Platform which most of our authors do, they do not want to be exclusive with amazon or if they want to have more leeway in prices,they will choose a nonexclusive option which gives you a 30 royalty. So Amazon Amazon gets 70, the author gets 30. And we think thats a ridiculous because amazon is providing the technology and the platform and that is all they do. They are not investing much in terms of labor at all. They aregood at it and you paid regularly, if you are exclusive you are also part of their library, basically its a Subscription Service where the reader can pay Something Like 10 per month to a whole library books. And there they pay based on a pool. It is completely nontransparent what that pool consists of our how they arrive at the authors. So we have for that authors have got into that pool, which you have to have exclusive arrangements, have had to made much less money doing so. The authors who really can make it selfpublishing, they generally cheat them out of options. Host finally, you mentioned the Senate Judiciary committee looking at copyright law. What are some of the changes they are considering with the Authors Guild . Guest right now it has been led by the house judiciary committee, although the senate is starting to get involved. So the issues that we are focused on right now, there are a number of minor issues but the ones that are going to move forward most quickly are the creation of a small claims tribunal which would be housed in Thecopyright Office and why this is important is because copyright is a right but without a remedy you really have no way. To bring it Copyright Infringement litigation costs minimally 150,000. Very few authors can do that. They cannot for that. So authors, photographers really have no way to enforce under the current system. This would create a very small area where you could do the proceedings over the phone, you dont have to hire a lawyer, a lawyer would tell you you would save a lot of money by not hiring a lawyer. No complex discovery, and it would be for claims under a certain amount. Say claims that are worth maybe a number that is 30,000 or less. Less. Nobodys going to litigate over that. So it gives authors an ability to do that. So we are supporting that. We are we are also supporting legislation that would change the notice of takedown rules. Theres a section of the copyright law which was enacted by the the digital copyright act. That allows any Service Provider, internet Internet Service provider can escape liability for Copyright Infringement, if they comply with certain rules and one of those is notice and takedown. We have to have a good hour on this subject is to explain the nuances but basically what the way the courts have interpreted it, which we think is incorrect, but the only remedy others have is to send notices to the Service Provider to take it down which the Service Provider generally do but then it goes right back up. So theres no obligation. You actually have to give the url for the infringing copy. So we have to tell the Service Provider about the url, for some Services Like cyber lockers theres no way the author to know where all the copies are, were Service Provider can search and over the copies are but they have no obligation to take down those other richmond copies. They have no obligation to take down the copies and they put a right back up. So its its called the game of wacko mold. It has really become ridiculous. We spent a lot of money dealing with these notices and from the other perspective you dont actually achieve getting anything taken down. So we are asking for a number of changes to that part. Were also looking at selective licenses for books that says fibers can access copies of books and actually pay for them instead of having libraries saying that we cannot possibly do that. That takes way a lot of income ultimately. Those of the big ones but those are bunch of issues. Host when you look at where we are publishing in 2016, has there ever been another period in history for this revolution is happening like it is now. Guest well, when yes. I mean the beginning of publishing. It was was a huge thing in terms of the written word. It was enormous. People who never had access to books before suddenly had access to books, like they took 100 years for the Publishing Industry to realize that we can use this technology for mass distribution. So the digital revolution is just as big. The implications are huge and we are already starting to see some of the entrance of the ability to access knowledge. It is very exciting. We just want to make sure that authors get some of that money because right now what is happening is its the result is that the wants to be Free Movement and its not like nobody is making money off of the content, the technology company, the Service Providers are making huge amounts of money off of content. The googles, amazon, apple, facebook, theyre called the big four, they are profiting from content now and the creators are losing their shirt. And its not fair but its also just very short sighted. If creators cannot cannot afford to keep creating they wont. Host mary, thank you for joining us on book tv. Guest thank you very much. When i tune into it on the weekends usually it is author sharing their new releases. Watching the nonfiction authors on book tv is the best television for serious readers. On cspan, you can can have a longer conversation and delve into their subjects. Book tv weekends, they they bring you author, after author, after author and they spotlight the work of fascinating people. I love book tv and i am a cspan fan. