Transcripts For CSPAN3 National Conservative Student Conference Afternoon Session 20170801

Watching us on cspan. Kate obenchain has a long history with Young Americas Foundation. She is the alumnus of our programs, has been a popular speaker for more than 25 years and has served as both Vice President and director of the foundation. She is also a frequent fox news guest and author. In addition, kate has been the chief of staff for senator george allen and was the first woman chair of the virginia gop. However, among her many accomplishments, i would guess kate is most proud to be the mother of six children. Please join me in welcoming kate ob obenchain. [ applause ] okay, i am beside myself. I am so excited about this i usually have to stand up here and talk and yall get sleepy looking. Thats another going to happen today because i have the pleasure of introducing to you someone who is a good friend of mine, but i have admired her for decades. And when it was announced that this lady was going to take over running the trump campaign, i, somebody who had been a little, mm, not sure, was in completely i had complete confidence at that point. Kellyanne conway is counselor to the president of the United States of america. [ cheers and applause ] she is she is the first woman ever to successfully run a president ial campaign. [ cheers and applause ] she is the coauthor of what women really want you know, we conservative women know what women really want she has appeared on thousands of television programs. This year she was Clare Boothe Luce policy institutes woman of the year. She has been president and ceo of her own company, the polling company, and on top of that, she is an amazing mother of four children. Now, the toronto sun called her the hero that feminism ignores. I wonder why. [ laughter ] Jonah Goldberg said of kellyanne, because of the unprecedented, and frankly, sexist attacks that she has been sustaining, that she is Kellyanne Conway is good at her job, and the media hate her for it. Well, we love her and i ask you to join me in welcoming a true hero and a great champion of freedom, Kellyanne Conway. [ cheers and applause ] its like a rock concert. If she walks down there, it will be awesome, right . Hello, yall kellyanne, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Were so happy, as you can tell. Love the introduction that my mother wrote, i guess. I know she and i are like this. No, youre amazing. You have this ridiculous resume. It is so impressive. Phi beta kappa from trinity college, George Washington school of law. She graduated with honors. Thats right. Yay, yay. You have been president of a mul multimillion dollar company, the polling company. And i just think its amazing that nobody mentions this, of course, in the media, but you are the first woman to successfully run a president ial campaign. Now, i have known you for years and have always been so impressed with your grasp of trends and polling. Youre one of the smartest people i have ever met, but you are definitely the best in the country at understanding these trends. How did your background with polling help you in the president ial campaign . And basically, tell us a little bit about what that was like running that campaign. Kate, first of all, thank you, and thanks to Young Americas Foundation, to ron robinson, i think one of the longest serving leaders in the conservative movement in one consistent position, which is very rare these days. And i also just want to take an opportunity to thank each of you, certainly for being here, but just for being such loud voices for freedom and democracy and free markets and National Security and prosperity and for really standing your ground. I know how difficult it may be, but its fun and its worth it, and shes not the president , so let me answer that question. [ applause ] so, to answer your question, i actually think that it was very helpful to be a data specialist and become campaign manager, why . Because in politics, true political pollsters, they only know what voters think and what voters are doing. So were missing basically half of the country. And in president ial elections, about a third of the country or 25 of the country. So, part of the job was to understand how people really felt about issues and themes outside of the electoral context. Ill give you a couple good examples. One is, instead of just talking about jobcreators or jobseekers. So, the Republican Party for a long time was talking about entrepreneurs and jobcreators. The famous you didnt build that meme in the 2012 what do you call it convention. Right. And i think thats fine. Check, check jobcreators. I was one for 21 years, entrepreneurs, but thats about 7 of the country. Another 7 or so of the country are jobseekers. Well, we need to talk to the vast majority of households that are neither jobcreators nor jobseekers but are jobholders. Because its the jobholders that are saying, wow, we have two and three jobs in our household. Were not worried about losing the job and replacing a lost job. But why is the job not enough to get ahead . Why am i whiteknuckled at the end of each month to pay these bills, to decide whether my child can afford a Community College or the college, the Fouryear College that he or she was welcomed into . Also recognizing that themes motivate voters, not necessarily just issues. So, i think one thing donald trump did masterfully was elevate the theme of fairness, and he did that without really saying the word that often. An example would be how he wants to reform the tax code to make it more fair and simple and to give people relief. Another example is his views on School Choice and charters, that is it fair . Just asking somebody, is it fair that a child goes to school based on his zip code or where he or she lives . He also, i think, elevated the issue of fairness by changing the way we looked at trade and immigration. Trade was such an unsexy issue, it wasnt even mentioned in most polling choices, but he basically took this issue of trade and said its not fair to america and American Workers that we make onesided trade deals. No wonder the other countries love us. Theyre taking us to the cleaners every single time. So he wants something thats more fair. And perhaps the best example of it is his views toward immigration, where for years this country was asking, whats fair to the illegal immigrant. And he changed that to whats fair to the American Worker that may be competing with that immigrant for the job or whats fair to the local resources, whats fair to a sovereign nation that should have borders. We have spent billions of dollars helping other countries protect their borders, and he just figured, its fair and its high time we do that here. Data also helped me to understand the difference between biased questions, which are easy to detect, and useless questions, which are not easy to detect but which were sucking the lifeblood out of republican president ial politics, in my view. So, a useless question is, for example, do you support or oppose protecting the environment . Its like, well, it will say like 88 . Well, who the heck were the other 12 , you know . Thats silly. But that wasnt somebody would look at the 88 and go right for the liberal policies and be forced to adopt them as a republican because theyre not asking the tough questions beneath, which is, here are four views about how best to balance Economic Growth and environmental stewardship. I coined the term undercover trump voter last july right before i came campaign manager. I was already part of the campaign. And i coined this term undercover trump voter and said that he was doing about four to six points better in most state polls, and i was literally universally ridiculed because i said it on a london station first, universally ridiculed. But it was my data background that helped me to realize that there were going to be people who either had never voted or had never voted republican who are going to vote for donald trump, and they were going to do that based on him coloring outside of the lines and getting out of the comfort, partisan comfort zone, and reaching out to the forgotten man or forgotten woman and saying, you know, you are doing the best job you can, but youre forgotten by the special interests, the system and the swamp, and were here for you. Ill do this for you, to really appeal to people and have that connective tissue. He really is the best communicator ive ever seen, and it mattered to people. At the same time, and i want all of you to remember this as Young Conservatives im still conservative, im just not young is i want you to remember this, which is he would not have gotten elected unless he had a program, unless he had run on issues. Hes the best communicator ever, but its the issues that he ran on, it was his message. If you can tell me what Hillary Clintons message was, id love to know, because im still a year later wondering. Every day id wake up and say, please, god, dont let this be the day that she gets an optimistic, positive, cohesive message, please. And days would come and days would go and there would be no message other than hes bad and im not him, which is not a message. It was discrete. But it was his message, repeal obamacare, build a wall, put isis in defeat on its way to retreat. Make America Great again, but number one again, american exceptionalism. He ran for our veterans, the military, the taxpayers, property owners, our first responders, and with specific, a tenpoint program to reform the va, one of i think his greatest sets of accomplishments in the first six months, so much that has been done for our veterans, for example. But the data, back on its importance, on the science side to recognize that there are people who call themselves republicans or democrats or undecided, and to make them feel comfortable to tell you that maybe theyre going to be a little less comfortable in their voting behavior this time and go outside of the norms. And secondly, from the art perspective of the question wording, just to try to ask things a little bit differently so that people would feel comfortable to tell us. Maybe they dont know all the ins and outs of an issue, so thats an opportunity to help inform. Or maybe the answer is, oh, protect the environment, of course. Well, we all agree with that, but the question is how. How do you get there, and with what level of priority, with what level of, i guess federal involvement in this case. So, it was helpful, but i want the report to reflect it took donald j. Trump to elevate a woman for the First Time Ever in the republican president ial campaign dynamic. Without him, that would not have happened because it never had happened, and it wasnt happening with the other candidates. And i always want history to show that more than anything, which is that this man who was comfortable for decades elevating and promoting women to positions of power, in new York Real Estate before it was cool to do so, certainly in the trump corporation, the trump campaign, trump cabinet, and trump west wing. Well, he sees quality and sees professionalism and excellence and did something about it, so we were all pretty happy that he recognized that in you. A lot of the young people in this room are Trump Supporters and were Trump Supporters. And i will tell you, they took, as you know, they took a lot of heat on campuses, and they still and still do, sure. Take a lot of heat. If you dare say, i support donald trump, then they come after you and youre being vilified, just like what obama did for eight years. Theyre still doing it on campuses, probably more intensely than anywhere in the country to you guys. So, what advice do you have for these young people and Trump Supporters out there who are still enduring this . First of all, thank you. Thank you, obviously, for your support of the president , and im sure maybe there are some people in this room who dont always support us and what were doing or maybe had a different candidate last year in the primaries. But remember what President Trump said just as he was elected and as we are as of november 9th. He took to the podium and he said i will be the president of all americans, including those who did not support me. And hes really made good on that. He has me working on the Opioid Crisis along with other people, obviously, in the white house and in the administration. And i have yet ive gone around the country and will continue to do that. I would never in a million years ask somebody, so, did you vote for him . What are your politics . Are you registered to vote . You know, before we help you with the Opioid Crisis. So, i know personally he doesnt feel that way. And i know that he believes some issues should prevail and others should fail. And hes made very clear as to why hes there. So, you should remember that, too. You should have a 7second and a 70second and a 7minute version, and you should tell everybody this, whether they ask you the question or not. Answer the question, even when youre not asked. Why am i a conservative or why am i a trump supporter, or why am i on this side of that issue and not where everybody else seems to be . And tell them, because you have a couple things that we simply, that i simply lack. One is the largest part of the future. You do. The future belongs to those who are the youngest. And you have the long you will vote in more elections than the rest of us. You will be more involved in civic participation, in workplace participation than those of us already decades into that. And the thing about you thats so unique and so important and consequential, i would say, is that you have an opportunity for somebody to look at you on your college campus, in your communities, in your extended family, anywhere where you happen to be, and theyll look at you and theyll say, you know, i like you and youre like me, so im listening. That connective tissue is so unique, and its so powerful, and i would argue its much more powerful than some random Television Appearance or a speech somebody gives or me with you today, because you are the best ambassadors for your peer group. And yes, it is tough. People will say, well, i cant believe you could support this or i cant believe youre not a liberal like us. And i mean, i remember, and this is decades ago, long before there was social media i dont think there was an internet where there would be a little bit of ostracization involved in did i just make up that word . In actually being on one side of the issue or the other. I think as a prolifer, ive experienced that first and foremost, most of all. But if you believe it, youll be able to articulate it and youll be able to defend it and explain it. And i dont want to emphasize the word defend as much as i emphasize the word explain. You have an opportunity to tell people how you came to that conclusion, because i bet that there are as many viewpoints, as many