College here in washington d. C. Welcome to the center for constitutional studies in constitutional ship. We are cosponsored by clear politics. Com and i recognize david hiding in the back. He is the publisher and jen mcintyre of the co founder who will be here as well. Our discussion deals with a collection of essays in which the essays were originally published. The perils and promises of populism. It is not a new idea in latin means the voice of the people. The voice of the people is the voice of god which is often time used in history to attack monarchs and attacked the people who said such nonsense. The idea of populism is not new to america. Thats pricing in a regime of popular consent but theres always been somewhat of attention between popular government and constitutional government, the potential of populist demagogues. Hence promise and peril. Populism abounds from agent rome to brexit england and donald trump are elected as president on a populist revolt. Our speakers will speak for about five minutes and then will have discussion after words. Will be joined by Michael Anton and we will start. Our first speaker is Roger Kimball. He is the author of numerous fine works. He is also responsible for all of this and other great things being published by encounter and i would like to draw your attention to a broad number of things there publishing on numerous topics. Roger, please start us out thank you everyone for coming. I dont suppose that any term has been more productive of confusion over the past couple years than populism. In many ways, it is a word in search of a definition. For many people, populism is like the term fascism according to george orwell. That is to say the rhetorical weapon is very lack of semantic precision is part of the attraction because anything or anyone you dont like can be the p and if you can deploy the f word and get it to stick. What does populism mean . I think it means little more than i dont really like this person or this policy. They will have noticed that the term racism has a similar allpurpose content free aura of malignancy but exploring that topic will take us further afield so well save that for another day. Thinking about the term populism reminds us that certain words accumulate a nimbus of positive associations and they shoulder a portfolio of bad feelings. For example, consider the two very different careers of the terms democracy on one hand and populism on the other hand. Democracy is a you logistic word. It produces vibrations. People feel good about themselves when they use the word democracy. But its quite otherwise with populism. This should seem quite odd because the word populism occupies a semantic space very close to democracy. Democracy means what. It means rule by the people. Populism according to the American Heritage dictionary describes a political philosophy directed to the needs of the Common People and advancing a more equitable distribution of wealth and power, just the kind of things that the people, if they were to rule, would seek. But the fact that populism is ambivalent at best, sometimes it is true, a charismatic figure can survive and even illuminate the term populist like assertive personal halo. Varney sanders managed this trick among the evil conscious, non gender stereotyping anti capitalist beneficiary of capitalism in the last election [laughter] but it was always my impression that, in this case, the term populist was not by sanders or his followers but his rivals and the media, and their effort to establish standards in the publics mind as one of the many examples of not hillary who herself was presented to be popular but not populous. There are at least two sides of the negative association under which the term populist struggles. On the one hand, there is the issue of demagoguery. Some commentators tell us that populous and demagogue are essentially synonyms though they rarely point out that the greek word demagogue meant a popular leader. The populist leader has said to for steak reason and moderation in order to stir the dark passions of the semi literate and spiritual on elevated populous, the people who eat mcdonalds hamburgers. On the other hand theres the issue of the unedifying soil upon which the demagogic leader is said to work. Anyone who has looked into the commentary on brexit, the campaign of the first year of the Trump Administration or last summers election in france will have noted this. Populism, that is to say is yielded less as it is descriptive than a delegitimizing term. Successfully charge someone with populist sympathies and you get both the imputation of demagoguery and what was famously derived as a deplorable and irredeemable cohort. The element of the existential appreciation was almost palpable. I think i first became aware that the charge could have a powerful political, moral delegitimizing effect when i was in london in june of 2015 to cover the brexit vote. Nearly everyone i met was a remainder. The higher up you were in pay scale, the more likely you were that they would be in favor of britain remaining in the European Union and the more pointed would be his disparagement of him arguing in favor of brexit. They were said to be angry, ignorant, fearful, xenophobic and racist when they moved that program to the United States a little later. Except, the people who were four brexit really werent, at least not the ones i met. For them, it turned on a simple question, who rules. If the ultimate source of parliament megan has been for centuries or is it brussels. I think uranian people are just now discussing a similar question. Who rules in iran . The fundamentalists or the reigning people. We will find out. Im convinced that the issue of sovereignty, what we might call the location of sovereignty has played a very large role in the rise of the phenomenon we describe as populism. Thats both in the United States and elsewhere. In this country, the question of sovereignty, of whom governance stands behind the rebellion against the Political Correctness of our times [inaudible] the smothering blanket of regulatory access has had a wide range of practical and economical effects, stifling entrepreneurship and making productive innovation difficult. Perhaps its deepest effects are spiritual and psychological. Many assault against free speech on College Campuses come the demand for safe spaces and trigger warnings as part of this