Transcripts For CSPAN2 Michael Anton The Stakes - America At The Point Of No Return 20240712

Listen live on the cspan radio app. Election night on cspan, your place for anunfiltered view of politics. Good evening to the students in our audience and our viewers, welcome to coaldale college, im, vicepresident of the college. The college of course is based in coaldale michigan and we are near the colleges washingtondc campus. Also the puppy school of government. The nations capital. You can find out more about our programs at dc. Hillsdale. Edu. But where in the library with Michael Antone who is a college lesser Research Fellow here and were going to be discussing his new book the face, america at the point of no return welcome my area glad youre here. You might know michael from his previous work, he wrote my election, under certain time, he was working the private sector at the time. He wrote under a pseudonym until he was outed and then you went to work for the Trump Administration in the national securitycouncil. That worked, they saw the election 2016 as an x essential question and now you tell us that were at the point of no return so im tempted to ask right off the top, what do you say to those who consider you to be an alarmist but of course i look around me and i see what is going on all around us right now. What is going on . What is your general assessment of things to set up our conversation. I would agree with those people, im an alarmist so thats not the question the question is am i right or wrong . Im comforted by the fact that people who said this sounds insane in 2015 come around and said you might have been right after all or im now cancompletely convinced. I say im comforted but to be vindicated by that is only somewhat comforting. Id have rather just been wrong and had everything turn outokay. So i wrote the bulk of the book for the lockdowns and before the local riots for the 1619 rights as our teacher charles holden. They serve as sort of further indication of the countries headed in a bad direction but again, its something id rather not happen but id rather be proved wrong and have everything become harmonious and i can go down in history as a crack who wrote one alarmist thing that turned out to have been accurate. Id be much better, my own reputation would suffer everyone else would be a lot happier. Both of 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 . Its definitely temporary. But thats also not a comforting answer because one way you can solve the problem is at one more election , lx the Democratic Party. Let them amnesty, if you leave joe biden in, are essentially promising to bring in or through accommodation of amnesty and immigration, a 52 million americans and all on a path tonaturalization and citizenship. The highest correlation of liberal or democratic voting for a district whether thats a congressional district, a state, a county or whateveris the percentage of foreignborn and the democrats have been saying this for decades. That more immigrants coming to the country and the more democratic and this will be a great way to build a permanent democratic majority so thats just one example of what i think was on the table in 2016 and is on the table in 20 20 so one way to stop having 93 elections is to have not happen elections or have meaningless elections forever. In california estate of every gubernatorial and other elections are serial because Everybody Knows the outcomes are not going to support a conclusion and whoever wins is going tohave the same program as everybody else. The country could become like that shortly as is what im most worried about. So one more general question and i want to walk through some meaty parts of the book. The 2016 election, the 20 20 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. Miles gilman has tweeted that you were the number rasul of our time and should be treated as such he was executed for working with the nazis read what is he doing wrong . Is this election more heightened. It was std executed for writing articles without a trial. And this person has been criticized by some of our friends and has refused to apologize or back down as it were all totally justified and is extremely wellfunded and hes mine nominally presages that he works for as apparently no problem with him tweeting up Death Threats as did a lot of the left to endorse it. So what does that tell us about where we are . I think where we are is the left expected to win the 2016 election by a landslide. Expected a transition to a oneparty state to be smooth and uneventful. In which they could justbegin the implementation of their program. They were shocked the election of trump. They were shocked it was still enough effective resistance in the country and in a very angry and vengeful mood the 2016 election and that angry vengeful mood as it 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 had occurred would have been smoother and less eventful and i think its going to be extremely turbulent if they get it now in part because theyre going to be out to settle scores. One person who my notes slightly and i havent spoken to in years has called for a truth and Reconciliation Commission and this is something that happens when a totalitarian dictatorship fall and you dont want to put everybody in jail, you these tried to paper over the differences by having people come forward and confess. What crimes are there to confess for making an argument for the president and for his programs . If were talking about the truth and Reconciliation Commission, there are no democratic parties and theres no justified opposition, there one side and enemies. Lets back up and kind of work through the books and get some of your arguments. Flight 93 election was an essay that was turned into a book is more of an extensive work that thinks through some of the underlying problems that we face. You open