doctrines like collectivism and utilitarianism. this conversation hosted by the heritage foundation is one hour. chatter] >> welcome to the 2022 russell kirk lecture, natural light and the recovery of human freedom. please welcome the director of the heritage foundation simon center for american studies. [applause] >> welcome to the 2022 russell kirk lecture. to be delivered by robert george . i know that we are in store for and attend actual -- for an intellectual feast. this afternoon, i'd like to say a few words about our namesake, russell kirk, and his connection to the writings. the national law is a perfect subject for the lecture series. as kirk's writings bear the mark of a man searching for and articulating the essence and the reality of the truth that service the foundation of ethics, law, and culture. i don't exaggerate in making the click that russell kirk's writings and contributions made american conservatism into a remarkable, intellectually coherent group of thinkers, writers, and activists. his primary focus was not on politics, he was an intellectual historian. who delved into the moral and ethical roots of conservatism. what you prominently found in a later work. kirk's 1953 book made it impossible for conservatives to continue to divide the conservative movement. he explores the thought of edmund burke. and ends with t.s. eliot. you can access with john adams, cooper, hawthorne, scott, abraham lincoln, and many more. russell kirk -- especially the virtue of prudence along with custom and prescription. and other conservative principles. conservatism, kirk always maintained, was the negation of ideology. american conservatism's purpose was to conserve our constitutional tradition and the moral and ethical order that it depended on. because he wrote about what endures. rather than the ephemeral. what is morally obligatory rather than the latest intellectual fad. regarding the natural law, the focus of our being here today, kirk observed in a lecture delivered here at heritage titled "the illusion of human rights" that natural law is "the justice conceived as being the higher or ultimate law." proceeding from the nature of the universe. from the being of god and the reason of man." this time i would like to invite professor george onto the stage. robert george is a mccormick professor of jurisprudence and director of the james madison program and american ideals and institution. he is a member of the board of directors here at heritage and has served as chairman of the u.s. commission on international religious freedom. and before that on the president's council on bioethics. as a presidential appointee to the commission on civil rights. he is a former judicial fellow at the supreme court of the united states, where he received the justice tom c clarke award. professor george is the author of numerous books and essays and articles on a range of subjects including the natural law, marriage, anthropology, and morality. his books are many. the class of orthodoxies, and what is marriage, man and woman, a defense, which he co-authored with ryan anderson. he has received numerous awards and honors from in a way of institutions -- from an array of institutions. looking at all of them, they signify that and devoting his life to teaching on writing, professor george has had an immeasurable impact on students and on many other academics and writers. he is foremost in his defense of the integrity of the human person, the essential reality of marriage, the dignity of conscience, and i know he's going to give us much to think about today on the natural law and freedom. he will be joined by our president, kevin roberts, on stage, for a moderated discussion, and we will take questions for our audience. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, richard. it's always a pleasure to be back at the heritage foundation. it's an honor to serve on the board alongside the great ed folder and so many other fine people. what an honor it is to give a lecture named for russell kirk, one of the towering figures of the conservative tradition. someone who deserves his status because he was such a great defender of the permanent things. the things that really matter. . there are some things that matter, money and power and influence and status. you can use ghost dance for good things. but they are not good in themselves. they are not what ultimately matters. kirk devoted himself to the defense of what ultimately matters. faith, friendship, family, honor, integrity. the things that really matter. abraham lincoln began his remarks at gettysburg in 1863 by noting that the nation he served and was fighting a civil war to preserve was founded "four score and seven years ago." as the great hadley arkes has observed, if one does the arithmetic, this takes us back not to the ratification of the constitution in 1788 or its adoption by the constitutional convention in 1787, but to the signing and publishing of the declaration of independence in 1776. in this matter, as in so many others, lincoln's understanding was very much in line with the nation's founders. they, too, believed that with the declaration they established a new nation, albeit one whose political institutions and fundamental law were changed in significant ways by the constitution and then by its amendments. lincoln observed that the nation they founded was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. this led to a law understanding of the american founding and the american regime is, once again, something lincoln held in common with the founders themselves. as the declaration itself proclaims, awe hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. america's founding statesmen launched their experiment and ordered liberty, the experiment that would, as lincoln would go on to say at gettysburg, test whether a true regime of republican government can long endure and whether government of the people, by the people, and for the people -- that is to say, republican government -- would survive, not only on the north american continent but on the earth itself. so the experiment was a bold one. yet thomas jefferson, the principal