Transcripts For CSPAN2 Rick Tyler Still Right 20240712

Visit booktv. Org. Now we kick off the weekend on how conservative principles can tackle todays political issues. Good evening and welcome, im elisabeth, and i am joined by author rick tyler who is the author of still right an immigrantloving, hybriddriving, composting american makes the case for conservativism. He is joined by john clark. Good evening, gentlemen. Welcome to gibsons. Thank you, elisabeth. Thanks for having me. Its an honor to be with one of americas greatest independent bookstores. Thank you for saying that, first of all. I will mention this book is available from gibsons. We do happily ship books all over the country, all over the world, or if you are local, we do offer instore browsing and Curbside Pickup right now. Tell me a little bit about this book, rick. So i knew i wanted to write a book, i always wanted to write a book, and i had lots of ideas, but i had to have the first book, and the first book if you dont like this book, i wont be writing any others, but if you do like this book, i is have lots of books in my head. [laughter] i wrote, actually, different proposals to the publisher, and i got rejected by a lot of publishers, like a lot of authors do. But i had one publisher who came to me from st. Marks press, his name is steven power, and i have to i say if it wasnt for steven, i dont think this book would have began because he actually edited my proposal, critiqued it and sent it back to me. And literally that does not happen. He says, rick, if youll write this book, i would publish it. And i said i dont have the stature to write that book. [laughter] just because i thought it was, its a really to me, its such a weighty, heavy topic, and so many people are so educated on conservative thought that i just didnt put myself in that category, and he said you can do this book, and im going to help you do it. So i put together a draft, and i want to take this opportunity to introduce john, john clark, hes joining us from sunny florida. John is someone we normally meet in a coffee shop, meeting at bookstore is actually sort of appropriate. We always discuss ideas and have robust debate and collaboration about ideas. So when i got the deal to do the book, i approached him and said, you know, what do you think, and he really just was engaged. So johns been really a partner in this whole book. Because i felt, as i say, i felt swim intimidated. Having him help me through all these concepts, and there really isnt a chapter that john didnt help me shape. I wanted to write it for two reasons. One is conservativism is often bashed in the media, particularly to the centerleft, and that almost kind of hurt my feelings. [laughter] and, because the things that they say about it, i just knew that they werent true. And i wanted to set down a marker that conservativism is a rational governing philosophy. And i wanted to hold out an olive branch and say conservativism is rational. Its not my philosophy. My philosophy is conservativism, but i dont know that it serves anyone well to trash each others philosophy when in the end we have so much to agree on. Our country is a constitutional republic, and what that means is to get anything done at all, you have to compromise with people who have different ideas than you in the same way that if you want to vote for somebody who you agree with 100 of the time, you should run. So thats onehalf of the ideas. The other half were people who actually selfidentified as conservatives but seemed to be more and more embracing policies that are just antithetical to conservativism. And i wanted to lay down that marker as well. So that people who and, of course, for people who were unfamiliar with conservativism at all east because theyre either because theyre young or just havent paid attention, i think this book lays it out pretty well. I think i define conservativism actually the way john does, and he says its ordered liberty. Ordered liberty in the sense that if you take away the order, you just get liberty, and that really thats a libertarian philosophy which is not my philosophy. We dont automatically are reject ideas because theyre new. We test those ideas against established ideas, and if theyre better, we can migrate to them. But if theyre not, we juan throw out something we wouldnt throw out something thats working very, very well for something that isnt working very, very well. So i make that case on immigration, on trade, on health care, on the Second Amendment and many of the other issues that are in the book. So thats kind of, thats, that was my motivation for writing still right. By the way, we just couldnt think of of a title, and we had all these ideas, and he said you got to call it still right. The reason its still right, im an msnbc analyst and i get accused often of going to the enemy. There are more conservatives who appear willingly on msnbc on any of the other cable news networks. And one of the reasons i like to be on msnbc is i had to learn how to present a conservative case to a liberal, leftwing audience. And i think over time its been pretty successful. I think that while i havent convinced everybody who watches the network that they should embrace conservativism, i get a lot of comments that, you know what . I didnt really know what conservativism was, and at least now i understand it has a rationale. And so being accused of, you know, being a lefty and i am a trump critic, and being that, they say, oh, youve gone over to the left. No, im still right, so i thought the title fit. The internetloving, hybriddriving, composting american, which is all true, i think we should be a proimmigration country. I do actually drive a hybrid. I love technologies that protect the environment. I have a whole chapter on the environment. And we compost here at the tyler household, and we make 23 yards of dirt a