dictatorship of Political Correctness. One of the main points of his arguments concerning what he called the psychological change, the character of the people that government control. It involves a process of softening. In exchange for the challenges of liberty and selfreliance for the coddling pleasure of dependence. In his 1770 essay, thoughts on the present discontents, edmund burke criticized the court of george the third for circumventing parliament and establishing what amounted to a new regime of role progress and influence peddling. They maintained the appearance of parliamentary supremacy but a closer look showed that the system was corrupt. It was soon discovered, he wrote as a sly understatement that the forms of the free and the ends of an arbitrary government were things, they were not altogether incompatible. That discovery stands behind the growth of the Administrative State in our society, under the cloak of Democratic Institution institutions, its essentially undemocratic activities to pursue an expansionist agenda that threatened liberty and the most comprehensive way by circumventing the law. At the same time, however, a growing recognition of a totalitarian goals of the Administrative State have said what many call the populist uprising here and in europe. Populous i suppose is one word for this phenomenon and affirmation of sovereignty underwritten by a passion of freedom is another and possibly more accurate term. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker [applause] our next speaker is james pearson. He is the senior fellow. He is the author of many great books including shattered consensus. He also has an essay in the january [inaudible] i appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you roger for assembling this. My essay in this volume is about james madison. The constitution does not engrave anyones policy preferences in the chimes of process and the series of rights, but none of the policy preferences thapreference is ths hold today so i suggest in this essay that all of this is badly overblown in the constitution is going to survive without any difficulty. Its under greater threat and from disintegration and in some of his last letters. Was simila it was similar to a serpent in regards to this but obviously he was thinking the slavery issue. I dont believe they envisioned a nation state. If you think about federalist number ten in the extended republic was talking about a policy in which the country is divided. If they cant agree on something or reach a consensus then that will be okay if. But democracy is the expression of people and we need to identify the general will of the people as a coherent and united conception of the nation. Succumb if you look at these polls, trends represents the nationstate and resolution and the United States represents something different. Now we talk about it as a republic but what was he imagining . The images of the state at this time were not very wide. There was of course the idea of the empire, that was the dominant view of the state at the time. Jefferson called his vision and empire of liberty and the United States acquired the Louisiana Purchase jefferson didnt seem to care if the New Territories are organized within the United States or they were organized as separate states so long as they were republic he envisioned an empire not only with the united people. Now of course they talk about the union and that was the idea. Sacred image was time and when dean talked about that. The United States was forged into a nationstate that took place between each and 60 to 1945. Those were communal events and everybody participated and sacrificed. They created a nationstate on kind of a united people. If one were to look at the Development Taking place since world war ii one could see a continuation of the american nationstate that was assembled. It was great stress and greater difficulty that through the course of the events, the United States as a nationstat is a nata image of itself. We intervened in the european war and save them from themselves until they are the great superpower in the world we have this version of the american nation. Some would give more and more to look less like a nationstate and more like an empire with a powerful Administrative Center with an attenuated relationship with all the groups across the country nothing uniting these groups, multicultural groups and many languages. The empires collapse and disintegrate and that is the story of the century. Donald trump i would say was elected to try to somehow reconstitute the nationstate against this centrifugal forces that is now encountered. Is this something that can be accomplished and is going to be extremely difficult i think that i dont think that is what it represents. I dont think that donald trump has articulated this question all the 12. It can be found at heritage. Org. Lets be honest if donald trump hadnt run for office, populism would still exist but roger would have commissioned a couple of short pieces and not the series of indepth essays analyzing the phenomenon of populism which are now collected in this excellent book by the way that i recommend. Now trump isnt the First American populace. We had a party in the u. S. That actually claimed the term populist in the 1890s but trump is the most successful populist weve ever had so hes never called himself a populist but it is pretty clear that the cornerstone is the following claim the end of the American People have been betrayed and taken advantage of by corrupt and incompetent allegiance from both parties. Its interesting to note that early in his campaign he calledd for even its incompetent and made his case more compelling by starting to attack them for being corrupt and taking advantage of the American People. Now, not surprising, they reacted and warned us in the strongest possible terms that the presidencthepresidency woule end of america and the rest of the gulf. I cant risk sharing with you the right and th and left into e eve of the election. In terms of Constitutional Order they wrote in the new York Magazine trump is an extinction level event that marked the end of democracy and the beginning of america. Paul krugman was his characteristic subtlety and warned america that we would soon become trumpistan content for the rule of law with no restraint whatsoever. In the baseline dangers for the Trump Administration. In the