draftsman of the declaration, had insisted that there was nothing novel about that natural law philosophy that he and his colleagues had set forth in that document as the basis of republican liberty in the new nation. reflecting on the declaration in may of 1825, a little more than a year before his death, and the death of his revolutionary colleague, then political foe, then friend john adams, a little more than a year later on the 50th anniversary of the declaration, jefferson said in a letter to henry lee that the point of the document, the declaration, was not to find out new principles or new arguments never before thought of, nor merely to say things that had never been said before, but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject. it was intended to be an expression of the american mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. all its authority rests on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversations, in letters, in printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as aristotle, cicero, locke, sidney, etc. now, it goes without saying that jefferson, a learned man, was aware that in a vast range of particulars, aristotle's approach to practical reason and moral and political theory differs from cicero's approach. it would obviously be erroneous to interpret it as saying that u.s. was founded on a particular natural law theory that was common in a nonexhaustive list. the claim that the american mind that produced the declaration and the harmonizing sentiments were deeply informed by the broad tradition of reflection about moral truths and its relationship to political order that includes greek philosophers and roman jurists of antiquity, the true founders of the natural law tradition. the great medieval philosophers and theologians of the monotheistic traditions of faith; and the enlightenment thinkers of the founders' own time. knowledge of natural law, one's natural natural law, like all -- knowledge of knowledge, begins with experience, but it does not end or even tarry there. knowing if an activity -- an -- intellectual activity, to be sure, but an activity nonetheless. we all have the experience of knowing. but to know is not merely to experience. knowing is a complex and dynamic activity. the role of experience in the activity of knowing is to supply data on which the inquiring intellect works in the cause of achieving understanding. insights are insights into data. they are, as bernard lonergan brilliantly demonstrated by inviting readers to observe and reflect on their own ordinary intellectual operations, the fruit of a dynamic and integrated process of experiencing, understanding, and judging. so what are the data supplied by experience that are at the foundation of practical judgments -- that is to say, insights that constitute knowledge of natural law? they are the objects of intelligibly choice-worthy possibilities -- possibilities that, inasmuch as they provide reasons for action of a certain sort, that is, more than merely instrumental reasons we grasp as opportunities. in our experience of true friendship, for example, we grasp by what is ordinarily an effortless exercise of what aristotle called practical reason, the intelligible point of having and being a friend. we understand that friendship is desirable not merely for instrumental reasons -- indeed, a purely instrumental friendship would be no friendship at all -- but above all for its own sake. you are only in a friendship if the friends are valley each other for the sake of the other. they are treating their relationship as intrinsically and not just instrumentally valuable. because we grasp the intelligible point of having and being a friend, and we understand that the fundamental point of friendship is friendship itself and certainly not goals extrinsic to friendship to which the activity of friendship is merely a means, we reasonably judge that friendship is intrinsically valuable. we know that friendship is a constitutive and irreducible aspect of human well-being and fulfillment and that, precisely as such, friendship provides a reason for action of the sort that requires for its intelligibility as a reason no further or deeper reason or sub-rational motivating factor to which it is a means. the same is true if we shift our focus to our experience of the activity of knowing itself. in our experience of wonder and curiosity, of raising questions and devising strategies for obtaining correct answers, of executing the strategies by carrying out lines of inquiry, of achieving insights, we grasp, by what is again for most people in most circumstances an effortless exercise of practical reason, the intelligible point of searching for truth and finding it. we understand that knowledge, though it may have tremendous instrumental value, is intrinsically valuable as well. to be attentive, informed, thoughtful, clearheaded, careful, critical, and judicious in one's thinking and judging is to be inherently enriched in a key dimension of human life. we reasonably judge the activity of knowing, then, to be an -- to be like, and intrinsic or basic human good, and irreducible aspect of our flourishing as human beings. no -- that knowledge is not innate. it does not swing free of experience or the data provided by experience. even when it is achieved, it is an achievement. it is the fruit of insights which, like all insights, are insights into data, data which are supplied by experience. the insight -- the knowledge -- that friendship or knowledge itself is intrinsically humanly fulfilling is ultimately rooted in our elementary experiences of the activities of friendship and knowing, apart from those experiences, there would be no data on which practical reason could work to yield understanding of the intelligible point, and thus the value of friendship or knowledge. that these activities are intrinsic fulfillments of the human person and, as such, and does other principle of practical reason and basic precepts of natural law. it is important to understand that not all practical knowledge, knowledge directed to action, is strictly speaking moral knowledge, knowledge of moral