Coauthor john clark. Good evening gentlemen, welcome to gibsons. Thank you, its an honor to be a part of one of americas greatest independent bookstores. Thank you for saying that. I will mention, as one of americas great independent bookstores this book is available from gibsons we happily shipped books all over the country, all over the world or if you are local, we offer instore browsing and curbside pickup. Tell me a little bit about this book. I knew i always wanted to write a book i have a lot of ideas for books but i had to have the first book in the first book if you dont like this book i wont be writing any others but if you like this book i have a lot in my abin my head. I wrote different proposals for the publisher and got rejected by lots of publishers like a lot of authors do. I have one publisher who came to me from st. Marks press and he worked for Thomas Newman books his name is Stephen Power and if it wasnt for steve and i dont think this book wouldve began because he was unheard of in the publishing industry. He actually edited my proposal, critiqued it, and send it back to me. Literally, normally that does not happen he said a break if you write this book i will publish it. I said i dont have the stature to write that book. Just because i thought it was a really to me at such a weighty heavy topic and so many people are so educated on conservative thought, i didnt put myself in that category. He said you can do this book and im going to help you do it. Put together a draft and i wanted 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 so meeting in a bookstore is appropriate. We always discuss ideas and we have robust to date and collaboration. We normally meet in the bookshop but when i got the idea for the book i approached him and said, what you think . He really just was engaged. John has been a partner in this whole book. I felt, as i said, i felt intimidated, there isnt a chapter here 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 liberal left likes to bash conservativism. That always hurt my feelings. Because they things they say about it i knew they were to. I wanted to sit down a marker of conservatism is a rational governing front often like philosophy which is an attractive governing from philosophy. I would extend an olive branch to my left friends and say ab its not my philosophy my philosophy philosophy is conservatism. I dont know what 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 week to get anything done at all we have to compromise with people who have different ideas than you. The same way that if you want to look for somebody who you agree with 100 of the time you should run. Thats one half of the outing if the other half actually people who self identify as conservatives but seem to be more and more embracing policies that are just antithetical to conservatism and i want to lay down that marker as well. And of course people unfamiliar with conservativism at all because they are young or just havent paid attention to governing philosophy i think this book lays it out pretty well. I define conservatism the way john does he says its order of liberty ordered liberty in the sense that if you take away the order you just got liberty and thats a libertarian philosophy which is not my philosophy, its ordered liberty, we dont automatically reject ideas because they are new, we test the ideas against established ideas and if they are better, we can migrate to them but if they are not, we wouldnt go out something working very well for something that might not work very very well or isnt working very very well. I make that case on immigration, on trade, on healthcare on the Second Amendment and many of the other issues in the book. That was my motivation for writing. By the way, still right, john picked the title. We couldnt think of a title we had all these ideas and he said youve got to call it still right, the reason why is because on msnbc political analysis so i get accused often of going to the enemy. Im on msnbc, although i daresay there are more conservatives that appear regularly on msnbc that appear on any other cable news network. One of the reasons i like to be on msnbc as i had to learn how to present the conservative case to a liberal left wing audience. Over time its been pretty successful, while i havent convinced everybody who watches the network that they should embrace conservatism, i get a lot of comments that i didnt really know what conservatism was and at least now i understand it as a rationale. Being accused of being a lefty and im a trump critic and being a trump credit they say youve gone to the left i say, no, im still right. I thought the title for. That migrant loving hybrid driving composting work which is all true i think we should be a proimmigration country i do actually drive a hybrid and i love technologies to protect the environment i wrote a chapter on the environment. And we compost here at the tyler household and with 223 a ai never thought of that as a liberal idea i thought it was actually a conservation idea. I will say, our local town operates on a pay as you throw garbage removal where you pay per garbage bag and composting has reduced our household garbage output by 1 3. I will take this moment to say, you just given us your credentials, john, tell us a little bit about yourself and conservatism. Just briefly, rick and i actually met working on a campaign and i worked as a speechwriter for a few candidates everywhere from local level to the National Level we were working on the campaign and Work Together my background i would agree in Political Science and economics and ran an Investment Firm