presidency in america and the world are somehow still standing. We should have the third consecutive supporter of the economic growth. More than 73 very special elections and many of them have been won by democrats to caliphate is no morit isno moree negotiating table. Trump of course cannot gain credit for all these things. Contrary to the warnings, he appointed him to the supreme court. He is pursuing a very aggressive regulatory agenda on all that is doing much good for the economy and the constitution. To pull out of the paris climate accord. And jerusalem is the capital of israel judged by the conventional non standards of the Republican Party, president of trump has had a pretty successful first year. The deportations are up. Theyve not negotiated a trade deals but they did and the draining of the swamp is not surprisingly proving to be the toughest challenge. Washington it turns out wasnt drained in a year and they did order the first ever financial audit of the Defense Department and the Washington Post reported this week that the federal government, the number of jobs that declined in the past year by 14,000. Succumb in some states hav had e success so far as a republican dan as a populist which is to be expected given how little support his views are in the Republican Party i will and by pointing out congress is now discussing the signature issue of immigration so lets see what this year brings. Thank you. Ooscar so i have to do my Clint Eastwood impersonation. Michael, glad to have you, assistant Deputy Communications to the Security Council and is also the author before his current work in that capacity he wrote the flight 93 election. I remember that piece. It was like 10 Million Words and they wrote a rebuttal and sullivan found me at some point and said he thought it was very good but hard to answer. What was i going to say . I have to begin from a position of ignorance because i still dont know what that position of populist is. I know it is associated with Williams Jennings bryan. Any other great populist figures in history those are the only ones i can think of. The only one that is supposed to be bad, nobody says it is a compliment, if youre a populist you are bad, which is okay take that at face value that we shoulbut we shouldexplore it a. The one thing that we know that is unquestionably good is democracy. Thats the only legitimate form of government and it is an obligation or should be an obligation in the United States government to spread democracy throughout the world. Maybe subterfuge and other ways, but we aired this from certain intellectuals. So democracy is good and populism is bad. The root of populism, roger would tell you because he can speak in these languages anyway that i cannot is a latin term for the people while the roots of democracy is the people at the most there is a slight difference in that it is very selfconsciously a part of the whole people. Its not everybody. It is that many or the poor or the multitude. Whereas the people are the whole people. It seems to add an echo like that so thinking about this further prod me to one of my favorite writers. A political philosopher said he specifically praises the people on specific grounds. All of the write the writers age basically that people are stupid and you have to be governed to have any stagehand on the pillar. Pity it was the American People who for a couple of decades at least were tired of unchecked illegal immigration. Whereas they used the term got been some of the king or monarch or just anybody in charge in that sort of way where the elites that were more confident plus a financial crisis and a lot of other things come us who is wiser and more constant but this course is entitled as perhaps the 2016 election illustrated there is a multitude of border enforcement and one is the too bad trade deals and smarter safer policy that he couldnt gebut hecouldnt get it they hoped for a. They found a candidate who would explicitly and overtly championed their interest and now they are trying to ask to be to give them what they asked for and always wanted. This is the title of course 153 he says that many times. I can give you a few examples like these people wanted to launch the expedition and look how that turned out. The multitude of the resolution it wasnt and elite conspiracy and the aristocrats and so on the opposed it. People can be deceived that is thats never true of the elite . I dont know. They are the ones that plunder and world war one as the multitude. They gave us the financial crisis. So maybe this isnt quite as open of a question, but i would suggest. However there is another demagogue. Like the populist traditionally the demagogue is someone who can appeal to the multitude to move it to unhealthy directions and certainly there have been examples of this many in our century or the past century but i wonder is that only a phenomenon or a class of people whose only specialty is to appeal to the prejudices of the ely. Who do i mean by this, people like tom friedman, malcolm gladwell, the whole Editorial Staff of the Financial Times and the economist who specialize in formulating and refining the conventional wisdom and enforcing they told depletes what they want to hear of course your policy is justified and moral and right and opioid epidemics and stuff like that, that is the failure of older people, keep doing what youre doing so we need to think about this. It is a category of thought that nobody has explored. I would suggest that we all were some of us whoever is interested, come up with a definition of only is a parallel of populism because this really does work both ways in reality just not get in our language but i think that we will get there. [applause] we have time for questions and microphones. I will start with the first question picking up on something that roger eluted to them wondering whether the circumstances to be of populism arises when there is a divide between the but it seems to be different because the nature of the bureaucracy, administration and how we are ruled. Does that give rise to different populist leaders that we are also observing . The Administrative State is possibly the most serious threat to the Civil Liberties that we face because it is a systematic and quite deliberate means of. Its what the Administrative State is is the power to the entities that are not the constitution says all legislative powers should