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] hello everyone. Thank you for joining us today for this launch. I think the microphone was too low for me. I am a senior fellow here at the Manhattan Institute. Our speaker today is a fellow at the policy center in washington. And and founder and editor of National Affairs magazine. It is a real privilege for me to introduce our speaker today, he is an outstanding mentor to Young Scholars such as myself. All you need to know about him is that he has with some not use twitter. I should probably pay say more about him that he doesnt tweet so less oppressive but more relevant today i would say he is better than anyone in america at defining what conservatism means, showing its relevance to modern society and applying it to principles of the challenges of today. And and now he has written a book doing just that. The fractured republic, renewing americas social conflict. I think it is a probably not sense in the dream of the nightmare have we had such a thoughtful and thorough account of the dramatic changes in society, the causes of those changes and the consequences of those. But even more notably, he did not stop there. For me the most important and may be overlooked message of the book is the importance of presenting a positive vision for americas future. It actually brought me back to my former career as a Management Consultant and if youll forgive me moment of jargon, i will quote quote something written by my former colleagues. People get excited by mentioning themselves on the beach or the ski slope, not by reading the travel itinerary. Effective change requires leaders who can inspire people and provide them with the internal compass to align their subsequent behaviors, decisions, and actions. This vision works worth root metaphors and stories the impact. It emphasizes the destination as well as the journey. Successful change begins by asking what is our beach . So maybe that sounds obvious but i found it universally ignored in business and politics. If no shortage of writers telling us what is wrong, how great things used to be, why things used to work, few but some focus on legislative reforms that might help Going Forward and id like to count myself in that last group and i think that work is important. Even for me are authors message was an exhilarating wakeup call. The path to reform starts not with legislative conference but with a picture of how things can look now with an itinerary, but with the beach. He forces everyone to think about that beach and provide a compelling one of his own. Many people will disagree with his particular vision but i really believe he will force more of the debate to occur and america will be better so here to tell you more [applause]. Thank you very much for that. To thought that i would be a mentor to use both scary and wonderful so i appreciate it. And thank you especially to the Manhattan Institute for talking and bringing you all together i am a grateful consumer of so much of what mi does both in publishing and anyone you will let me publishing National Affairs and reading what you publish and learning from it. I have never before thought of what im doing is describing a beach and from now on i will. Thank you. That said, im going to starve something a little bit bit more depression than the beach, alas. I will speak briefly and give you a little overview of what this book is and what it has to say and then hear what you are interested in and what youre thinking about and what, and what you take away from what im trying to offer. I will start with a book start switches with the simple fact that american politics today, and some respects American Society is drowning in a frustration or at least anxiety, were living through what seems to be an uneasy time. Thats thats reflected in the tone and tenor of our debates in a kinda candidates that are rising appealing to voters of the concern is that you hear people expressing. If you listen to her political conversations at this point you have to conclude that america is deeply frustrated. At first glance its not particularly hard to say why we should be frustrated. Its not that hard to explain the attitude. For one thing our economy has been very sluggish since this 21stcentury began in not only during the Great Recession or after, the strongest year of Economic Performance in the century was 12 years ago, 2004. Even that year we saw a growth that barely reach the average of the prior four decades. The sluggishness of the economy leaves people feeling like they are running a place which is certainly part of the frustration that people are feeling. At the same time the century began with the worst terrorist attack in our countrys history. And it is not changed or vetted the hope that we mightve had first somewhat peaceful postcold war order in the 90s that has been shattered. Art politics at the same time as been polarized and intensely divisive. Our culturalto battles about sensor subjects from stem cells to marriage and sexuality to National Identity have been fought at a fever pitch that has left everybody feeling like theyre besieged and offended at the same time. Some key indicators that cross the line between politics and economics and culture things like family breakdown and inequality have also pointed in the wrong direction for long time and have stood in the way of mobility and of the american dream. So the opening years of the 21st century have given americans reasons to worry. Theres also plainly been more to the frustration of this time than just the straightforward response to circumstances. Our our problems are very real but the way that we talk about the stuff and disconnected from reality so that the kind of diagnoses and prescriptions that people offer up seemingly to contribute to the kind of disorientation that so defines our public life. When you