for 18 years. I sold my company about 10 years ago, my Business Partner i wanted to get into the writing side. Im hoping what this book can accomplish as we start a conversation because we used to try to win the hearts and minds, we want to really know what it is we believed, i think one of the fun things to me about writing is sort of stress testing my ideas, do they work . But im hoping what this does is start the conversation because i think right now the political environment is such that we just shout each other down. That doesnt help anybody. I dont claim to have all the answers by far. I think over time i think my ideas have changed and i think thats a healthy thing. I think its a positive sign. Im hoping that doesnt start a conversation. What im abpeople that are saying, im a lifelong democrat but i dont really see much, i disagree with in this book. I think its a good sign that its starting a conversation. Being willing to have a conversation is a very good thing, whereas shutting yourself off and making your choices emotionally on a rational subject are problematic. Rick, did conservatism need to be redefined . And for persons who might be joining us seeking to learn, can you briefly define conservatism for people who may have had a different idea about it. In a nutshell, William F Buckley never actually define conservatism. We can go back to the writings of William Burke and a lot of great conservative writers, which i mentioned before is a little intimidating to write this book i didnt feel the stature to be in the zone but i wanted to lay down and i dont define conservatism per se, conservatism as we talked about earlier is ordered liberty, the idea that freedom individual freedom matters. Its in our declaration of independence, jefferson wrote life, liberty, and the pursuit of happyness and puts them in that order because liberty is a precious to people who dont have life and its hard to pursue happiness if youre not free. That combination and that government was supposed to protect those things in those order in that order, life, liberty, the pursuit of happyness. That protection and particularly the pursuit has made america by far one of the wealthiest most prosperous nations in the world. We are having an argument about that, what does that mean . I think conservatives do an okay job of explaining the academics. We dont always explain how conservatism addresses some of the problematic sides of our american society. For instance, people in need, we often get people who live in dismissive, pull yourself up by your bootstraps the independent, work hard, all those things are true but there are people who are just never going to be independent and always need help. We dont often explain the idea of decentralized government could actually help people. In a nutshell, i will tell you a story its about Franklin Delano roosevelt, probably the greatest politician of the 20th century, i dont think he really had a rival. Roosevelt was running right after Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson was a democrat and he was loyal to Woodrow Wilson. He was going to run as a democrat, his fifth cousin he modeled his political career after was teddy roosevelt. Teddy was progressive. Fdr was also progressive but he had a problem. He couldnt run as a republican because hoover was a republican and hoover was in the middle of an economic collapse. He couldnt run as progressive because under Woodrow Wilson, progressives have taken a really ugly turn. It stems from eugenics, which was the socalled settled science we could actually decide who gets to procreate and who didnt and that was a very ugly time. Progressivism also brought us the womens right to vote so that was a good thing. It also brought us popular elections of u. S. Senators and awas a bad thing because it cut the responsibility, or the leverage, the state legislature is used to have over the u. S. Congress just eliminated it. State legislatures congress can pass all these laws and state legislatures continually have to deal with. In the old days they wouldve said senator, you keep passing back to us we will bring you right back home. Thats not the case anymore. Finally, they passed prohibition right in the middle of prosperous times. The roaring 20s a wonderful time and they passed prohibition. Fdr couldnt run as a progressive as you really wanted to end wilson was progressive, in fact, teddy and Woodrow Wilson ran against each other, both with competing progressive agendas but from different parties. Wilson claimed to talk, he got his clock cleaned. Fdr did something really interesting what he did was he put out a progressive agenda, he didnt call it progressive, he called it liberal. Which is interesting because up until that point the word liberal and liberalism have been associated with what we now recognize as conservatives. Thats where the word classic liberal comes from, john and i would identify ourselves as classic liberals in the preroosevelt sense. He called it liberal and it stuck and conservatives ended up calling it conservatives and thats been the monitors of Major Political philosophies a a unfortunately many people who follow him call himself conservative and they are not, consider the Republican Party just at the convention and for the First Time Since 1856 in which nine of the six planks in the original Republican Party platform civil rights claims the next hundred years the Republican Party was procivil rights party they lost that and this year they didnt put a platform at all just to say that we dont know what we believe. They simply pass the resolutions that we are with the big guy in whatever he