norms or their correct applications. though all moral knowledge is practical knowledge. yet knowledge of the most fundamental practical principles, those directing our actions towards what is intrinsically fulfilling for human beings, in a way for the privations of those goods, though not strict lee speaking, it is foundational to the generation and identification of such norms. moral norms are principles that guide our actions in line with the primary practical principles , those first principles of natural law, conceived altogether, integrally conceived. that is true whether we are talking about principles of personal morality or principles of political morality. it is true of a principal like, do not hit your sister, just as it is true of principal like, do justice and employed injustice -- avoid injustice. norms of morality are specifications of the integral directiveness or prescriptivity of the various aspects of human well-being and fulfillment that together constitute the ideal of integral human flourishing. so if the first principle of practical reason is, as aquinas says, that the good, bonum, are to be done and pursued, the bad, malum, is to be avoided,a then -- avoided, and the first principle of morality is that one ought always to choose -- there might be several options consistent with the will to integral human fulfillment, leaving us with a morally available set of choices, even if some choices are ruled out. reality does not preclude one being a doctor. or a car salesman, or anything take scholar. it does exclude one being a bank robber. just as the first principle of practical reason is specified by identifying the various irreducible aspects of human well-being and fulfillment, friendship, knowledge, aesthetic appreciation of a skillful performance, getting into a right relationship with god and other things -- to the first principle of morality as specified by identifying the norms of conduct that are entailed by in -- an openhearted love of the human good. it is taken as a whole. now, a natural law theory will propose to identify principal of right action, moral principles, including principles pertaining to human freedom. among these principles are respect for rights, above all natural rights, what our founders called unalienable rights, but are often today called human rights, even if russell kirk the idea. rights that people person -- people possessed not in virtue of some special quality about them or achievement, height, weight, intelligence, race, sociability -- but simply in virtue of their humanity, rights, which as a matter of justice, others are bound to respect and governments are bound not lead to respect but to the extent possible, also to contact. natural law theorists, unlike utilitarians, for example, understand that human fulfillment, the human good -- there are many irreducible dimensions of human well-being, and they can be pursued in a morally upright way by countless numbers of people and a countless number of ways. respect for people's freedom to do that is itself a moral requirement, a specification of the requirements of the human good. to say that is not to deny that human nature is determining. all natural law thinkers from antiquity to the present, everyone understands that there is a determined human nature. it is to affirm rather that our natures, though determining is complex. we are animals, biological creatures, but we are also rational, unlike brute animals. not only our bodily well-being but our intellectual moral and spiritual well-being. there individuals. be come packaged as units of one, but friendship and sociability are constituent is aspects of our flourishing, which is why someone like kirk can talk about friendship, marriage, and family as among the permanent things. those relationships, the relationship of true friends, husband and wife, parents and child and so forth are not simply instrumental relationships. people are not simply using each other. they are inherently fulfilled, intrinsically enriched by those relationships themselves. by reflecting on the basic goods of human nature, especially those pertaining to social and political life, they propose a founding of principles of justice, including those principles of justice pertaining to freedom and legitimate limitations of freedom and arrive at a sound understanding of what we call human rights. in light of what i have already said about how theorists understand the human good, it should be no surprise to learn that they typically reject individualism and collectivism. while the dignity of the human person is paramount in natural law thinking, we never sacrifice the individual for the good of activity. radical forms of individualism should not be can -- confused with conservative views of individual liberty overlooked the intrinsic value. they reduce friendship and other forms to the status of mere instrumental value. viewing all relationships as near means by which the partners collaborate with a view to work to achieve visual goals and objectives. collectivism and any form compromises the dignity of human beings by instrumental lysing and subordinating them to the interests of larger social unit, the community, the state, the fatherland, the future communist utopia. the right and left, but they all commit the same mortal sin. subordinating the good of the person to the larger social unit. radical individualists and collectivists have theories but they are highly unsatisfactory. they are rooted in important misunderstandings of the human good and neither can do justice to the human person, a rational animal who is a locus of intrinsic value. whose well-being intrinsically includes relationships with others and membership in communities beginning with the family in which he or she has both rights and responsibilities. natural rights, human rights, including rights to basic freedoms exist to -- i certainly believe that there are such principles. they cannot be overwritten by considerations of utility at a general level, they direct us to treat human beings never as means only. remember that from your philosophy classes, that formulation. treat humanity always as an end