listen carefully to what is being set in our politics you realize it is disconnected often in a particular particular way, our way of talking about our problems now is dominated by nostalgia. By a powerful and widely shared sense that our country has lost ground. That we have fallen far and fast from a peak that a lot of americans can still remember. I will give you an example that i think will strike you as recently and familiar, not because you have for this particular line before, but because you hear all the time. How often have you heard a politician and less for your say Something Like this come i will quote a brief paragraph. Many people watching to make you probably remember a time when finding a good job meant showing up at a nearby factory or a business downtown. He didnt always need a degree, your competition was limited to your neighbors, if you worked hard chances are you had a job for life. With a decent paycheck and good benefits and the occasional promotion, maybe you would even have the pride of senior kids work at the same company. That world has changed and for many the change has been people. That happens to be president obama and a state of the Union Address a few years ago but this could easily be almost any politician in either party at this point. With a little more emphasis of the cultural cohesion of that time that everyone so mrs. Mrs. Mightve been a republican, it mightve been mitt romney in the last election, or any of the candidates in this election with more emphasis on low inequality of the time it couldve been Hillary Clinton or elizabeth warren, it often is. With poor grammar and more anger can be donald trump right now calling for rolling back globalization and recovery what we have lost. America just is not what it used to be. That is the theme of contemporary market politics. It speaks to public anxiety that often comes down to a question that is asked in anguish. What is happened to our country . Its not a bad question, Something Big and smith can has happened to our country. In its less cartoonish forms and nostalgia than what we see in todays politics is understandable. The america and are politics miss so much, the nation as it emerged from the Second World War, the great depression, gradually evolve from there was exceptionally unified and cohesive. It had its first and amazing confidence and big institutions and Big Government and big labor, big business managing the nation together a meeting its need. That confidence is stunning when you look at what people are saying and thinking of midCentury America. Americas cultural life was not much less consolidate. It was dominated by a broad traditionalist and more religious attendance was at a peak, families are strong, birth rates were high, divorce rates were low. In the wake of a war in which most of its competitors had literally burned its economies to the ground, the United States dominated the World Economy which for a while allowed Economic Opportunities to all kinds of workers with all kinds skill levels. Almost immediately after the war that consolidated nation started a long process of unwinding, fragmenting. Over the subsequent decades the cultural liberalize and diversify the struggles against racism coincided with a massive increase in immigration. It supports wrecking as letter by the way which we do not think about scale of it quite enough. Because of immigration restrictions and acted in the 19 midCentury America had an incredibly low level of Cultural Diversity and tolls those restrictions were lifted. In the 1970 senses the percentage of People Living in america who had been born abroad was an alltime low of 4. 5 percent. Today, it is back at an alltime high of almost 20 . That is certainly part of what has happened for country. Meanwhile some key parts of the economy, some were deregulated to keep up with rising competitors in our labor market was forced by the pressures of globalization to go to hire skilled work. In politics, very unusual midcentury elite consensus on important issues gave way by the 70s to renew divisions that are been getting sharper and sharper sense. In one area after another, the america in the immediate postwar years was a model of consolidation consensus. Through the following decade that consistence fracture. By the end of the 20th century the fracturing of consensus grew from diffusion into polarization. Polarization of political views, economic Economic Opportunities, incomes of family patterns, ways of life. We have grown less conformist the more fragmented, more diverse but less unified. More dynamic ballistic or. All of this has not gains for america which which not overlooked. In prosperity, personal liberty, Cultural Diversity and progress and in options and choices in every part of life. Over time it is also meant a lot loss of faith in institutions and social order. A loss of national cohesions and security and stability for workers. Those losses have piled up in ways that now often seem to overwhelm the gains. They have made our 21stcentury politics distinctly backward looking and unhappy. Conservatives and liberals emphasize different facets of these changes. Liberals tend to treasure the liberalization the loss of social solidarity, the rise in inequality, conservative, conservatives celebrate the economic liberalization, but lament the social instant ability, the breakdown of families and other institutions. The trouble is these changes are all tied together. The liberalization that the left celebrates is the fragmentation that the right remains and vice versa. That said set of forces diversified and fracturing, are all functions of the essential driving force of american lives since the end of the Second World War. Individualism. In