year which we use in our organic gardening. And i never thought of that as a liberal idea, i thought that was actually a conservation idea. I will say our local town operates on a pay as you throw garbage removal where you pay for garbage bags, and composting has reduced our output by a third. Isnt that amazing . Yeah. Wow. I will take this moment to say youve just given us your credentials, reduction. John, tell the us rick, josh, tell us about yourself and conservativism. So just briefly, rick and i actually met, i think we were working on a campaign. I had worked as a speech writer for a few candidates at the local level and the National Level. So, rick, i think we met, we were working on a campaign together. My background, i have a degree in Political Science and economics, and i rap an Investment Firm ran an Investment Firm for about 18 years. I sold my company, and i wanted to get more into the writing side because i thought conservativism wasnt getting a very fair hearing. And i thought i could maybe help a little bit with that. So i can bring my finance, what i learned on that side of it, to the economic side of these arguments, and thats exciting. I dont think thats presented well. Im hoping what this book can accomplish is that we start a conversation because we used to try to win the hearts and minds. We wanted to really know what it is that we believe. I think one of the fun things to me about writing is its sort of stress testing my own ideas, do they work. And so, but im hoping what this does is, is starts a conversation, because i think right now the political environment is such that we just shout each other down. And that really doesnt help anybody. And i dont claim to have all the answers, by far. And, you know, i think that, you know, over time i think my ideas have changed, and i think thats a healthy thing. I think thats a positive sign. And like i say, im hoping that that, it does start a conversation. What become happy to see in the reviews is people are saying im a lifelong democrat, but i dont really see much i disagree with in this book, so i think thats good. And i think its time to start a conversation. Being willing to have a conversation is a very good thing whereas shutting yourself off and having emotional, you know, making your choices emotionally on a rational subject so, rick, did conservativism need to be redefinedded, and for persons who may be joining us seeking to learn, can you briefly define conservativism for people who may have had a different idea about it . Well, as i say in a nutshell, william f. Buckley never if actually defined conservativism. I think you can go back to the writings of william burke, and there are a lot of great conservative writers who, as i mentioned before, it was a little intimidating to write this book because i didnt feel the stature to be in that zone. But i really wanted to lay down and i dont define conservativism per i say. Per se. Conservativism, as we talked about earlier, is ordered liberty, is the idea that freedom, individual freedom matters. And, you know, its in our declaration of independence. Jefferson wrote life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and he put them in that order because liberty is of precious little use to people who dont have life, and very hard to pursue happiness if youre not free. And that combination and that government, by the way, was supposed to protect things in that order, life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. And that protection of particularly the pursuit has made america by far one of the wealthiest with, most prosperous nations in the world. And were having an argument about that, what does that mean. And i do think conservatives to an okay job of explaining the economic side. We dont always explain how conservativism addresses some of the problematic sides of our american society. For instance, people who are sort of glib and dismissive of, you know, pull yourself up by your boot straps, you know, be independent and work hard. And all those things are true, but, you know, there are people who are just never going to be independent, and theyre always going the need help. And we we dont often explain, you know, the idea of decentralized government could actually help people. So conservativism in a nutshell, ill tell you a little story. Its about Franklin Delano roosevelt whos probably the greatest politician of the 20th century. I dont think he really had a rival, and roosevelt was running right after woodrow wilson. Woodrow wilson was a democrat, and he was loyal to woodrow wilson, and he was going to run as a democrat. Husband fifth cousin, though, he his fifth cousin, though, he modeled his career after him, teddy roosevelt. And fdr was also progressive, but he couldnt run as a republican because hoover was a republican, and hoover was in the middle of an economic collapse. So that was out. He he couldnt run as a progressive because under woodrow wilson, progressivism had taken a really ugly turn, and it stems from eugenics which was the socalled failed science that we could actually decide who gets to to create and who didnt. And that was a very procreate and that was a very ugly time. Progressivism also brought us the womens right to vote, and that was a good thing, but it also brought us popular elections of u. S. Senators. I think, on balance, that was a bad thing because it cut the, it cut the responsibility or the leverage the state legislatures used to have over the u. S. Congress, it just eliminated it. So state legislatures, congress can pass all these laws that state legislatures continually have to deal with, and they hurlly have no leverage to literally have no leverage to push back. Thats not the case anymore. And finally, they a they passed prohibition right in the middle of prosperous times, if you can imagine. [laughter] you know, the roaring 20s, theyre