and never as a means. when we specify that general norm, we will find the easiest example is the duty to refrain from treating other people as if they are property rather than persons, which is what they are. we need not put the matter in terms of rights, but we could translate it into a different language. it is reasonable and helpful to speak of a right against being enslaved and to speak of slavery as a violation of human rights. while i he'd the warning not to inflate talk or turn every moral proposition into a proposition about right, some moral there --moral norms cannot be captured in that way. i think that rights talk is a legitimate and useful to -- useful practice. we should speak judgmentally of basic human rights. these are rights that people have not by virtue of being a of a certain race or class but by virtue of our humanity. but, here is where things get interesting on the international stage. in addition to negative duties and their corresponding right, there are certain positive duties. and these, too, can be articulated and discussed in the language of rights, though here it is especially important that we be careful because we need to be clear about by whom and how a given right is to be honored. sometimes it is said, for example, that education or health care is a human right. those claims are often much more made on the left than on the right. often and always when they come from the left in my experience, these claims amount to substantive endorsements of policies driven by collectivist ideologies. the more or less subtle insinuation is that if something is a right, then it is the duty of government to provide it. conservatives are therefore rightly leery of such talk. it is talk that appears, however, in catholic social thought and other conservative traditions and in international documents to which the united states has signed on. and it can, if one is careful, be detached from collectivist ideologies and policies. to do that, certain questions must be asked. they must be asked consistently. who is supposed to provide education or health care to whom? who should control it and what counts as education and not indoctrination? why should those persons or institutions be the providers? what place should the provision of education or health care occupy on the list of social and political priorities? is it better for education and health care to be provided by governments under socialized systems as typically claimed by the left, or by private providers in the markets? what does the principle of justice, a central and stringent principle of justice, known as subsidiarity -- famously formulated and insisted upon in catholic social thought -- require? when we are talking about positive rights, the question of subsidiarity has to be front and center. these questions go beyond the application of moral principles. they require prudential judgment in light of the contingent circumstances people face in a given society at a given point in time. often, there is not a single, uniquely correct answer. there are different morally legitimate ways of doing things. societies can handle them in different ways. people can be doctors, lawyers, think tank scholars or salesman. the answer to each question can lead to further questions, and the problems can be extremely complex -- far more complex than the issue of slavery, where once a right has been identified, its universality and the basic terms of its application are out there, the results and conclusion is fairly clear. everybody has a moral right not to be enslaved. if you are a person, you're not property. you have basic liberties and rights. everybody has an obligation as a matter of strict justice to refrain from enslaving other people. even if they have the raw power to do it, governments have a moral obligation to respect and protect the right and, correspondingly, to enforce the obligation. what i have said so far should provide a pretty good idea of how i think we should go about identifying what are human rights. but in each case, the argument must be made, and in many cases, there are complexities to the argument. one basic human right that almost all natural law theorists would say belongs in the set is the right of an innocent person not to be directly killed or maimed. that is to have his death be the precise object of your act, whether you or another individual, or you or an agency of the state. it is this right that grounds the norms historically associated with the tradition against targeting noncombatants, even in justified wars, against elective abortion, euthanasia, the killing of handicap people and other forms of homicide. if there is a core human rights principle, it is the one prohibiting the direct killing of innocent human beings. the natural law understanding of human rights i am here sketching is connected with a particular account of human dignity. iou some words about that account. under it, the natural human capacities for reason and freedom are fundamental to the dignity of human beings -- the dignity protected by natural rights, or human rights. the basic goods of human nature are those of a rational creature -- a creature who, unless impaired or prevented from doing so, naturally develops and exercises capacities for deliberation, judgment, and choice. these capacities are god-like -- albeit, of course, in a limited way. in fact, from the theological vantage point, they constitute a certain sharing -- limited, to be sure, but real -- in divine power. this is what is meant by the otherwise extraordinarily puzzling biblical teaching that human beings, man, is made in the very image and likeness of god. after all, that teaching cannot mean that god has five fingers on each of his hands. what is godlike about us is precisely our power to act freely on the basis of reasons that we have for action. to conceive a state of affairs, to understand the intelligible point, the value, the worth, and then to act, not on impulse or instinct like a brute animal, but freely, for reasons to bring that state of affairs into existence. it is what god himself does, prior to the creation of man in the genesis story. but