Transcripts For CSPAN2 Liberalism At Home 20150119

Childs eyes. His or her mouth drops open a new note the child is lost in the story. I like to pick up a book of my local Neighborhood Stores because i like the random encounter. For a little while, while reading this book you do your own world leave your own space and inhabit somebody elses soul. Everything we hold here is in boat. Take them up and its all better. Go out, get a book. Keep reading. National read a fun day saturday january 24th. New to 10 00 p. M. In your time zone. The website again . Search National Readers on and its the first thing that comes out. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Caroline Hampstead and ended to wreck her of the program. It is with great pleasure that im here to introduce a distinguished patron of the liberal arts and scholar of western civilization, professor noel valis. She is the director of graduate studies at spanish era galan also a professor of spanish and portuguese. Okay, no longer portuguese. [laughter] she was the recipient of the guggenheim fellowship and also a national and found that humanities scholarship. Shes written on sacred realism as server war and 19th century spanish novel. Without further ado the moderator for the second panel, liberalism at home and the challenges to western survival. [applause] can you hear me all right . Good. Welcome to the second panel on this conference which the william f. Buckley Junior Program has so beautifully organized and put together. I should point out at once that unfortunately, james was unable to attend. Wonderfully at the last moment we have a replacement. Avik roy has stepped it up to volunteer for him. So now james taranto, r. R. Reno and noel valis. Our distinguished speakers very briefly to turn the panel over 2000 to which we will open up the floor for discussion. When i accepted the kind invitation to moderate this panel, i was genuinely delighted to have the opportunity to revisit the classic book. But as i started to read ive realized that i was absolutely dead wrong about it. Not about its classic status, but that i actually read the book before. Because as i read further i understood had i once read his book, i would never have forgot that. My false memory of having read it probably arose from recognizing the title title that is truly a must read decades ago. I would never have forgotten it because as a professor of literature come in the first thing i noticed was not so much what he was saying, but how he was saying that. In chapter one the contraction of the west he begins while working on this book one morning i happened to come across lingering on a remote shelf and historical atlas left over from my school days long, long ago. I threw it out and began idly tuning the pages for no particular reason other than to indication as a writer will escape or a moment from the lonely discipline of his craft. The atlases current 1914 in the little bit later he writes, the historical atlas of this sort, we see history that history multiple polarizing blast that reduces the infinite human variety to a single vigorous dimension comic effect of political control. This dimension is unambiguously represented a single color, red, green, yellow blue and a particular segment of the outline world. The red on italy, spain, egypt means roman rule. The uncolored fringes mean damore faced anarchy. Burnham had once drawn a sin first by using the classic use and then his all too human yielding distractions all writers crazed. But of course, this atlas is not a distraction as has also been pointed out, for represents the first chapter which introduces western civilization. His ability to focus with unsentimental clarity on this image sets the stage for the rest of the book. Above all i was struck by the sober objective way he went about outlining what can only be described as impending disaster. No beast of the apocalypse but still disaster. The terms of engagement in this book are harsh and unsparing. He speaks of the necessity of the will to survive that the west suicidal tendency and provocatively then and now of liberalism as the ideology of western suicide. So, we have two extraordinarily graphic terms suicide and survival often noted some of the survival in particular suggests passage through something so terrible as an image of the last standing man or the last man standing to put it in the right order. I found myself asking is this what burnham is marching towards . Is that all there is . How shall the west survive . What are the forms to survival will take . But then i returned to the upper brass of the queen that burnham carefully chose though he does not identify or comment on the source of the quote station, at least not in the addition that ive read. After describing the cave of despair spencer has despair repute by the red cross knight for provoking the suicide and it is despair himself who speaks in this epigraphs saying, the passage haslip makes debater ways is not paying wellborn that brings lonny assemblies the soul to sleep in quiet after toil after stormy seas, ease after war, death after life. Hearing this insidious argument itself nearly kills himself, but is saved whereupon despair hangs himself. That is the part that comes after. My question is, what is the connection between spencers figure of despair and the liberalism but are numb identifies as the ideology of western suicide. Does he mean to take this projection . If so theres great irony and paradox to it or in it for as he himself declares, liberalism is the optimistic espousal of the perfect ability of human nature for the rationalism and secularism. But it is the the consequence of such utopian thinking it is underlying basis may lead us to the cave of despair. It tells us something about the moral combest of division in the book. Now i am privileged to introduce our distinguished speakers. The Public Square pages i love reading after graduating high school, he