very. In very broad terms, the first half of the 20th century to the Second World War was an age of growing consolidation and cohesion in life. As our economy industrialize the government grew more centralized, the culture became aggregated through mass media and National Identity and cohesion valued above individuality and diversity. In those years a great many those forces were pushing americans to become more like everyone else. And therefore it was highly incredibly, exceptionally cohesive. The second half of the 20thcentury in these early decades of the 20th century have marked an age of d consolidation as it became very gated and diverse and in some respects a personal identity came to be held up above conformity and national unity. In these years, a lot of the most powerful forces in our country have driven people not to be more like everyone else, but to be mark like himself or herself. MidCentury America, especially the 1950s and 60s stood between these two distinguished periods and for a time there able to keep 1 foot in each, combining dynamism with cohesion to an extra ordinary degree. That kind of a straddling of cohesion or unity in diversity really was a wonder to behold. It is not surprising that we idolize it and that we miss it. It offered us a stable brock backdrop for different kinds of liberalization towards cultural liberalization or free economics. But that liberalization now has done its work in our country, our society is its result. We are highly individual diverse country. None of that is about to be undone. So we are going to have to solve the problems that we have is that kind of society. Both our strengths and weaknesses, functions of the past that we have traveled together and will now have to draw on those strengths to address those weaknesses. This and want to print senses what is happening to our country. It is the essential challenge of the politics of the 21st Century America. How to use the advantages of an Adverse Society to address the disadvantages of a fractured security society. If that does not sound like what theyre asking ourselves its not. Our political culture has not been very good at grasping either the challenges we face are the strengths we have in facing them. It is instead by overwhelmed by nostalgia. By a desire to reverse liberalization and diffusion that has transformed our society. So whether an economic terms for the left, to recreate a consolidated centralized consensus driven society that we were not all that long ago. The first step to a constructive politics is to see that that kind of reversal is not an option. That we probably would not want to do it anyway. Instead we have to think of how to address the challenges of dissolution and diffusion. Challenges like the breakdown of the family, the loss of worker security, growing polarization, by making the most of strengths like diversity, dynamism. That question could help with the way to the next set of political and policy debates. Not this year apparently, but what our politics is finally ready to face reality. How do we use our very fragmentation itself is a strength . Follow our troubles in the sElection Year i think conservatives ultimately are uniquely wellpositioned to offer a plausible set of answers to that question. Using our diversity of fragmentation as a tool of problemsolving would require an approach to government that empowers problem solvers are under society rather than hoping that just one in washington to get things right. A means of bringing to Public Policy the kind of dispersed incremental bottomup approach to progress that you increasingly see in every other part of american life. An approach that solves problems by giving people lots of options and letting their choices drive the process. That vision a problemsolving is not what the social democratic ideal of the left looks like. It looks like looks like more of the industrial economy. But this more way of problemsolving is what conservatives has to offer. Its the modern post works. Its also the logic of federalism embodied, its the logical subsidiary, its articulated by the best traditions of civilization. Its how a revitalized is a tool of modernization and revivalism. That kind of approach after all is what conservatives propose and some of the policy arenas have been most active over the years. Thats opposed to what a centralized Model Public School system. Its what Higher Education tends to look like. Now, as those kind of examples would suggest, that sorta bottomup approach has been championed by conservatives in some areas for long time. Though with limited success against the entrenched welfare state. But as the old progressive model exhaust itself and as politics and midcentury nostalgia is proving inadequate, the time is growing right for new conservative approach to make its case more boldly. Both in familiar arenas in a new ones. That kind of modernized conservatism would also have a lot to offer trent offer our cultural debates. The fragmentation of our society is an enormous challenge that they were more majority of commonly held views from a tiny but aggressive minority. That consensus was also always shakier than it seems and dependent on loosely affiliated moral and religious traditionalists. The loosely affiliated traditionalists have become unaffiliated and social conservatism needs to get use to be in a minority and a fractured company. And that kind of society, moral traditionalist would be wise to emphasize that building cohesive and attractive subcultures rather than struggling for dominance of the increasingly weak institution of the main street culture. While some National Political battles, think especially those about religious liberty will remain essential to preserve