this book with the extended essay if you will from a chapter about california. Im from california. You spent some time in california. But you present california as a study of americas possible future. So backing away from the immediacy of the election, do you see really a larger trend going on here which thats a representation. California has effectively had oneparty rule for decades. The schwarzenegger interregnum notwithstanding but not to go into the weeds but Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor on the recall effort and that less than two years trying to govern as a kind of centerright moderate conservative was defeated in every respect and spent his second term governing as a liberaldemocrat even though he never formally switched parties and had a super majority in both houses of the legislature, a congressional delegation of 45 to 7 or overwhelmingly democratic. Its had oneparty governance at the state level and its pretty much every county level with a Large Population there are these counties in the world but those red counties and red people, there are millions of them in california. They have no effective vote or say. Theyll be outvoted on everything important so california shows what happens when the Democratic Party and modern left a complete power and what they do particularly illustrative of the modern Democratic Party has left and is an especially well represented by california by finance interests, the managerial class. The socalled knowledge economy workers, things like that. These are people that cram that ribbon up and down the california coast , come up with all kinds of enthusiasms and impose them on the rest of the state and its a very, its not a warts and all portrait of california, a mostly warts portrait because california propaganda about the Natural Beauty and Silicon Valley innovation and all these things, everybody hears that, we all know that side of the state and im not denying that its there but im saying underneath that tip of the iceberg theres a giant rest of the iceberg which isdysfunction and dk and people dont hear about it and they need to know about. So what literally makes it the example of where things are going . Obviously there is this culture of washington but how it actually operates. How the state works. All of the above, i start almost at the beginning of the book with former mayor of new york city and briefly a president ial candidate in the democratic primary, while he was running came out to california and he said this is a model for the future. Bloomberg is a prototypical oligarchic type, i dont know how much money he has and he founded his company, not taking away from his success but he very much is all about the knowledge economy, the finance economy, high tech economy and with no concern for the middle class or manufacturing and so on. His vision of new yorkused to call it a quote unquote luxury product meaning yes its very expensive to be here and all kinds of things dont work but it works for those at the top and thats what matters. These keynotes of the Global Economy are what matters and he dont seem to care about the rest of the country in any significant way. Mike bloomberg was a candidate for the coastal elites. And the parts of california that he was praising are the only part that seemed to work and he neglected the rest. Id say the same about gavin newsom and Mark Zuckerberg and schwarzenegger and all the ones you think about when you think about the great california Success Stories and palo alto and laguna beach and a handful of other places are doing okay. California is working, modesto and fresno and the foothills and the Cascade Mountains and the high desert and low desert and inland empire, not only do they not care aboutthose places, they dont know theyre there. So theres a sense now to juxtapose back with you also talk about you refer to a parchment regime, so the old regime, theres a certain just to position between this new regime which is a model of where things seem to be going and this other old regime thats this parchment regime. I want to come back later to an analysis of the regime analysis but i want to talk about those two models, the california model but this parchment regime we talked about, the older america. Tell us how you analyze that and the confusion in the left and the right after that. The main thrust of chapters 2 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 and and say i revere the constitution and declaration and bill of lights and organic laws and so on just as much as you do but its time to own up to the fact that the United States is no longer governed by this thing, its governed in a different wayso i dont give much of a civics lesson about how its supposed to be governed. Its five or six pages because its all well covered elsewhere but i spend a lot of time in chapter 2 discussing the tax on the original understanding of how america is supposed to be governed and i spend more time on rightwing attacks than on leftwing attacks partly because i think the leftwing attacks have been amply covered elsewhere by many scholars and by myself rightwing attacks havent gotten as much attention. Lets dig into those for a bit because in hildale among other places we spent a lot of time talking about the founding and Core Principles behind of the declaration of the constitution and we think those are important to defining our regime. But its also the case which some of our own 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 has that kind of taken the conservatives, the defenders of the founding off on the wrong path . There maybe is two ways i can put this. For the first is they are interrelated, theres a conservative attack which says the founding is, let me put it this way. Im trying to those conservatives who look at the world of 20 20 and say i dont like this, something has gone terriblywrong and needs to be