lifes experiences and as many motivators as to what compels you to be a conservative than there are people in this room. So tell people. For some, it may be youre prolife, for some its schools and charters, others its National Security, others its taxes, repealing obamacare. Others is you feel the culture is so coursened and so politically correct that it bothers you and you dont want that. It could be for any reason at all. But for whatever reason it is, be willing to tell your story, because people will look at you i want to repeat it i like you and youre like me. Youre accessible, youre affable, but also, youre a costudent with them right now on the campus. Youre in the place of worship where they go. Youre in the community. Youre part of a larger peer group that got invited to some event together, so youre a friend of a friend of a friend, and you meet other people. And that is i think the most effective way to grow and deepen this movement of ideas. Thank you. Boy, do we all need to hear that, whether were on campuses or not. Now, heres something i didnt know about kellyanne, and i dont think you all probably know it, either, unless you really study her wikipedia page. God, i hope i know. Yeah, you know. Yeah, you do. Wikipedia, its probably yeah, its probably wrong. Somebody probably made that up. So, for eight summers, you worked on a blueberry farm. That is true. Is that right . Yes, it is. So, you guys, i hate to tell you, but youre called the entitlement generation. So, whether thats right or wrong, kellyanne, you know, schlepped away. I think you won like the best packer award . I was the fastest, because you got paid by the crate, so we had to put the cellophane into the crate, 12 times, 12 times for a crate. So, i was the fastest because the faster you were, the more you got paid. Awesome so, i learned how to do that. A little bit of a maniac about it. Well, we like that. I said somewhere in an interview and it got covered quite a bit, thankfully, kate, that so much of what i learned about hard work and comradery i learned on that farm, because i started working on it when i was 12. And yes, you were allowed. I think weve been outsourced to machines now in that position, but yes, you were allowed to be. And many of my friends worked and we worked really hard. But we learned so much about teamwork, and honestly, the tax code. We had to pay them. But im all for you know, this is a time in your life, if i may give you unsolicited advice, where you can try things and not make a full commitment, that thats your total career path. Go take an internship in something that youve never actually thought you might like. Its a great way to figure out in eight or ten weeks whether you do or you dont. Ive also i mean, the advice i would give, because im sure there are other things i wanted to do over the summers, and i was hardly, like, supporting the family with my summer job on the blueberry farm, but i did it because i looked at it as an opportunity to say yes instead of saying no, and ive been trying to say yes, even though i tell women all the time specific, saying no is a gift you give to yourself ultimately, because we tend to overextend ourselves. But saying yes. Opportunity does not always knock twice, so i always remember when i was younger, especially when i was building my business, kate, that i would try to listen and accept the word no more often than i said it. And all that means is that you will be rejected, you will be passed over, you wont get into that grad school of your dreams, you wont get the job you think youre perfectly qualified for. Maybe its not fair. But accept it and learn from it and go on. Everythings a lesson. But dont say the word no. I see people say the word no. Its like, oh, i dont know, im tired, i didnt work out this week, i already have plans this weekend. If youre being asked to do something, volunteer your time, or be the person who literally goes the extra mile and travels for work or is being asked to stay late, just do it. To the extent you can do it just do it because you will be seen as somebody who is dependable and reliable and pleasant and there for the team, there for the ultimate objective. And if youre seen as somebody if youre marked as somebody whos willing to always go the extra mile and help out and be pleasant about it, then youll be seen as that person, even though there wont always be an opportunity for them to have to ask you to stay again or work on the weekend. I learned so much from the times that i said yes instead of no, and ive often regarded the times that i said no because of all the other reasons i mentioned, which didnt even matter in the end. Also, just, i feel i always say to people, dont be afraid, because whats the worse the worst thing that could happen is somebody will say no or youll find out whos a miserable person. Thats all right. You might as well know whos miserable. Dont be afraid to call moms College Roommates cousin who works here in washington in patent law, if you think you want to be a patent lawyer, or who worked on the energy and Commerce Committee in the senate for many years because you think you may want to do an internship or get a fulltime job on capitol hill. Dont be afraid to call them. You should contact them and say i would love 15 minutes of your time. Sometimes it doesnt work out. Sometimes theyre not available. But often, somebody would rather spend an hour with you than the 15 minutes just to find out. And youre incredibly helpful to them because theyre going to learn something about your generation and the aspiration and the energy and the entrepreneurialism i just find in your generation really a moxie on many things, and then youre going to learn from them. But making those connections is incredibly important, because its a way to really its a way to learn from somebody whos not in charge of giving you the job or the internship but can guide you. But i always tell people, call me, because if i can just say i know someone who knows someone who knows someone and we can all be each others connectors, the left is really good about doing this, and so, we need to be good about it, too. All right, sticking sort of a little bit with the personal. You are counselor to the president. I mean, that is huge. You talked a little bit about donald trump and some of his characteristics. What is it like to be in the white house serving as counselor to the president . Then im going ask you a question that the media doesnt actually let you answer, but what are some of the things youre working on . You mentioned the Opioid Crisis, but what else are you working on . Thank you very much. So, as counselor to the president , my role includes being involved in big, big initiatives as part of a large team, Like Health Care reform, tax reform, perhaps today were going to have the 65th anniversary of the Small Business administration, for example. Administrator mcmahons doing a great job. Shes someone that my team and i work very closely with on a number of different initiatives. Tomorrow, ivanka trump and i will be part of a roundtable discussion with Military Spouses on an issue i work on practically every day, which is Military Spouse unemployment and underemployment, that we really, we do a great job as a nation connecting veterans with, perhaps to reassimilate and to get employment and skills training as they need it and want it. But were not so great yet about making sure our Military Spouses can find work. So, heres a very good example. In many places,places, its the licensing fees that are the impediment. If youre already a licensed hairdresser or a nurse and you try to move because youre moving to different base and youre a spouse, normally a man is deployed and you want to be employed here, you have to go and get a license in that state, and its cost prohibitive, and theres no guarantee. To even look that the, the 500 licensing fee for example which is grocery ris or child care. Youre already qualified, credentialed, working. Trying to work with governors and employers on matters like that. The Opioid Crisis, i definitely work on every day. No state has been spared in the demographic root untouched, and we, through a couple of different initiatives are really trying to destigmatize a national epidemic. Yesterdays report recommended the president consider declaring National Health emergency the way it was done with aids and with zika years ago, but, we also on opioids really to help with supply and demand, both are out of control. Intradiction, treatment, recovery, those different strategies. I take a lot of meetings with outside groups, Small Business groups, not for profit groups. Folks who have been working on issues for years and feel like they finally have the ability, perhaps, to be heard. And to want share with us the information, ut research theyve done, the information, the ideas they have. Work with our legislative team when they need me to go to capitol hill and help them. My friend mark shore, the Vice President whose pollster and strategist i was before he became Vice President. Im a terrible match maker, but im glad those two are together for sure. Donald trump and mike pence, also, i try to support whatever were going with respect to the workplace and with women. When which other people work on as well obviously ivanka trump takes the lead on that. And i support what our press and comes are doing. I help to oversee the strategy and the deployment in press and coms and support that every day also. About 2 of what i do is go on tv or radio. Really . Wow. Well, because thats just sort of in and out. Theres so much else to do. But, happy to really support the initiatives and what im being asked to work on. Im a big protocol and pecking order kind of gal. Im really happy that we have that at the white house. And you asked me a question about what is it like to work there . So, with gravity and responsibility should come a great deal of humility. I told the president last week that i really feel the people who prosper and can do the strongest and the longest and in his administration are those who if they can stay, some people have to leave for other reasons, family or money concerns, et cetera, are those who are tough, but humble. And i do believe humility is so incredibly important when youre serving the country. And its incredibly important when you are representing the president and the Vice President and the administration. And humility is that is something very infectious, actually. And so i always stay focussed on why were there and i stay focussed on the fact that many people either dont know whats being done there or dont want to know. Im somebody who doesnt really talk about biassed coverage so much as incomplete coverage. So ive said if the media dont to want acknowledge their responsibility to be fair and to keep an open mind and not be so negative about the president and his administration, they ought to at least acknowledge their role. They have a role of connecting america with the information america needs. What has been done for our veterans in the first couple short months, the veterans choice act that a veteran can Access Private care if he or she cant find timely quality care through the va. The accountability and whistle blower protection act, the authority of secretary at the va which he has executeden to fire people over 700 now have lost their jobs. This entire 24 7 hotline at the white house for veterans. So if youve never heard this before, its not because you dont turn on the news or read, i know you do and you do. Its because nobodys talking about it. And so, it means our veterans may not know about it. So my whole point is, connect america with the information they need. I know its more fun and its a lot easier to just sort of cover the personalities and the palace intrigue and the tweets, but dont you also want to isnt it your responsibility, indeed, to tell americans that the dow jones has had, stock market has had a 26 record highs since he got here over 800,000 jobs created, a multibillion dollar investment just like week. Dont you want people to know that the Home Builders confidence, consumer confidence, Small Business confidence, manufacturers confidence, businesses are higher again. The Unemployment Rate is 4. 1 or 4. 4 , its low. And dont we want people to know that the Second Quarter gdp was up 2. 6 . It had doubled the first quarter. And if you dont know that i know its not because youre not smart or well read, you are, its because its just not being covered. Thats not a complaint, thats just me asking you to help us get the message out as, you know, great messen jers and ambassadors in your own communities. The other thing is, you know, working in the white house, i said like one of 300 people representing a country of maybe one of 330 people representing in the white house, in the west wing in a country of 330 million people. So theres a certain just complete blessing, unexpected, be raised by single mom, in a houseful of four women who raised me, and, you know, we i grew up very middle class, maybe. But i grew up with god and country and family as number one. We never talked about politics. Never had a single political conversation in my life. And we had pictures of the last supper and the pope on the wall, noft reagan or kennedy, i assure you, but to be raised to give more than you take. To be humble. To be to believe in god. To rely on family and friends, to recognize that the government is there to help and to help temporarily to help those truly in need. More permanently. And that, and to really have faith in your own belief system and be willing to articulate that. And i saw yesterday, somebody made the remarks, and its so true, that its so different in this country where you pledge allegiance to or you take an oath of office. You pledge your fidelity to the constitution. Not to a monarch, not to a political party, to the constitution. And its important, im sure many of you have memorized it and could defend and explain it as well. So thats incredibly important when you walk through that door as well. Every day we just want to do a good job and i work for a man i work for a president who, for whom the basic political motivators didnt apply. They power, greed, money, prestige, position, bankability, come on, he had all of that, and he and his family sacrificed normally to do this. I appreciate the fact that our president and our Vice President are sacrificing so much to do these jobs on behalf of a country that we all love. And i know that there are critics and nay sayers and indeed haters out there, i usually just say a prayer for them. What can i do . I usually aa prayer for them. Nobody can make you feel badly without your permission. And is to so far, i havent granted it. I really hadnt heard a lot about what was being done for veterans wives. You know, you very rarely do you marry anybody talking, any politicians talking