spent a year living in a tent in Yosemite Valley and id like to move this story. Rusty is also a gala who received his phd in religious studies from Yale University and todd theology at Creighton University in omaha for 20 years and notable publication by the collection of essays fighting the double in the ruins of church retentive atonement in the care of the soul and the coauthored fish in an introduction to early interpretation of the bible. James taranto is editor of opinion journal. Com and force possible best of the web column and very memorable for his sense says pointed commentary. Hes a member of the wall street journal editorial board. Hes been with the journal since 1996 after spending five years has been added or it city journal, the manhattan to policy. Hes also worked at the Heritage Foundation International Reason magazine and elsewhere in a coedited the book president ial leadership, rating the best and the worst in the white house in 2004. That would be a different story would net . [laughter] and finally avik roy come in the opinion editor and not there at the apothecary and many readers familiar with his criticism of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care act otherwise known as obamacare is also served as an outside adviser to the Romney Campaign on how scary she is. He contributes to National Review online and the author of the encounter broadside, how medicaid sales the poor. He too is a yearly having studied a Deal University school of medicine as well as m. I. T. Lease join me in welcoming our panelists. [applause] thank you for that wonderful meditation on spent there in the cave of despair. I never thought about liberalism hanging itself. [laughter] but i rather like that outcome. When i read suicide of her west it is certainly a book that im very sympathetic with. After 9 11 i took to asking many of my friends who were very concerned about islamic terrorism and islamic extremism. I said what is the greatest threat to the west . When people hammon hall they eventually agreed the west is the greatest threat to the west. That seems to me to be burnhams insight. But today i would rather pursue some contentions and provocations with the book in order to stimulate thought and perhaps discussion. Talk about what liberalism is. I am going to take issue with the way he treats communism and then i want to talk about how i think he may have underestimated liberalism. Okay, so what is liberalism . My memory is not so good, so i dont like to boil things down to 39 principles. Free is better to my mind. I think reading suicide of the west crystallized for me what is the three features of liberalism. They are not quite the same as burnhams vision and maybe we can talk about that. Richard weaver said we operate at three different levels. We have specific beliefs general principles and with metaphysical trains and i think liberalism is a metaphysical dream are perhaps more accurately a metaphysical dream. It dreams his political train his political train this Justice Without virtue. Its a moral dream is a dream of virtue without to supplant or center. Spiritually, it is the dream itself realization of salvation and in my mind, that is the metaphysical or antimetaphysical dream of liberalism. Well, so that was a kindness provocation in light of his own account of liberalism. The second issue i want to raise is the implausible way, understandable given the book is in the 1960s, but the implausible way in which burnham treats communism is antiwestern. I think it is transparently the case that communism was a contending force in the west. It was a form of western assam that was actually extremely effective at conquering a great deal of a world. So i would submit that china today has been westernized by communism or was westernized by communism and now is an indispensable stage in its Current Development into the sort of authoritarian capitalist society. Certainly russia i think was westernized by communism. So i think that communism as we look back was not in fact in antiwestern ideology. It was one of the perversions of the west that was contending for the soul both for the future of the world to use his terminology. It did a great deal in great deal in the 20th century to westernized the political imaginations of the part of the world where high dominance. Like i said youll see that in retrospect. Also got me turned out to be wrong about the capacity of liberals to resist and defeat communism. That is because he saw it but sometimes didnt see certainly the managerial revolution helped me see that the commissar and the liberal technocrat are rivals competing for dominance in the west. So what is really the liberal technocrat and the commissar that were at war with each other for dominance postwar era. And liberalism has techniques for establishing and maintaining power that look we can seem weak but artifact quite effective. I think this is decolonization. Clearly come a decolonization served the interest of liberal technocrat than america. Our nonintervention of the suez canal crisis in 1950 clearly demonstrated to european nations that they were subservient to a new was an instrumental move here at our nonaction was instrumental in establishing and demonstrating that the nonsoviets donothing without american backing. So decolonization i think is actually serving the interests of a specifically american technocratic elite which is why we supported it. It didnt represent our defeat. It was actually part of our vic terrine establishing a very different kind of imperial globally. Im also the different kinds of power, multiculturalism domestically is the strategy for managing power and the way of maintaining power. These appear to be weak and a strap give suicidal but we know from experience that institutions like el that have adopted the multicultural ideology but are able to actually double their strengths. So i think this brings my final point. The way in which burnham