the space for moral traditionalism to thrive, and social conservatives will need to focus on how best to clear that space in their own communities. Thats ultimately out of the overpowering frustration that now dominates our politics. A more diverse politics that lowers the stakes of our debate and uses our societies diversity as a means of solving its problem. We could revitalize layers of our society and it could help dross back into the space between the individual in the state. To counteract with the isolating individualism that increasingly characterizes our character and that that accompanies it. It could help us reunite and build our communities. Were lacking now and those virtues and sense of common purpose. This Election Year has shown us that has given us concern for the fate of our country. First is to ask what happened to our country but they do not define what will happen next. This marks not the beginning of a new phase but the end of an old one in american politics. The exhaustion of the baby boomer model of politics that cant meet americas needs anymore. Im afraid that the exhaustion of this order is really what will be on display this fall with two sevenyearold candidates yell at each other about how best to go backwards. To see the way forward we need to open our eyes to the 21st circumstances. To grasp the challenges and the opportunities that they represent and see how applying our enduring american principles to circumstances can be the recipe for an american revival thank you. [applause] we will take questions from the prerogative. I lost the first question. The media institutions you listed are ones that werent so prominent in the 50s or 60s whether its paternal organizations, churches and other things. Do you see a role for those in the future or is there a whole new wave of media institutions are more likely to succeed . Thats a great question. I think it sometimes can seem like those were the institutions that were prominent in midCentury America but by then those institutions had already been subject to a halfcentury of assault from a centralizing politics that took a lot away of what they were doing. Its interesting to read the sociology of the 1950s. The quest for community which is a very timely book was written in 1953 at a time when we think of as the peak of this kind of Civil Society of america. He was writing that no Civil Society had been undone by progressivism for a halfcentury and he realized the next step after centralizing would be a radical individualism that would break these apart. He was right in a lot of ways. I wouldnt look to that. To solve that problem. Sometimes the challenges we face now i like what they faced in the 19th century. If you looked at america you wouldve found a country that was diverse and divided and had no confidence in the constitution. If you couldve taken a pole in 19th Century America at any time, the Approval Rating wouldve been 2 for congress. You dont have to read a lot of mark twain to get a sense of what people thought of the american institution. For many of the same reasons now, weve reach this this point as the country that lived through that mid century moment and move through progressivism. We cant just go back. We can assume that those institutions have just been sitting there waiting for us to come back, that the rooms are just sitting empty and we can go back and do it again. It will take a different kind of revival. Above all what it requires is making those kinds of institutions significant, giving them some authority, making what you do matter and that means giving them a role in trying to solve the problems we have which to the extent that Public Policy can do much about that would require some decentralization. To me there is a big role for decentralizing conservatism of them and happen. We do have other kinds of media that are creatures of the digital age or that have, in more recent times to try to help us solve the problems that we have now. The internet accelerates the kind of atomism and hyper individualism that we suffer from because it allows us to be selective about the expenses we have in the people we interact with. It lets us be more and more like who we already are. Thats not a bad thing. We all do it because we like it. But it does mean that the effect it has on our social life can tend to weekend where actual communities reside. I think those certainly can be part of what it would take to bring people back. I think we are headed toward a more fragmented future. However, looking back over the last 50 years, a Major Development you havent mentioned is what they called the end of history, the end of deeply seated conflict about the role of government. The truth is the traditional left is defeated. Its dead, even in europe. Were not going to see a large part in the future where the government takes over the economy. On the other hand the right has accepted the welfare state. In my time in washington, i have not seen many conservatives who were truly libertarian who wanted to eliminate the welfare state. Were talking about a future without, what are having instead is fragmentation which is quite accurate compared 50 years ago. That future that you are imagining is a future in which people somehow take on what we call the burdens of freedom. The heavy responsibilities that go with living in a free society. In the security danger isnt so much that the fragmentation will be too much but that major parts of america will cease to be individuals. Phil take up another set of burdens and those burdens dominate the entire outside world. The entire world outside the west. That world is falling apart. They are coming to our borders, seeking entry and the question is, the thing we should fear