be in the congress hands, not the epa, not the Consumer Protection board, not the irs into this kind of alphabet soup populated by people who would be our masters and tell us what we have to d do and what we may not do with the ultimate goal of making it everything that isnt mandatory for christmas. I think it is a fact that it seems the growth of the state is something that is lawful and joe pointed out. In the madisonian system if madison envisioned all the action taking place in congress in all of the conflicting groups and they would settle the problems in the congress, but in the modern age it dawned on people this is extremely difficult to get anything done in this matter, so we need to find ways to make end runs about it and thus we find that people look to the courts increasingly if you can muster the five justices in the courts you can totally change the social policy and a beaded change the nature of the regime. That is something that has only dawned on people in the postwar era and i suppose you could say they tried to do that dred scott, but that was it t spectar blowout and nothe spectacularble administrative structure to make the decisions that can never be made by the congress, so it is thafrustration with the madisonn system of confidence build builo the system that has led to the creation of policies and runs around the system. And partly that is the Administrative State. Madison said that this kind of problem can be solved by an appeal to the electoral principle. If the people dont like it, they can vote them out. Madison thought that was a simple thing to do but it turns out that is a very difficult thing to do as we are finding out. Because, if donald trump is elected by the people to do Something Like this and we find the serious resistance against it, so began i would say we are talking about the failure of the madisonian structure in the century. I dont know that i would chalk that up. Its been deliberately changed to stop working the way that it was designed to work and to be if not in complete control of the idea of experts it is that life has become too complicated so with the rule of experts we have to expand the bureaucracy in the state and all of thi of e system by desigthis isdone by dd intention but the only way is if you could argue somehow that its le limited to that which i dont think it has led insufficient safeguards to prevent it i suppose and remember this was a deliberate change, not a failure per se. There is an ideological mention that the elites on the left and the right have a variety of globalism and the issues that define trump released to the questions of the nation and how america interacts and the rest of the world, who do wwould we trade with and on t terms and what sort of a Foreign Policy to be have that manifests itself on the treat immigration and Foreign Policy previous populist movements. Im not a historian but i think they were criticizing but there was this added dimension. I think the most intelligent thing that was said is we either have a country or we dont. You dont need a phd in political philosophy to state it that way but it turns out this is a revolutionary Statement Today and i dont think it would have been in the age of Andrew Jackson or William Jennings bryan. The radically accelerating. You could find very recently bill clinton and brother of jordan and the others talking about border security. If you can find New York Times unsigned editorials praising these things in the years that began with a two and now we are only a decade or so on and its all completely what causes people to be objection it is quite striking how fast of the opinion moves in one direction and the state. Raise your hand. We have microphones. You have used words that goal derived from the people that have antithetical meanings, democracy, demagogue. There is one other i have not heard. The historical figures that you cited a with William Jennings bryan. Its one of the things that turns off a lot of people that he does seem to have a certain outerborough vulgarity. Is the populism inevitably folder . Today happens to be the anniversary of crossing the rubicon. The populist was he bolder, no. I dont thin think that it is ld to the populis populism althougk those people that deal with the term as a west end would like to have a think so. Im glad you mentioned that because it seems to be one of mf the fundamental objections of donald trump is static. He wears the wrong kind of ties and he likes his steak welldone, he puts ketchup on it. Now of course there are other things as well, but i think that a large part of this aspect of the hysteria over populism and over donald trump is a matter of maybe a better word would be snobbery. It depends on how you define it, there are two different ways. The original just didnt comment or ordinary. This was one of the reasons why the books were so extraordinary a. Sa. Sa. So i just thank everybody and thermeant everybody andthere ise people have more they are not lining up necessarily outside of art museums on the weekend and going to hipster houses. It is by necessity or by nature a. For the fringes of the common commonality in the first yes there is maybe something necessarily because he is appealing to the broad common denominator in that it has to be gross. By the way what is more vulgar, Donald Trumps taste in state or thousands osteak orthousands ofg around the mall with hats in the shapes of female genitalia. [applause] moving on. [laughter] another question. My question is how much rationalism and common sense. If you look at the slogan, yes weekend was more populist and hes just saying something because he was successful in his personal life and he could make the matter successful, so in terms of its not very deep or philosophical like obama but its very rational to be success but in addition, i think that he kind of copin put together just theyve take it too much to the left than the natural reaction of data so once you can see these factors of populism. We have americas leading political analyst watching the campaigns over the last 30 years so tell me if i am completely wrong here. If you are more in line with your political philosophy you hammer it done over the course of the next 18 months. He did that and never stopped talking about them in the same terms. Why dont we have a wall and why havent we enforced a border why cant we be tribal societies and why have