underestimated liberalism. He is right to say a number of places that liberalism is not in touch with reality. I think the example that is most powerful here is that this caused the view of the soviet union in the 50s and 60s and into the 70s that it received itself about the true nature of communism for all kinds of reasons. We see it as a political correct ms. , which tends towards quite frankly this a real. We all see that. It seems kind of bizarre in its lack of contact with reality of Political Correctness. But in fact american liberalism has adjusted itself a great deal since his time and its done so in ways to ensure it is ongoing viability. Understanding this capacity for adjustment is something we need to do. I think perhaps the capacity for adjustment stems from the fact that contra burnham liberalism, and it is not in fact rationalism in politics. It is instead a pragmatic capability of infinite adjustment. It is committed to his metaphysical drains and principles are highly plastic. It is a quality except when its not. It is freedom except when its not. Its tolerant except when its not. Inclusiveness except when its not. Standing strong except when it doesnt. The welcoming and inclusive except when its not. Its very difficult to see what the principles our in contemporary american liberalism. Instead come a pragmatic set of sensibilities underwritten by or guided by a pragmatic mentality. To put it a little more differently, liberalism is an establishment and ruling mentality more than it is a political philosophy. I would add by way of sideline that i think burnham neglect it to recognize that american liberalism has actually connected culturally with certain strands of mainline pragmatism in the 70s and 80s. Nevertheless, it kind of cultural base bag is it a kind of stability and content and capacity to perpetuate itself that helped it overcome the weakness of its own principles. So finally it seems to me that if liberalism triumphed globally, it and it may come in nothing of her completely times, but it may proceed in becoming the dominant global mentality. If it does that come in they represent the suicide of humanity, but above represent suicide of the west. It will represent the triumph of a certain faction within the west come a certain tradition within the west. Thank you. [applause] well thank you. I have a better memory than our moderator does because when i says to be honest daylight distinctly invisibly recalled that id never read suicide of the west. [laughter] so i did, and as i was reading i was comparing burnham decision of the liberalism 1864 with the liberals we see in 24 at dean. I think his description hauled up on the whole better than i wouldve expected. But there were two very glaring differences that i noticed. One of them is in the past 50 years, liberalism has completely rejected the freedom of speech as principal. If you think that is an exaggeration i suggest you read the texas senate germ evolution 19. This is a constitutional amendment introduced by senator tom udall of new mexico. A 49 democrats voted for to the Judiciary Committee in all 45 currently in the senate have voted for at least on a procedural motion. Those numbers are going to decline some next year but not because the democrats changed their minds. [laughter] this side amendment is a response to the Citizens United case which held that independent expenditures could not be regulated which is the case of Campaign Finance law against the rights of free speech and particularly corporations have been sustained for your reach size of individuals. This would go far beyond reversing Citizens United hear what he says commerce or state legislatures impact any reasonable legislation on the spending of money by individuals or organizations to influence an election. But the crucial thing here is the people the Supreme Court has always recognized as justifying restrictions is corruption buying politicians are buying access. This is not corruption. This is persuasion. Seeking to change the minds of the voters core political speech. The democrats are for this not because they think it will be compared and it just democrats. They are for that ideological grounds. I think this makes the rejection of free speech total. Rocker campbell talks about Political Correctness and none is a better way of examining the psychology of the rejection of free speech because what you see is robert frost who said that a liberal is a man to broadminded to keep his own mind in the quarrel. Nobody would say that. No one would say that about liberals and 2014. It is not just the understanding of free speech that burnham describes the liberals of his day having a few old ones today was not just a legalistic. It was a social and cultural understanding the idea that everyone is entitled to his opinion. The other fellow has the right to speak his piece and more speech and all of that. Well, they dont believe that anymore. Look at what happened to that guy who was driven out of his job because he supported the initiative against samesex marriage in california. Look at the attacks in the incident that John Osullivan described earlier that has to do with his political speech though he didnt specify what the provocation was. And so i guess the question is why. I suppose i would say there are two reasons. One is a show of dominance. If you have the power to shut your opponents up, you will use it. If you dont have the power you appeal to free speech. They may not have the political power, but they have the cultural power. On the other hand, its also assignable durability because they feel threatened by the x fashion of this adding used and what is the not quite a bit during the Obama Administration where all critics of the president are denounced as racist and so on and so forth. The other area i should save her to did foretell that liberals might eventually abandoned free speech. I will go into that a bit after i talk about this