says we are behind. I think its a really sad thing because parties cant sustain themselves on abif 89 yahoo were to pass from the public stage is party would collapse because theres nothing under it except for benjamin netanyahu. The republic and party is now the trump party and when he moves on one way or the other it will collapse because we its based on one person. Parties need to be based on ideas because when we went, i spent my career helping them republicans when when we win, my question now is, what do we win . What do we actually get . If the answer is, higher deficits, traded tariffs, mismanagement of a National PublicHealth Crisis that ends up costing us trillions of dollars and millions of 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 about the kids table even if they were ever invited to dinner they got to sit at the kids table and when reagan came in they got to sit at the adult table and drove the agenda for quite a number of years. Now we dont even get underwriter to dinner and bunch of what i would call imposters sit at the dinner tables and call themselves conservatives while people like john and i are talking to them to come to dinner. Thats kind of where i think we are in a nutshell and why conservatism i think really needs to revisit it. Even if you read my book and dont become a conservative thats okay my goal is accomplish that you say, 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. At least you will know that its a rational theory. 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 two teachers to learn. For yourself as well john, does teaching people, did that definitely reinforce your own belief or did it change them . Its funny because i have nine children, amazingly enough, i homeschooled all of them, whats interesting is that probably one of the greatest reparations for writing speeches is teaching my children and explaining concepts to them. I think there is that but i think you are absolutely right thats the principal its impossible to separate teaching from learning and when we have these conversations, the thing for me from a conservative perspective as much of what we believe is that the private sector is able to come up with many of these solutions they did an amazing job in the environmental chapter because hes explaining, thats his life. Thats the way hes living his life. The reality is hes not saying, hey, conservatives are painted with the brush of we dont care about the environment, thats clearly not the case. We are making the argument that conservatism, the private sector might simply be the best way to address this as opposed to leaving it in the governments hands. I think that many of the areas in the book a essentially make that claim is that things may be better addressed, its not that we dont care about these things, of course we do, we are just trying to figure out the best way to get there. We are trying to achieve the common good, presumably the same as political progressives, we are just arguing about maybe that math in terms of how to get there, if that makes sense. Rick . I was so enthralled with johns answer i forgot what the question was. Reexamining our own beliefs abdoesnt help reinforce your own beliefs . Absolutely you have to explain to other people what you believe. I will give you two examples when i first went on msnbc i started really going on the Chris Matthews show, john and i have been watching Chris Matthews, weve been watching Chris Matthews as literally as long as theres been cabletelevision. Hes a legend. Chris matthews worked on the hill he worked three separate congressmen. He was actually a Capitol Hill Police officer before he worked on the hill and politics. I always have respect for chris because he doesnt pontificate because he just pontificates, he pontificates because he actually worked for speaker of the house and the speakers office. Thats the experience you cant trade. Was invited on the show hardball for the first time and its very intimidating so my goal with Chris Matthews on hardball was to get invited back to survive it. Chris is very generous and over the years i kept getting invited back more and more but when i first started on msnbc i was the person on there that people love to hate so we all have those people, we cant take our eyes off of them because we hate them so much. [laughter] they are enjoyable and entertaining because they are nuts. That was me i would argue and loved to argue but i wasnt very likable. Over time i decided, i worked on a president ial campaign, 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. So i had to learn how to speak to people who didnt believe what i believed. And find common ground. I think its worked very well and as john said, he read reviews and talking to people who read the book and they are very surprised thats been very gratifying and its all about starting the conversation. I also taught people how to run for elected office, to thousands of people all over the world, israel, rome, greece, most canada, mostly the United States. He really got to think it through and when steve power, the one who wrote my failed proposal, when i sent him the initial manuscript i cant remember he had 7000 words of questions. Like that to lincoln at Cooper Union Speech length number of questions. That as long. It was hard because i really had to think very deeply about healthcare, 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. Fred guttenberg, if you dont know who he is he lost his daughter at Parkland High School in florida. I read about him. In every chapter i try to think, i was once already accused of putting out straw men, that wasnt my