We are hear here at here at the washington, d. C. Campuses where im also the dean of the school of government here in the nations capital. You can find out more about our programs at dc. Hilt hills take. Edu. Were in the ply area with library with Michael Anton whos a Research Fellow here, and were going to be discussing his new book, the stakes america at the point of no return. Welcome, mike, glad youre here. You might know michael from his previous work, he wrote flight 93 election, under a pseudonym at the time. He was in the private sector, so he wrote under a pseudonym until he was occupanted, and then he went to work with for the Trump Administration in the National Security council. That work, i think its safe to say, saw 2016 as an existential question. And now you tell us were at the point of no return, so im tempted to ask right off the tough what do you say to those who consider you to be an alarmist . I look around [laughter] and i see what is going on all around us right now. What is going on . What is yourassessment of things . You know, set up our conversation. Well, i would agree with those people, i am an alarmist. The question is am i right or am i wrong. Im comforted, somewhat, by the fact that a lot of people who said this is insane in 2016 have come around and said, i dont know, you might have been right after all. Or even im now completely convinced. To be vindicated by bad events is only somewhat comforting. Id have rather just been wrong and had everything turn out okay. So i wrote the bulk of the book before the lockdown, before the riots or the 1619 riots as our teacher called them. Right. And they serve as sort of further vindication that the countrys headed in a bad direction. But, again, its vindication id rather not have. Id rather have everything get fixed, everything become harmonious, and then i could go down in history as a crank who wrote one alarmist thing that turned out to be inaccurate. Thatd be a much better outcome. My own reputation would suffer, but everyone else would be a lot happier. [laughter] right. Well, both these books are about elections. Is something about where we are in our history such that are all elections going to be of this magnitude, or is this a temporary thing . Well, its definitely temporary. But thats also not a comforting answer because one way you could solve the problem is just have, you know, one more election, elect Democratic Party, let them am nsse amnesty if you read the biden harris immigration plan, theyre essentially promising to bring in through a combination of amnesty, 52 million americans if they become president and all on natural sawtion, citizenship. The number, the highest correlation of liberal and democratic voting for a district whether thats a congressional destruct, a state, a county or whatever is the percentage of foreign born. And they know this. The democrats have been saying this for decades that the more immigrants come into the country in certain states, the more they tip democratic, and thisll be a great way to build a permanent democratic majority. Thats just one example of what i think was on the table in 2016 because its on the table in 2020. So one way to stopping having flight 93 elections is to stop having elections. Everybody knows what the outcome is in california, you know whos going to win. And whoever wins is going to have the same program as everybody else. The country could become like that shortly, is what im most worried about. So one more general questions, then i actually want to walk through some meaty parts of the book. The 2016 election, the 2020 election, is the 2020 election more existential, if you will . And i preface that by pointing out that the founder of the transition integrity project, which is a Bipartisan Group with john podesta [inaudible] nice gilman has niles gilman has tweeted that you are the robert [inaudible] of our time and should be treated as such. Well, he was executed for working with [laughter] what is going on . Is this election more, more hyped finish. Worse than that, he was executed for writing articles, right . Without a trial. And this person has been criticized by some of our friends and has refused to apologize or back down. Totally justified. And extremely wellfunded think apparently has no problem with him tweeting out threats. What does it tell us about where we are . I think less expected to win the the left expected to win the 2016 by a landslide. They expected the transition to a oneparty state to be smooth and up eventful. They were uneventful. They were shocked by the election of trump. They were shocked that there was still enough effective resistance to their program, and theyve been in a very angry and vengeful mood since the 2016 election, and that ang ily, vengeful mood has hit a fever pitch in 2020, and i fear that if they get total power in 2020, i believe that the transition to total power in 2016 add that it occurred would have been smoother, less turbulent. I think its going to be extremely turbulent if they get it now in part because theyre going to be out to settle scores. For example, one person whom i know slightly, havent spoken to in years, has actually called for, quoteunquote, truth and Reconciliation Commission for the posttrump age. This is something that happens when a totalitarian dictatorship falls and you dont want to put everybody in jail, you at least try to smooth over the differences by having people come forward and confess. What crimes are there for making an argument for the president and for his programs . If were talking about a truth in Reconciliation