fixed and when we sit down and make our list , whats a list of things you dont like . My list and their list looks about the same but how did we get there and then theyll say one of maybe two things to oversimplify. The founding, all men were created equal, this universalism that was wrong from the beginning and the related attack is its the enlightenment or monetarily where the finding is simply about byproduct of. Its i dont mean to disparage bloom, i love the closing of the American Mind but he parodied america in that book which came out in 1987 as nothing but a lock in a petri dish, like click to life on a politicalstage. So i tried to answer neither one of these charges is true. Its a deviation from the founding that got us into the mess were in now, not adherence to the founding principles and the founders in fact were not straight up lockeans or libertarians or concerned only with the private satisfaction of appetites and things like that and just built up a regime thats all right with no duties, weve heard all of these critiques before. They were doing the best they could and the best anyone could with the circumstances of 1776 which in fundamental ways still prevail today and in the sense that we still live in the modern world as opposed to the classical medieval world, were still in the christian world. At least we live in a world where civil and religious law has been separated. I think were not in the ancient world, i dont want to get into the philosophy too deeply but many of the circumstances will prevail and the answers that are proposed by the right reject the founding or are things that i think areunviable and i think they know that because they never spell them out. They chip away a lot of the founding and they that maybe its blood and soil, maybe its this kind of old new right that comes from nietzsche and nietzsches orbit in the 20th century. I find all of those ultimately unsatisfactory. I find some aspects of some of those things reasonable interpreted in the right way if theyre welded on or included with other elements and i tried to sketch on the south very much not me. Im trying in chapter not to bash the rightwing critics of the founding 20 20 correct as i dont see how that helps anything. Im trying to say im with you on the diagnosis. I dont think youre righton the cure and you got your me out. The one effort minimally is saying i had bought this through and ive been on the defense but thats literally like five people told me that maybe one. But thats an importantaspect of your book i think. People will come to your serious criticism of current policies of conservatism and modern aspects of the movement if you will, but that really stems from a misunderstanding or a failure to comprehend the grounding of the founding. Is that a fairstatement . Its not an original case, i guess is most original about chapter 2 is putting it all in one place trying to directly address criticism have been seen over the last 10 years. So im not going into old debates between pale ale ponds and neocons from the 70s. Im not reciting the civil war, not going into any of that. This is all about more addressing serious rightwing critics of the regime as it hasdeveloped in the last couple of decades. A regime which i oppose and i think its far afield from what it should be but i think diagnosis thereasons why inaccurately. So lets then talk about the on the left been a little bit. Today we had the 1619 project just closing. The first 1776 projects, what do you make of all that . Essentially the roof of what has gotten us here. Thats a good question, the root of what has gotten ushere. Isolate two movements, one is capital the progressivism in the 20th century. 60s leftism and beyond. The 1619 project, the original p prevent his whatever things of the scholars, i find some good in them one thing i find good in them is none of them were antiamerican but theres Something Different about them. They wanted to reinterpret thefounding. Not an antifounding at the top bought that it was bad at the time, think of them as somebody coming to estate of the art computer and finding software from a commodore 64 on. Thats the way they look at america. The constitution is outmoded software and it cant possibly work on this complex machine today but they loved and the machinearea. Wilson wanted tobring about progress. By the time you get in the 60s radicalism, the machine is terrible, where the sledgehammer, im going to break it. What happens there . It arises from a kind of i dont know, irrational passion. A utopianism. Residual marxism. Maybe theres just a lot of discontentment up into the system. Some of it i think arises from critiques such as we been telling our history one way and lots of people have been left out. A lot of this begins with an argument for inclusion, why are they telling the story and not this story andthen it begins youre right, you should tell all the stories. And it becomes why dont we emphasize, change the matter of emphasis until we get to where not going to tell the story anymore or only tell it in a disparaging way and everything has to be aboutthe stuff was formally excluded. Theres a momentum to it that takes on a life of its own and culminates. I will say its about the 1619 project if you then watching it had a rough week or two where they are starting to deny ever said some of the most radical things they said at the New York Times and have gone so far as to disingenuously retroactively change websites and take down tweets but as they say the internet is forever. These things havebeen captured somewhere and its being thrown back intotheir face. Thats sort of a , for purposes of our talk ill make a distinction probably you make your between the intellectual shifts that are going on but also structural practical things that are happening as well area one of the things that many of our friends and scholars point out