vacuum way in which todays liberals are very different. That is burton said almost nothing about sex. I mean that in both sense of the word sex. The roles of women and men in society and also relationships and freedom is though forth. Theres obviously been not social change in both of these areas in the past 50 years. I would pinpoint to policy decisions, more or less contemporaneous. I dont think this is striven by liberalism and burn and omission is an indication of that. They have adapted to it and made a really central to the ideology. One is the fdas approval of the pillow as a form of contraception, which seems to be enabled the sexual revolution in a way that was just not possible before. The other is the civil rights act, which included an amendment that extended its protections to an end. It was originally intended as racial discrimination. The sex amendment was introduced ms. Shipley by a congressman named smith who was a virginia segregationist. Some argued that he was sincere in his devotion to discriminatory provincials. One of his names was to scuttle the bill because he thought he would embarrass people where they would vote for it and then they would be embarrassed into voting down the bill is so perhaps he was too clever. Weve had fast emerging as though shall change ever since that, to which liberals adapt it and this has really become, it seems to me the central core of liberalism. I think it these two changes in tandem have had more than a on our culture and our politics than anything else that is happening domestically in the past 50 years because it affects the structure of the family. It affects the welfare state. It affects fertility rates, legitimacy rates, which in turn more demands for expanding the state and also at the strains on the welfare state. It has just been overwhelming. I dont know that anyone could have. I will close by coming back to the case i was talking about with no well before the panel began. As noel said to me i dont understand how feminists cannot support womens equality and freedom in muslim countries. I said, i think burnham explained that and ill explain it in my talk, which is he has this chapter as you may recall the broad political values and how the differences in worldviews come down to a difference of how one ranks these values. Some of us value some of them more than others. And it is ranking for the liberal the uppermost priority with peas followed by a justice, followed by freedom, followed by liberty and personal freedom. Liberty is National Freedom or sovereignty. So liberty is besides the point. But lets think about this. So we used to embrace free speech. That was their idea of freedom. Now the idea of freedom in sexual freedom. We have competing claims of justice, which is the second most important value. All he is speaking on behalf of justice for women and detractors speaking on half of justice are muslims who are supposedly oppressed minority. The reason the claim on behalf of muslims end up trumping the liberal mind to claim on behalf of women is because of the topmost value peace because the claim of justice on behalf of a potential or actual adversary of america or the west always the claim on the humanities, some of who are by westerners. And so theres the answer to the question. I will pass it over for some cautions. [applause] tanks james. Its great to be here and i also want to thank the Buckley Program for the beautiful moment earlier this semester when we all got to watch her see it all the come to this campus. To water it down in some way, i think all of us are very appreciative of that. I also want to thank John Osullivan for bring at the moment from 16 years ago when he got carded. I was there. His hair was flapping in the wind as they chartered a amount of the room and i was tasked that evening by the speaker of the Political Union with preventing a mob of marauding koreans from breaking that were down with two by fours to get into this holiday pack mr. Sullivan. South koreans. It was not a day you would never forget. It doesnt happen everyday. Today wed are not expecting moms of koreans to break down the door, but that is actually kind of relevant to our subject for today. I actually want to add post something that some of the earlier panelists on the stage mentioned, which is burnhams book come at the managerial revolution in my mind has the most profound implications for today. If you think about how the state has grown in the United States and across the west, what has been the state involvement in the economy. But our movement has done a reasonably good job of holding the line on state taxes. If you look at the percentage of economic output in gdp. Its been relatively constant since world war ii. Spending has certainly gone up. The biggest growth in the scale of state activity has been regulation. As something the conservative movement has not done a good job of addressing. We have books that talked about it. We express skepticism about regulation. There has been no coherence approach or attack or action against the growth of the regulatory state. I think theres a reason for that. When we think about the conservative Movement Since world war ii weve done a great job of thinkers and philosophers. Theres an argument to which term you want to use. There has been a lot of great prose stylist, but we have not necessarily done a great job of producing people who are able to find on the battlefield on how to chain the regulatory state in a further direction. Theres an understandable reason why. It is really really boring. In 1926 the federal register, it puts the regulatory notices is about 2600 pages. In 2012 in 70900 pages. Obama carillon has Something Like 20,000 pages of regulation. People talk about building 2000 pages. Theres 30000 pages that are the bulk of how obamacare changes america. The federal spending is that we all talk about. The federal government is so involved already through the Great Society programs