having a wonderful time, and they passed prohibition. So fdr couldnt one as aing progressive as he well wanted to, and wilson was a progressive. In fact, teddy and wilson ran against each other both with competing aggressive agendas but from different parties. Wilson claimed hawk. Taft was the third candidate. He got his clock cleaned. But fdr did something really interesting. What he did was he put out a Progressive Agenda but didnt call it progressive. You know what he called it . He called it liberal, which is interesting because up until that point the word liberal and liberalism had been associated with what we now recognize as conservatives. So thats where the word classic liberal comes from. John and i i would identify ourselves as classic liberals in the preroosevelt sense. He just called it liberal, and it stuck. And the conservatives ended up calling themselves conservatives, and thats been the monikers of the Major Political philosophies in our country ever since. And i would argue whats happening now is, you know, trump calls himself a conservative. Hes not. Its demonstrable that hes not. And unfortunately, many people who follow him call themselves conservative, and theyre not. Consider the Republican Party just had their convention, and they for the First Time Since 1856 in which nine of the six planks in the original Republican Party platform were civil rights planks. For the next hundred years, the Republican Party was the procivil rights party. Theyve lost that. And this year they didnt put out a platte at all as platform at all. They simply put out a resolution that says were with the big guy. Thats a sad thing because parties cant sustain themselves on a personality in the same way that in israel politics, parties come and go with their leaders. If but binetanyahu were to pass from the public stage, his party, i believe, would collapse because theres nothing under it except for bibi netanyahu. The Republican Party is now the trump party, and when he he moves on one way or the other, it will collapse because its based on one person. Parties need to be based on ideas, because when we win and ive spent my career helping republicans win when we win, my question now is what do we win, what do we actually get. And if the answer is higher deficits, trade tariffs, mismanagement of a National Public Health Crisis that ends up costing us trillions of dollars, millions in lost jobs, thats not winning to me. I would like to return to tried and true philosophy of governing, and conservatives have always been sort of at the kids table even if they were ever invited to dinner. They got set at the kids table. They drove the agenda for quite a number of years. Now we dont even get invited to dinner, and a bunch of what i would call um posters sit at the imposters sit at the table and call themselves conservatives while john and i are not even allowed to come to dinner. Thats kind of where i think we are in a nutshell and why conservativism, i think, really needs to be revisited. And even if you read my book and you dont become a conservative, thats okay. My goal is accomplished to say, you know what . At least i understand why hes a conservative, and i understand his thinking on how it works whether i believe it works or not. Thats one thing. But at least youll know that it is a rational theory. So you mentioned earlier that your work as an analyst on msnbc forced you to examine your own beliefs in depth, and they do say that to teach is to learn. So for yourself as well, john, does teaching people, did that definitely reinforce your own beliefs, or did it change them . Well, its funny, you know, because i have nine children, amazingly enough, and i home school them. Ive home schooled all of them. Whats interesting is that probably the greatest preparations for writing speeches is teaching my children and explaining concepts to them. So i think theres that. But i think youre absolutely right. I mean if, thats the principle, right . Its impossible to separate teaching from learning. And as i say, when we have these conversations, the thing for me from a conservative perspective is, is that that much of what we believe is that the private sector is able to come up with many of these solutions. I think rick did really an amazing job in the environmental chapter because hes explaining his thats his life. You know . Thats the way that hes living his life. And the reality of it is hes not saying, hey, conservatives are sort of painted with a brush of we dont care about the environment. Thats clear wily not the case. Were clearly not the case. Were making the argument that conservativism, the private sector might simply be the best way to address this as opposed to leaving it in government hands. And, you know, again, i think that many of the areas in the book essentially make that claim that things may be better addressed. Its not that we we dont care about these things. Of course we do. Were just trying to figure out the best way to get there. Were trying to achieve the common good, presumably the same as political progressives. Were just arguing about maybe the map in terms of how to get there, if that makes sense. And . I was and rick . I was so enthralled with johns answer, i forgot what the question was. [laughter] does that help reinforce your own beliefs . Absolutely. When you have to explain to other people what you believe, and ill give you two examples. When i first went on msnbc, i started really going on the Chris Matthews show. Now, john and i have been watching Chris Matthews for as long as literally as long as theres been cable television. Like, he was a legend. Crust matthews actually worked on the hill, he worked for three separate congressmen. He was actually a Capitol Hill Police officer before he actually worked on the hill in politics, and i always had respect for chris because he doesnt