Commission, were admitting there are no democratic politics, no justified opposition anymore, theres just one side and enemies, and thats the way they see it. Right. Well, lets back up and really kind of work true the book through the book some and get to some of your argument. The flight 93 argument was turned into a booklet, but this is really now more of an extensive work that thinks through some of the underlying problems that we face. You opened this book with the extended essay, if you will, from a chapter about california. Im from california, as are are you spent some time in california i was born and raised the revolting generation. Okay. But you predict california as a study of americas possible future. Right. So backing away from the immediacy of the election, you see really a larger trend going on here which thats representation california has more effective lu had oneparty rule for decades. The interregnum notwithstanding, not to go into the weeds, but arnold is schwarzenegger spent less than two years trying to govern in the kind of centerright modern republican conservative and was defeated in every respect and spend his entire second term governing as a democrat. Even though he never switched parties. The congressional delegation, ive forgotten, its Something Like 457, overwhelmingly democratic. It has had oneparty governance at the state level, city level and pretty much every county level with a large population, there are some red counties in rural areas, but those red counties and the red people, there are millions of them in california, they have knowfective vote or say. They can vote, it just doesnt matter. So california shows what happens when the Democratic Party and the modern left take complete power, what they do. Its particularly illustrate thive, because the modern Democratic Party are especially well represented by california, by finance interests, tech interests, the managerial class, the socalled knowledge economy workers, things like that. These are the people that cram that little ribbon up and down the california coast, come up with all kinds of enthusiasm and then impose them on the rest of the state. And its a very, you know, its not a warts and all portrait of california. It is a mostly wartsz portrait because i feel like californias propaganda about the Natural Beauty and Silicon Valley innovation, all of these things, everybody hears that. We all know that side of the state. Im not denying that its there, im just say underneath the tip of the iceberg is a big, giant iceberg of decay, and people dont hear about it, and they need to know about it. So the what literal lu makes it the literally makes it the example where things are going . Obviously, theres cultural questions cultural questions how it actually operates yeah, all of the above. I mean, i start, almost begin the book with mike bloomberg, former mayor of new york city and very briefly a president ial candidate in the democratic primary, while he was running came out to california and said this is the model for the future. Bloombergs a prototypical kind of oligarch type. I dont know how much money he has, 50 billion. Not taking anything away from his success, but he very much all about the knowledge economy, the finance economy, the hightech economy and with no concern for the middle class or manufacturing and is so on. His vision of new york, he used to call it the, quoteunquote, luckily products luxury product. Yes, its very expensive to be here and all kinds of things dont work, but it works for the top. And thats what matters. He doesnt seem to care about the rest of the country in any significant way. Mike bloomberg was very much a candidate for the coastal elite, the coastal oligarchs. And the parts of california that he were praising are the only parts that really work, and he seemed to neglect the rest. I would say the same about gavin newsom and Mark Zuckerberg and schwarzenegger and all the names you think of when you think of the great california success story. As long as palo alto e and San Francisco and a laguna beach and a handful of other places are doing okay, californias working. Modesto, lodi, fresno, the foothills and Cascade Mountains and the high desert and the low desert and the inland empire, not only do they not care about those places, they dont even know theyre there. So theres a sense, and i want you to juxtapose that with you also talk about, you refer to like a parchment regime yeah. Theres a certain juxtaposition in your book between this new regime, californias model of where things seem to be going, and this other, old regime, this parchment regime. I want to come back later to your analysis, but just i want to talk about those two models, the california model but this parchment regime you talk about, the older america. Tell us more about how you an lose that. You also talk about the confusion both within the. [laughter] and the right over that. Yeah. The main thrust of chapters two and three is to say this is how were supposed to be governed, but were not anymore. And in a way, its meant to shake conservatives by the lapels a bit and say i reveer the constitution and the bill of rights and civil war amendments just as much as you do. But its time to own up to the fact that the United States is no longer governed by these things. Its fundamentally governed in a different way. So i dont give much of a civics lesson about how its supposed to be governed. I think five or six pages because its covered elsewhere. But then i spend a lot of time in chapter two discussing attacks on the original understanding, and i