about and they all looked very happy. They were Standing Shoulder so shoulder eight and ten deep. The thermometer said 86 degrees outside. They had been standing there for quite a while, and they werent saying please sign this autograph, i loved you they would say please help us get jobs back to the area. Thank you for loving the country and putting the veterans first. Thank you for saying youre going to put isis in retreat. Hillary clinton had referred to them as quote, determined enemies, at the convention in philadelphia. I dont know what that is. Determined enemies. The other lacrosse team. I dont know what that is. What is that . But, and i listened to the people, and we have Great Stories like that all the time, but i want to tell you, when i watch the president in youngstown return to the same area last tuesday, as president , i think the affection and respect for him and the hope in him has just intensified because now he can execute on that program, but when i listen to the people, whenever youre watching a rally, listen to the biggest applause lines. Its really build a wall, cut taxes, repeal obamacare, he ran on an agenda on a program, that they love. And the one thing i will tell you, i dont think hed mind me sharing is, how much he loves and honors the job he has. When i see him invite people into the oval office to take a picture, hell ask them, hell have this very serious round table, policy, everybodys discussing, big issues, in the roosevelt room and hes ten steps away from the oval office. And invariably, he invites the entire group in to look at the office, to have a picture with him. It takes all of eight minutes, and the people are happy, but he asks them, have you ever been invited in there, and people are like, no, youve never been there. Its ten steps away. But its him sharing the peoples house with the people. And weve had people in there, everybody from ceos to obamacare victims to coal miners came in, i mean, i can name 40 different instances where thats been the case. And i do want to relay that to you because it is your house. Its one its a job that he honors and a place he wants to share with the public when he can. Thank you. Kellyanne, i just want to, on behalf of i think young people. Well, no, im your age, so sorry, i cant do that. But on behalf of Young Americans foundation, i know ron back there feels the same way i do. We just thank you. First of all for being a stall worth in the conservative movement, for being such a power house in this movement sorry, weve been around weve been around a long time. And im remissed in not saying one thing, this mother of six, hello. Between us, we have ten children. This is the way were fighting the demographic wars. Just birth our way out of it. [ applause ] i just wanted to Say Something ive said before, its worth repeating here. I consider myself a product of my choices, not a victim of my circumstances. And being a product of your choices means if you want to be a stay at home mom or dad, if you want to be a ceo of a fortune 100 company, be president of the United States, and ladies, first female president , the job is still open. We left it open for you. We left it open for you. I told my sevenyearold, im ran to the ice cream man. It was cute, on the beach. But, do what you want to do. Be who you want to be. And, just have to say that because the greatest professional blessing of my life is certainly to work for the president and for the people of this great nation that i love so much. Thats given so much to me, but the greatest privilege, blessing of my life, is not to work for the president and in the white house. Its to be a mother of three four children. Whom i adore. And i just theres so much talk today, everybody tries to control their lives and good luck with that if youre ever going to be a parent, they try to control their lives and plan to do this and then do that and dada da, just know who you are, thank people for their unsolicited advice, and be true to yourself and your goals and your dreams and aspirations because you can have it all, just not all at the same time. And i really dont want an entire generation discouraged by all the negativity and all that you must choose and all the you cant afford that or thats not worth it or dont you want to. Not to be a parent, that is, that is the essence of why you are blessed to be in the United States of america where democracy and freedom and individual liberty and choices prevail. So, god bless you. On that note, thank you, Kellyanne Conway. [ applause ] you look fabulous. We are going to take a quick break. If you dont mind, take a short break. Well be right back with you. Its the 39th annual National Conservative student conference host the by Young Americas Foundation. Short break here, theyve been hearing throughout the day from conservative leaders and others, theyll hear from rnc National Committee woman from california in just a bit. And later this afternoon, of the National Review, columnist Jonah Goldberg, coming up livepu cspan 3. All right. Everyone, those Still Standing up, wed like to ask you to make your way back to your seats. I know some of the our colleagues in the hallway are still making their way in the room and our team is bringing them inside at the moment. This is my privilege to introduce Kimberly Martin beck and our general council. To introduce our next speak perm please join me in welcoming kimberly. [ applause ] i have the honor of introducing you to our next speaker, harmit dylan. She is one americas preeminent First Amendment, limited government, and individual liberty. But years ago, she was a student like you encountering leftist arrogance on campus. I would like to share a story with you about her college days. Because she credits this experience with inspiring for activism and career as a First Amendment advocate. She was editor in chief of the dartmouth review. The dartmouth review is an independent campus newspaper with a National Reputation for challenging at liberal status quo. It caught the attention of the New York Times. In an interview with the New York Times in 1988, she said, im very disturbed by the response to the article. Im very surprised, very, very surprised. I suspect, and you can ask her about this in q a, but i suspect that she is no longer very surprised by School Administrators contempt of students free speech rights. She earned her law degrow at university of virginia and now leads a distinguished law practice in San Francisco, california. She has won numerous awards and earned a National Reputation for her passion for free speech and expertise as a First Amendment litigator. So, when Young Americas Foundation faced an unconstitutional restraint by berkeley to prevent students from hearing from one of our speakers, we called her. We needed the very best representation. So he hired her and filed a lawsuit on that day, took control of the narrative when she held a press Conference Announcing our lawsuit and e vis rated the administrators at berkeley. Those are not my words, those are the words of the commentators who watched in autoexplain those uninstitutional violation of students rights. That press conference has been viewed more than 100,000 times. We are grateful for all she is doing to champion the free speech rights of students at berkeley and across the country. Please join me in welcoming harmit dylan. [ applause ] i would like to share with the berkeley case and the background and give you tips and suggestions at the end of my comments about how to deal with these issues on your own. Campuses and theres going to be time for q a as well. So, kimberly mentioned by tremendous vails with free speech at dartmouth. I just came from a radio interview with laura ingram who was on the board at dartmouth, so i had some good teachers and mentors when i was a Young College student at dartmouth. And those are some of my best friends today. And were still fighting the same battles, just kind of disappointing. I think the stakers are higher now than they were at dartmouth so to set the stage here and i hope i dont bore you with dry, constitutional law, but, im sure most of you know that the First Amendment is part of the bill of rights and its sort of the cornerstone of our concept and its one of the really unique things about the American Democratic thoughts is that we have this concept of free speech. Even other democracies dont have free speech rights to the extent that we do. And freedom of thought and speech and freedom of association are natural rights. Those are what the founders of our country believe to be rights that la godgiven, but not given by the government. Theyre inherent rights. But today on College Campuses, the concept of free speech has metastasized to be a concept of being free from speech. Im sure all of you have experienced this on your campuses that there are bullies there who will view your free speech as something that infringes on their right or perceived right to be free from speech that is critical or that challenges them. And thats kind of the new spin that we have here today is that when i was at dartmouth, we were kind of free to be somewhat obnoxious to a point and then that point came where like i said in the New York Times interview where there was just this massive violent reaction really and we were put on the defensive. And if it hadnt been for some lawyers who helped us out in that situation, actually, i wouldnt be standing here today as the lawyer and free speech activist that i am. So, the idea of campus unrest and id logical and generational clashes on campus is not new. I studied ancient greek at dartmouth and that was my major. We learned about the classics and we learned what happened to sok row tees. He was an early campus controversial if you will. He had a student who he was teaching. And he answered questions from some students. And the way he answered those questions about the dee deities of the city, the gods, do you recognize these gods . That troubled the elders, and they decide that he needed to be put on trial for his her ret call views. And ultimately sentenced to death for not believing in the gods of the city and the other sin of teaching the students about some other gods and some other beliefs, the beliefs and challenge and rhetoric and Free Exchange of ideas. Well, so thats what happened to him. But today, its actually the professors at our universities who are putting free speech to death. Theyre the ones who are imposing their viewpoint on the students. And theyre the ones who are stifling that very speech and that very american tradition of democracy out of existence. And those folks have tenure. And theyve been there longer than you. And theyre waging a war of attrition on the students, most of you the joke at university of california berkeley is that youre on a four, five, sixyear plan, people are not you believely graduating at four years these days. But youre going to be to be gone in four or five years. And theyre going to be there for the next generation and the next generation after that. Theft advantage of time and it takes a lot of conviction and force and will to combat these powerful enemies of free speech. So, you guys are the ones who are going to have to fight that war that he once fought to bring enlightenment to the campuses. So with that, im going to have some slides here about the First Amendment, the threats on College Campuses. And i have a slide about the text of the First Amendment. And this is relevant. What it says in its words is actually not what the law is evolved to be. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the exercise thereof. Or the freedom of speech or the press or of the right of the people to assemble. And to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Now, a lot of people look at the First Amendment and say well it says Congress Shall make no law, and Congress Shall not abridge the freedom of speech. Okay, if congress isnt making the law and congress isnt abridging my speech, they get to do that, right . No, the First Amendment has been brought in to include any action by the government. So, university of california berkeley which kimberly mentioned is a government university. And any restrictions by the Government Property or when the parameters by the government but its even broader than that. Dartmouth is a private ivy league institution, but a federal judge and state judge in our case ruled that because dartmouth accepted federal funding in that case i believe it was title ix funding, dartmouth as well as other private institutions and Higher Learning are also subject to certain First Amendment standards as well. So just because those of you in the audience may not be going to a state school dont assume that the First Amendment doesnt apply for your speech as well. Just about every American Institution nowadays, in education takes government funding and therefore is also liable to follow the dictates of the First Amendment. So, to give you a little bit of context, there were there were there was a Free Speech Movement on campus that started at berkeley, well get to that in a minute. Ive talked about this, okay, so the birth of the Free Speech Movement is something that we know about from history and in december 2, 1964, mario is a famous Student Activist at uc berkeley, and he was lets call it a liberal and he was an antiwar activist, and he wanted to and the University Administration at that time was conservative. So, they did not want students talking about the war, protesting, and students who are being threatened for punishment with that. So he was not having any of this. He gave up and he was a civil disobedience activist who made a speech, famous speech about giving bodies upon the gears. In other words, which is sort of communist rhetoric, its the idea of throwing your body on the gears of the machine to stop the machine from crushing the souls of people. He demanded to lift the ban of on campus political activity and acknowledge the right of free speech and academic freedom. As a result of the activism at uc berkeley, the famous plaza and the steps of the plaza which is an open plaza on the uc Berkeley Campus was made a designated public forum. Today if you go to uc berkeley, you will see that all kinds of im trying to think of a polite word to say, all kinds of hippies, countercultural people, bums, crazy people, these are the sprawl plaza these days. Anything goes. Anybody can come there. Shout their crack pot theories and have a place to talk. And its very its very interesting. I held a press conference, it was a Second Press Conference that week at sprawl plaza and as we were giving the press conference and my clients troy warden and others were speaking there, we had all these crack pots circling around and shouting. It was distracting and interesting. When i joined it it was two issues. One was calling for die investment from south africa. Any