pontificate because he just pontificates, he actually worked for the speaker of the house and worked in the speakers office. Thats an an experience you cant trade. So i was invited on his show hardball for the first time, and it was very intimidating. So my goal with Chris Matthews and hardball was, you know, get unviolated back, like invited back, like, just surviving. Chris was very generous, and over the years i kept getting invited back more and more, but i was the person on there that people loved to hate, right . So we all is have those people. We watch because you cant take their eyes off of them because you just hate them so much. [laughter] its enjoyable and entertaining because theyre nuts. And that was me. I would argue and loved to argue, but i wasnt very likable. And then over time i decided and i worked on a president ial, several president ial campaigns that if i was ever going to be effective in promoting the conservative philosophy, i was going to have to learn how to convince people that it was reasonable. And so i had to learn how to speak to people who didnt believe what i believed. And find common ground. And i think thats worked very well, and as john said, hes read the reviews. Ive talked to people who have read the book, and they are just very surprised. In fact, ive had conversations with people who read the book who said theres just so much in here unit understand, i didnt know. And thats been very gratifying. And, again, its all about starting a conversation. I also taught people how to run for elected office to thousands of people all over the world, from israel to rome, to greece, qanta and mostly the United States canada and mostly the United States, and youve really got to think it through. The one who rewrote my failed proposal, when i sent him the manuscript, you know, he he i cant remember, 7,000 words of questions. [laughter] like thats lincoln at cooper unions speech length number of questions. [laughter] that is a lot. And it was hard because i really had to think very deeply about health care, people who dont have insurance, people with preexisting conditions, how to reconcile my Second Amendment rights with fred guttenberg, who i write about, who endorsed the book, by the way. He lost his daughter at Parkland High School in florida. And so i write about him. And so in every chapter, i i try to think of some of i was once, i was already accused of putting out, you know, strawmen. And that wasnt my attention. I did not want to put out strawmen. I wanted to answer questions that had been asked of me. So i tied to take i tried to take what proifgs ask, really hard questions for conservatives to answer, and i wanted to answer them, and i wanted to start there. Heres the theory, if i can start a chapter where theyre nodding their head yes for the first three pages as opposed to throwing my book across the room, then i might have a chance to actually get to the ideas, and they might finish the chapter. If i could just do some storytelling, connect with them at the gunning of the chapter at the beginning of the chapter, that they might read the rest of the chapter where it might get a little hard going. And i think the strategy might have paid off. Well, i will take this moment to remind people that the book is available from gibsons bookstore. We are including signed bookplates, which rick was very kind to send to us. Thank you very much. So can you tell me some of your biggest frustrations about how [audio difficulty] and political conservativism has been changed by Public Perceptions through the Republican Party . Well, yeah. Theres a lot of issues there. Let me start with trade, and then let me move to health care and then immigration. I think those are the three topics that are illustrative of conservative thought and the way the Republican Partys decided to go instead. God, please dont talk about trade [laughter] because its such an i soar thetic i esoteric [inaudible] heres the heart of trade. The human being is designed to create. Its our most precious gift, is to be creative. It is what has made great artwork, its what has made great music, its in great books, but it also makes great products and services, peoples ability to create. To try to get people to part with their dollars to buy their product or their service over somebody else, that has led to in the ago reregate ago are e gate trillions of different transactions of all those people competing for dollars in the free market. And what trade does is it says, oh, your government decides we dont want you to buy these kinds of products because of whatever reason, because they have different labor practices, they have different form of government, etc. , etc. Its one thing to say i dont want to buy products from a company because of uighur enslavement camps, and thats a real concern. Thats a moral perspective, but in the broader sense we have trade deficits with other countries mostly china precisely for the reason you have a trade deficit with your local supermarket, right . You keep buying stuff from them voluntarily, no one forces you to buy, and every free market transaction is a voluntary transaction and is not a compulsory transaction. And they never buy anything back from you. [laugher] which is a very interesting story about hong kong. The way they traded porcelain and rice, other agriculture products from hong kong, but the chinese wont buy anything from the british, nothing. It was a oneway street. Sounds familiar, right . Same way today. And they would only take silver. And it became a crisis in the British Empire because they were literally running out of silver because they were sending all their silver to hong kong. So the british came up with an idea, and what it was was they were going to sell to something, something to the chinese that they couldnt recyst, and resist, and it was opium. They sold opium to the