as medicare and medicaid obamas impact is relatively modest. They only increase federal spending by about 15 , which is not nothing. Its not the right direction. Where direction. Whereupon the care is a step change from the old system as it introduces a layer of regulation, federal regulation into the Health Insurance market that dramatically changes the way Health Insurers can operate in this country and the kinds of choices we can all have in how we pay for and consume health care. So it is a huge huge problem and its been a huge deficiency in our movement. I am not sure how we reorient or try to do something to make sure that we are building a cadre of a regulatory ninjas who could go out there and fight these battles. Maybe ninjas is not the right metaphor. In a sense, what weve done is we tend to say if we produce the regulatory efforts, they are technocrats, too. The government had no legitimate role in any of this stuff that we should just keep saying that. While we keep saying that the regulatory state keeps advancing. And so we havent found a way to navigate that divide between paying we are in principle against regulation. It tends to be economically inefficient and yet we have to have a plan, a game plan for an approach to actually rolling back for reforming the regulatory estate are making it smaller. The federal government should have no role. I read the constitution too. The federal Government Spending 1 trillion a year on health care driven by 50,000 pages of regulation. Unless we figure out a way to address the problem we are never going to enjoy a freer Health Care System of the kind we all want and espouse. This leads me to the second half of what i want to talk about, which is should there be a suicide watch. Rusty brought up the beautiful point about how communism is a western idea. We have to define our terms. What is the west . If so the entire world is western in one form or another. And you can say that ifas is not western in politics but certainly in the use of technology, they are quite western, actually. Capitalism gets an idea that will originate in the west but its actually asian city state that are preeminent part to sugars of capitalism around the world. If you look at the Heritage Foundation Economic Freedom, to countries at the top. So we actually have a lot to learn from the geographic use when we think about how to apply in advance the values and interests of the west. If were talking about the west in terms of a set of countries where historically white europeans have inhabited, i guess we can express concern about that, but i dont think thats why we are here. We are here to talk about ethnic groups or whether they will be the most prosperous groups in the world. We are here to talk about a set of ideas. Those ideas are not only advancing around the world, but our triumphant because i think this is something that burned burnham reminds us out. It is a bit like john locke writing about the west in the late 18th century or perhaps earlier. At this time of the enlightenment, which of course is a liberal movement rebelling against the conservatism of say roman catholicism or more aristocratic forms of government. We did not get fully understand at that time what the Industrial Revolution was going to do to the west. Today we are at a similar point here the information age, the information revolution we are undergoing is transforming the whole world in a way that those of us who have been product to think about the world in an industrialized science have not fully grasped and those in our movement who fight the battles against communism the 20th century, lets not forget that debate between capitalism and communism in the 20th century was about industrial societies. And as a society we are evolving towards a society as which the information economy is more important than the industrial economy is one that is going to advance not in a Straight Line it is going to evolve in ways we cant predict. One thing that is very interesting a few think about it some of the greatest s. Of our era, people like steve jobs and mark burke are political liberals. So the greatest s. , we all say we are for capitalism. Why do some the greatest s. Of our time are political liberals. These are also people who are globalists. Oriented like James Burnham critique liberalism is something that looked down on nationalism and displays of patriotism. Most of the super successful capitalists i know are the same way actually. They are not brought rap american americans. They have a global perspective in which they look at each country in the plus and minus the beach and do business everywhere, including red china. China, the peoples republic of china is moving in a more capitalist direction in certain ways. Perhaps a crony capitalist direction with less Political Freedom. But its not at all clear that the west is failing. If we were at a similar conference on the left they would he fulminating about the triumph of the west and the triumph of capitalism and how a capitalist and corporatist idea has taken over the world and how ideas of equality are being demolished as a result. So yes is the state trying to do more to enforce the kind of economic equality . Gas. Under this president , economic inequality has actually increased. Part of the reason is his policies. Part of the reason is the information economy. So we live in a world where successful entrepreneurs because of Global Market can now make the lives of dollars when before they might make tens of millions of dollars. For the people who are very successful, who can actually navigate the information economy, collegeeducated elites are doing extremely well. The socalled bluecollar worker that we know so much about our talk so much about the 20th century, his role in this new economy is not clear. And so as we think about burnhams thought process and writing a similar book today, what would he be concerned about . I would argue hed be very