whether or not one recognizes biblical authority or even believes in a personal god, it is true and understandable by anyone, by natural reason, that human beings possess a power traditionally ascribed to divinity -- namely, genuine agency: the power of an agent to cause what the agent is not strictly speaking caused to cause. that is the power i described in this state of affairs that is worth bringing into being, and then acting on the reasons provided to bring into being. a further question will present itself to the mind of anyone who recognizes the god likeness of our capacity for rationality and freedom. capacities that are immaterial, and thus one can say spiritual in nature. the question is, whether beings capable of such powers could exist apart from a divine source. one finds in the affirmation of these powers a ground for the rejection of materialism. one discerns the basis of an openness and even the roots of an argument for theism, for noncontingent reality. but more on that point in a moment. what about the authority for this view of human nature? human good, human dignity, human rights and freedoms? natural law theorists are interested in the intelligible reasons people have for their choices and actions. it is all about identifying, understanding, grasping reasons. we are particularly interested in reasons that can be identified without appeal to any authority apart from the authority of reason itself. this is not to deny that it is often reasonable to recognize and submit to religious or certain forms of secular or legal authority, and deciding what to do and not do. indeed, natural law theorists have made important contributions to understanding why and how people can sometimes be morally bound to submit to and be guided in their actions by authority of various types. but even here, the special concern of natural law theorists is with the reasons people have for recognizing and honoring claims to authority. we do not simply appeal to authority to justify authority. one might then ask whether human beings are in fact rational in anything more than an instrumental sense. can we discern any intelligible reasons for human choices and actions? everybody recognizes that some ends or purposes pursued through human action are intelligible at least insofar as they provide means to other ends. for example, people work to earn money, and their doing so is perfectly rational. money is a necessary, a means to a great many important ends. you literally cannot live without it. no one doubts its instrumental value. the question is whether some ends or purposes are intelligible as providing more than merely instrumental reasons . are there intrinsic, as well as instrumental, goods? your hard-core skeptic denies there are intelligible ends or purposes that make possible rationally motivated action. natural law theorists, by contrast, hold that friendship, knowledge, critical aesthetic appreciation, and certain other ends or purposes are intrinsically valuable. they are choice worthy as not only means to other ends, but they cannot be reduced to their value in satisfying our desires, emotions, feelings or other sub rational factors. these are the goods constituents of of our nature. finally, to the question of god in natural law theories, as soon as you bring up the concept of natural law, lots of skeptics, mostly on the progressive side of things who have forgotten what martin luther king says about natural law every time his subject matter turns to justice, for example in the letter from a birmingham jail where he distinguishes a just from an unjust law precisely on the grounds a just law is in conformity with the natural law and the eternal law. an unjust law is out of conformity -- lay that aside. the minute you invoke the idea of natural law, some people, especially on the progressive side will say you are illegitimately bringing religion into this. natural law is a religion-based argument. let me conclude by addressing that. it is true most natural law theorists are theists. there are some who are not but most are. they believe, we believe, i believe, the moral order like every other order in human affairs is what it is because god creates and sustains itself. in accounting for the intelligibility of the creative order, natural law theorists infer a free and creative intelligence, a personal god, a noncontingent ground of contingent reality. indeed, they typically argue god's creative free choice provides the ultimately satisfactory account of the intelligibility humans grasp in every domain of inquiry, whether it is philosophy or the natural sciences or the social sciences, humanities, mathematics, what have you. natural law theorists do not deny god can reveal the world truth and all christian and jewish natural law theorists believe god's chosen to reveal many such truths. however, natural law theorists affirm many moral truths, including some revealed can also be grasped by ethical reflection apart from revelation. they assert with no less an authority than st. paul that there is a law as paul says written on the hearts even of the gentiles who do not know the law of moses. a law the knowledge of which is sufficient for moral accountability. the basic norms against murder and theft don't reveal in the decalogue, the 10 commandments, are notable even apart from god's special revelation. the natural law can be known by us and we can conform our conduct to its terms by virtue of our natural human capacities for deliberation, judgment and choice. the absence of a divine source in natural law would be a troubling thing just as the absence of a divine source in any other intelligible order would be a troubling thing. -- whether it is immoral order, the natural order, but it is far less likely to cause someone to conclude our perceptions is illusory or our understanding is a sham, though that is certainly possible. finally, can natural law, assuming there are true principles of natural law vied some common moral and plitt will ground for people who do not agree on the existence or nature of god and the role of god in human affairs? in my view, anybody of whatever faith or someone who