spend more time on rightwing attacks than leftwing attacks. Including by many hillsdale scholars including myself, but the rightwing attacks havent gotten as much attention. Lets dug into those for a little bit. At hillsdale we spend a lot of time talking about the founding and the Core Principles behind it, the declaration and the constitution. We think those are very important to defining our regime. But its also the case with some of our own, our teachers have talked about many times that you go into some depth about how theres been a debate within the right for some time over how to understand the founding. But to what extent has that kind of taken the conservatives, the defenders of the founding, off on the wrong path . Well, theres two, theres maybe two ways i can put this. First is that theres, theyre related. Theres a conservative tack which says its the the founding is well, let me put it this way. Im trying to speak to those conservatives who look at 2020 and say i dont like this. Something has gone or terribly wrong, it needs to be fixed. And when we sit down and make our list, you know, whats the list of things you dont like, my list and their list looks about the same. Simply a byproduct of. I dont mean to disparage but he caricatures america in the book which came out in 1987 is nothing but a kind of lock put to life on a political stage. I tried to answer, neither of these charges is true. It is deviation from the mess we are in now. Not adherence to the founding principle and the founders in fact were not straight up locksians are libertarians or concerned only with the private satisfaction of appetites and things like that and build a resume that is all right and no duties. We halted all of this before. They were doing the best we could and the best anyone could under the circumstances of 1776 which in fundamental ways still prevail today in the sense that we still live in the modern world is ups to the classical a label will probably still live in a christian world, we live in a world in which civil and religious law have been separated as they were not in the ancient world. I dont want to get into the philosophy too deeply but many fundamental circumstances still prevail and the answers that are proposed by people in the right are unviable. I think they know that because they never spelled out. They chip away a lot of the founding it in maybe it is kind of a new right that comes from nietzsche or people in nature absorb it. I find all of those unsatisfactory. Some aspects of some of those things are reasonable if interpreted in the right way and included with other elements and i tried to schedule this out. Is very much not me. Im trying not to bash rightwing critics of the founding, it doesnt help anything. Im saying im with you on the diagnosis. I dont think you are right on the cure. Hear me out and from what i have heard minimally, i hadnt really thought this meant that on the fence but i have been convinced by that. Literally 5 people have told me that. That is an important aspect of your book. We will come to your serious criticism of current policies of conservatism and modern aspects of the movement if you will but that stems from a misunderstanding or failure to comprehend the grounding is that a statement . Its not an original case, the most original about chapter 2 is putting it all in one place and trying to directly address criticism that gained steam over the last 10 years. Im not going to old debates from kaleocontacted neocons from the 70s, not refighting the civil war. It is all about addressing serious rightwing critics of the regime as it has developed in the last couple decades, a regime which i oppose it is far from what it should be but diagnose the reasons why. Host on the left a little bit, we had the 1619 project, the first 1776 project, what do you make of that . That is the root of what it has gotten us here. That could question. I isolate capital progressivism of the Twentieth Century and second 60s leftism, the 1619 project, the original progressives whatever one thinks of them, skeptical to say the least, i find some good in them. One thing is none of them were antiamerican. They wanted to reinterpret they were antifounding but not in that they thought it was bad at the time, they just thought, think of them as somebody coming to a stateoftheart computer and trying to run software from a, 64. That the weather looked at america. The constitution is outmoded software that cant work on the complex machine today, we need new software but they left the machine. Wilson wanted to bring about progress. When you get to 60s radicalism the machine is terrible and we are trying to break it. What happens there . Arises from a kind of irrational action, utopianism, residual marxism, maybe just a lot of discontentment built into the system. Some of the arises from just critiques such as telling her history one way and lots of people have been left out. A lot of it begins an argument for inclusion. Why we only telling the story about this story and then it becomes we should tell all the stories as well. Why are we emphasizing, change the matter of emphasis you get all the way to we are not going to tell the story him anymore only to let in a disparaging way and everything has to be about stuff that was formally excluded. There is a momentum to it i guess the took on a life of its own and culminates, what you have been watching the last couple days, theyve had a rough week or two where they are starting to deny they ever said the most radical things they said and even gone so far as to disingenuously retroactively