concerned about the regulatory state and he would also be trying to think hard about how the information economy is transforming political workers around the world in ways that both advance our values in ways that may work against our values, but principally i would say this set of political problems we have are very different. Liberalism and the John Stuart Mill sense has some limitations in the world where it used to be the industrial economy. If you work hard, you get ahead. Anyone could get a good job. We still believe an icon set. For certain people are brighter than other people are going to have a fundamentally and pitch. We have to think about how we are going to a drive those disparities. Is it going to be true . If you work hard you have an equal chance of getting a hand of someone who has a degree from yell. It is not exactly clear. Probably speaking, i think we have a lot of reasons to be optimistic. The world is different today than it was then. As james mentioned, sexual mores are very different than they were fit years ago. Economic prosperity throughout the world is advancing because western values. Hamas 20 years, billions people around the world have been lifted because the western values. Hundreds of millions of people have been liberated from totalitarian political system celebrating the 50th anniversary of the suicide of the west and also the 25th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall. Efforts by governments to regulate the information economy have proven nascar not to be successful. That could change. But that is at least a source for us to be optimistic that western ideas not only are growing around the world, but that they will remain and become even more triumph in that generation from now than they were a generation ago. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much for that amount interesting and stimulating panel. We do have some time for questions and maybe that is starting you could also pitch in to this discussion. I had a number of questions but one that i wanted to ask was i think it was adams who said there was never a democracy that did not commit suicide. He goes onto say that all forms of government are subject to the same vulnerabilities because of human frailty. Has comment nevertheless resonates with me when i think of it as juxtaposed to burnhams understanding of liberalism. I dont think earn him quotes adams in the book on this matter. But my question is to what degree are they speaking of the same day and are not speaking of the same thing . Ali this to anyone of you if youd like to comment on it. American democracy 200 plus years later. I think it is a testimony to the fact that we have a society with a lot of social capital and we have a democratic system that right now is paralyzed because in my analysis it accurately reflects the country with respect to really deep questions about what kinds of society we want to be. So i think we have a system that is actually pretty darned representative and its dysfunctional because our society is kind of an apple poised between two different visions of the future. Its easy at a place like he ought to feel the liberals run everything. I was with a friend of mine in new york. It was really down down down. Youve got to go to texas. [laughter] yeah, i would agree with that. I actually got back a couple weeks ago from a trip to singapore and i can tell you it was eyeopening. The s. Energy in asia right now is absolutely incredible. They are sent to the possibility of what they can do to make people around them more prosperous is just i cant even describe it. It made me feel arguments and debates in this country are so petty and those are relative to whats going on. Their political orders are not generally very democratic, right . We dont have to get into a side discussion of whether Political Freedom Economic Freedom are necessarily correlated than coexistent. I would say the problem is not so much a democratic problem, its a minnesota man problem. We have a System Design and has succeeded in making it hard to change laws in terms of statutory laws passed by congress. But because in those few moments where progress is had overwhelming powers such as in 2010 and 1865 they have passed laws that have become entrenched. Its very, very hard and the regulatory manager of state has taken over. That is something we have to think about hard in a world where i dont think the framers believed that in the system they were dividing up of limited government as a disadvantage but arguably it has because in those few moments come in the progress is being able to stall their system and conservatives have not been able to reverse because of madisonian checks and balances on their temporary moments of power. As Steve Hayward put it the last reaction to the Midterm Election was canceled Midterm Elections. I guess this was actually this was the day before the election. The argument was we had these Midterm Elections and it makes it hard for the president to govern. So really, democracy is the correct it here rather than the problem. Well, they did. Data there were despairs about the future of america from the left for much of the bush years, too. In the reagan years as well for that matter. On one thing come in terms of this question about the regulatory state, i think it we are stuck with it. It is going to get taker in the real question is who gets to run it and that is going to be if we can run it we can make it somewhat less burdensome. It is going to get bigger because best traditional moms for organizing peoples lives proceed in their power and influence over peoples lives we have to impose the kind of bureaucratic therapeutic Legal Mechanism to work in its peoples lives. We see this in a small way on university campuses. We sort of tossed out male female relations and admit that things are happening. Now we have to have the kind of legalized system in order to impose some order. As the family