about is the lost of individualism rather than the loss of unity which is what youve been describing. Thank you. Thats a great question. I dont quite agree. In a sense i came to write this book out of a question thats a little bit like that question. The book i wrote before this was a somewhat different kind of book. A more philosophical book. It was about the roots of the left right divide which you suggest have sort of come to an end and therefore the nature of the left right divide. I tried to look at it by thinking about what the basic questions were in the premise of that and i think its ultimately demonstrated in that argument and looking at that history is that the left right divide in genuinely liberal societies is not an extreme divide between radical libertarianism and socialism. The left right divide is this agreement between two kinds of liberalism that actually differ very profoundly in their anthropology and their sense of what the human being is in their ideas of how we come to know things. The differences are real but the differences in the 40yard lines the history never really happened in america anyway. Weve always lived in a different way and they have not experienced that kind of struggle of fascism against communism or even it general radical libertarianism against a truly totalizing socialism. So the trouble that i see looking at our politics now through that kind of lens is not that our politics is small but that its totally disconnected from todays problem. There is a kind of left right debate that we could have that would be an american left right debate, not to radical ends but a progressive sense of what to do about the 21st century in a conservative one. Both of them would have something to contribute. I think one of them would be better than the other but we dont have the debate at all. Thats not even whats going on. In a sense, the question of why that is was the question i was left with at the end of the book i last wrote because i think the reason for the mentally is that neither of our parties, neither of our large Ideological Coalition is looking up the 21st century and its own terms if they did that actually both have a lot more to offer than they now have. The leaders of both seem totally unaware of what they might have to offer the public. Instead of reelection being a choice between 1965 in 1981 in the public looks at that and just thinks what is this. So im not sure that the end of history is that big of change for america. Whatever you make of the argument of global politics, i think a politics in our country is what we have one things are working. Its not what we have now, not in the sense that our politics are terribly radical but in the sense that its totally disoriented and not looking at the problems that might have something to say about. I understand what youre saying but the problem i see is that weve had eight years of increasing centralization and increasing part of Central Government and the way the betting markets are saying were going to have another four or eight years of that. How are these intermediate institutions to grow when the Central Government and healthcare is now much more centralized. Just every day you read in the paper about another agency squeezing out some of these midlevel things. How is actually going to happen when we have this huge Central Government growing and growing and taking over things. Look, weve had more than eight years of centralization. Weve had 80 years of centralization. I think that puts the question in a site slightly different light because it seems to me that the last eight years have not been the most successful time for american progressivism. The last 80 years have been a successful time. We do stand out at a point that our way of thinking about politics and government is awfully centralized. I dont see that as intention with the dynamic of individualism in our culture. I think those two things go together. A lot of people have made that argument. Thats the argument that they were getting up at. Its the socialist argument that ultimately moral individualism are two sides of one coin. They always go together because one needs the other and makes the other possible. So conservatism is him doesnt choose one of those. It offers an alternative to the combination of the two of them. Thats why seems to me that a has to focus itself on that middle space between individual and the state. The the how, its not hard to persuade americans now that this isnt working. The problems americans had in the 1960s, the problem conservatives have is that a lot of americans believed that it could work. That the Great Society would succeed in solving the nations problem. When you look at opinion polls and what politician said in the 50s but especially the early 60s, its amazing. No one talks like that now. Bernie sanders doesnt talk like that now. The notion that poverty is behind us, Lyndon Johnson tells the students at the university of michigan. Now we have to figure out how to not get bored. Thats not how we think now. If you begin your approach to the public by telling people this doesnt work and in fact, what we can offer you is something that is much more likely to work that would be persuasive because in part it looks like what does the work in american life. It doesnt make the assumption that somebody in the head office has all the answers. It makes the assumption that by giving people a lot of choices you could gradually and incrementally improve things. I think that makes sense in 21st Century America, that and i old idea is something theyve already had but its also a new idea. I think theyre in a stronger place that would they give credit for. Theres no way to find out if we can succeed except by