is secular who acknowledges the human capacities were region -- for reason and freedom has conclusive grounds for affirming human dignity and basic human rights. these grounds remain in place whether or not one adverts to the question is there a divine source of the moral order is tenets we discern an inquiry regarding natural law and natural rights. i myself happen to think the answer to that question is yes and we should be open to the possibility god has revealed himself in ways that reinforce and supplement what we can know by unaided reason. it seems to be true that in our following condition, we perceive moral truth but often through a glass very darkly. revelation can shine a spotlight on what was obscure and enable it to be seen clearly as natural law can often illuminate and make intelligible but are otherwise obscure teachings of scriptural revelation. so yes, i happen to think god has revealed himself and it is a darn good thing he has because we cannot know all we need to know by reason. as much as i think we can know. but we do not need agreement on the answer to the question how can it be the case human beings have reason and freedom and therefore dignity. so long as we agree about the truth that give right -- to give rise to the question -- namely that human beings possessing the literally godlike, literally awesome -- for once we can use that word correctly -- awesome powers of reason and freedom are bearers of a profound dignity that is protected by certain basic human rights, including those fundamental freedoms that jefferson and his colleagues acknowledged and wrote into our declaration of independence. thank you. [applause] robert: that was fantastic. i'm tempted to say it is awesome. we have time for questions and i have one. then we will go to our audience and colleagues. my question is about the point on which you concluded, and the follow-up is have we gotten in the public square too far gone in our ability to talk about natural law for the political left and political right in the united states to even see that in spite of your very persuasive answer to your own question as common ground on which to advance good policy? robert: i think there is common ground between conservatives, at least those conservatives -- and not all conservatives fit under this description. those conservatives who do believe in the principles of natural law and natural rights. and what i like to call old school liberals. those who are supportive of a much larger role for government in public affairs than conservatives characteristically are interested in. but who do believe in the principle of human dignity and understand dignity is grounded in our unique capacities for reason and freedom and understand civil liberty is important. this is not the woke left. the woke left has lost its sense of the kind of dignity human beings have that undergird rentable's of civil liberty. so they will run over basic civil libertarian principles -- freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, participation, they will run over them in the stampede to achieve what they regard as social justice. the philosophical grounds are of that conception of social justice are, i have no idea. but that's a question you are not allowed to ask and if you do ask it, you are not going to get an answer to it. i do think we still have common ground between most conservatives because most conservatives are believers in natural law and natural rights and old school liberals. kevin: follow-up questions -- are our american institutions still equipped to cultivate a citizenry that understands what you just said? robert: our institutions, like so much about contemporary society, have decayed. but where there is decay, there's always the possibility of renewal and i don't think we should ever give up on that possibility or abandon it. it is our job to renew. the founders launched an experiment -- experiments by definition can fail. the founders themselves new it was not a sure bet. but they also knew there was no machinery they could put in place that would guarantee it to last as long as possible, that it would always take each new generation renewing its commitment and renewing those institutions and reforming what has gone wrong in order to keep the experiment going. so we don't have a guarantee of success, we are not like those on the progressive side who think history is moving toward future utopia. it could all be lost. but let's not let it be lost on our watch, which is we need to be about the business of reform and renewal of our institutions. kevin: thank you for your optimism. we will go to a couple of questions -- to rules. first, wait for the microphone and please state your very brief statement in the form of a question. write down here. -- write down here. >> catholic american, conservative, christian nationalist in that order. my question is this -- now that we have overturned roe v. wade, what would you advise christian conservative activists such as myself, especially those of us who don't have a whole lot of money, what would you advise us other than pray to get the gay marriage decisions of 2013 and 2015, gay marriage civil unions, whatever overturned? robert: thank you for the question. we still have a lot to do on the pro-life front. that is so important to the very core idea of human dignity. if human dignity exists, if there is such a thing, if there is something that corresponds to that phrase, human dignity, it has to be the case that our dignity as human beings is inherent and if it is inherent, we've all got it. it comes with our humanity. if we've all got it, we've all got it equally. in the pro-life struggle, which we can now engage in in the democratic forum, openly and fully in a way we couldn't prior to the demise of roe v. wade, we need to be about the business of working for the profound and haran equaled dignity, including a precious child in the womb and caring for the mother who very often is in need and under pressure from boyfriends and husbands and families and employers and economic circumstances. so we have a lot of work to do there. roe v. wade -- i'm sorry, dobbs against jackson