intention i did not want to put out straw men, i wanted to answer questions that have been asked of me so i tried to take what progressive ask as really hard questions for conservatives to answer and i want an answer to them and i want to start there and it was also a crash marketing theory, heres the theory, if i could start a chapter where they are nodding their head yes for the first three pages has opposed to throwing my book across the room that i might have a chance to actually get to the ideas and they might finish the chapter. If i can do some storytelling, connect with them at the beginning of the chapter, they might get interested in the rest. I will take this moment to remind people of the book is available from gibsons bookstore we are including sign the book places with all purchases of the book from gibsons book store which rick was very kind to send to us, thank you very much. Can you tell me some of your biggest frustrations about how political conservatism has been changed by Public Perception through the Republican Party . There is a lot of issues there. Let me start with trade and then moved to healthcare and then immigration i think those are the three topics illustrative of conservative thought in the way the Republican Party has decided to go instead. [indiscernable] here is the heart of trade, the human being is designed to create, its our most precious gift is to be creative its what made great artwork, great music, its whats written great books but also makes great products and Great Services peoples ability to create to try to get people to part with their dollars to buy their product or service over somebody else, thats led to in the aggregate trillions of different transactions of all people competing for those dollars in the free market. What trade does it says says your government decides we dont want you to buy these kinds of products or those kinds of products because of whatever reason because they have different labor practices different form of government etc. Its one thing to say i dont want to buy products from a company because abthats a moral objective to buying chinese products because of weaker labor camps but in the broader sense we have trade deficits for those countries mostly china precisely for the reason you have a trade deficit with your local supermarket. You keep buying stuff from them voluntarily, no one forces you to buy anything every fleamarket transaction is a voluntary transaction its not compulsory transaction. And they never buy anything back from you. Which is very interesting story about hong kong the way hong kong comes into the British Empire is the british would trade with hong kong trade porcelain and trade rice and other agriculture products from hong kong but the chinese wouldnt buy anything from the british, nothing it was a oneway street, sounds familiar, right . Same way today. For those products 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. The british came up with an idea and what it was as they were going to sell something to the chinese they couldnt exist it was opium and they sold opium to the chinese and they said but if you buy opium we are so sorry but we only take silver for the opium and that became the great flow of migration of silver from hong kong back to england and meanwhile millions of chinese became addicted to opium, which led to two separate opium wars which finally ended years later in the british treaty acquiring the 236 square miles of greater hong kong territories. Hong kong itself is very small. With the british game, im not advocating colonials, dont get all upset when advocating is that what the british gave to the chinese and hong kong was freedom and what we are seeing today in hong kong is a pushback of the chinese that they know the goose is laying golden eggs they dont have gold, silver, oil, natural gas, they have fish and agriculture. They became wealthy because of the sheer creativity. Donald trump renegotiated the south korean trade agreement which is called chorus with a k. It offered almost nothing significantly better than what the previous course agreement had despised confirmations to the contrary, the one thing i could find significant was that americans are not allowed to buy south korean pickup trucks and told 2032. Thought to myself, what if i wanted to buy south korean pickup truck . What if the south korean pickup truck is the trucks that i need . What if its the truck i want . Why does my government want to keep me from buying south korean pickup trucks . When government interferes in the market in that way they are propping up warm and picking winners or losers. I was also as our trade policy with china led to the greatest abput the gm bailout it dwarfed the gm bailout and make it look tiny by comparison, the gm bailout was what brought ab people say it was good because it saved the plant in the company and jobs, thats all great i dont begrudge that at all and it made money. 