change websites and take down tweets but they say the internet is forever. All these things have been captured and has been thrown in their faces. Host for the purposes of i will make a distinction you make. The term intellectual shifts that are going on but also structural practical things are happening as well, one of the things many of our friends and scholars point out about the Administrative State, structural things are happening below their intellectual critiques and arguments. But because of that. Host they are connected. The constitution of 1786 is old software for a machine that is too complex for it. We need to come up with new software. Part of the problem is the old Software Says let the people decide all these questions, you cant have that anymore because the questions are too complicated for people to decide. They need to be decided on the basis of expertise or Scientific Authority and implemented in a nonpartisan way. And in order to do that we have to build this incredible apparatus. They do it cleverly, still formally only 3 branches of government, the Administrative State, not quite but almost entirely built within the executive branch but becomes an unaccountable fourth branch, people are not you nonresponsive to elected authority. There is a chart, the executive branch sits at the top, little lines on the box to secure the ceo of the company you would think these people report to me and ceo, that is more or less true, you have a lot of leeway, the president doesnt. The Administrative State is so insulated from political authority. The breaking away between the parchment regime, the regime of the founders which in various different ways, there were some things that werent quite as radical as what comes later. There is a break and it takes a while to build these. The most radical intellectual movements dont go anywhere and sometimes they do but you only notice. When the progressives talk about what they want to do in 1898 and 1910 they actually pushed through a lot of progressive reforms, the National Park system, immigration restriction, health and safety regulations but they do it legislatively. They are using the old system. It takes a while before you get to the point where Unaccountable Agency can just say we are passing this regulation. Congress has nothing to say about it, congress didnt order it and if youre found in violation you will be tried, found by one of our agents and can be brought for an administrative judge, all three powers, to constitutional powers vested in one unconstitutional branch where they can charge you, try you, sentence you, find you, convict you within one system. Takes a long time to be built and almost the very definition of tyranny. People are surprised they didnt notice it while it was happening and it is just there. Is that an evolution, slow change or a change in time . You seem to suggest we crossed the rubicon. I think i believe that. Doesnt mean you cant ever go back. We will come back to that. Let me put it this way. I was saying earlier today in a meeting remember this comment, the power between those who believe in the old order which is still on the books. No one has repealed the constitution. I sent my students every year to make sure it is still there. It is. I was there last thursday and it is still there. On the books formally the old order still rains and is still fundamental but the power and balance between those of us who want to enforce the old order and those who uphold and enforce the new order is vast. They have almost all the power. In one sense we crossed the rubicon in that, charge headlong against the Administrative State, the epa says i inadvertently killed in endangered insect in my backyard and wants to do what they want to do, they charge me on the basis of regulations, the person doing the charging is an unelected bureaucrat, not a sworn officer of the law, i get hauled before an administrative judge on a proceeding that has no precedent in law, all about regulations and get convicted on administrative grounds and find and punished, they can do that and i can say this is unconstitutional and illegal and i will fight you with xyz and i will be squashed like a bug i alleged to have killed, a power balance. The old order is there and in the other since i am bambi and they are godzilla. If youve seen that cartoon godzilla defeats bambi rather easily. It is a shift of political power from the elected branches to the Administrative State which begins with the progressives themselves and there are structural things going on. You also introduce this other element and relate that to the conversation. We were talking about a shift of power to unelected bureaucracy called the Administrative State. You have a long chapter talking about the ruling class which is not necessarily the same thing. What is the ruling class . The people who run things. If you are thinking, the reason i know what the ruling class does, it was the land of aristocracy and high clergy. James q wilson who governed. In our system the ruling class, it seems disparate but they have one fundamental thing in common. They all get the same education and the same opinion. Senior members of the ruling class are people who run the banks and tech firms and big corporations and universities, the junior members of the ruling class, some are extraordinarily rich and others merely make a lot of money. Junior members of the ruling class are people who didnt go to harvard but to middlebury or oberlin, they learned their wealth, indoctrinated, instead of ending up being a managing director at Goldman Sachs