declines in the United States, we are going to get a resulting growth in government to compensate. People with prosthetics for the family and those prosthetics have to be administered here it is very complicated, so we will wind up regulating intimately in order to compensate for deregulation of the intimate life end the sexual revolution. Open up with a question. I see one of the major problems is education. The people really do not have an understanding or appreciation of capitalism of freemarket. Education timmy falls into two broad categories. One is academic in the other is what people got from the media. Id be interested to know what your views are rest views are rescued by boat squadron, the predominant thinking is so liberal. I will just jump in here because i actually think i would disagree with the premise of the question. Everyone wants to go to stanford. Stanford has now become the score the lowest admissions rate in college in the United States because Everyone Wants to become a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. I think that has become a very Exciting Development in a lot of sense. But there is deficiency perhaps his defense of classical education civic education, why our constitution and political traditions come from. That is where education, not just political tradition but the western canon in the western intellectual tradition. Those are things where we are suffering. At least on the issue of entrepreneurship, theres a lot of reason to believe and have optimism about generation. [inaudible] well, i think the university is the progressive church. Because progressives dont go to church. [laughter] so if they want to transmit their values to their children, how are they going to do it click they have to control educationalist duchennes in order transmit values to their children. I think there are profound structural reasons why the University Culture is left of left and not centerleft. That is because i have a conservative catholic. If i want to transmit my values, i can give money to the church. I can identify traditionalist catholic organizations to give money to put the knights of columbus or the masonic lodge. A lot of institutions in america are almost on the conservative side. So progressives dont have mediating institutions to transmit values. They have to control public education. They have to control only universities. Another reason is people who appreciate capitalism by a march become capitalists. They go into business. There is a self election issue. I am a bit of a nod all and that i appreciate capitalism and i decided to become a journalist. I know other people like me, but i have an outlier. Lastminute theres three problems during these three broken into three parts. There are a lot of are in inches. Thats a phrase i use. A few have sometimes. The broader difficulty in part number two there is the class interests in the rigor to restate or Administrative State and that is where there has not been, a group you completely there hasnt been any serious thinking or development in a broad political thought on how to turn it back. Burnham is merely describing it. He didnt have an answer. The third problem is should there be some kind of conservative regulatory philosophy except for the utopian libertarians, very few conservatives think there should be no way galatian. But what are the forms . It seems to me that is the big challenge for conservative political leaders and thinkers today and i grew to complete the. Well we cannot a whole conference on that topic. I will do my best to abbreviate my answer. I would say couple of things. It actually goes back to what james was just saying. The regulators are generally the people want to regulate in a regulation is an attractive mechanism. I will Say Something else. Here is where our movement in the United States can learn a lot or from berkey and inhumane conservatives than as opposed to purely been about economic liberalism. How would burke inform our thinking about a regulatory state . He would say we have to be gradual and the way we report names. Not disruptive. But also rigorously empirical. So how does that frame your regulation . Quite a number of ways. We have to think about regulatory tests. A lot of times a bunch of people in the room say lets regulate xma dont think about the cost benefit. Theyre not required to buy loud and theres no oversight of the cost benefit, which again sounds walking attack the car take in one of the few ways they can never regulation and the framework for thinking through. They can encourage more competition and a more prosperous economy. We have to think about that and use that as a way to address it. Burnham has another regulation. Conservatism small fee a lot of it if you look about europe, what is conservatism mean . A lot of it is elitism. Old aristocratic idea, which is now in modern western European Countries not so much aristocrats. Its also capitalists and economic corporatist families they hand down their big gigantic dismisses two kids and avoid all the rules that everyone else has to adhere to. This is where the regulatory state of berkey and ideas can help us think through things because part of what we are now fighting against in terms of this overweening regulatory fee is the kind of conservatism. If you deregulate things, dolby disruptive. We just dont know. We can never have a free Health Care System. Who has one of those . Its so much better like jonathon group or the other day. All of the American Voters who dont understand we have to do these things for them because they are too to figure it out for themselves. That elitism in a small sense betrays a kind of conservative impulse. Liberal elitism is something we have to figure out a way. Populism alone never succeeds. Theres a reason why only fair call to leave because they have more resources more influence and more power. Populism and democratic country cant always easily fight back. We have to figure