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 and return, i didnt get a gm car or truck or doorhandle or a rearview mirror, i got nothing. Gm got the money and it was some sense the warrensville plan ohio, its now close, the reason its closed is not because of unfair trade practices or labor laws in mexico, the warrensville plan is closed in ohio because americans didnt want to buy the chevy cruze. They made the chevy cruze and when they werent buying the chevy cruze couldnt sell the chevy cruze they had to close the plant. That was painful. But heres the bigger 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 tesla and others. Who are actually designing cars that i might want to drive or that i might want to buy. What we lose as 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. I know that sounds harsh but over time why is this fair to take American Consumers money and give it to a Company Whose products and services you dont actually consume. I will wrap up a little quicker on healthcare i think the republicans in short, the democrats have always had somewhat of an advantage and proposing policy solutions that is best, democrats can always point to a large or massive Government Program and say this is our answer to healthcare whereas conservatives and 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 its not a government plan. Heres the problem with the republican plan they didnt actually have a come on theres no plan. Was four weeks ago donald trump announced healthcare is incredibly collocated and it isnt one thing, obamacare is just 7 of the market. 93 of the market is not obamacare because you have private insurance, union insurance, tricare, medicare, medicaid, Indian Health services, it is extraordinarily, located and theres tons of money in healthcare finally, immigration the conservatives were Ronald Reagan was proimmigrants 1986 for Immigration Reform bill the testimony to that was never antiimmigrant the Republican Party is never antiimmigrant. What i say about immigrants is the fear that trump generates, which is all encapsulated in the mythology of the wall that mexico didnt pay for and by the way trump didnt build we have five 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 i remind them, when the italians came we didnt all speak italian when the irish came we didnt all become catholic. When the jews came we didnt all worship in the temple. When the germans came we all have to learn german. Now the muslims and the hispanics are getting the same horrible treatment of always treated. I dont suspect any of us who are nonmuslims worshiping the lord, were abanytime soon. No wave of immigration is ever overwhelmed the American Culture. Quite the opposite, its made our economy better and stronger, more innovative, more traditionally diverse, id argue we are a monolithic American Culture. People do bring a lot into our country, their ideas, food, traditions its wonderful. Why wouldnt we want to keep going in that direction . Why is it we suddenly decide now, by the way, we might look at some of the lowwage workers who happen to be latino they work in construction and lawn care, may deliver your amazon packages they may work in restaurants, their children will be doctors, lawyers, ceos and god forbid congressman. Thats just the way immigration has always worked, people assimilate. I get people to say what is nancy pelosi and Rudy Giuliani have in common . Do you know what it is . I would guess their parents are immigrants . Theyre all italian americans but it doesnt come immediately to mind even though their last names give them away. The italians have so assimilated to our society we dont think of them as italian we take of them as americans. One day i will say rodriguez and hernandez and we get the same quiz and people say, i give up. There both hispanic i should have seen that. We are getting closer to that everyday. I dont worry about the American Culture and i certainly dont worry about economics because next time theres a caravan coming should send buses and get them here as quickly as possible because if john and i are ever going to rely on Social Security or medicare someone has to do the work and if we ever get to three, four, five, six percent gdp we dont have enough americans to do it. We are going to need lots of immigrants. That was trade, healthcare and immigration, do you want to talk about the environment . I have to admit my environmental chapter is a little snark. My editor had a real problem with it, there was more notes in the margin on this chapter by far than any other chapter. I really delve into i first give a background on myself i tell a story about the grand canyon and why its my favorite place on earth and a little adventure i had their that really amazing like a godgiven gift. You can read about that. Here at the tyler household we compost, we compost all grass clippings, cow manure, all the organics that come out of the kitchen, everything gets recycled. Take the recycles personally to the recycle center because i dont trust the trash man is actually taking them. I just have this terrible suspicion its getting mixed in with all the other trash and all our efforts to collate and separate and its not being met. I do recycle myself i love the environment and i think its foolishness for the republicans to feed the abon the republican side of the environment can be a great issue because its a job creation issue because its a innovation issue because its such an exciting field and at the same time, if we could help the planet, thats a wonderful thing. Hi unidentified on the democratic side, with a more critical of the democrats. I think the foolishness of dismissing the environment is not an important issue is totally crazy. On the democrat side im a little more harsh because ive had many conversations about the environment and it believes in the same direction, rick, are you a scientist . Can i still im not can i still talk about abif youre not a scientist you really not qualified to talk about this okay so i cant talk about it. I dont identify abthen they say if i said something about the environment and most equivocal way lets say i believe that Global Warming is occurring that the earth is occurring but im not entirely sure to the degree of which ab help me out. Anthropomorphic Climate Change that is manmade emissions