or assistant secretary of the treasury or senior manager at facebook they are fact checker and think how could this person barely making 6 figures cant afford a closet for his condo, this is not a successful person but in a way that person is an incredibly important part of the ruling class because he enforces the dogma. Not merely pushing a populist push against those currently in control in the washington establishment. It is that but theres more to it. The ruling class most of the washington establishment his ruling class and that includes the bureaucrats. I would call them junior or lower middle members but not merely that. It is an intellectual thing, the universities, broader than a populist complaint against who is currently in power. The most fundamental defining characteristic of the ruling class is how they are educated and what opinions they hold. I dont think Mark Zuckerberg, theres a fundamental difference in the makeup between Mark Zuckerbergs mind, he may be somewhat smarter since he has 66 billion but the makeup of his mind, how he thinks, the things you wants to see done that are just and unjust, the way he thinks power is justly used to enable certain ends, there is no difference between him and the low 6figure scribe or internet click debate offer. They think the same way as work in their own spheres toward the same end. You make some distinctions, freeloaders and avengers. Who are these people . The ruling class army. Or constituency. Every ruling class, every Leadership Class needs people behind them. You can put stars on peoples shoulders, they dont have an army, what good are they . Freeloaders is a loaded term and i try to qualify but fundamentally people whose interest in the political system is to get free stuff. Prototypical freeloader is a birdie bro, i want socialism because the system is unfair and i deserve more and dont know how to get it. So i will make the government do it. They are more true believers in the religion of wokenest. The defining characteristic is they are not in it because they feel they personally have been harmed but they feel a religious sense of america has harmed people and that is terrible and im going to dedicate my life to redressing that. Avengers are people who think america has harmed them personally and or harm their Demographic Group more broadly and theres a cosmic ledger that needs to be squared and that is the squaring of it requires the punishing of america or certain segments of the american population. This is a Bipartisan Group if you will. Pretty much all 3 hard to imagine republican constituency this is more of a description of liberal whereas liberalism has gone. The ruling classes liberal or left but it is a weird leftist that has no problem with billionaire oligarch wealth concentration but if we are going to think about partisan divide today, who is conservative, was liberal, whose democrat, who dominates the red states or blue states the ruling class, blue left democratic. Do you think theres a ruling consensus, a stable consensus . I dont think it is stable and the election of 100 turbulence of our times, they realize the instability ultimately requires further coercive measures on their part and that is what they are gearing up for in this election or let me put it this way the whatever the outcome of the election if they manage to retake the white house somehow. It fair to say, there is, we use terms like old left and new left, the old democrats and new democrats. There is a sense in which the new democrats, the new left, new progressives have come to dominate, the old parts are no longer capable of controlling it. They went over to republicans. The old democrats, the Old Coalition was noncollege educated union workingclass or the big cities, the big cities dont have noncollege educated they dont have manufacturing anymore. I dont mean that entirely but they have become havens for tech and the managerial class but that type of all democratic voter are independent or dont vote or gone over to the republicans and many never voted in decades voted for trump which caused the surprise of 2016. The battle between the new left and the left the new left won that is all settled. I think it is settled. Dont know how they win over those voters because trump voters, some of them perhaps old left the have now voted trump or what do you make old left may be too much. Host old democrats. Old left like the steinbeck novels of the 30s, organized cells on the Central Valley floor, you have that committed to the left, probably not a trump voter but somebody who is happy to vote for truman and jfk you are an old democrat. A lot of them were trump voters. A lot of people later voted for a gray. A lot of those people, maybe their children are trump voters a generation back. Host you have a number of things in your booklet talk about the operations of the left, the mechanism of the left and you talk the narrative. The negative, the narrative, megaphone of the muzzle. Explain that. Guest the number one tool, america is not just a little bit is not mostly not ruled coercively. It is ruled one of the disturbing element of 2020 has been the extent to which weve seen outright coercive measures, we see a lot of violence on the streets, excused, denied and whipped on by the media, social media legacy and mayors and governors refusing to do anything about mob violence or encouraging it. The few times weve seen Law Enforcement have a candlelit under them, to go after aggressively people who exercise their natural Constitutional Rights to selfdefense, that is the state acting coercively in a