businesses that did business in south africa the students were agitating to ask the university to divest from the corporations. Issue number two was the war in the america between them and most of the professors were favoring the communist side, and the dartmouth review, the students were very supportive of the anticommunist movement there. So those were a couple of big issues on our campus. Im paraphrasing, there was a lot of others. We had incident after incident after incident where our student reporters would go in, expose something, exsuppose a story and have a article followup about it, and as these articles were exposing to the alumni and to the rest of the world what was going on at dartmouth for example giving out our 486, an Abortion Pill before it was allowed to the fda, basically doing testing on students without authorization, things like that. We exposed these issues at dartmouth and we began to be getting the fire and getting a lot of negative attention from the administration. So this culminated in three of my colleagues at the dartmouth review being suspended indefinitely from dartmouth after they went they heard about a music 101 class. We had an African American professor named bill cook. And cook was famous for going off on these riffs or rants about Ronald Reagan, how bad Ronald Reagan was. He would call white students honkies. He was really quite a character. So one of the Young Conservatives told one of our colleagues on the paper, hey, this is crazy, you should cover it. So the student went in and audio taped a class. Without permission, admittedly, just audio taped it, we published a tape and this went out to the several thousand alumni. And it caused a National Human cry and dartmouth alumni were calling the administration, the phone is ringing off the hook. Im going to take you out of my will, the old guys were really up in arms about this thing. We thought wed do a followup story. My friend Chris Baldwin and a couple others and he went to talk about the followup issue and what was his comment about the commentary. He basically assaulted the student. There was a photographer and two editors. And there are photographs showing the professor coming closer and closer before he grabs the camera and throws it to the ground. And so theres a disciplinary hearing of the students, not professor. And we had something called the committee on standards at dartmouth. And the committee on standards was professors who heard this case. They were like little kangaroo court, star chamber, tribunal. One was known to have make remarks and one of the students challenged him impartiality and he said no, i can be impartial. The three students were suspended. Think about it now, im sure some of you are in the same situation. These are all kids with Bright Futures ahead of them, and assault thud their careers stretching out for their entire lives are going to be impacted by this negative situation. So, then there was a savior that came to the scene. And nafs one of our Board Members knew some fancy lawyers at the aclu. And the aclu, lords tribe, actually, you know, had read about the situation and so, we got some volunteer lawyers from new york city to represent the dartmouth review to sue dartmouth to reenstate the students. So there was a state lawsuit filed and long story short, the three students were reinstated. One of the reasons that the court gave was the faculty was biassed against the students. They did not get a fair hearing. And, you know, ultimately we established the principle that the students could not be punished for their speech. So that was all while i was editor and chief. I was not one of the three students, but i presided over this lawsuit. And i actually switched my major at that point. I had been premed and i thought this law thing was pretty cool and it was Pretty Amazing to be able to sue your university and win. So i switched. Well, as a side, it was bad enough for my parents that i was majoring in ancient greek, fairly, incredibly useless major, and they werent really fond of lawyers either. My father is a doctor in a small town. He wasnt really nuts about lawyers either. But, you know, they accepted my decision and i went on to eventually, i was a journalist at the Heritage Foundation for a year and eventually became a law and practicing law for almost 25 years now. That brings know another institution where i attended, also a seminole free speech case. I believe the rosenberger in question is a student graduate, if im not mistaken. I went to the law school. There was a christian newspaper at the university and the university had a student fund. I guess they raised this fund from an activity fee thats assessed on all the students, and it was supposed to be given out equally to different student groups. So if you had a soccer paper or an atheist paper, lets take it out of atheist, if you had a paper of some infinitive group, you could get money from the university to print your paper. Christian students asked for this support as well, few hundred dollars and they were denied the printing costs and took this case to the United States Supreme Court. And the university of virginias position was, well, first of all, we are denying this money to all religious oriented publications. The Christian Group was the only one which had asked for the funding. That was kind of a clever but not availing argument. So thats okay if that doesnt work. We have limited fund. That was another argument, the court wasnt having any of that. And the United States Supreme Court pointed out that it was not speech about religion that was banned, but so the money could be used by the underwater Basket Weaving Club to talk about payingenism or whatever, so, you know, but a Christian Group was not allowed to express its christian views with the student funds. So ultimately, that case established the concept that exclusion of multiple views, all religious views is as offensive as exclusion of only one view. And that scarcity of funds of a university, such as university of virginia and today were going to use the same argument. Berkeley is not permissible. I think these are all incidents that have occurred in the last several years. Weve had some recent drama involving the university of missouri. Thats a fascinating sthier goes back several years. And what i think is fascinating about that the story just as a side is there came a point in time bht University Administration was under attack by the African American students, criticizing them, and i think it was beginning to affect funding for some of the sports programs. And so the guys, the coaches and the guys in charge at the Athletic Department turned on the administrators. Basically switched sides and started to side with the students who were agitating and basically when that happened, i guess we know where the money comes from or what really matters at that institution where the dean had to resign. Yale had an incident about cultural miss appropriation. The administrator made the signal error of saying that Halloween Costumes that offend you, be ageisha or cherokee costume is protected free speech. Well this drove the students nuts. Princeton students staged a sitin at the University Office for 32 hours demanding thatwood row moved. Woodrow is now openly called a racist, i think thats harsh, but definitely had views that are out of the mainstream of what we call the mainstream speech today. And so, eliminating his name from campuses all over the country is now a big thing. I read about a School District in oregon that has decided that it must remove the name of a Famous Family donor thats been on the schools for 100 years. The name of the family slimpbl. The lynch family donated a few Million Dollars a hundred years ago. The reasoning now is well the word lynch has negative connotations for many students, and so, even though the lynch family wasnt actually lynching people and even though its oregon, not where the slavery was occurring, forget all of that, that name has to come down. So thats the kind of Political Correctness were seeing everywhere. You all know this. So, then weve had incidents involving ben shapiro owe being disinvited. He was then threatened with arrest there at depaul university. And then weve had the incidents that bring us up to the uk berkeley situation. So, it seems like so long ago now, but its really only been this semester that weve had this much drama there at uc berkly. As aside, im a former chairman San Francisco of the Republican Party and serve on the rnc. Ive had over a decades with the uk Berkeley College republicans. Its a great club, its been sometimes the largest Republican Club in the country. And, up until this year, they were pretty free to bring students on. The students were free to invite conservative speakers on to their campus. It wasnt a controversy, but what happened was we had this contentious election last year. And after several years, i want to say more than 12 years of fairly stable, liberal progressive mayor there in berkeley, he decided he wasnt going to run for reelection, and what we got instead was a younger, latino mayor who is very vocal about illegal immigration issues. Hes also vocal about renters rights, you know, a part of his platform was allowing longer partying hours on at berkeley, so, you know, really appeal to the student vote, and i think thats how it got elected. Well this guy is a member of a group, hes a supporter and sympathizer, some allege of the antifa, i guess they like to be called antifa on the campus. And so he was not a big fan of milo coming to the campus as you can imagine. My friends at the Berkeley College republicans invited milo to come speak on the campus. And before that, he had been cancelled from speaking at uc davis which is about an hour away from our campus. And so when to their credit, the university did give milo a place and gave the uc berkically republicans to occur and allowed them to have it in the evening. They did impose a significant speech, it was several thousand. I think they hoped if they opposed a large tax on this speech, eventually the students would say its not worth it. The students raised the money, and they were all set and milo was going to come. He was alleged to be planning, i dont know who planted this rumor, but milo was alleging to plan or out or identify dreamer students on the campus. I dont know if thats true or not, but that was the reasoning used by the mob to come there and disrupt this event. So, i think a lot of you may have seen this video. It made International Headlines where basically these thugs about 100 plus wearing mask and gloves came armed with metal bats and set fires in downtown berkeley, which is a lovely town. And there were hundreds of police there and they stood there and watched. They did not make any arrests for the most part. This riot went on for hours and of course the threat was cancelled. There was a threat and the event got cancelled. What weve subsequently learned is because of because of the occupy wall street protests earlier this decade, in 2014, uk berkeley city of beckly was sued by occupy rioters who were arrested. They were sued for wrongful arrest violation of their civil rights. The city of berkeley entered into a Settlement Agreement with what a Consent Decree and agreed that unless somebodys about to be killed, the police are not going to step in and intervene. So, i didnt know that was the policy, im sure my friends at the berkeley policy republicans didnt know that was a policy, but thats the policy on the screen there. They were merely property damage. It was merely starbucks being broken into. It was merely windows being broken and flames and people being beaten on the head with metal bars and the police have a policy not to intervene. Thats the backdrop of which we doom to our later events in the smesic. So before i get to that though earlier this year, all in the same semester and other campuses, we had Heather Mcdonald who was being prevented from speaking at Mckenna College in southern california. We have a federal judge ordering Auburn University to allow white supremacists, Richard Spencer to speak on the campus where violence erupted. It was really unfortunate scene there. Uc santa cruz made a protest also in california, turned violent with passer by and Police Officers assaulted. And then, just about a couple months ago, Evergreen State College has got this ongoing protest going on with violent armed agitators, protesting carrying bats and clubs on the campus. So, fast forwarding to our situation at uc berkeley, what happened was let me go back a slide there. Berkeley College Republicans work with them. They werent deterred with the milo situation. They wanted to bring milo back, but meanwhile, they already had a program to bring David Horowitz to campus. Hes one of the stable speakers and, you know, actually incidentally somebody who i heard speak at dartmouth and i cowrote a chapter in his book. Hes a great conservative speaker. But universities response was as follows. You can let this dude come speak, but, um, you know, safety concerns been these conservatives, so okay he cant speak beyond he kent speak late. Like after 3 00. Okay. Well, students, were in class until 3 00, i mean, hows that going to work. Some people can go see him speak. Okay, where can we have him speak . Over there. Like two miles away from the center of campus. Like bus distance away from the center of campus. During classes, okay, thats going to be hard. Okay, but on top of that, we strongly encourage you not to publicize this event in any way. Dont. Tut on your social media, and by the way, if you invite outsiders off the campus to come, were going to charge you extra security fees for that. So cant speak in the middle of campus, cant speak during a time when students can come hear him speak, cant publicize the event, and cant invite people from the local community, which might make it feasible to pay the security fee. So, what i call the cued gra of this whole situation was, the students gamely moved forward with this by the way, they tried to accept all of these conditions, and the University Said by the security fee is l 5,700. By the time all of though restrictions that funnel down the number of people who could come listen to this speech had been in place, they had like 30 students. You guys are smart. They did the math. Did they really want to pay a 200 per student tax to the university to hear David Horowitz speak . Hes great, but running the math, that did not make sense. So they decided that it wasnt worth the inconvenience and that event was cancelled. Now that was the same month as the ann coulter event. Lets talk about that. In the ann coulter situation, Berkeley College republicans actually paired with another conservative not conservative, but another Student Organization on campus called bridge cal. Bridge cal sl a national nonpartisan Student