are adding i dont know to what degree thats true. When i look at the science, they say Rocket Science is hard and Rocket Science is actually by comparison easy because all the fixed variables are known. If i get a rocket in the space i gotta put fuel in it to create a certain amount of thrust if you always so much and im working against the force of gravity and ive got to get it into the air to serve trajectory interests in orbit. Im not smart enough to do that math. Those are all known factors thats why we can dock up with the space station because we are very smart people who know how to do that math. Environment is very different, theres many variables that there are hundreds of variables that are nonbut also variables that are known but we dont know what they are. We have to make estimations about the variables. They are called guesstimates and thats fine. You might be guessing right and thats fine, thats good, i hope so. Maybe not, maybe i hope they are not because some conclusions are rather catastrophic. But there may be unknown variables. Is a very difficult thing to predict 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 i make an example about the weather, for example, hurricane laura went from category one to category 1 overnight and nobody talked about it. And then they say i cant make a weather abi believe we might be warming the planet and im concerned about it and i think we should prudently do something about it they will say i am a denier. You for that word, climate denier. That means i dont believe in Climate Change, i just told you i did, to me those are religious terms. Those are doctoral terms, thats like arguing with me about the virgin birth because ashe cant argue that with me because thats what i believe as a christian because you wont convince me otherwise. Sometimes i feel i can talk to the left about the environment i cant talk about it because its a belief that there is nocturnal and based on a doctrine that somehow exists its in religious terms and i cant have a discussion about it. The democrats could win on the environment the same way i recommend that the democrats could win on the environment but they have to drop the henny penny, meaning we are all going to die in 20 years because they said that 20 years ago and we havent died and people should begin to you lose credibility. When i hear we have 12 years is not fixable and terrible i dont know its can be terrible and in 12 years we are going to find out and i hope its not. It seems to me that scaring people about the environment longterm is not a good political strategy because people begin not to believe it. Because its so big. Talking about the environment in positive terms and protecting the environment, creating jobs in the future i think is very exciting field and i think its the way we should go about it. I think in the end its far better for environmentalism then crying that the sky is falling. I think in the book there is a story of a man named nick a hes an interesting background. His family apparently didnt have a lot of money going up so when he would ask his father, i dont have this i would like this, his father had an interesting response, his fathers response was, go make it. 1. I dont have a bike, go make one. He came up with essentially developed the Led Technology so we have the government lightbulbs, he invented the led bulb which now you can have 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 replacing an led afrom a conservative perspective its clearly not the case that we dont appreciate the environment, as a christian im looking at as christians god wants us to care for the earth. I would regard that as gods command to me to care for the earth. But i think that the answer is the supplyside. As with the creativity, the answer lies in the creativity of man and i think too much we look at things as manmade problems, there are madman answers, the answer is whats the next led bulb. Have looked at the numbers and they are in the book the amount of energy saved every year with the led bulbs is incredible, its like the greatest thing ever to save energy but whats the next thing to be . My guess is that someone is coming up with it now may be somebody who has done a conversation with his dad or mom and saying, go make one. Thats all things happen. Unleashing the creativity maybe thats the best way to address what ails the environment simply what supplyside operate as opposed to the government says lets go do this our belief is things dont happen too officially abefficiently by doing it that way. I think john and i also agree there is a role for government in areas where there is no natural incentive to create. For instance, the led bulb was actually was a government it was government contract government contract went to the private sector to solve the problem but they needed an indicator that it would then produce heat and this is how the led got invented. We talked about the moonshot the space station the government did get us to the moon. There was no Natural Market to go explore the moon. There are things the government can do, there is basic science can we talk about this in the chapter on healthcare government does an enormous amount of work in research that leads to the development of drugs and the private sector in my opinion im fairly profit from that that probably needs to be rebalanced or some licensing or its unfair the taxpayers pay an enormous amount into Nih National Institute of health National Institute of science and they do ultimately reap the benefits but they dont reap the profits from them and i dont want the government to become a prophet, its not a