trying which for the moment is just not overdoing. I read a brilliant review, be that candidate. Lets hear the candidate that you would recommend rather than these 270yearolds that are screaming at each other. Tell us. What you would say. Look, the last thing i would would ever want to be as president. I used to work for president and i dont know why anybody wants to be president. You have to be truly crazy so we shouldnt be surprised that crazy people are running for president. I think what that candidate would have to say to the public would have to begin from a kind of humility about the nature of what he or she could do as president in solving problems. It would have to begin from a recognition that not everything in 21stCentury America is a problem. Not everything or every fact of our contemporary National Life is a problem but we do face some discrete problems. Some of them are cultural and moral and to varying degrees there are ways for government to be helpful or at least less harmful. I think the kind of policy agenda that would have to be attached to that would be driven by the sense that Solutions Work best when they work from the bottom up. You can take any set of issues you want. We talk about healthcare. The Health Care Debate weve had in the last few years has been the epitome of the left right divide on how to solve problems. Theres a certain amount of agreement with the nature of the problem that our Healthcare System is incredibly inefficient and what there is disagreement about how you saw that kind of problem. From the left you get a centralizing answer that said the solution is get just the right mit professor to set it up for you and make sure everybody has to buy what hes selling. Then the rights answers to give people more choices and allow for more products to be sold as insurance and allow people to have the resources they need to become consumers in that kind of system. Then gradually, you will make your way toward a better system. I dont think you could find a lot of americans who have any idea that thats what conservatives say about healthcare. I dont think that conservatives have done a very good job of explaining the basic difference in how we think about how to solve problems. Whether you use healthcare as an illustration or education or welfare or any of the massive problems that we have, it seems to me theres a practical matter , a candidate inclined to think that way is going to have a lot to drawn on. In a funny way, we have more of the programmatic policy ideas than we do of the vision of how this is different and why it makes sense. Thats part of what this book is about and what a lot of people are trying to do. The American Public doesnt have the faintest idea that there is this basic difference with how to solve problems and that conservatives are on the side of that question they might find attractive to begin with i think you want to politician who is capable of making that argument. There arent a lot. There are some. They tend to be younger. Republicans have some promising younger members of congress. One is speaker of the house and there are few in the senate. Theres not a lot but it doesnt take that many peer and i think the change is to the tone of how you approach this public. Frankly, to put aside the cataclysmic rhetoric that is at the very core, even when we try to offer solutions, we say say if we dont turn this around right now its the end of the american republic. Well thats just not true. Its also not helpful and its not the way to persuade anybody of anything. You listen to somebody say that an you say thats probably crazy. The problem we have is actually worse than that. Its not if we dont do something we will have a cataclysmic moment, the problem is if we dont change things now we will gradually decline. We could keep doing that for a long time and we better not. Thats a harder case to make them people who just want to be angry but i think its closer to the truth and more persuasive. Ill ask you the Charles Murray question which is, thinking about all these communities and decentralization across america, did you find any research in the book evidence or things we could count on for optimism that some of these communities are actually up to the task of decentralization . Were up to building these communities. It seems like a lot of them have decayed so much that there isnt the social capital there so did you find anything that will be a source of optimism on that score . Thank you dan. I would never want to be accused of optimism. Thats not a good thing. Optimism is just expecting good things to happen. Thats crazy. I would want to be accused of being hopeful and i think thats very different. To be hopeful is to believe that there are the resources for improvement and whether those are Material Resources or spiritual resources, it takes all of them. I do think those are there. Now, obviously in places that most need help, those resources are most lacking. Thats how they got into the situation theyre in and how theyve remained in it. Its true that in a lot of communities there are problems that are going to be resolved by someone on the outside just saying figure it out, have a meeting. Thats not what it means to have a little more faith in Civil Society, but i think when you ask yourself how do i help how do we make a difference, the answer needs to involve ways of building things up within those communities rather than ways of mailing checks to the right address. Thats hard to do from the center. Thats a difficulty youre going to have with the cash welfare state in a country as vast as ours. So i think the diversity of problems we have requires in an enormous diverse solution. When you thing about welfare you always think