Organization and their goal is to come and bring speakers on the campus who are, you know, on interesting topics. They decided the topic of this Speaker Series was illegal immigration. Timely, milo was supposedly going to out these dreamers and its a big issue in the press. The president s spoken up a lot about it. They approach the republicans to see if Berkeley College republicans would bring them to campus. They said sure, we can help you with that. And so they proposed to the university several weeks before the event. A little bit over six weeks before the event that they were going to have a Clinton Administration deputy chief of staff come and speak about the pro illegal immigration. I know illegal immigration, its like rude, but thats what i call it. You know, the pro undocumented peoples, the pro undocumented students, the pro undocumented people situation. And then the ann coulter was going to come present the opposite side. So, you know, the Nonpartisan Group was okay and we presented, my clients presented this to the university, yeah, again graciously agreed to pay for ann coulter to come. And ann coulter, an old friend of mine from back when i was in law school as well, and i know from her speaking career that, and yaf does as well, concerned about her own safety. She always has some exmilitary body guards around whenever shes coming to a place like this. Yaf was going to pay for all of that. They asked for a room that would hold the expected size of people, maybe 500 people. A big crowd for this event ann draws a big crowd. The university allowed the Clinton Administration official to speak in the evening in the middle of campus, all the advertising that they wanted, no restrictions, and, you know, some people showed up, it wasnt that compelling. Nothing near 500. They looked and said no ones going to come, you can have it, whatever you want. And but when it came to ann coulter, the university kept giving the students the run around. We have determined there is a substantial risk of zinlts securing with, we need to take securing procautions. Of course a security fee, we wont tell you what that is yet. Youll tr have to abide by some restrixs. Okay, what restrictions . Theres a curfew. You cant have the event go passed 3 00 p. M. So in other words, it cant start at 3 00 p. M. Been it has to end by 3 00 p. M. You cant have it in the middle of campus. Because that would make it easy for people to get to, and we dont want people to get to it easily. You cant advertise the event until a few hours before the event. People off the campus are not allowed to come to this event. We will not allow you to invite herit dylan, she cant come. Back and forth, back and forth, and ann coulter and, you know, actually accepted all of these restrictions bereave it or not. She was ready to speak at 1 00 in the afternoon, off campus and all of that if they would just let her come speak. When she finally agreed to the restrixs, and they were working, Berkeley College republicans working with the yaf, the University Said actually, guess what, all the rooms are booked. We dont have any rooms for you at all. So sorry. But she can come in the fall. Thats cool. Now, the then president of the Berkeley College republicans was about to graduate. It was an argument that i made. This guys going to graduate. Hes never going to see this speech then. There is an eminent need for us to adhere to the request that we have the speech on schedule. So then, this began to get some publicity. Yeah, working with republicans got a the Love Publicity around the situation and so the college offered an alternative. The alternative offered by cal was she can come speak, between the end of classes and exam time. The one week when, you know, i dont know how many of you are familiar with our campus system there, but, you know, a lot of students leave the campus. Its the reading period. Theyre not required to go to any classes, and but they were going to impose the same restrictions, 3 00 curfew and, you know, were not going to tell you where it is until right before the event. And youre going to have to pay several thousand dollars of security costs. So, you know, that the point, we said enough is enough, we agreed, its not happening. And so, yaf kimberly and mark, her other lawyer on the team here. They called me and asked me if i could help. And ive been a long time activist of free speech issues dating back to dartmouth but other incidents as well. This was a thursday. The speech was scheduled to be the following thursday. And, you know, logistics had been arranged, these three body guards had already been had their tickets booed, they were going to do a security ann was ready. She was very fired up about this and she had, you know im sure all of you have seen us on social media and hannity talking about this days. She was fired up and wanted to speak. You know, then confront the university. So they hired me and i wrote a letter to the university that evening. I wrote a detailed letter saying look, youre violating the United States constitution. You cannot have illegal time place and manner restrictions on the students. Whatever you allow other people hike this lame, you know, Clinton Administration person, youve got to give the same time slot to ann coulter, and the response from the university was a friday afternoon, i remember it well because it was addressed to dear mr. Dylan. So, so, you know, for me as a lawyer, i have an unusual name, i was born in india. My lawyer hat goes on and i forward this to my clients and my staff, and im thinking, as a lawyer, youre thinking wow, this lawyer is really not doing a good job because the first thing you do as a trial lawyer is you look up who youre dealing with. I mean, im going respond differentfully im dealing with the guy whos got, you know, the mez theel owe ma ads or unemployed. Im dealing it with that different than a First Amendment lawyer, prominent lawyer in california. So this tud just types out this the letter and dear mr. Dylan. And my clients were split on this. Some of this thought, they know youre a woman, and theyre just trying to insult you, and they misgendered you. And i was like i was like, whats that . So i like pull out oh my god, they misgendered me. They sure did. So i wrote a letter back to the lawyer, campus council, and i said, you know, dear mr. Whatever, first of all, i have to say, of all people, im so disappointed as, you know, a tax payer and as a california resident that you all of people would misgender me. And deeply me. [ applause ] deeply puzzling. And please, lets not let that happen again. So but what is really hilarious about that is this guy, and other people in the administration, these are people who signature block say my preferred gender pronouns are he, him and her, so that is the level of Political Correctness on the campus itself. So bad lawyering, lack of attention to detail and generally, i dont care. So that is the response we got from the university. So we filed a lawsuit. A civil rights lawsuit. And it asserts federal claim, federal court violations. Because of a concept called anti slap. But we filed allegations involving the First Amendment and then equal protection and due process as well. The allegation is that the students were denied their rights of speech. The students, not ann coulter. It is the right of the students that were being suppressed. Our lawsuit seeks to vindicate the important principal of that. The university allows outsiders to come and speak on their campus. Like they allow outsiders to come and speak on campus, they have to allow conservative students. The hecklers veto is where they said that we anticipate a violent reaction to ann coulters speech, ergo we are going to make it difficult for you to have that speech and that is not a close case, that is blatantly unconstitutional under United States constitutional law. So where are we on that case . The university hired a lawyer, one of their lawyers actually crashed my press conference. The lawsuit had barely been filed, but luckily i had a good Republican Press person who got rid of that lady. So we kicked the interloper out and went on and had our press conference which was very satisfying and i got fan mail from liberal lawyers all over the country about this lawsuit. And you may get jaded as conservative students on campus to think that you are on your own, but actually, there are a lot of people around the country who share the concept that government cannot discriminate on the basis of viewpoint. I am used to being the minority lawyer. It was nice to get that fan mail from across the country all the lawyers who practice area of the law agree there is no legal justification for Berkeley Administration to treat the students as they have. So let me give you tips and tools. There is a motion to dismiss. So in the end of september we are going to argue the meeotiono dismiss. The arguments include that the policy that we are talking about, the argument is it isnt well settled law. The first amend jurors prude dense is not really settled. And then we havent pled sufficient detail. I think we have. And i am confident about our chances there. They asked me to put the lawsuit on hold a few weeks ago because they were issuing a new policy. I said i dont think so. It is an obtuse 22 page policy. It is difficult to understand and i think it is unconstitutional. So we are moving forward with our lawsuit. We are going to ask a federal judge to make sure that happens and we are prepared to take this case all the way. Thank you. [ applause ] so let me end my prepared remarks by giving you some tools. News you can use. Here are some things you should know your rights on the college campus. Campus speech restrictions cannot be content based. They cannot bar you on a college as opposed to a high school from covering certain topics. The hecklers veto cannot be allowed. The university cannot gouge you one justified security fees. And this issue has not yet been l litigated in our case, but i expect them to be. This is actually unconstitutional. You cannot give this type of restriction as a proxy, i call it a tax, a speech tax. Students have ever right to use the public spaces of the university with few exceptions. And by public, even semipublic. Forums on the university campus. The key restriction is you cannot make a use of the University Space that excludes its primary use. You cant run an auto auction off of the plaza or zellerback hall. That is not permitted but short of that, any lecture by any coo coo speaker is allowed. There was a lot of garbage political and legal analysis going on after we filed our lawsuit. I would turn on the news and see people on cnn and msnbc saying hate speech actually howard dean said hate speech is not covered by the constitution. And i responded in a tweet when i said amateurs attempt to practice constitutional law. He is an amateur [ applause ] because howard dean hate speech is protected by the constitution. Ceg nazis marching in illinois. And i am sure all of you, many of you come from campuses where your viewpoint is not the dominant viewpoint. If you want to have events that are on your campus that are successful and you think you may have run into roadblocks like my friends at berkeley and yaf and multiple campuses. Start by knowing the rules. There are written rules. Follow those rules. My friends at berkeley followed the rules. You propose a speaker, ask for a space and there is this back and forth. And get it all in writing. What the university wants you to do is come to a private meeting with them where there will be one or two of you and those are the people who will give you your degree and maybe crush your entire life blood and career right there at the age of 18 or not. So what do you think, students . Dont be intimidated about that. Try to do as much as you can in writing or confirm everything in writing. I would also suggest that you be strategic in who you would invite. I probably wouldnt have invited Richard Spencer. That is just my taste. If you want to be the conservative group with credibility and if you want to win people over to your side, you know, think carefully about who you would invite. They should be persuasive,out going, attractive. Makes you look better if you can trying to enrich the education atmosphere in your school. And i recommend if you have a speech and you expect there to be protesters, videotape everything. Have your students who have skill in that set up and videotape it. Because you will be accused of starting it or being the instigation. Your instigation which wasnt will be the justification for punishment. Make sure there is a record. I think that helps back people off. The university or college has hundreds of resources. We have Janet Napolitano the head of the uc system and she gets paid a lot of money. Dont go into battle unarmed. That leads me to my final slide. If your speech is silenced, get some help. There are a number of conservative lawyers who can help you. The Republican National republican associations have country. All over the country. The federalist society. Local Bar Association may have Young Lawyers who may not share your views but First Amendment law is the sexiest thing for lawyers. Everybody wants to do it. And if you are a lawyer who is interested in intellectual issues. Even if you are a liberal. The aclu represents some friends at dart mouth. You may found in alabama, the aclu chapter may be willing to help you. Whereas northern california, forget it. There are a bunch of other groups out there that handle these cases. Founded for conservative free speech. If you are involved in a dispute with your university and you think you might need a lawyer, ask the lawyer before you start tweeting, snap chatting, facebooking about it because you dont want your communication on these issues to undermine your legal strategy and goals. I am happy to take any questions if i have any time left. [ applause ] my name is scott i am from the university of arkansas. I wanted to play devils advocate talking about restricting funding with private university. I believe this affords private universities the right to assemble to choose under their own belief will serve as a death sentence any schools ability to remain open that do not have endowments or completely free of federal financial institution. Such as the college of the othe. Do you believe the due process of this will affect the application of title 9 students that attend the university willingly and in the aspect of voluntary members . So that is what i call a speech masters the question. To answer the question that is wrapped up in that, i think i already did. But you are free as a university to take zero penalties of dollars. Almost all universities do accept private you open your door to the federal government regulating what you want tong. If you dont want to be subject to the First Amendment, dont