about the progressives is what theycall the Administrative State. Theres doctoral things that are happening below their intellectual critiques and arguments. But because of that so theyre connected. Go back to the software analogy, p progressivism says the constitution is old software or a machine that is too complex, were going to come up with new software. Part of the problem is now the old Software Says let the people decide on these questions. You cant have it anymore because the questions are too complicated for the people to decide. They should not be decided politically and they need to be decided on the basis of expertise or Scientific Authority and implemented in anonpartisan way they say. And in order to do that we will have to build this incredible apparatus. They do it cleverly, there still formally only three branches of government, this administrative. Not quite all entirely built within the executive branch but it becomes an unaccountable fourthranked, people who work in it are not elected and are not really responsive to electoral authority. On paper theres work chart in which the executive branch the president sits at the top and everybody has a little line for the boxes and you would think all these people report to me. And then the ceo actually that is more or less true, you have a lot of leeway under your chain of command that the president doesnt does not the Administrative State has been insulated from Political Authority so here we are seeing the breaking away if you will to the part of that regime, the regime of the founders which was intellectual but also a practical thing. In various different ways. There was a break there. There were some things that werent quite as radical as what comes later. Break and it takes a while to build these things. Sometimes the most radical intellectual movements dont go anywhere. And sometimes they do you only notice because when the progressives are talking about what they want to do in 1890 1910, they actually pushed through a lot of socalled progressive reforms are the National Park system, immigration restriction and a list a bunch, health and safety but they do all ofthat legislatively. Theyre using the old system for progressive ends. It takes a while before you can get to the point where an Unaccountable Agency and just say were passing this regulation, congress has nothing to say about and the president didnt order us to do it. If you are found in violation you will be tried, found by one of our agents, not a Law Enforcement agent and you can be brought before a judge. In other words all three powers, constitutional powers vested in one unconstitutional branch where they can charge you, try you, and you, find you within one system. Thattakes a long time to be built. Almost the very definition of tyranny. To the point where people are surprised that they didnt notice it while it was happening and its just there though that is evolution, slow change is that a change in time . Its crossing the rubicon. Yes, i think i believe that. It doesnt mean you cant ever go back. We will come back tothat you. Let me put it this way, i wassaying earlier today in a meeting if you remember this comment , the power between those who believe inthe old order which is still on the books , no ones revealed the constitution. I always say i send my students down every year to make sure its still there and it is. I was there last thursday and its all there but no ones revealed any of this on the books the old order is still fundamental power balance between those of us who believe in and want to enforce the old order and those who uphold the new order is fast. We have almost no power over the system and they have almost all the power therefore in one sense weve crossed the rubicon. I have no charge against the Administrative State, suppose the epa as i inadvertently killed and endangered insects in my backyard and wants to do whatever they want to do. They charge me with outlaws on and the person doing the charging is an unelected bureaucrats, not sworn officer of the law reporting of a political chain and i get all before an administrative judge on the preceding and has no precedent in law, its all about regulation and i get convicted on administrative grounds, kind and honest. They can do that and i can say this is all unconstitutional and ill fight you with exwife and z and i will be squashed like the budget bug that i am alleged to have been killed so in one sense the old order is there and it rains but in the other sense, im andy and they aregodzilla. And if you see the cartoon, godzilla defeats bambi rather easily so part of that is shipped of political power from the elected branches, delegation to the Administrative State which begins with the progress in themselves. So there are structural things that are going on but you also introduced the other elements that i want to talk about that and relateback to the conversation. But we were previously talking about this shift of power to an unelected bureaucracy which we call the administrative but you have a long chapter talking about the ruling class. Which is not necessarily the same thing. I want to parse that a little bit but what is the ruling class . Its the people who run so its easier to think that if you think of the reason the term will confuse people as well say i know what the ruling class and resolution is, it was a land of aristocracy and high clergy. James q wilson. In our state ruling class is it seems desperate but they have one fundamental thing in common. They all get the same education and they all learn from a different state of peoples of the senior members of the ruling class on the people who run the backs and the big corporations and the university. The junior members of the rulingclass and some of them are extraordinarily rich and others merely make a lot of money. The junior members of the ruling class otherpeople