about the opening line that says all happy families are alike in their happiness but every unhappy family is alike in its own certain way. That doesnt help when youre trying to deal with failure which has its very own look to it. People tried to think about how to help the most troubled places and they have to begin in those places. Thats an argument for an evolved welfare policy. Its not assuming all the resources are there. An argument to help build those in believing that building those could make a difference. I want to discuss a positive scenario. Uber is a technological social transformation of how people get around and then you have people using the means of levers and government trying to block the progress that is in self entirely extra governmental that came out as a matter of people owning phone and having wifi and gps and being able to talk to them. Then you have a self driving car which means you dont have to own a car because you can order a card come to you and take you somewhere. That itself is a kind of gigantic social Economic Transformation that you can see coming and you can also see a wave, a colossal number of forces that will do whatever they can to impede the progress to that point. The question is, is there a political matter that a combined set of forces, voices, people have to build the case to help win those forces alive to make Technological Progress impossible for dues one live in a technocrat of fantasy in which it will simply happen and you cant stop it. It will happen the way hollywood took over or Something Like that. In political terms we can see the transformation that youre talking about and we can also see how it will be, how the levers of government can be used to make it impossible or at least to slow it down so that the transition will be the worst possible kind of transition. Slow, unwillingly, cost full and without much benefit. Well i think its great question. In a way the story of uber and all of us that were so obsessed with help to tell every angle of that story. Uber is a great example of how to overcome those limitations because what they did in a lot of large cities is just kind of do it. They didnt get permission. They knew they would get in trouble but they just went in and became popular pretty quickly. A lot of places, that meant they couldnt be stopped. Thats what happened in washington where theres a very strong cabdrivers lobby but it just got to a point where it will be crazy for the city council to do anything about it because there would be a revolution. Thats one way to think about this kind of problem you are describing. Theres no question there will be, as there always is, resistance to changes to a system that helps incumbent factors. That means theres no question that any kind of reform along these lines are going to be messy and slow and not ideal. Now im not of the view that messy and slow is the worst way for change to happen. In some ways it might be the best way for change to happen. If its too quick, its very likely to involve the embodiment of some terrible ideas. If its slower can try to weed out those terrible ideas. Messy, were a complicated society so a change that sets us us is going to be messy. The problem is, how do you deal with inherent cronyism of the status crow quote thats going to try to prevent improvement . I think that is one of the great challenges for people who want to advance this. One of the great challenges for conservatives is to become sworn opponents of cronyism. If you look at the Republican Party you would not say that is the case. I think its very important for people to try to influence the politicians on the right to talk a lot about this and make much of it because its extremely important. Ultimately it becomes impossible for the sorts of changes we want to happen if we allow the people who are now in the system to have so much control of the process and changing it. Its more, cronyism is not just a way of sending a positive message and showing people that were on their side. I think it can be that but the notion that theres a lot of political gain from that has always struck me as overstated. I think it exists because it benefits a lot of people and people tend to like it. Its an enormous problem to anybody who believes that the way to advance progress is through competition because if it is anything it is anti competitive. It really cuts to the heart of what i would want to see happen. I do think thats a question to constantly ask and wrestle with. The only answer is to fight it. Knowing that you wont always win but you can make some progress of what you are offering is attractive. By michael myers, im president of the new york civil rights coalition. My question relates to the proposition that you put out that america is not what it used to be. For a lot of americans, the answer that proposition would be thank god. You have blacks and other racial minorities. You have women, you have have gays, lesbians, you have labor unions, you have so Many Americans who feel that america is not and should not ever be where it used to be. My question as to the social change movement in america, that is not what through a left right win. You had a consensus. They brought forth a consensus based on Public Opinion and public change in the congress, legislator and the judiciary branch. How do you move us to a position where we can continue to protect, as Benjamin Franklin said, keep our republic based on not being a divide among the americas between left and right but to try and bridge the left and right divide by addressing serious, real problems in our society. Thinking for the question. I want to the people who is critical of the notion that america is not what used to be. I think thats t w