take federal funds. [ applause ] hi, my name is ashley. I go to the university of texas in austin. At what point should you be concerned that they are trying to gouge you and what we deal with often is an administration that slows things down. Number one what is too much in terms of speaker fees and what can you know about the slow walking your request. There is no bright line, but an activity fee that seems to vary who the speaker is is suspect. There is a thousand dollar per event charge to every event on the campus that is cool. If you are charging 1,000 to the clinton guy host, and charging more to ann coulter. When we bring ben shapiro there this semester that they are going to need 100 Police Officers to check all the bags whereas Sonia Sotomayor might need five. So ask the university what they charged prior groups. Keep a record of that. And create a track record. Make sure there are Institutional Knowledge and as to the slow walking, you have to create a record. You have to consider this to be the long game for your club. You may not be able to prove your case this time or even the next time but if you create a good record of all of those incidents and having good relationships with your friends who dont share your views. So maybe your roommate or somebody on your lacrosse team, they are on a group but their application got approved in three days. And yours never got approved. Keep a record of that. And make a record of that and that there help. I think there are a lot of free lawyers out there who will give advice throughout the country. You just need to find somebody. If you are having trouble to find somebody, yaf might be able to help, i might help. I go to sacred heart university. Where do you think of the whole mentality of the left comes from . Thats a good question. When i was a kid, actually it was the same thing when i was a kid, only now, when i was a kid, it was sandnistias were good and now it is gender fluidity. Generally speaking, academics are liberal. I recall a study at dart mouth where i went, and so they have a liberal attitude to start with. And i think it is kind of a lazy cushy place to be honest with you. And an easy place for time who have time on their hands to take up causes who are found to be trivial to us that hold 95 jobs. I once called San Francisco the utopian petri dish of america. I dont know if these students come to campus pre baked with these insane. I saw adam corolla testifying in congress and he talked about helicopter parents. These parents that shield their children, and when these same coddled spoiled kids come to the campuses they cant take a contrary view. That is the parents fault but then we have to all live with the bad parents of liberal parents. If i disagreed with my parents on something, they won. Thats my pop psychology analysis. Thank you. And thank you for everything yob do. My nam is samir and i go to bunker hill Community College and i plan to transferring to a private Fouryear College, and how do you find out that private schools funding and how they receive federal money . Thats a good question. I am not sure i know the answer in very big detail, but generally, there are records of all of these things. You can call up the university and ask them what kind of federal funding do you get. You are entitled to knowing that. That is a good question. The general avenue whereby the federalism is put on to these private institutions is via title 9 funding. Equalize sports between women and men. And then there are pell grants and other grants that coming. Any federal funds by research. All of those are avenues that may subject the university to First Amendment analysis. I think we are out of time. Thank you all for your attention today. [ applause ] good afternoon. It has been an honor getting to meet you all and discuss conservative ideas with you the past few days. I want to take time to welcome you the Young Americas Foundation 39th annual conservative conference. The mission from the foundation is to increase the number of Young Americans who understand and are inspired by the ideas of individual freedom, a Strong National defense, Free Enterprise and national ideas. Let me introduce one of those speakers. Johna goldberg is a nationally syndicated columnist. He is also a weekly columnist for the los angellos angeles t also an contributor to fox news. The atlantic magazine identifies him as one of the top 50 commentators in america. He has written on politics, media, culture for a wide variety of publications and has appeared in numerous radio programs. Please help me give a warm welcome to Jonah Goldberg. [ applause ] i feel like i should be selling sham wow. Great to be here. It has been a while. I used to do these every summer and then i started going on three state killing sprees instead. So, it was a long and generous introduction. But as those of you who have heard me speak know, if it is not brought up, i feel compelled to do it myself, when the la times publicly brought me in as a columnist, Barbra Streisand canceled. I have been buried working on a new book in my house sort of like a Howard Hughes with cl clenexboxes. I shouldnt do a lot of dead dog jokes, some of you know i am a huge dog guy. I love my wife, i love my daughter, but it is my dogs that get me out of bed every morning. Literally, not the way joe biden means figuratively. So anyway, where to begin. I know i dont have a huge am of time. Sort of as henry the eighth said to each of his wives, i wont keep you long. [ applause ] lets see if this enthusiasm remains throughout the whole thing. One of my favorite stories is about a medical School Professor who teaches anatomy, and he walks into one of these auditoriums where the seats go all the way up. And he wants to see who has done the assigned reading for the night before. So he walks in and says what organ of the human body increases eight times in size. He says ms. Smith. And the girl starts to blush. She squirms in her seat and i couldnt possibly say. I couldnt answer a question like that. The professor goes okay, and he picks a smart ass in the front and he says mr. Jones. And he says the pupil of the human eye when it goes from light to dark. And the professor says that is correct. And now ms. Smith, i have three things to say to you. One, you didnt do your homework, and two, you have a filthy mind, and three, you are destined to live a life of unfulfilled expectations. [ laughter ] i like that joke for a few reasons first of all, because i think it is funny. It is lewd without crossing the line into scaramucciesque. And just for the record, steve bannon is not that flexible. But before i continue, i should, well the second reason i like the joke is gets to in some ways the heart of what it is to be a conservative in a lot of ways. You are often, you know, you are often let down by events beyond your control and even sometimes events in your controlling. But before i get into that, i should back up a second. I have been doing these things in one way or another since before you were not allowed to say yaf. There was this great split between the peoples front of judia. And there was Young American freedom, and there was this great nerd fight. And somebody said something about hay yak that you couldnt take back. But if you called it yaff, they got and the scattered tribes of conservatives are all coming back and it is great. I think it is part of my job. Wi william f. Buckley believed that you should go forth and help Young Conservatives. I wrote about it in a book that i published. That Young Conservatives tend to come out of college smarter and better equipped for political fights than smart young liberal kids. It is just that the best learning is done through the socratic method. When you have your thoughts questioned. You could be the smartest liberal kid on campus and you are just hearing professors say that you already believe in. Dead things go with the flow and living things go upstream. That is how you build up muscle memory. So conservative kids that can keep their wits about them through four years of college, come out better. That is a huge advantage. A huge disadvantage in terms of numbers. But advantages in terms of the quality of kids that places like yaf put out there. I am sorry i am drinking so much water, i smoked enormous amounts of pot before i got here and i get this crazy dry mouth. I get forgetful. Normally, under normal circumstances, you know, pre orb, i would have come here and you know, let the red meat fly like the set of texas chainsaw massacre. But we are in a difficult moment and these are different times and you are going to get enough of that. I am sure, Vice President pence whom i admire and i know a little bit will tell you about the president s broad shoulder leadership. Actually, you should have bingo cards ready for the term broad shoulder. Kelly ann, who i have known for years do a great job in making the case for the administration. And that is sort of not why i am here today. Some of you may know if you follow me at all, that not only am i a handsome man, a powerful man no. That donald trump was not my first choice in the primaries. He was not my second choice in the primaries. Wasnt my third choice in the primaries. He was right around the 17th mark for me in the primaries. Also if you follow me, you know that i remain fairly skeptical on donald trump. I do not consider myself never trump. What that meant was i wasnt going to vote for him. I have never lived anywhere in my life where i wasnt outnumbered seven to one. I love in washington, d. C. Grew up in the Upper West Side have manhattan. So my vote doesnt matter. I dont care about my vote. Except in the theoretical yeah america sense. But what i wasnt going to do was say things that i dont believe. And this is one of these fascinating things that i have discovered. One of the most depressing, these last two years have been rough, i have lost friendships, lost a lot of money. I cant find that body i buried in at thtacoma. The most disappointing thing to hear from so many people who have been disappointed in me. And i am like, no i dont. It is not my job. 90 of journalistic ethics talk is bs guild stuff to protect Journalism Schools and people who have suede on their elbows who they go on tv and want to talk about journalism. One thing that i believe truly in my heart is that the vast bulk of journalism ethics can be covered by the simple fatah dont say things that are not true. And dont write them either. [ applause ] i am not going to name names because some of these people are friends of mine, and still a fox contributor. I have been amazed at how many people say one thing when the red light on the camera is on and say another thing when the red light is off. Other people who say when the light goes off, i cant believe i have to defend this guy. The short answer is you dont. If you agree what he is doing or you think the media is too harsh, i am not a member of the resistance either. Every time i hear some of these people talk, i want to smash their guitar against the delta house wall. The approach of donald trump from day one from a lot of liberal outputs, donald trump puts salt on his french fries, hitler put salt on his french fries. I am not going to lie. And i am no the going to support somebody or say he is winning because that is the talking point of the day. I am not going to defend you feel like an alzheimers patient wandering out into the snow are the height of american rhetoric. So my position during the campaign was that this was the choice between two crap sandwiches on different kinds of bread. And i am, again, i am totally open to the argument if you have to choose, you have to choose one. Okay. I had to choose one, i would choose one of them and it wouldnt be hillary. But i wouldnt say this is the best roast beef i have ever had. That is the distinction. So anyway, i am not never trump. I am not part of the resistance. And i will confess the day after the election, i thought i was incredibly happy. For a couple of reasons. One reason was hillary lost. [ applause ] and i mean, you can go back to aristotle, it is good when clintons lose. More over, i thought that we could get enormous i still, for reasons i will get into in a second, i never thought a Trump Presidency would end well, but i did think we could get enormous things done before the wheels came off. I thought we could get repeal and replace taken care of. That was awkward. I have significant but dwindling hopes of tax reform, not tax cuts which is more important. Some of the regulatory stuff that donald trump has done is great. I am infav i am in favor of it. He has been a better president than i anticipated so far. This is not a high bar. This is, you know, like saying the best gas station sushi in alabama. Full disclosure, i am not a fan of donald trump. And donald trump is not a fan of mine. He has tried to get me fired. We had these fascinating sort of socratic dialogues on twitter. There was that one point where he talked to some local nbc reporter and she read him an excerpt from a column i had written for the l. A. Times and he said, wait a second, i went to the best schools. I built this amazing business. I got this great brain. All of these things he likes to say. I am sure you never heard anything of this. And i have to take this from Jonah Goldberg, a guy who doesnt even know how to buy pants. I have a team of interns at aei working around the clock trying to figure out what that means. Because, look, if i were on a job interview, i wouldnt lead with my pants buying skills. I wouldnt say i am the greatest pants buyer in the world. But i know how. You know, my wife doesnt get calls a couple of times a month from the floor manager at home depot saying, sorry, mrs. Goldberg, but your husband is in the power tool section trying to buy pants again. So just want to get that out there. But here is sort of the larger point. William rusher who was for 30 years the publisher for National Review. I think he was born in a pinstripe suit. He would take all the youngins aside. The first job at National Review, or internship. And he pulls them aside and says i have to give you some advice. He says look, politicians will always disappoint you. And he wasnt saying that because he thought politicians were bad people, obviously some people are. He was saying that because the nature of being a politician is different than the natiure of idealistic of Young People Working in the review. And politicians are going to be different. They like winning elections. They are going to do things that we are going to have problems with. And it is the job conservative, in general to acknowledge this fact and figure out how far you can bend or adapt your principles to reality and what lines you will not cross. The Republican Party never meant much to me and really Means Nothing at all to me now. I have always been incredibly proud