prophet enterprise. Thats why we dont need a ceo or businessman to run it. The government does amazing work in doing basic science as a private sector and the internet is a perfect example. abthat developed over time to the internet, no one even imagined what the internet would been like at that time. The last example i will use as the pandemic because i get asked this a lot in healthcare, if we had a National Healthcare system we would honestly be able to deal better with this pandemic. That might 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 cannot be dealt with at an ad hoc statebystate city by city town by town level and needs a coordinated effort and as far as i understand that effort was actually in place by the beginning of the Trump Administration it was dismantled and was never really reassembled it was just punted to the states and thats why numbers are so dramatically bad compared to the rest of the world. Our death rate of the United States is 20 times worse than all the Asian Countries combined. Is twice that of europe. We are way behind the eight ball because we didnt respond to a National Pandemic and coordinated national way. I think we have time for about one more question. I think i might have john lead with this. You mentioned you have a very large family, how do you recognize large political differences in personal relationships . In marriage, parents, siblings, how if you are conservative how do you reconcile relationships with persons who disagree with you . Thats a really great question. Actually like to hear the other side. I invited abrick was mentioning a coffee shop we sometimes get together, i like to hear the other side of things. I would say the wonderful thing that has happened lately, i think its gotten worse, maybe it was their 20 or 30 years ago but people really do find themselves politically i think what we need to do is try, i think rick talked about this a few times, the fact that we can get together and disagree, rick and i dont think we agree on everything, and thats okay. The reality of it is that i like to keep the friendship in place, its not worth that, there will be things we disagree about. If im a browns fan and rick is a patriots fan, thats okay. Maybe we see plays differently. Rick is a patriots fan. [laughter] the reality is, we have to, instead of shouting each other down we need to listen better. I think it all really starts there. Were not going to get anywhere until we do. Winning over hearts and minds is important but listening we should listen because we are trying to adapt things and trying to figure out does it make more sense. We have to stop doing that we have to focus on the friendship and realize there are things we disagree about and thats okay. Rick . I would say in the book relationships are more important than politics. And they are. Your relationship with your family, your relationship with your friends, you want to preserve them at all costs. If your friend cant talk about politics with you thats a way thats not to preserve your friendship you should agree not to talk about politics. I have friends who were Trump Supporters and we just dont talk about it. They may come to dinner, they havent since covid, but before that, theres a million other things to talk about besides politics. Often on twitter occasionally i have followers who say i cant stand it anymore this is driving me crazy im often responded many times to say, turn the news off, take a few days off stay away from social media for a few days, clear your head, connect with nature, its really helpful. Because of the connection human beings desire to have with nature. Get some perspective and get healthy because we needed to come back. If you find yourself you are going crazy because of all the news and the news is nonstop, its too much people need to take a break and sort out whats important and sort out the priorities. My book may not do that for you but maybe there might be a chapter or two that might calm you down. Thank you very much for both of you for joining us this evening ricks book still right is available from gibsons bookstore stop its available for pickup at curbside in browsing or we do happily ship all over the country and all over the world. Thank you very much rick tyler, john clark, thank you for joining us, have a great night everybody. Thank you. A look now at some of the current bestselling nonfiction books according to Publishers Weekly topping the list in malan you and me Stephanie Winston wilcox recalls her time as the first lady Senior Advisor and why she left the it ministration. Followed by activist landon doyles memoir untamed and Pulitzer Prizewinning author isabel were questions expiration of what she calls a hidden caste system in the United States. Fox news host sean hannity argues a democratic president ial victory in 2020 would lead to socialism and economic strife in live free and die. According to Publishers Weekly as how to lead businessman and Philanthropist David Rubenstein advice from leaders in the fields of finance, entertainment, and government. Some of these authors have appeared on booktv and he can appear the abwatch them online at booktv. Org. Today at 7 00 p. M. Eastern a live discussion with Pulitzer Prize winning author bob woodward on his new book rage which looks at present Trumps National and Foreign Policy decisions. Watch booktv on cspan2. Hi, im bill soquel id like to welcome me this afternoon to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute all these presentation, the first in a series of presentations on americas unfinished business. Presentation this afternoon will be with doctor lawrence