who go to harvard and went to middleberry or overland or something. Theyre well indoctrinated in the tenets of the religion and instead of having a being a managing director at Goldman Sachs or assistant director of the treasury or senior manager at facebook or whatever they end up as the fact checker vox. Com or Something Like that anything how good this person the ruling class , theyre barely making six figures and they cant afford a closet for his condo in the left side of man and this is not a successful person in a way that person is an incredibly important part of the ruling class because it forces. So is not merely a populist push against those who are currently in control in the washingtonestablishment. It is that and there seems to be more to it. Most of the establishment is ruling class and that includes the bureaucrats. I would call it junior or lower middle members but its not really that. Its an intellectual thing, its connected to the university. Its much broader thanmerely a populist complaint against who is currently in power. The most fundamental definingcharacteristic of the ruling class is how their educated and what they believe. Thats the true unity. So i dont think that Mark Zuckerberg has any fundamental difference in the makeup of mark hubbards mind, he may be smarter and 66 billion but the makeup of his mind, how he thinks, things he wants tosee done , the things he thinks are just and unjust and the way he thinks power is justly used to enable certain ends and theres no difference between him and low sixfigure strive or internet click they offer that im describing. They think the same way and they work in their own sears toward thesame end. You make some distinctions , freeloaders, literati and avengers so who are these people . I call them the ruling class but there is ruling class army. Or constituency so every ruling class or every leadership classneeds people behind them. You can put stars on a bunch of peoples shoulders and have them sit around the conference table but if they dont have an army what good are they . Freeloaders maybe a loaded term, i tried to qualify it but they are fundamentally people whose interest in the political system is to get free stuff so in todays parlance the prototypical freeloader is a party bro. I love socialism because the system is unfair to me and i deserve more. So im going to make the government give it to me. The workerati dont necessarily feel, i would say its a defining characteristic of the workerati is theyre not in it because they feel that they personally have been harmed by a burdening system but they feel a religious sense of america has harmed people and thats terrible and im going to dedicate my life towards redressing that and avengers are people who think america has harmed them personally or harm their ancestors or harm their Demographic Group more broadly and theres a cosmic ledger that needs to be squared and thats the squaring of that requires the punishing of america forthe punishing of certain segments of the american population. Two things, one is this is not a Bipartisan Group if you will. Its divided according to all three of the parties constipated in the Democratic Party, its hard to imagine a republican constituency. A description of where liberalism has gone. The ruling class is liberal or leftist but its a weird kind of leftist that has no problem with oligarchic wealth concentration but if were just going to think about a partisan divide today and whose conservative, who is republican and democrat, who dominates the red states versus the blue states, the ruling class is blue , left democratic overwhelmingly even though they like money. Training team. Is it fair to say, i dont think you do this in the book, but we suspect in terms of the old left and the new left. The old democrats and the new democrats. Theres a sense in which the new democrats, the new left, the new progressives have come to dominate and the old parts, they are no longer capable of controlling. Or the just went over to the republicans. The old democrats, the backbone of the old Democratic Coalition was noncollege educated union workingclass, or in the big cities. The big cities dont have noncollege educated union it has manufacturing anymore. I dont need that entirely but its mostly true. They have become havens for knowledge workers, finance and tech and the managerial class. To the extent that type of old democratic voter, they are either independent or the dont vote. They sat out the election for the gun over to republican. Many havent voted in decades, vote for trump which caused a surprise of 2016. The battle between the new left and the old left, the new left one in route. Thats all settled. I dont see coming back from that. I dont know how they went over those voters anymore especially are trump voters come some of them perhaps old left that it now voted trump or what you make of that . Old left may be too much. Old democrats. Left, like John Steinbeck novel, organizing cells in the central valley. No. If you got committed to the left your father not the trump voter. Somebody who voted for jfk and hubert humphrey. People who voted for didnt vote for mcgovern. Those same people maybe their children i think are trump voters. You have a number of things in your book we talk about the operations of the left, how it operates, the mechanisms of the left. You talk about the narrative. The narrative, the megaphone and the muzzle. The narrative, make a foot and the muzzle. Explain those. Their number one tool for the leftright now america is not entirely or maybe just a little bit is not that mostly is not ruled coercively. Its ruled by propaganda. One of the disturbing elements to the extent to which we see more output coercive measures, before answer your question i i want to mention this one thing. Its disturbing to become witches we see a lot of violence on the