chinese, and they said, ah, were so sorry, but we only take silver for the opium, and that began the great outflow of migration of silver from hong kong back to the english. And meanwhile, millions of chinese became addicted to opium which led to two separate wars which finally ended years later in a british treaty acquiring the 236 square miles of the greater hong kong territories. Hong kong itself is very small, its like 7 miles by 7 miles. But and im not advocating colonialism in the book, dont get upset. What the british gave to chinese in hong kong was freedom. And what were seeing today in hong kong is, is a pushback on the chinese that they know the goose thats laying the golden egg, and i dont want to kill that goose, but theyre about to do it. They simply got contract law, independent judiciary, freedom of press, freedom of religion and all the rest of it, and, you know, people say they want to take something out. Well, thats how hong kong became because they dont have any natural resources. They dont have gold, silver, oil, natural gas, theyve got some fish and some agriculture, but they became wealthy because of sheer creativity. Donald trump had renegotiated the south korean trade agreement, and it offered almost nothing significantly better than what the previous agreement had had despite his problem proclamations to the contrary. The one thing i could find in it that was significant was americans are not allowed to buy south korean pickup trucks until 2032. And i thought to myself, what if i wanted to buy a south korean pickup truck . I mean, what if the south korean pickup truck is the truck that i need . What if t the truck that i want . Why does my government want to keep me from buying south korean pickup trucks . And when government interferes in the market in that way, theyre propping up one or nitpicking winners and losers. So ill give you an example. I was also very as our trade policy, with by the way, with china has led to the greatest [inaudible] weve ever seen, and it put the gm bailout, it dwarfed the gm bailout, made it look tiny by comparison. That was what barack obama struck, and people say it was good because it saved the plant, saved the company, saved jobs, and thats all a great. I dont begrudge that at all. And it made money. And all of that is true, but heres the problem when your government decides to take your money and give it to a company and you dont get a service or product in turn, in other words, i didnt get a gm car or truck or even a door handle or even a rearview mirror. I got nothing. But gm got the money. And it was all the same [inaudible] the lordsville plant in ohio. And the lordsville plant is now closed. Its not because of unfair trade practices or labor laws, its closed in ohio because americans didnt want to buy the chevy cruze, and they made the chevy cruze. And they had to close the plant. Now, that was painful. But when but heres the bugger problem and the problem i like to focus on which never gets talked about. All that money that went to gm arbitrarily or because the politicians decided it should go there didnt go to their competitors. Didnt go to the upstart Companies Like a tesla, and theres others, who are actually designing cars that i might want to drive or that i might want to buy. And what we lose is we lose tomorrows future innovation because the government literally took your money and sent it over and put money into a company that was failing. And i know that sounds harsh, but over time why is it fair to take American Consumers money and give it to a Company Whose products or services they dont actually consume . Thats trade, thats the ill wrap up a little quicker on health care. I think the republicans, in short, in short the democrats have always had somewhat of an advantage in proposing policy solutions, and it is this the democrats can always point to a large or massive Government Program and say this is our answer to health care, right . Whereas the conservatives and the republicans have been at a disadvantage by pointing to the private sector which allows the democrats to say you see they dont have a plan because knotts a government plan, right . Its not a government plan, right . You follow me . But heres the problem with the republican plan, they didnt actually have a plan. I think it was four weeks ago when donald trump announced on Chris Wallace that he was going to unveil a huge health care plan. Well, have you seen that . Theres no Health Care Health care is incredibly complicated. And it isnt one thing. Obamacare, by the way, is just 7 of the market. 93 percent of the market is not obamacare because you have private insurance, union insurance, tricare, you have medicare, medicaid, you have Indian Health services. It is extraordinarily complicated, and theres tons of money in health care. My argument with health care is theres actually no free market in health care, and i can explain that later if youd like. And then finally on immigration, the conservatives, Ronald Reagan was proimmigrant. It was 1986, the Immigration Reform bill is a testimony to that. He was never antiimmigrant. The Republican Party was never antiimmigrant. And what i say about immigrants is the fear that trump generates, which is all encapsulated in the mythology of the wall that mexico didnt paw for, by the withdraw, trump did build. We have 5 new miles of wall, thats it. But what the wall encapsulated was people who are fearful of two things, economic insecurity and the overwhelming of our culture. And i remind them the, i say, well, you know, when the italians came, we didnt all speak italian. When the irish came, we all didnt become catholic. When the germans came, we all didnt have to learn german. And now the muslims9 and the hispanics are getting the same horrible treatment that weve always treated our immigrants. So i dont suspect any of us who are nonmuslims