ceramic away weve not seen before but worries me a lot. Ive never seen as much as ive seen in 2020 and the trend is in a bad direction. Mostly they will through propaganda, broadcasting only one narrative on any subject, extraordinarily high decibel and omnipresent way to every channel you are only hearing one things the right now we have another disputed police shooting, the narrative is all Police Shootings of black people are unjustified, the police are systematically racist. Lots of stuff, the case is initially presented by the narrative is entirely synthetic, it is a no knock warrant, she was asleep, not guilty, shot in cold blood, turns out there was a knock wasnt a no knock warrant, the boyfriend was under indictment for something, had a felony warrant out for him, shot at the police. Everything is complicated and the shooting was justified. It is not inevitable anymore but there is a refusal to bring down indictments, and when indictment that comes down is for not murder but lesser charge so we get writing. The narrative fueled the writing because the narrative says this cant possibly be justified. Every time this happens the police are always at fault and the victim of the shooting is totally innocent. Thats the narrative. On megaphone bladders that out there every channel, where view click, whatever you read that is what you will see. The few places to try to tell more side of the story get muzzled, sensibility platforms on social media or tied with accusations of being racist, it is hard to get the alternative story out. Thats the chief way the ruling class rules, by only telling one story, one side of one story, by telling it everywhere constantly as loudly as possible and suppressing other versions and attacking and the platforming those who try to get out. Guest the idea of a narrative, by itself, has a long history in kind of liberal anger academic thinking to shift away from an argument about history and truth to a narrative, a way of doing things that is the political square. You use to hear relativistic argument in academia but theyve moved beyond that. Is too sophisticated for them now. The truth that america is systemically racist and police are out for blood to kill innocent people, they are not saying that is my truth and not your true, they say that is the truth and honestly as stupid as i find a relativistic argument it all depends on your perspective it is a little bit smarter than saying this is the truth when you have a whole pile effectively here i can show that undermine it and you still insist this is the truth and pretend those facts arent there or you are just a bad person for bringing them up. The old naive sense the kids in college is are merely learning relativism. They are not anymore. Guest they are learning awoke religion. And being radicalized. 5 years ago, smart but naive liberals were saying colleges are becoming a problem because they are getting so radical how long ago was it we had that crazy meltdown over the halloween email at yale, saying you put out a note saying be careful how you wear, what kind of question you wear because you would event people and the professors wife and the professor herself said just dont wear anything stupid but use your judgment, you are not idiots and we dont need to be too respective and students with crazy and it was caught on videotape of them screaming at the professor and his wife and all this, several smart liberals at the time said colleges are doing a disservice because what happens when kids get out into the real world at have to do real jobs in Real Companies that expect a result they would get eaten alive. The joke was on them because kids went out and went into the real world and 8 the companies all live. When 2020 walls around and anytime there was a controversy hitting 50yearold senior and middlemanagement, they won in about every time. The effects of the academy which has been a subject of criticism for decades now, what we are seeing now is a push, many things but that may be the biggest intellectual thrust. I want you to lay out for us your chapter 8 which is how this could be saved. What what an agenda look like that might turn this around another way and that brings up a particular chapter in your book earlier on on immigration, you talk about a number of things that might be a different way of looking at these questions, the criticism of the modern parties. Host we had to create some things if that is possible, the first step would be to create a semblance of unity which we dont have. In my own view, trying to make cultural unity or civic unity the First Priority is a mistake because it is not permanently hopefully average but fairly far out of reach. The thing would be is economic unity. I think the country is very economically divided but it is more culturally than economically divided at the moment but maybe economic unity could be a pathway to creating more cultural unity and essentially the full implementation and fleshing out of the program. All kinds of things the labor market to prevent healthcare from cannibalizing visit has the last couple decades. Make housing more affordable so people can get married and have kids younger and not having to scrounge and save forever and the first down payment and traditionally ridiculously excellent of house at age 40 the way the system works now, i say it in the book, not a policy. I a lot of help putting that together. I wrote it myself but i did get ideas from people and bounce them off people just as away it does require the Republican Party in particular to abandon freemarket and freetrade absolutism