streets. We seen a lot of that excuse, the night and even whipped up by the media, social and legacy, and by mayors and governors. Refusing to think about mob violence and or encouraging it. The few times weve seen Law Enforcement really get a candlelit and leap into action is to go after an arrest the people who exercised the national and constitutional rights. That worries me a lot. Ive never seen so much of it as i seen in the 21 and trends in the bad direction. Mostly the way they rule now is through propaganda. Doing so at extraordinary high decibel and omnipresent was every channel you are only hearing one thing. Right now we have a rolling another School Shooting yesterday. All School Shootings of black People Matter what happens there unjustified and the police or system of the races. That case is initially presented by the narrative as being entirely sympathetic. Its a noknock warrant, she was asleep, not guilty, shot in cold blood. It turns out it wasnt a noknock warrant. White friends and indictment, a felony warrant out for him. He shot at the police. Everything gets complicated, in this case theres a refusal to bring that indictments at least two of three officers and when indictment comes down is not for murder come come from much lesser charge. The narrative feels the writing because narrative says this can possibly be justified. Every time this happens the Police Always the fault and the victim, the shooting is totally innocent. Thats the narrative. The megaphone blair set out to every channel to what have you click read that all you hear and see. The few places that try to tell more sides of the story get censored or they get tarred with accusations of being racist and so and so forth. Its hard to get the alternative story. That is the chief with the ruling class rules, i was telling onestory, onesided onestory, by telling everywhere constantly as loudly as possible and i suppressant of the versions and attacking and deep platform those who try to get out. The idea of a narrative was itself, this itself has a long history in kind of liberal and academic thinking to shift away from the argument about history and truth to a narrative. Its a way of doing things. Its now at our political square. You used to hear relative to stick theyve movie on that. Thats too sophisticated now. The truth that america is system of the racist and police are out to blood to kill innocent people, they are not saying that is just my truth and you have your trip. They are saying that is the truth here that is the truth and as stupid as a fun the argument that all depends on your perspective, thats smarter than saying this is the truth when you have a whole pile of facts that i can show that undermined and you still insist this is the truth and pretend those sites are not there or youre just a bad person for bring them up. The old naive sense that these kids are merely learning relativism. They are not anymore. There were a kind of willful religion and radicalized in it. Five years ago smart by neither liberals were saying the colleges are becoming a problem because they are getting so radical. Remember, how long ago was it when, for instance, we had that crazy meltdown over halloween. An email saying yale put out a notice like be careful how you wear, what kind of cost anywhere because you might offend people. The professor tweeted outside just dont wear anything stupid but you should judge them. We think are not idiots and we dont need to be too restrictive. The students went crazy, insane. It was all caught on video of them screaming at the professor, his wife at all this. Several smart liberals at the time said colleges are doing a disservice because what happens when these kids get up in real world and have real jobs and Real Companies that expect real results. It turns out the joke was on the because the kids got out, when into the real world and they ate the companies alike. New york times. When 2020 rolls around any time there was a controversy paving 50yearold middle and Senior Management against 25yearold, the 25yearold was in about every time. The effects of the academy which is been the subject of criticism for decades now, what were seeing now is a push. Definite definitely. That may be the biggest thing. Intellectual thrust. Yes. Lets shift, i want you to talk, layout for us your Chapter Eight which is how this could possibly be saved here. What with the agenda look like if i i can turn about another. It also brings up, you have a particular chapter in your book only on on immigration. You talk about a number of things that might be a different way of looking these questions, witticism of the modern parties. First of all we have to create if were going to say some things come if thats even possible, the first step would be to great some symbols of unity which we dont have. In my own view, try to make cultural unity or civic unity the First Priority is mistake because not permanently hopefully out of reach but fairly far out of reach of the moment. Create economic unity. I think the country is the economically divide but more culturally than economically divided. But maybe economic unity can be past week to create a unity. Essentially the full implementation but also further fleshing out of the trump program. All kinds of things to tight labor market to raise wages at the bottom to prevent healthcare from cannibalizing wage case the wheat has to make housing more affordable for people so people can debate and have kids younger rather than having to scrounge and say forever and at the first down payment on a tiny ridiculously expensive house at age 40, the way the system works now. I sit in the book im not a policy wonk. Ive had a lot of help putting the chapter together. I wrote it myself but it did get ideas from people and bounce them off the people. It does require the Republican Party in particular to abandon free market and