of calling me a conservative. I have been around conservatism in way or another my entire light. I met pat buchanan at my bris. Dont google bris right now. It will lead to bad things. But my point is i love conservatism, to me, it is the most sincere form of patriotism, at the end. Day conservatism means gratitude. You are trying to preserve, conserve, and extend those things that make this country a wonderful place, right . [ applause ] and you are going to have if you believe in the principles that we have got, then sometimes you are going to have to be willing to endure the fact that sometimes your principals are unpopular and that doesnt make them wrong. Pure democracy is a crappy form of government. All pure democracy is the doctrine that says 51 of the people get to pee in the corn flakes of 49 of the people. Long before donald trump was giving money to chuck schumer, i was talking about how populism is dangerous. It is the idea that right and wrong derive solely from the will of the mob and nothing else. William Jennings Bryan had this great line, the people of nebraska is for free silver. Therefore i am for free silver. That is not what it is about. In my view, conservatism, for me it all boils down to at the end of the day, just two things at the metaphysical level, the importance of ideas, and the importance of character. And that is it. Right . And you can talk about which ideas and arguments about ideas that is part of it. Is argument. One of the things i love about conservatives is that we actually are less dogmatic than people realize because we love to argue about our dogma. I have been doing panel with liberals for literally 25 years. And d. C. Is full of 20 something, i think the word is dorks. Who wear their ties with frederick, i am a level 9 hi highiian. I could not run for office explaining why my platform is based on fredrick hayeks book. Everyone gets up on stage and says i am Ronald Reagan. No i am Ronald Reagan. And let me, just full disclosure, i like Ronald Reagan. What has two thumbs and thinks Ronald Reagan is awesome, this guy. He was put on this earth to do t two things, chew gum and kick ass and he ran out of gum in 1934. He had principles. He was a conservative. Love that. And he was a good politician. And he understood how to talk to people and persuade them and this is a huge part of problem with conservatism. Normally under normal circumstances, historically, i come to these things and you know, i just become a Sprinkler System of red meat. Bowls of libbertiers are delicious. I get it. For the last decade or two, you could make a good living only talking to groups that agree with you. And you can win the republican nomination when you talk to groups that already agree with you. And when you talk to groups that already agree with you, you forget about persuasion. Go back to aristotle. It is about convincing people in another coalition that their interests are better in your coalition. It is about arguments. Making arguments and bringing people over and when you go in front of arguments and all you do is click bait horror stuff which is what milo does. Which is entertaining but persuades nobody. People who are on the fence are pushed over to the other side when they encounter shock artist sha charlottons. When you have these guys claiming they are the purest. No i am the purest. When you talk about purity by definition, you are freezing people out. Ronald reagan used to say, if you are agree with me on seven out of ten issues, you are my allies. Now it is if you dont agree with me on 110 . As a conservative i would love to have super majorities of conservatives out there. But as a halfway sengsed being who follow conservative. You want to grow the party. And the hope is when you do that is you can bring these people along. And so what happened was it got to the point where no one knew how to persuade anybody. It was all the same bullet points. I could hit f 10 on my computer and give you the responses. And then along comes donald trump like friggin godzilla. And i mean that seriously, seriously, but figuratively. If you are a student of the godzilla move like i am, then you might know that a huge number of godzilla movies, it was like a cliche. Godzilla comes over, and he bites these electrical cables and he gets stronger. And the japanese are like, oh, crap. And that was donald trump in the primaries. He would say things that you are not supposed to say outloud never mind on a stage and in an interview. And it worked for him and one of the reasons it worked for him is because people are fed up with this focus group nonsense, cookie cutter republican stuff and the one thing that you can say about donald trump is he doesnt sound like he got his answers from a focus group. You couldnt get a group of people to make some of that stuff up. So i am grateful for that because he cleared the field. He raised the village so we could build something new on it and get back to making arguments. In the meantime we have a problem because a huge chunk of the Republican Base and a large chunk of conservatives on campus are starting to internalize a lot of this junk either out of a desire to protect donald trump or offend other people and there are look, i hate Political Correctness, it is a hot mess. All sorts of warmed over, marxism and fine. Simply because rudeness and crudity are politically incorrect doesnt mean republicans should embrace rudeness and crudity and we are seeing this on so many College Campuses. [ applause ] i think it is clear that i am not a prim and proper comstock blue hair type. One of the first columns i wrote for National Review online is trying to figure out how to take the original titles of the classics of canons and turn them into i am not prude interest these things but when you start defending rudeness and crudeness as if they are advance higher conservative principles, you are basically giving up on some of the principles. To hear people who are up tight about public cursing and i wont name names, but a lot in the past got upset about bad lyrics and Homer Simpson and stuff and defending some of the things that scaramucci said or donald trump said. It is fnot because they think that stuff is good, it is simply they are being corrupted by power. We have heard the phrase power corrupts. That was my lord acton. Lord acton believed that. The historian was defending one of the what they call in the field one of the bad popes who did very bad things. And acton said this is a problem. Intellectuals have this capacity to defend bad things when powerful people do them. To this day, fidel castro, you go down the list who admire them and they dont care that he murdered a lot of people. Donald trump hasnt murdered anybody but there is this tendency to say we dont care about those principles. Donald trump moved the American Voter doesnt care about those things so we are going to move on. My answer to that is go to hell. We are not going to move on. If you believe these things when it was convenient to believe them, are you telling me that you hold your principles so cheaply, that one election of this guy is going to cause you to abandon him. And if you believe in what you believe you should hold on for, at least, a little while. Abo but ha that is sort of the plac that we are in these days. I should wrap this up so we have a little time for q and a. Because the pot is starting to wear off. I have zero, problem having a transactional relationship with the president. This is the relationship that conservatives had with Richard Nixon and to some extent with dwight eisenhower. Conservatives got too close to the Bush Administration during the war. There were reasons for it. You know, wartime president. His critics were being so unfair. You have to overlook the fact that he was spending money like a pimp with a week to live. I get all that. Read the federalist papers you should have a healthy distrust of any political leader. Sometimes particularly the ones who claim to be speaking to you. I have lots of friends at National Review and the Weekly Standard who love to go have lunch and dinner and drinks with lots of politicians. I tried really hard not to do that. Because friendship can be corrupting. If you become friends with somebody it is harder to tell the truth about them. You dont want to get too attached. It is much easier to stick a needle in test subject 42 b than fluffy. And same thing with politicians. For the most part i try to stay away from. The job, at the end of the day, to get back to this, the job at the end of the day for conservatives, is not to win elections. It never has been. The job for conservatives is to move this country in a direction where it is in the selfinterest of politicians to be conservatives. It is a big difference. [ applause ] and i think just for your own help and edification about what to look for in politicians, yes, ideological consistency and principle and all of that stuff is great, but they should also be like reagan a good politician. The guy knew how to tell a story. The human brain evolved to understand things through stories. Most history was remembered in song or in stories. Every important lesson in your life, your short envy creating lives, comes with a story attached to it. There is this great story about Ronald Reagan being visited by George Schultz and he wanted him it take a look at a speech he was doing. And reagan read it and said it is good. It is not the speech i would give but it is good. And he says what do you mean . Here is what i would do. Fact, fact, argument, story. Fact, fact, argument, story. That is how you connect with people. They can relate to you even through jokes. I wasnt always this jokey guy. I have a strong nerdy wonky tendencies. But i learned from talking to College Campuses. I learned that a lot of conservatives cant tell jokes which is weird. And if you talk to liberal groups, you can make fun of yourself and it makes harder for them to hate you. We need a truck load of bran just to crack a smile. What i am saying is learn how to tell stories. Most of you want to go into something related to something that going to take something away from my talk today, whatever time it is, i get confused, its just simply this. Learn how to persuade people that dont already agree with you. Learn how to make arguments that bring people to your fold rather than scare them away. Its very easy to be a shock artist. I mean, right now there are things i could do that would shock you, but they wouldnt persuade you of anything, right . And at the same time and this is advice that ive been giving you guys for a gazillion years. Have fun doing it, right . For a couple of reasons why. First of all, conservatives actually have more fun. Theyre happier about their lives because they dont have these expectations about the role of government and all of that kind of stuff. Moreover, life is too freakin short that makes you miserable. If youre doing something that makes you miserable. Stop doing it, and third, there is nothing that infuriates the left more than a conservative who seems to be enjoying themselves. Happiness is its own best revenge. And lastly, be happy because you should be happy warriors generally. The system that we live under, as flawed and as damaged as it was by obama and the stuff thats going on now and going back to the new deal, still remains the greatest system ever conceived of for maximizing human happiness. People [ applause ] people ask why is there poverty . We know why theres poverty. Poverty is the preset of the human condition. As species and as individuals we are all born, naked, penniless, ignorant and poor. Theres only one answer to why the only important question is not why is there poverty . Youd be too stupid to be a spell checker at an m m factory to answer that question. The important question is why is there wealth . Its only one answer. Its this amazing revolution, and i call the lockin revolution and its expanded by the American Revolution and it unfolds through the civil war. It transforms the world, and it all comes from these basic principles that our rights come from god and not from government and the fruits of our labors come from us and the individuals are sovereign and were citizens and not subjects and from that flows all human liberty and all human prosperity for the last 10,000 years. Thats a good side to be on and a good fight. You should be proud of it and be happy warriors about it, and if youre outnumbered and you see your party going another way, well, dont give in to it. Fight. See t. S. Lewis write, and theres no such thing as a truly won cause. The only way a cause dies is if people stop believing in it, and if sometimes youre outnumbered that makes it more fun. Be a member of the we happy few because that is where all of the fun is. Its no fun to go to a room and just shout to a whole bunch of people who already agree with you. Win some battles by enjoying yourself and writing for the right cause. Thank you all very much. [ applause ] do we have time for q and a. All i ask is that you make your statements in the form of a question. Yes, maam . Is it working . How do you believe well, dous do you believe that the conservative party is being properly portrayed in the Mainstream Media and if so, how can it be improveded . No. Conservatives have never been portrayed well in the news media. The idea that they ever were is a product of nostalgia and not fact. In 1960 1964, daniel shore the cbs evening news correspondent reported that Barry Goldwaters planned vacation to europe after securing the nomination was, in fact, a clandestine effort to meet up with neonazi elements in germany so they could coordinate the fall campaign. This is what social sciences called a huge freakin lie. This kind of stuff has been common in the media for a very long time. The answer has always been the same as having more Diverse Media diet is the only real solution for it, and in some ways, look, there is a lot of bad stuff going on in the media and for you that want to be journalists, this is ails the most exciting time in the history of journalism for young people to break into media. There are opportunities that you can use an iphone that used to take a camera crew and ten years of dues paying for you to do. The only down side is its kind of hard to figure out how to get paid for it but well figure that part out. I actually argue that the American Media is largely turning back to what it was prior to the new deal which is a Partisan Press from a lot of different perspectives. Theres nothing wrong with that and thats the way its remained in europe. In europe you have the london times which is conservative and you have the telegraph which is moderate conservative and you have beolshevik, and one of the things that the Washington Times and the post have done is theyve been more honest about where theyre coming from. The one thing you shouldnt do is