to be a hairdresser, braid hair, do nails, typical job of a lowincome person, you have to get over 1000 hours of education. You education. You have to go to school for over a year to get a cosmetology license. Thats dissemination. That is anti entrepreneurial behavior. So we can be education reform warriors. Thats all about innovation and choice. We could be radicals for work so that every Public Policy is to bring more work for people who dont have College Education but want to work hard and do something that is skilled and good. It takes five it takes five weeks to get gutters put on your house in this country and we have people who are laid off and cant find jobs. We have to do better in vocation and especially helping people build their lives by pushing Free Enterprise in the system and the freedom that we as uppermiddleclass enjoy all the way down to the bottom. Then well have a new game. So with this new game, where do you see us at the end of the cycle . This is the prescription as far as im concerned. When i was reading this and i said to, i said how does this man get in my head. You have articulated what a lot of conservatives have felt has been missing. There are a lot of pieces out there but this brings them altogether. Youre right we didnt get into a lot of the weeds here. Ill leave the weeds for you to read. And you should, but i am left at the end with the question, looking at how this is unfolding now, where do you see this going . If it all fits right now the way youve described it, how do you see this playing out in the current cycle and this book being on the table as it should be what is the take away at the end of the day . This is a manual for conservative optimism. We have reason to be optimistic as i mentioned before its irresponsible for us not to be optimistic because we live in the greatest country of the world. This is a handbook to help you learn how to talk and be optimistic. If it works than the republicans and conservatives, no matter what party they belong to is going to be seen as much more aspirational force and we will break out of the shackles that we have seen. If they are the only ones who do it they are going to experience incredible victory in 2016. They will take the country forward to the likes of which we have not seen since the days of ronald reagan. If they are competing optimism between the two parties there will be a virtual competition and america wins unilaterally. Its a new kind of conservative. Absolutely. At when we really see whats on our own heart, we dont dont need a qualifier for conservativism. Oh im a conservative but not one of those mean ones. You have to understand it which is to say the dignity of work in the sanctity of every single individually is a child of god. How did we get so far off that path . How did we get into the space where what we what you are describing is not what we are. Its anger and protest. People are still angry about the lawlessness in the chaos and that theyre losing the country in so many ways that they lash out. Believe and celebrate and follow summary like donald trump, at least for a little while. I understand the frustration that goes into it but thats not the right reaction. Thats not it. When you feel like lashing out, thats when you have to be most in control. Is that true on the Progressive Side where you see them lurching toward and Elizabeth Warren . Yes. Its a lot less interesting for the media. Summary like donald trump is like catnip for the media. You never know know whats going to come out of his mouth. Its catnip with a cocktail. Absolutely. The truth is the left is moving to the left more than the right is moving to the right. The right is actually moving into a more flexible apps are aspirational space and i think thats better than 50 likely that you will see a candidate who basically frames himself as the candidate of aspiration out of anger. Youve gotten high praise for the book from some really cool people like senator mark mike lee, paul ryan who states it makes the case for why principles should be the center of our poverty fighting efforts. That for me is one of the more important takeaways of the book. It does it does give a prescription of how to fight for something and how to be about that fight in a way that brings people into it. I think after listening to you