free trade absolutism and say any quality doesnt matter. A tide lifts all boats, a noted been in for 30 years. The Republican Party realized the private sector is the enemy. Its wall street worship hasnt paid off and think about serious banking regulations but yes may reduce wall street profits but for the financial position of the economy only benefits the blue coast coast at the expense red mill. I serious reassessment of the Republican Party is the Republican Party the vehicle . It might be. Right now the Republican Party is divided. The Republican Leadership plays nice with drop because a look at polls and to develop based is 96 approving of trump. They are waiting for trump to go away and think they can go back to the old playbook consensus. I guess which i have its not produce any good in 2020, 2024, into 2020. It doesnt work for these times. Setting aside, you have the Republican Party that is the vehicle, the consensus. Parties change but you have made a couple of points about the intellectual grounds of that coalition behind it, the Reagan Coalition of the avs or the conservative movement today, libertarianism, traditionalism or social conservatism. How do you see those things use them in a different way. They need to operate differently, the intellectual coalition behind the party. The oldest and we look at the Reagan Coalition was Foreign Policy hawks, the economic libertarians. Lets take that in reverse order. The Republican Party still needs to be the party of the social conservative. It doesnt deliver victories. It talks a good game and then rolled over on different things. Think about the enormous social change weve seen over the last five years against which Republican Party claims to be standing by to guess which is also entirely ineffective. It needs to stand up, not, i accuse Republican Party of being cynicism that talks a good game to get votes and boost donations but knows it cant take on the power of the media and the Administrative State and the judiciary so it asks for your money cynically. On that its less than disagreement a more followthrough. As political will. Not just will, but get rid of the citizen. We need people who are not just talking good game because if you have to but believe it and going to fight for it. On economics, i think it would have to be the biggest change in the Republican Party will have to be, its not 1980 anymore. The top marginal tax rate is that 70 of famously reagans first inaugural visit in this present crisis is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem. He said in this crisis. We are in a different prices. Crisis. Reagan himself was not against terrorist. He was philosophically. Terrorists. After his first term of trying to use diplomacy to redress all kinds of trade imbalances and being shined on by our trading partners he started building the state inspector backup results. He did that reluctantly. He thought i know the other alternative is better but these guys not going to play ball. I cant be a sucker about them export my country. Most of the american tradition is not necessarily a purely free trade tradition. There are a lot of tariffs. The Republican Party is not found by a family could the founded i know the viewing audience, about 45 miles from Hillsdale College under tree which ive seen. I can vouch to the accident ths the guy the guys who took me to the tree swear thats the tree. It was a terrorist party from the point of lincolns presidency all the way up to the great depression. Which raises the question, the second point you may, that is an intellectual point you are making which is the notion that markets and trade, commerce are extremely important. What works for the citizenry may become a doctrine interestingly the absolutism of how many republicans realize this. They inherited from the democrats. Americas current free trade emerges after world war ii as with helping rebuild the economys of europe. Its the democrats are doing for. Its the socalled wiseman around treatment saying we have to do this because if we dont these economies in europe wont be rebuilt and there will be subject to communist take over, and we know we might lose out a little bit but we can afford it. We are 50 of global gdp right now. Thats mostly democrat even though they had this big unity Democratic Base to which they say look, when we control this much of of the, dont worry abt it. We are still the strongest economy in the world. The republicans take over the free kit argument to the point where the famous nafta vote in 1993 where bill clinton went as democrat for the first time in 12 years, and the democrats are still considered to be a terrorist party and theres a lot of pressure on him not to pass nafta. Hes going to side with it and goes to the congress and congress as no, or essentially his own caucus. Hes got to rely on republicans. All of that trend continues through the nights, china and republicans have become the rigid freetrade party and only trumppence was shaken by that. Thats going to be a tough one. Im just in the composition of Trump Administration itself how many people his own top aides and top cabinet picks struggle with the idea that weve got to be tougher in a trade negotiations and maybe even think about terrorist. Theres not a deep street of that. You know theres a deep street of that in the Republican Party going back to lincoln but theres not much in the party today. Right. Your third category. Foreign policy. This should be an easy one because the Republican Party has always been, at least through much of the 20th century the Republican Party, i do want to say the isolationist party but it was a party much more inclined to restraint, much more inclined to Foreign Policy standoffish nest but its also a strong jacksonian stream in it, a term that made famous by and essays about 20 years ago i assigned to my students, we will leave you alone as long