overturning roe v. wade returns at issue to the democratic forum. now we have to do our work there. but i think justice thomas is right -- this is very controversial to say. justice thomas, in his concurring opinion in dobbs -- and no one joined him in this -- but i believe he was right in saying that in exposing a salacious and rejecting the doctrine of substantive due process, which is the principal on which row -- roe was built, the court has also undermined the authority of its other substantive due process decisions, including the decision that redefined marriage for the entire nation. so there is an opening there. the other justices have been at pains to say that is not the issue, that's not what we are talking about here. but i think what justice thomas says is true as a logical manner -- logical matter. with roe gone and gone because substantive due process is a corruptive doctrine, exposed for the fallacy it is, there is no solid constitutional basis for some of these other decisions. that does not include loving against virginia. the left has been claiming it does. that's not true. loving is not a substantive due process decision. it's an equal protection decision, but it is true for the other. kevin: we will work and one more question. the microphone is coming your direction. >> great to see you. thank you so much for coming. robert: we are old classmates from swarthmore. >> and oxford. you talked about natural law coming from reason. what if we think that reason tells us the natural law involves child sacrifice or if i was one of your colleagues of kingston and believed it was ok to kill a baby soon after was born because as no consciousness of its own existence? then you have the application of reason leading to something that is very much against what we think of as natural law. robert: that's very true, but then we sit down and have an argument. we have agreed there is a moral truth, good. that gets us somewhere. now what is the moral truth? in my discussions with my colleague -- this is a real-life case, my colleague, peter singer at princeton university who believes not only in abortion but the morality of infanticide, he would say to me you and i agree that what gives human beings special status in dignity is our capacities for deliberation, judgment and choice come our rational capacities. but unborn babies don't have those and newborn babies don't have those. you don't develop even a sense of yourself separate from your mother until many months, maybe a year, maybe more after birth. so that is how he would justify infanticide, not just abortion, but infanticide as a practice. first, i would say you are absolutely right and please tell all of our colleagues that if you accept abortion, you've got to accept infanticide, logically. let them know that so they are in on this secret between us. he is logically correct the argument for abortion will give you infanticide. now the question becomes is he right that human dignity requires the immediately exercisable capacities for deliberation and judgment and choice? the alternative is human dignity requires the root capacity for deliberation, judgment and choice, which are in place from the earliest bionic stage of the point you have the formation of a new individual member of the human species and that is the point at which a child is conceived. if it is the latter, the radical capacity, then not only is infanticide wrong, but elective abortion, abortion where there is no threat to the mother, elective abortion would be morally impermissible and the rights of the child should be protected, which is my decision. if it is the former, if peter is right, and it has to be the exercisable capacities, that would mean a person who is in a coma would not have that capacity. a person under anesthesia would not have that capacity. if we killed the person while the person was under anesthesia, we would not be killing a person, we would be killing a human being who is not a person. professor singer recognizes and again has been kind enough to inform his pro-choice friends that of course you have a human being from the very beginning. a course abortion kills a human being. professor singer is under no illusion about when life begins. he and i agree about that. he just thinks you can distinguish human beings from persons. some human beings are not yet persons. some human beings are no longer persons. people who suffer from alzheimer's disease or venture. those born with severe cognitive disabilities are not now and never will be, never were persons. so, yes, you've got human beings , the question is are they persons? if they meet the immediately exercisable capacity for judgment and choice to be persons and have dignity, you would not be killing a person you would not be doing any thing wrong to that individual, you would not be committing an injustice against that individual if you killed some buddy in it, or someone in a deep sleep. so it cannot be the immediately exercisable capacities. what is the only alternative? the radical capacities we all possess and never lose, even in the case of a severely congenitally cognitively disabled person. that person -- a severely, congenitally cognitively disabled person won't, but that person possesses radical capacities and you can see that is the case if you simply imagine a new therapy were developed or a miracle occurred that corrected the congenital, let's say genetic effect. would you, in that case, by applying that therapy or in virtue of that miracle be changing that being from one kind of being into another kind of being? the weight miraculously teaching a horse to talk would change that creature from one kind of thing into whatever we would recognize in that, we would not recognize him any longer as a horse, mr. ed from our childhood, actually existed. if he were correcting that defect in a cognitively disabled child, you would not be changing that child from one sort of thing, human being, into another sort of thing. you would be perfecting him precisely as the kind of thing he is, and that is a human being, a creature organized for deliberation, judgment and choice, even if, due to the