get all of your news from any one source, and i say that as the guy at fox news. Dont do that. You know, figure out a good diet of how to keep it diverse because otherwise you get even more of this polarization where people cannot imagine that other people dont see the same facts the same way and thats how wars start. Anyway. So before i begin my question, i would like to see the students here, go subscribe to Jonah Goldbergs the g file. You can thank me later. You will not regret it. So mr. Geld, my name is noah thompson. Im a student at la sposita college, and i would like to ask you about william f. Buckley. Buckley is famous for uniting the conservative movement. There is a battle between conserve tichism, and can the conservative movement coalesce as it did in the 50s and what do you think buckley would have done, in other words, as bill clinton said to the intern, can we do this together, baby . [ cheers and applause ] uh im not going to get bated into a race to the bottom of intern jokes although a race to the bottom is never mind. So [ cheers and applause ] so, i get the gist of the question. There are some things that are overlooked in it and one of the things that bill buckley did to unify conservatism is kick people out of conservatism and the fights with the cranks and antisemiits and these were real struggles. One of the reasons people dont really understand bill buckleys influence look, the National Review is my home, but the firing line is this tv show he did and most of you have never seen, but that was the longestrunning Public Affairs Television Show in america for a long time, and this was at a time when they wanted to make George Wallace the symbol of what it meant to be awe conservative, right . This sort of racist, cranky populist guy and here comes william f. Buckley and his puns and he blew away the most evidence kated and sophisticated left at their own game and that did an enormous good for the brand. That is not the approach of many of the people many of the conservatives who have regular Television Shows now ill put it that way and we can use some more of that. At the same time, bill buckley could kick people out of the conservative movement in a way that youio cant do today. One of the things the internet has done is its not that the gate keepers are gone. Its that the walls on either side of the gates are gone and so it used to be, you know, if bill buckley said you were you know, beyond the pale, that if you were too extreme, where were you going to go . Theres no internet, right . You werent going to get on one of the three, four television channels. You were never going to get on meet the press. You were basically locked out and there are lots of things to be thankful for that that old world is gone because liberals are getting back to the other question. The Mainstream Media, the establishment and liberals, they basically got control of the message americans got. We live in a freer time now with a lot more access to a lot more sources, but one of the down sides of that is that it makes it much more difficult to police your own side. Everybody gets to be on twitter. Every freakin jack ass gets to Say Something stupid on twitter and so what happens is you get this incredible sort of reminds me of this line from orwell who says a man can be a failure because he can take to drink. You have this catalytic thing where someone says something st stupid on twitter, trust me, it happens. And the other side picks up that head like a medusa head, see . This is what the enemy is like where everyone gets defined by the stupidest people. My colleague has always said that conservatives he tries to do this in part because hes a vulcan, but he tries to take on liberalisms best arguments and not its worst ones and one of the things that i think could help you on your fights on College Campuses is stop looking to win the easeiest argument by picking the weakest link in the chain and this moves all liberals are stupid and pick the strongest link in the chain and have arguments about those. First of all, its so effective and it will make you smarter and its a more intellectually serious way to have an argument. You know, i would argue with sally cohn all day. I can also shave my face off with a cheese grater. There are just some things that just arent worth the time. So i have no problem getting back to your question. I have no problem with populist conservatism as long as its popular conservatism. If youve read george nashs history of the Movement Since 1965 and its about populism versus intellectualism and the rest. I think you can have both as long as its defined by conservatism. Limited, government conservatism. We dont hear a lot from the selfdescribed nationalists, right . We hear something else. Protectionism isnt conservatism, and nationalism isnt conservatism, and so i think that it will be a much harder task to unify the tribe, as it were. I think liberalism has huge problems on this front, too. We may be ripe for an emanuel macron type of guy on a white horse coming out of nowhere that basically destroys both parties. There are elements of of that which would make me happy. There are elements on that that make me want to flip the safety on my rifle. So the simple fact is times have changed and the model of william f. Buckley doesnt appeal the way it once did. I wish it did, and the pools that he had dont exist the way it once did. Yes, sir . Hi. Im amir from Washington State university. What i wanted to ask was the national influenced or popular influenced now what a lot of people refer to as the new right. One of the things that are charact characterized by their efficient use of media and new media formats. How do you think that more traditional intellectualist right movements need to change so that they can keep up, as it were . Yeah. I mean, this is an old story. In my life time alone, there were four new rights and just go to the new category and look up books about the new right and theyre talking about nine different new right which is actually did not exist, but its also an old story that conservatives have always because we have been locked up out of the elite, Mainstream Media channels and largely that of universities and all the rest. Conservatives just call on conservatives, and theyre very much like the porn industry. Theyve been incredibly good at adopting new technologies of communication. Im not kidding. Direct mail, vcrs, cds dvds, am talk radio. You go back and conservatives have found ways to work around the Mainstream Media because they had to and so it doesnt surprise me that the sort of nationalist types are doing that because they have to work around a lot of the elite conservative establish ams, as well which is a policy im not inclined to change, but look, this is something we forget conservatives or not conservatives. This is something that, you know, every magazine, every Television Network is scrambling about how to use social media better and all of the rest. I dont have any great ideas. I sort of organized my professional life around not being an early adopter of this stuff and not i want to write, you know . Thats what i like doing. And i like playing with dogs usually in nicer weather than this and drinking brown liquor. Doing long strategy sessions about how to maximize seo and all of that kind of stuff and facebook stuff which i think is satans urinal. Its just not my thing, but lots of people are thinking about it. It just doesnt surprise me that the outsiders have taken to it more because they have to, and at the same time, the more they try to be establishment venues because at the end of the day, ideas and arguments carry you forward and they bump up into problems with the arguments and they may be great at social media, but theyre not great at actually winning a lot of arguments. You havent seen a lot of trump copycats win any primaries and win any sort of political contest. You havent seen a lot of good, intellectual magazines and other outlets embrace this embrace trumpism too closely because part of the problem is youll get whiplash because donald trump will change his position so often so theyll stay at 30,000 feet and say they believe in the idea of trumpism, if not the flawed vessel thatten c incarnates it. That is a longwinded answer to say im not sure i have a good answer for you. Good afternoon, mr. Goldberg, my name is carolyn lindhy. I will be a rising freshman at hillsdale college. Yay i would like to, first off, thank you for the dad jokes. At 3 00 in the afternoon, they are highly appreciated, but my question is looking at a lot of the new rising faces of rightwing media among 20somethings, kind of going off this last question. How do we, the next generation of conservatives who want to be in journalism or media have integrity like you were saying, dont say or write what you dont believe when we are seeing those that are before us use us young people for the gains without representing conservatism. Yeah. In another time i would give a whole talk about a lot of this stuff and probably have a better answer to the question the other guy just asked me, but again, ive been doing this, i came to National Review late 1998 and i was a freelance writer before that and a Television Producer before that and i worked in the same building when the Weekly Standard started. My dad was an editor for the Newspaper Syndicate and ive been around this stuff for a really long time. First of all, lasting success comes from maintaining your integrity. It is really easy and i cant tell you how often my friends and colleagues from the National Review will see some person emerge as the new hot, young thing, right . And there will be a big deal and maybe theyve had some tv success or now youtube success or they wrote some breakthrough article and will it goes to the head, and they say this guy is the future or this girl is the future and six months later they say who was that again . Forget the ideological part is grinding it out day by day and this is one of the points, that i think is really important about your career. Whatever career you want to do. You have to like it. You dont have to like it. There are some people who get fulfillment in life from outside work and they just want to the work to pay for that. Thats fine and totally honorable and in some ways its healthier, but if youre going to go into journalism youll have to like it. I have a friend whose mom is a painter and she would always tell people, before you get to what school of painting, you have to like smooshing the paints. You have to like the fresh of it in the morning and you have to like it, right . I was a Television Producer and i really liked it when my learning curve was this. It was so cool, and i could tell chicks i worked for pbs and it sounded so sensitive, you know . I traveled around the world and i went to europe and asia and wear my light meter, and it was really cool until the learning curve leveled off and all of a sudden i said this really isnt for me. Theres no much management and too many variables to deal with. I like writing because im responsible for what ends up on the page, and i can stop being on tv tomorrow. I could stop writing. What i would like to write is science and fiction and comic books, but i need more fu money. Integrity first of all, it is more important than even big success. Its certainly more important than temporary, fleeting success. You also have to figure out what kind of person do you want to see . Do you want to be a person that people take seriously and respect or do you want to be someone who has really impressively blond hair who gets to be on the view, but no one really takes very seriously, right . And quality will win out in the end and the great thing about it is that in the end you can look back on the things and have a greater measure of pride. That said, if you really want to be in journalism, one of the first things you should try to not do is try to be like me. I am in you may have noticed i am incredibly selfindulgent, right . I have an imaginary talking couch in my goldberg file thing. I write about my dogs and tweet about my dogs all of the time, right . I get away with it. I shouldnt. Screw them. If youre just getting out of college dont share with the world all your deepest feelings. Dont tell the world why you have this unique insight into the universe. Report facts, make arguments, let the quality the subject matter drive you and when you build up some writing chops and reputation, you can start following my ridiculous schtick. Thank you, sir. Sure. Thank you. Guess were all done . Thank you all very much. [ applause ] saa. Lets give it up for Jonah Goldberg one more time, everyone. We are very grateful that all of you stuck with us today and i know it was a long day and the room is very full, butty woo are excited tonight to welcome senator mike leigh to our conference. Yeah thats the excitement we like. So the busses will be departing outside of thurston hall. So be downstairs in the lobby at 5 30 dressed as business professional. You must have your name tag. Ill repeat that. You absolutely must have your name tag. We will not let you on the bus without one because we wont let you into dinner without it. Take this time to go back and find your name tag, see me now rather than when you get to the hotel because at that point in time we will turn you away. So again, you must have your name tag in order to get on the bus and in order to get into dinner tonight. We are looking forward to having breakfast tomorrow at 8 00 a. M. In the continental ballroom. If you have questions or problems, please do let me know. I will be outside in the lobby and we will see you on the busses at 5 30. Thank you. The 39th annual conservative conference wrapping up. College students heard this afternoon from white house adviser Kellyanne Conway and a republican National Committee member. This morning they heard from radio talk show host dennis preger, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and george allen. This portion of todays event is just over two hours. Good morning, everyone. I trust that everyone had a good nights sleep and welcome back to day two of our National Conservative student conference. [ cheers and applause ] for those of you who dont know me, i am the cofounder and co chairman at the university of georgia and i am looking forward to a great weekend with all of you guys, but this morning i have the great honor and privilege to introduce den prager. I am a huge fan of mr. Pragers work for two reasons. Number one, without his show i would not have found this distinct organization, Young Americas Foundation which ive had the privilege to intern for this summer and number two, because i believe mr. Prager provides something very important, something very unique and something lacking for most of our policy discourse today, thats moral clarity. Dennis prager is the host of the