will be praying to mecca in spanish anytime soon. No immigration, West Virginia of immigration is wave of immigration has ever overwhelmed the American Culture. Quite the opposite. Its made our economy better and stronger and made us better as a nation, more innovative, more traditionally diverse. Id argue that were a monolith of American Culture that people asimilar lit ad assimilated to, but people do bring a lot into our country; their ideas, their food, their tradition. Its wonderful. And why wouldnt we want to keep going in that direction . Why is it that we suddenly decide now, by the way, we might look at some of the lowwage workers who happen to be latino, and youve seen them, they work in construction, they work in lawn care, they may be delivering your amazon packages, they may work in restaurants, their children will be doctors, lawyers, ceos and, god forbud, congressmen. God forbid. Because thats just the way immigration has always worked. People assimilate. What does nancy pelosi and Rudy Giuliani have in common . Do you know what it is . I know john has the answer. I would guess that their parents are immigrants . Theyre both italianamericans, but it doesnt come immediately to mind even though their last names give them away because the italians have so assimilate ared into our society, we think of them as americans. And one day ill said rodriguez and hernandez, and people will say, i dont know, i give up. Well, theyre both hispanic. Oh, i should have seen that. I didnt see that. And were getting closer to that every single day. So i dont worry about the American Culture, and i certainly dont worry about economics because the next time theres a caravan coming we should send buses and get them here as quickly as possible. If i dont know and i are going to recognize our and medicare, we need somebody to work. Were going to need lots of immigrants. Do we so that was trade, health care and immigration. Do you want to talk about the environment . Sure. Now ill let john talk about the environment. I have to admit, my environment aal chapters a little snark i key. And my editor had a real problem with it. There was more notes in the margin on this chapter, by far, than any other chapter. And i really delve into i first give a background of myself. I tell a story about the grand canyon and why, and why its my favorite place on earth and a little adventure i had there that really amazing. A god given gift. And so you can read about that. And, you know, i here at the tyler household we compost, we compost all our grass clippings, our leaf clippings, the cow manure, all the organics that come out of the kitchen. Everything gets recycled. I take the recycles personally to the recycle center because i dont trust that the trash man is actually taking them there. [laughter] i just have this terrible suspicion that its just getting mixed in with all the other trash, and all our efforts to colate and collate and separate is not being met. So i do recycle myselfment i love the environment, and i think it is just foolishness for the republicans to cede the environment to the democrats. Now, i make two recommendations, one to democrats and one to republicans. One on the republican side, the environment can be a great issue because its a job creation issue, because its an innovation issue, because its such an exciting field. And at the same time, if we can help the planet, thats a wonderful thing. I identify and the democratic side, im a little more critical of the democrats. I just think the foolishness of just its not an important issue, just politically crazy. But on the democrat side, im a little more harsh. And its because ive a had many conversations about the environment, and it kind of always leads in the same direction. Oh, rick, are you a scientist . No, im not, is that okay . Can we still talk about well, its really settled science. If youre not a science, youre not qualified to talk about this. Okay, so i cant talk about it. But i dont identify myself and then ill say, well, if i Say Something about the environment in the most equivocal way, so lets say i believe that Global Warming is occurring, that the earth is occurring, but im not entirely sure to the degree of which anthro john, help me out. Anthroto morphic Climate Change says manmade emissions are adding i dont know to what degree thats true. And when i look at the science, you know, they say that Rocket Science is hard, and Rocket Science is actually by comparison easy because all the fixed variables are known. So that is if im going to get a rocket into space, i have to create a certain amount of thrust. The fuel weighs so much, my payload weighs so much, and im working against the force of gravity, and ive got to get it into the air at a a certain trajectory, you know, into a certain orbit. I cant do that math, but those are all known factors. And thats why we can dock up with the space station, because we have very smart people who understand and know how to do that math. Environments very different. There are hundreds of variables, and there may, in fact, be many variables that we dont necessary arely there are hundreds of variables that are known, but there are also variables that are known, but we dont know what they are. So we have to make estimations about the variables. Theyre called guesses, and thats fine. We may be guessing right, and thats fine, thats good. I hope so. Maybe not, because some of the conclusions are rather catastrophic. But there may be unknown variables. And so it is a very difficult thing to predict. And so one of the things i always get in trouble with is when people talk to me about the environment, they always refer to the weather. And then ill make an example about the weather. For instance, hurricane laura went from a hurricane one to a three overnight, and nobody predicted that. Oh, rick, thats a weather