disability, something was blocking full realization of those capacities. kevin: a plus, professor. there is no doubt the republic would be better off if all of us in this room and those watching on tv and online would listen to you for another hour. but the reality is, this is the imperial city and the heritage foundation, which has a lot of colleagues sitting in this audience, have to get back to work. [laughter] and you are on the board, so you appreciate that. so before i invite richard up for closing marks -- i did not make that up, did i? you are not? i'm the absent-minded professor. to closing thoughts. the first, i mean this genuinely, if we emulate two things about you, this republic will be better off -- the precision of your thinking and your ability to articulate that. and secondly, and this is perhaps even more important, the generosity of your spirit, which you personify not just here but on social media especially and particularly with people who disagree with you. thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2023] >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more including comcast. >> do you think this is just a community center? no. it is way more than that. comcast is partnering with 1000 community centers, so students from low income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. >> comcast support c-span is a public service along with these other, television providers giving you a front row seats democracy. >> on this presidents' day weekeno c-span's american president's website, your guide to our nations commanders in chief from george washington to joe biden. find resources, life affects enrich images that tell the stories about their lives and presidencies. >> he was a member of boys nation one in july of 1963 he visited the white house and president kennedy. the trip solidified and already burgeoning interest in politics. classmates would remember the children would gather around bill clinton. a teacher once predicted his mouth with either -- was either going to get him in the governor's mansion or in trouble. a high school contemporary recalled that clinton was running for something. his law school friends were impressed by his good grades despite him not studying. he was born in hope, arkansas in 1946 and named william jefferson blythe the third, after his father died in a car accident. his mother studied nursing from 1947 to 1950. bill lee, as he was called to stay behind with his grandparents. he became acquainted with his for stepfather and his grandfather's grocery store in hope. roger clinton owned a buick dealership. he visited the store often to supply billy's grandfather with bootleg whiskey. roger clinton's nickname was dude. he was about of as well-dressed and engaging. when virginia returned to hope, they married. in 1953, the three relocated to arkansas. although his stepfather never adopted him. billy blythe called himself billy clinton by the first grade. life at home became more difficult, as he became aware of his stepfather's alcoholism. he felt responsible for defending his mother against his stepfather's verbal and physical attacks. despite conflicts with his stepfather, he legally changed his surname, as a sign of solidarity for his half-brother, roger. the turmoil of his home life did not affect his education. he graduated fourth in his class of 323 students were he was a member of the national honor society, junior class president and a band major. in 1964 he applied to is only college choice, georgetown university. during his junior year he served on the staff with his mentors, the arkansas senator. he earned a degree in international affairs in 1968. that following october, oxford university, where he was a rhodes scholar. in 1970 he began his first year at yale university law school at matt hillary rodham. after exchanging glances, she approached him and said look if you're going to keep staring at me i will keep staring back. you we should introduce ourselves -- we should introduce ourselves. for a moment, bill forgot his name. after yell they both taught law at the university of arkansas. they were married in 1975. your earlier, clinton suffered his first -- years earlier, clinton suffered his first defeat. at his wedding reception he announced he would run for political office again. he held to his word with elected arkansas's attorney general. in 1978 he became the youngest arkansas governor elected and for decades. he lost the reelection bid in 1980 and reportedly wept. on the campaign trail in 1983, he quoted -- he said he made a young man's mistake. voters elected him for three consecutive terms from 1983 until he ran for president in 1992. his presidential campaign was plagued by rumors of marital infidelity, reported attempts to avoid the vietnam draft and a loss in the new hampshire primary. his ability to sustain blows lead the press to nickname him the comeback kid. on november 3, 1990 two, clinton received the largest number of popular votes in any democratic candidate in history. he was sworn into the first of two terms, january 20, 1993. the economy was low with unemployment. and interest rates were healthy. the council's name during his first term to investigate investigations, that clinton profited. they investigated charges that clinton had encouraged monica lewin ski to lie under both about their extramarital affairs. he admitted to the affair. in 1990 eight he became the second president to be impeached by the house of representatives since andrew johnson in 1868. he was acquitted by the united states senate in february of 1999. >> this administration, led america into a new century. i turned to the economy around. approved that problems could be solved. and the country could pull together. that we basically prepared america for a whole new age. and that when we left, the country was much better off than when we came. >> here's a look at what is coming up tonight on c-span. all week we will introduce you to the newest members of the u.s. house of representatives with nearly 18 new members. c-span's -- c-span spoke with more than four of them about their political philosophy. we are from the u