and say inequality doesnt matter rising tide lifts all boats, a mode theyve been in for 30 years, requires the Republican Party to realize the tech sector is not its friends, it is its enemy and that it is wall street worship hasnt paid off it needs to think about serious banking regulations that may reduce wall street profits but further financial position of the economy only benefits the red mill. Serious reassessment of the Republican Party, is the Republican Party the vehicle . It might be. The Republican Party is divided, Republican Leadership plays like to trump because they see the Republican Base is 96 approving of trump but many leadership of the Republican Party are waiting for trump to go away and think they can go back to the old reagan playbook consensus. It is not going to do us any good in 20202024, in the 2020s. It doesnt work. Host setting aside you have the Republican Party, the vehicle of consensus, parties change, youve made a couple points about the intellectual ground of the coalition behind it, the Reagan Coalition of the 80s or libertarianism, traditionalism, social conservatism. How do you see those you see those in a different way. It really needs to operate, the intellectual coalition behind the party. The old standard way of looking at the Reagan Coalition was economic libertarians and social conservatives, take that in reverse order. The Republican Party still isnt needs to be the party of social conservatives, the problem is it doesnt deliver victories for social conservatives. It toxic liberals over on everything. Think about the analyst social change weve seen in the last 5 years against which the Republican Party claims to be standing but has been entirely ineffective. It needs to stand up. Iqs the Republican Party of being cynical blooge it talks a good game about social issues to get votes and thus donations but knows it cant take on the power of the media and the Administrative State and the judiciary, it asks for your money on that piece it is less agreement and question the followthrough. Political will. Not just will but get rid of the cynicism. We need people who are just talking a good game because they feel they have to but who believe it is are going to fight on it. On economics, has to be the biggest change in that the Republican Party has to be, it is not 1980 anymore. Top margin tax rate is not 70 . Reagans first inaugural, he said in the present crisis government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem, notice he said in this current crisis. We are in a different crisis and government can be the solution is not the solution he can help with outsourcing, with us manufacturing. I think he was fifth philosophically in economics major but after a first term of trying to get diplomacy on the trade imbalance and shined on by trading partners, he moved the stick and the second term and got results. He did that reluctantly. And then play ball with 3 traders and cant be a sucker and let them exploit my country. Host the american tradition is not necessarily purely freetrade tradition. There are a lot of errors. It was not founded by Abraham Lincoln but 45 miles away under a tree which i have seen. I cant belch for the accuracy of that fact but the guy who took me to the tree swears it is the 3, from the deck of lincolns presidency to the great depression. It raised the question, it is an intellectual point which is the notion markets and trade are extremely important but those are prudential questions. Guest what works for the citizenry at the time. Host it becomes a doctrine. Guest the republican freetrade absolutism. I dont know how many republicans realize this, they inherited from democrats. The current freetrade stance after world war ii has a way of helping rebuild the economy, the democrats arguing for it, the socalled wise man around fruman saying we have to do this because if we dont we, these economies in europe wont be rebuilt and will be subject to communist takeover and we might lose out a little bit but we can afford it. 50 of global gdp right now, mostly democrat although they havent the Union Democratic base which they say we control is much of the economy, dont worry about it, we are the Strong Economy the world, the republicans take over the freetrade argument at the point the nafta vote in 1993 which bill clinton wins as a democrat for the first time in 12 years and the democrats are still considered the tariff party with the union party and is a lot of pressure not to pass nafta. He decides to side with it and goes to congress and Congress Says no. His own caucus, he has to rely on republicans and that trend continues through the 90s, republicans become the rigid freetrade party and only trump has shaken that up and i think that will be a tough one. And the composition of the Trump Administration how many cabinet pics struggle with the idea we have to be tougher in trade negotiations and think about tariffs. There is not a deep strain of that even though there is in the Republican Partys dna going back to lincoln is not much of it present in the party today. Host your thirdparty, Foreign Policy. This should be an easier one because the Republican Party is always been through much of the Twentieth Century the Republican Party i dont want to say the isolationist party but the party much more inclined to restraint, more inclined to a Foreign Policy standoffish in this but also a strong jacksonhe and strain in it, made famous by Walter Russell mead, he identify for jacksonian tradition as we will leave you alone as long as you leave us alone but if you mess with us dont