as you leave us alone but if you mess with us dont expect a proportional response. If you blow up one tank we will not blow up one of your tanks. We will blow up hundreds of your tanks. Which is not only jacksonian. Thats the phrase, it crystallizes the thinking. If you explain, if you explain that to the average Republican Base voter, we are not going correct picking fights, we certainly not get into foreign wars overseas or nationbuilding or humanitarian reasons. But we will defend ourselves and if we get hit we were hit back ten times as hard. Exactly. The intellectual case made for that kind of Foreign Policy, defines your interest narrowly, defends them vigorously, and otherwise try to get along with everybody and everybody alone if they leave you alone. Its complete common sense. Again though to lesser extent there still to some extent a fairly large category remained within the Republican Party is says we have an interest people in the world, we have to be active, engaged, aggressive but that argument is easier to win a special after two decades of failure in iraq and afghanistan. We are kind of running out of time here but used to close that, do you think theres a coalition there that can be a Real Coalition or is this well, the question entirely hinges upon at least in my estimation, and im not one of those quantitative political scientists who look at voting patterns but it seems to me that question entirely depends on whether or not a trumpet policy, a trumpet platform can pick up significant number of middle working and certain lower middle class voters, nonwhite voters, hispanic and black voters, not majorities of black and hispanic voters but enough to eat in the Democratic Coalition that gets the Republican Coalition to a comfortably low and mid 50. If that can be done than yesterday on the other hand, at the cultural issues trump Economic Issues and economic cant help start bridging the gap i appealed to enough of those voters then they can. Right now the reason for hope is that looks like trump is going to do come he did 8 of the blackfoot which is terrible in 2016 and 28 on its been a period which is also not great since other republicans have done better. Well have to wait and see where the vote is but it seems like hes doing significantly better with both groups now. If that pans out and if there are successes to trump can make demonstrable cases to these constituencies, my policy will make your lives better, my pulse will put more money in your pocket, make your healthcare cheaper and better, its going to give you these concrete benefits, then theres a chance. We will have to wait and see. A few minutes left. Is there anything i have not covered or i left out . You didnt bring up any of the fun doomsday stuff. Will have to read the book to find out about those. In short order, what are they . I talk about things conservatives dont like to talk about not because im wishing for them, bring them or even predicting them. Things are very rocky and rough out in the within been in a long time and if we dont start thinking through the possibilities of an attempted secession, civil war, authoritarian rule which i called caesarea some or a kind of thirst federalism where states say thats what you said, washington . Make me. Im not leaving the union. See if you can force it on me. Some of these things can happen. But the point being is you have written the book warning about those things to prevent those things, not advocating those things. No. You cant prevent and if we dont talk about them or think about them. If the first time we really entered the National Consciousness is when its being attempted thats going to be a greater problem than if you thought about an advance. Will have to get the book and read it. Thank you, michael. The book again is the stakes america at the point of no return. Its from our friend Regnery Publishing and it is a a great read. Ive read it many times through the process and i encourage a going to get a copy. Michael, thank you for joining us. Thank you to those of you who are here tonight and watching online. Tonight on the communicators mit Research Scientist daniel weiss there on security and privacy issues with artificial intelligence. The problem is that trying to regulate encryption is kind of a quick fix. It might do good but its not really going to help because the concerted criminal activity is ayes to find ways to hide their communication one way or the other. This leaves all the rest of us anymore vulnerable state. So im concerned that policymakers really should look at the whole picture when bit making this choice. Mit Research Scientist Daniel Weitzner tonight at 8 p. M. Eastern on the communicators, on cspan2. Weeknights this month were featuring booktv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan2. Tonight its a look at president ial history. You are watching booktv on cspan2, every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2, created by americas cabletelevision companies as the Public Service and brought you today by your television provider. Tomorrow is election day november 3 here to stay with us to learn who the voters selectively the country as president and which parties will control congress. Our live coverage of Election Night starts at 9 p. M. Eastern and continues through the washington journal at 7 a. M. Eastern. Join the conversation, share your experiences as the results come in and hear from the candidates. Watch live on cspan and cspan. Org or listen live on the cspan radio app. Election night on cspan, your place for for an filter view of politics. Hey everyone, jeff martin with magic city books. So throw that tobacco for ongoing virtual offices which we been doing since april, two to three times the week which is been really great way to stay connected to you, our customers and readers and meet a lot of new people that made it never been to