out some sort of language that allows to appeal to the elite class and say freedom is actually better than status regulation. I dont have that fully fleshed as an answer. There is one that is supposed to apply costbenefit analysis and sometimes succeeds in putting the kibosh and regulations. The outrage was the review. He said the office was created during the Carter Administration and the reagan had in the station put it to some good use urbach used. I am afraid we dont have anymore it time. Im assuming you want to stick to your schedule . You can do one more. Okay, one more. Good. The residuum of a christian nation and they are not going to put up with that anymore. That creates the impression of the decline of religious faith. What it really is a transformation of what people who are not really religious but still acquiesced to the dominance of christian values in america and thats a big change. So i think we should read this as a decline in religious faith. Its a decline in the influence of religious faith over the majority of the population. I think its a decline in religious faith over the elites. Because you mentioned the religious right and i think the evangelical side of this has been growing and so i may maybe we are becoming more polarized around religion would be the way to put it. I dont think that the trend away from the Nuclear Family is going away anytime soon but i think thats driven primarily by technological and economic changes. I think its actually separate from her of the religious question. If you look at coming apart Charles Murrays book he actually points out that more educated are more religious in terms of going to church and also much likelier to have intact families but i dont that they are more religious. I mean i think they may have a greater concentration of reforms used mainline protestants and that sort of thing. They are certain more liberal in their political and social outlooks. One of my friends said marriage is doing just fine in the upper middle class. They talk the talk of the 60s but they walk the walk of the 50s and i think one of the great problems in our society is not income inequality. I mean there are problems associated with that but its the marriage inequality that is a problem. Now i think that marriage is a luxury of the rich paid for by the poor because they cannot help but undermine the symbolic meaning of marriage because it puts an exclamation point on the sexual revolution. I know its a controversial thing to say but i believe that this is a serious problem. Anyone who is committed to limited government should be very worried about the future of family and the future of marriage because the family is the ultimate social safety net and if that is not functional than Government People will demand that somebody take care of them. I think single women vote democrat so strongly because they feel vulnerable. They dont feel as though they have a network or they have a reliable basis for the future of their lives. They dont feel secure so i think we should be very concerned about marriage and the family. Whatever your moral views are you should be very very concerned about the future the family if you are concerned about limited government. I want to be more pessimistic and more optimistic than my colleagues for a second. If you look at, its always good to look at western europe and i will echo the point about disparities here. Actually the divorce rate is a statistic you might not know. The divorce rate for collegeeducated couples in the United States is 10 is above the bride in the ground that are collegeeducated have the divorce rate of 10 of their theories as to why that is but among the elites the family is not broken down however in europe you definitely have. If you look at say scandinavia actually theres a considerable amount of social order and Economic Prosperity and Economic Freedom. There has been a complete breakdown of the family. Its common for uppermiddleclass. In france you are more likely to grow up with your natural parents than in United States so the french dont marry but they Stay Together anyways. Is a breakdown of formal marriage but often their score habitat and couples with children that Stay Together for long periods of time. And the reason i bring that up is precisely to say that while the formal characteristic of how we think about a Traditional Community in which people go to church on sunday and they have a formal marriage and they live in is very legal entity that made the road over time. If you look at western europe and a country like norway or denmark where christianity is a state religion. People pay taxes to the church yet there is a family breakdown. There has not been a breakdown in social order. I think we all assumed because of our experience in this country that family breakdown necessarily leads to social order. There may be a way out of that conundrum and the reason why make that argument is because, think about this. Whats the fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals . As was mentioned earlier liberals believe in the perfectibility of humans and human nature conservatives believe human nature is constant and immutable. If you think about the fact that human nature is constable and people have been living in the structure since time immortal and the resistance so enduring us for that reason. We have every reason to be optimistic that whatever the political conditions on the Economic Conditions are the social conditions we may endure our faith 50 years from now that people need and desire to be in families and community because that is ingrained in how we are. But the breakdown in the family in europe is a formal breakdown. In other words that i have a piece of paper but living together as if they are married for life or approximation thereof. I dont know if that suggests a way out if the breakdown is more than formal here. I dont know if that suggest a remedy but it suggests a disease