expect the proportional response. You blow up one take we will not blow up one of your takes, we will blow up 100 of your tanks. Host not only necessarily jacksonian. Guest that is the phrase that crystallizes the thinking. If you explain that to the average Republican Base protocol we are not going to go around picking fights are get into foreign wars overseas or nationbuilding or humanitarian, we will defend ourselves and if we get hit we were hit back 10 times as hard. The intellectual case, define your interests narrowly not in an expansive way, defend them vigorously and otherwise try to get along with everybody and leave everybody alone, complete common sense. To a lesser extent than freetrade to some extent a fairly large category remaining that says we have an interest everywhere, we have to be active and engaged and aggressive, it is easier to win especially after two decades of failure in iraq and afghanistan. Host we are running out of constraints last time but to close that do you think there is something there, a Ruling Coalition or do you think this is a difficult host that guest that hinges upon, i am not one of those quantitative political signs but it seems to me that question entirely depends on whether or not a trump policy, trump platform can pick up a significant number of middle, working and lower middleclass voters, nonwhite voters, hispanic and black voters, not a majority but enough to eat into the Democratic Coalition that gets the Republican Coalition to comfortably in the low to mid 50s. If they can be done yes. If on the other hand cultural issues trump Economic Issues and economics cant bridge the gap on cultural issues by appealing to enough voters i dont know the answer. Right now it looks trump did 8 of the black vote which is terrible in 2016 and 28 of hispanic which was not great, the republicans have done better. We will wait and see what the vote is that hes doing significantly better now and if that pans out and there are successors to trump to make the most of all cases to these constituencies my policy will make it better. My policy will put more money apartment make your healthcare cheaper and better, it will give these concrete benefits, then there is a chance. Host a few minutes left. Anything i have not covered or left out the you bring up . Guest you didnt bring up the doomsday scenarios, you have to read the book to find out about those. In short order what are they . Guest i talk about things conservatives dont like to talk about not because im wishing for the more predicting them but things are very rocky and rough in a way they havent been in a long time and and if we dont start thinking through the possibilities, civil war, authoritarian or a kind of enforced federalism were state in certain jurisdictions say that is what you said, washington, make me. Im not leaving the union, does not going to implement that, see if you can force on me. These things could happen. Host you have written a book warning about those things. Guest people we cant prevent them if we dont talk about them. First time one of these Things International consciousness, is going to be a bigger problem we talk about in advance. Guest read the book. Thank you, michaels book, the stakes the 2020 election and the point of no return, from friends at raber a publishing. I read it in the meantime. Encourage you to make up a copy, thank you for joining us, thank you for watching online. Here are some books being published this week. Find these titles this coming week wherever books are sold and watch many of the office in the near future on booktv on cspan2. During a Virtual Event hosted by the Ronald Reagan president ial foundation and Institute Republican governor larry hogan of maryland reflected on his life and political career. In this portion of the program he talks about his cancer diagnoses at the beginning of his first term as governor. We just won this big overwhelming upset victory, the biggest one in the country and i had my first legislative session, putting together an entire government, overwhelmingly a democratic monopoly state and we cut taxes for the first time, balanced the budget, got rid of 5. 1 billion deficit in the first 90 days, and 60 days later listen to the news, i was on my first trade mission to asia, wasnt feeling well, aches and pains and getting tired but didnt think there was anything serious, went to the doctor and doctors told me i had advanced and aggressive cancer all over my body except for my goal in, almost 18 month total battle, 24 hour the day chemotherapy while being governor. A brandnew governor in a tough state, and this experience, i got to meet so many people and what it was like going through that. My first worry, it was fathers day weekend when i got this diagnosis. My first thought i got to tell my wife and daughters, my dad who was 80 at the time, he took it harder than anybody, he is a little boy you couldnt keep out of trouble and protect so he tried to hold on. Then i announced to the state of maryland, tried to be very transparent and share it with them, 6 Million People put their trust in me and continue to keep working as i worked from the hospital bed and came out stronger than ever. To watch the rest of this Program Visit our website, booktv. Org, and search larry hogan for the title of his book still standing. Hello, welcome, thanks for joining the proceeding. I am jason kucsma and thrilled to have you here tonight. A number of our guests join a delicious meal that i saw concluded for our virtual authors, if youre interested in joining there are three ways to join us