we been giving these trade deals and the towns keep drying up and we keep giving more odoing moreof these trade t doesnt make sense to me so call it what you will, that in that way it was a very conventional campaign in a way that the opponents couldnt match and that is neede precipitated withn of the middle. We have the populists on the left and the right. Weve spoken of the example. Where does trump fit its policies that are conservative. If you had asked before the vote was cast there was this orthodoxy about the trade and economics in certain ways that he was fought to violate. But its fine according to the definition of the conservative in the last century that in the fundamental sense im changing the policy because i havent been working for people in the right way so this is a crackhead made many times i apologize if youve heard that the platform is going to be recited in the scriptures forever. Weve got to change. Any others . From the Capital Research center for jim pearson, you were talking about madison and the empire and the union. Empire into the union. Can you tell us more about the deeper picture of medicine did want independent question is whether anything that can be done now to get us closer to that . The second one is very difficult. As i said, 1787, the idea of the nationstate was not a very visible image to the founding fathers. The union was a new idea and was supported for a host of reasons that have to do with the european powers. Jefferson thought in terms of an entire. So i believe the american nationstate is constructed after words from all of these conflicts that developed in the 19th to 20th century. The question is how do we get back to this madisonian kind of system. I have no idea how we get back to that because medicine never envisioned this government. And many of these things we are talking about in the huge Administrative State, the financial power, the government, none of these things wer are iny in the 19th century. If he were to as you were to ass the foundation, the pillar of the administrative system that we have today, what is the thing that makes it run, theres probably a lot of things, but the one thing that is fundamental is the fact that the United States dollar is the reserve currency for the entire world and that means that the National Government can run and borrow money because it can print the money to pay our debts and all of these other countries to earn their reserves with trade. They cant resort to the printing press. If we ever lost the reserve currency, we would probably have to balance our accounts and our budgets. The kind of politics that go on today where politicians continue to promise all sorts of programs so you know, we live in a different kind of world[inaudible] people suggest that would be a good thing. There are some people that suggest that. So, how do we get back to the old system. Does the modern presidency encouraged populism so one thing you need to do is take back the power of the congress plaques to the before, i want to make one more disagreement. You say the founders didnt envisioned a nation and i would agreagree itsagree about the cd world war ii but im not sure that i agree when you say the founders didnt agree with the nationstate at least i agree you mean they didnt think of this as an ethnic nationstate and the way that the germans are ethnically german going so far back into the center is no one remembers. But one reason you should buy the book and i will get a cut, one thing he makes poignant in this book is that he studies not just the constitution of declaration that the constitution and all o at all oe documents and the founding year people dont look at anymore and over and over again consistently they refer to themselves as a people so i dont think they were simply saying youre going to create this federated system. They definitely saw themselves as a distinct people, new people, not a nationstate in the way tha that youre thinking oft but there is a middle ground that the implication that that is where they were. When you delegate without congress that does encourage them to promise things they can deliver to congress and all they need is a phone and a pen. The writer has a clever piece saying what we should do is disperse it and move the department of the interior to the interior, move the treasury, move the irs to someplace unpleasant, alaska. Just kind of drained the swamp physically by moving all of these departments employing tens of thousands of people. Its actually a very clever idea. A last question for us to end on. Editor of the modern age i want to bring up the point that is raised in the brilliant essay in the Current Issue of the criterion which is thus populism run out of steam because it cant form a coalition and the way successful as things do. They draw the contrast between the old populist in the century and the progressives that didnt have quite the same degree of support nonetheless they ended up winning the day and still running the country as a result. And then figuring out how to actually do it. Just very briefly the essay was titled why populism fails and the idea is to populist movements tend to be. Leisure center and cannot form coalitions. It requires a great deal of bargaining and Coalition Building a. They tend not to have a laundry list of programs and advisers to the. It was free silver and all that but the progressives was an expert movement with journalists, professors, experts of various kinds so they build all of their administrative agencies and they used that development power. It was an elite driven movement that succeeded in america and populism did not. Ive never run for office or know much about politics but it seems obvious trump figured out something that could be regulated and im not talking about the vulgarity or the statements were things that put people off pandering away at the court issues of Foreign Policy. I dont know what is going to happen but it is conceivable that there might be a small waves of those that might get elected and that would change things because they would have a handful of prominent allies in the senate and the house to agree with them on these issues think of you for coming, the book is the populism by Roger Kimball and encounter books. Thank you all for coming. [applause] good evening and welcome to politics and prose. I do cause of politics and prose along with my wife lisa muscatine