event. You cant talk about weather and make the case about Climate Change. Oh, wait, you just dud. [laughter] and then if i say im not sure i believe we may be warming the planet, and im concerned about it, and i think we should prudently do something about it, theyll say im a denier. Youve heard that word. That means i dont believe in Climate Change. Well, i just told you i did. Because im a denier, i must not believe. Those are religious terms. Thats like arguing with me about the virgin birth. We cant do it because thats what i believe as a christian. Theres no use discussing it, because you wont convince me otherwise. Sometimes i feel like i cant talk about the environment because its a belief thats doctrinal, based on a doctrine that somehow exists, and its religious terms, and i cant have a discussion about it. So i think, i mean, the democrats could win on the environment just the same way i recommend the democrats could win on the environment, but theyve got to drop the henny opinionny meaning were all penny meaning were all going to die in 20 years. People should begin to lose credibility. When i hear 12 years, its not fixable and its all going to be terrible, i dont know that its going to be terrible, and in 12 years were going to find out, and i hope its not. But it just seems, it just seems to me that scaring people about the environment for long term is not a good political strategy because people just begin not to believe it because its so big. But talking about the environment in positive terms and protecting the environment, creating jobs of the future, i think, is a very exciting field, and think thats the way we should go about it. And i think thats, in the end, far better for environmentalism than, you know, crying, you know, the sky is falling. John . Yeah. Well, i think that, you know, in the book theres a story of a man named nick, and hes he has an interesting background. His family, apparently, didnt have a lot of money growing up. So when he would, you know, ask his father or complain to his father, dad, i dont have this, his father had an interesting response. His fathers response was go make it. Go make one. I dont have a bike. Go make one. So he came up with, essentially, developed the led technology. And so instead of, you know, we had sort of the government lightbulbs that everybody liked for a long time, right . He invented the led bulb which now you can have, you know, i guess, pretty much any color of the rainbow . The energy is used for light as opposed to heat. Its much more efficient, its cheaper, they last forever. I dont remember replace an led bulb. So i think from a conservative perspective its clearly not the case that we dont appreciate the environment, as rick was saying. God wants us to care for the earth, im a christian. I would regard that as, you know, gods command to me, to care for the earth. But i think that the answer is supply side. I mean, if as with, as with the creativity, the answer lies in the creativity of man, and i think too much we we look at things as manmade problems. There are man made answers. The reality of it is is whats the next led bulb . What idea will that be . I looked at the numbers, and there is a book many there. The amount of energy that is saved every year with the led bulbs, its incredible. Its like the greatest thing ever to save energy. Whats the next thing going to be . Well, heres my guess. My guess is that someone is coming up with it now. Maybe its somebody whos had a conversation with his dad and mom and theyre saying, oh, go make one, right . Thats how things happen. And i think that by unleashing the creativity, maybe thats the best way to address what ails the environment. Is simply let supply side operate as opposed to the government says, okay, lets go do this. Our belief is things dont happen too efficiently by putting a Government Committee in charge of it. The greatest inventions didnt happen by Government Committee. I think thats a great way to see it. Or at least it doesnt seem to be that withdraw. I think thats where the answer lies, its in the creativity9 of men. I think thats a good place to insert also this counter thought, and i agree with john, creativity of man has solved more problems than government does. But i think john and i also agree that there is a role for government in areas where there is no natural incentive to create. So, for instance, the l e d bulb led bulb was actually a government contract. The government contract went to the private sector to solve a problem. What they needed was an indicator that it didnt produce heat, and this is how the led got invented. But the government does do some things extraordinarily with. We talked about the moon shot or, you know, the space station. You know, the government did get us to the moon. That was an incredible effort. And there was no Natural Market to go and explore the moon. So there are things that the government can do. Theres basic science. And we talk about this in the chapter on health care. Government does an enormous amount of work and research that leads to the development of drugs, and the private sector, in my opinion, unfairly profits from that. And that probably needs to be rebalanced. Or there needs to be some licensing or but its unfair that taxpayers pay an enormous amount into nih, National Institutes of health, National Institutes of science, and they do ultimately reap the benefit, but they dont reap the profits from them. And i dont want the government to become a profit enterprise. Its not. Thats why we dont need a ceo or businessman to run it, frankly. But the government does amazing work in doing basic science at the private sector. And the internet is a perfect example. It started as daughter darpa net which is the way the pentagon protected the Nuclear Codes so they could send them around the world, and they wouldnt be physical lu stuck in one place physically stuck in one place. What the internet would have been like, you know, at that time. So, yes, government and the last example i use is the pandemic, because i get asked this a lot in health care. Well, rick, if we had a National Health care system, then we would obviously be able to deal better with this pandemic, and that a may be true. I think the pandemic had to be dealt with on a National Level because it required a national response. Its a national Health Crisis. And it cannot be dealt with on an ad hoc, statebystate, citybycity, townbytown level, it needs a coordinated effort, and as far as i understand, that effort was actually in place at the beginning of the trump administration, it was dismantled, it was never really reassembled and was just punted to the states, and thats why our numbers are so dramatically bad as compared to the res of the world. To give you an example, our death rate of the United States is 20 times worse than all of the Asian Countries combined, 20 times worse. And its twice that of europe. So we are really way behind the 8 ball on this because we didnt respond to a National Pandemic in a coordinated, national way. I think of we have time for about one more question, and i think i might have john lead with this one. You mentioned you have a very large family. How do you recognize large political differences in personal relationships . Perhaps in marriage or in parents or siblings. How, if you are a conservative, how do you reconcile relationships with persons who disagree with you . Well, thats a really great question. I actually like to hear the other side. I mean, i invite it. Its funny, theres rick was mentioning the coffee shop, and we sometimes get together. I invite those. I like to hear the, sort of the other side of things. I think that one of the things thats happened lately, i think this is its gotten worse lately. Maybe it was there 20 or 30 years ago, i didnt notice it as much, but people sort of really define themselves pretty create. Politically. I dont think thats super e healthy. I think what we needed to do is, i mean, friendships are more important. I think rick actually talked about this a few times, the fact that we can get together and disagree. Rick and i, i dont think we agree on everything [laughter] and, you know, thats okay. But the reality is that i like to keep the friendship in place, and its not there are things we disagree about, you know . If uma a browns fan and reduction is a patriots fan, thats okay. Rick is a patriots fan, thats okay. [inaudible] whats that . Rick is a patriots fan. [laughter] so but the reality of it is we need to listen better, you know . I think it all really starts there because were not going to get anywhere until we do, because were not as i say, winning over hearts and minds is important, but listening, we should listen. Because as i say, we dont know everything. Were trying to adapt things and trying to figure out so they make more sense. And i think we have to stop doing that. We have to focus on the friendship and realize there are things we can kiss agree about, and disagree about, and thats okay. It really is. And yourself, rick . You know, i say in the book that relationships are more important than politics, and they are. Your relationship with your family, your relationship with your friends, you know, you want to preserve them really at all costs. And if your friend cant talk about with politics with you in a way thats not going to preserve your friendship, then you should agree to just not talk about politics. I have friends who are trump supporters, and we just dont talk about it. They may come to dinner they havent since covid, but before that, we just find a million other things, theres a million other things to talk about besides politics. And, you know, i often on twitter, you know, occasionally ill have a follower wholl say i just cant stand it anymore, this is driving me crazy, and ive often responded many times to say turn the news off, take a few days off, stay away from social mood e ya for a few days, clear your head, connect with nature its really helpful. I think this is a deep connection human beings desire to have with nature and get some perspective and get healthy because we need you to come back. But, you know, if you find yourself just getting, youre going crazy because of all the news, and the news is just nonstop, i mean, its too much, and people need to take a break and sort out whats important and sort out those priorities. So my book may not do that for you, but maybe there might be a chapter or two that might calm you down. [laughter] well, thank you very much to both of you for joining us this evening. Ricks book, still right, is available from gibsons bookstore. We do have signed books which we are including with orders, and it is available for pickup curbside, in store and we do happily ship all over the country and all over the world. Thank you very much, rick tyler and john clark. Thank you, everybody. Tonight on booktv in prime time, history professor martha jones explores the efforts by black women to win the right to vote. Former World Bank President Robert Zoellick talks about the history of u. S. Diplomacy. Netflix founder Reed Hastings and author erin meyer disbecause the unorthodox workplace culture. Democratic senator chris murphy of connecticut looks at the history of violence and firearms in the u. S. And the role they play in society. And the manhattan institutes James Copeland argues that america is governed by nonelected agency officials. That all starts tonight at 7 30 eastern. Find more Schedule Information on your program guide. Sunday at 7 p. M. Eastern, a live discussion with pulitzer prizewinning author bob woodward on his new book, rage, which looks at president Trumps National and Foreign Policy decisions. Watch booktv on cspan2. Hi, everyone