This week on q a, Heritage Foundation distinguished fellow, lee edwards. He discusses his memoir just right a life in pursuit of liberty. Host lee edwards, your new book just right. What do want somebody to take away . Mr. Edwards i want them to realize that Barry Goldwater was far more than just somebody who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That he was, in fact, the most consequential loser in american politics. I want them to come away, hopefully, with an idea that Ronald Reagan was not amiable dunce. But actually an intellectual who is very comfortable with ideas. I would like them to come away with an appreciation of bill buckley. Sometimes we get caught up in his style, but he was also a very serious man who could have been the playboy of the western world, but chose, as a put it in the book, to be the st. Paul of the conservative movement. To evangelize on behalf of conservatives and throughout his life, some 60 years. Host you say in the book you are now designated as the longest living conservative and conservative in a country who has been active in politics. What year did it start for you that you were active in politics . Mr. Edwards it would have started in 1960 with the Republican National convention, which i attended. I was an editor of the young Republican National newspaper. That was the first of some 11 or 12 National Conventions i attended. That is when i got into it. That same year is when we founded Young Americans for freedom. That had a profound effect on politics in this country. Host lets go down the list quickly, everything you have done, without explanation. Then we can come back to some of these things. Besides helping to found Young Americans for freedom, what is next . Mr. Edwards i was also there at the founding of the American Conservative Union, which was 1964, which occurred after the goldwater. Host next. Wards host mr. Edwards then i would say that i founded my own Public Affairs firm in 1965 because i had been in the Barry Goldwater president ial Campaign Starting in 1963 when i was working with the draft goldwater committee, then the goldwater for president committee. Host how long did you have your own firm . Mr. Edwards 20 years. Host what did you do other than that firm during those 20 years . Mr. Edwards from time to time i was writing. I was writing a weekly column, which i syndicated myself. I did write a couple of books, a good one called you can make a difference with my wife. It was the First Political handbook for conservatives. I also wrote a little book called rebel peddler, which was about a young millionaire salesman down in north carolina, and how he was motivated by positive latitude to become a billionaire and try to get the people working for him to become billionaires as well. Host after those 20 years in pr, your own firm, what was next . Mr. Edwards in 1984, 1985, frankly, brian, i was burned out. I had been working hard and enjoying it very much. Working for political people like bob dole, the white house, Republican National committee, then a whole bunch of conservative organizations. The American Conservative Union and so forth. I was just tired. I had been thinking and really wanting to go back to school and teach. I wanted to be a teacher at the college level. To do that, i had to go back to school. So, i enlisted at the Catholic University of america, and it took me five years, but i got a phd in world politics. So that was what enabled me to begin teaching at a Catholic University. I will be starting my 31st year of teaching at Catholic University in january of 2018. Host i want to put on the screen a photograph of something located very near where we are sitting right now and ask you about it, because you write a lot about it. This is a photograph of what . Mr. Edwards this is a bronze replica of the goddess of democracy statue, which was first corrected in the papiermache formed by prodemocracy Chinese Students in june of 1989. It became a symbol of freedom, the desire for freedom, and a part of those young chinese. It also became a symbol of what a totalitarian regime would do to stamp out freedom, liberty and calls for democracy. No sooner was that statue erected, the original one in 1989, then when was that takes an troops killed under maybe thousands of students. Therefore, when we decided to build a memorial, a memorial to all the victims of communism, and that is 100 Million People. That is probably a conservative estimate. We take that estimate from the black book of communism. It was published by harvard university. We decided we would do this. But to do it we had to overcome , a really wide, wide variety of obstacles. Host where did it start, what year and was it your idea . Mr. Edwards as a matter of fact, it was not my idea. It was january of 1990. It was some two months after the berlin wall had come down. I was having brunch with my wife and our daughter, elizabeth. I was fretting already that people were forgetting about why we had fought the cold war. People were forgetting about the victims of communism and the crimes of communism under the soviets and the chinese, and many other countries and regimes. So i said, we have to do something. Ann said, you know what we need, we need a memorial to the victims of communism. It was her idea. I merely picked up a paper napkin and wrote on it, memorial victims of communism. The next day, i called an old comrade in arms and said, would you join me in this great adventure to build a memorial for the victims of communism . That was 1990. It took us some 17 years. We had to negotiate the 24 steps, which are called for by public law if you want to build a memorial in washington d. C. Host who sets those 24 standards . Mr. Edwards that was done by the National Park service with congressional approval. Host if you go by your statue and stand in one particular location, you can see the capital of the united states. What makes you think anybody pays any attention to this when they drive by . Mr. Edwards we know that they do because they stop, they will pause, there is a lot a foot traffic. This is mass avenue, new jersey avenue, two blocks from Union Station and four blocks from the u. S. Capitol. By the way, on the top of the capital is the statue of freedom. That was a deliberate choice on our part to put our democracy of freedom there, so you can also see the statue of freedom on top of the u. S. Capitol. We know also that National Leaders from all over the world, the baltics, eastern and central europe, taiwan and many other countries come to that place. They lay a wreath, they say it they say a prayer. Not only that, but every year in june, on the anniversary of Ronald Reagans famous mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall speech, we have a public event. This past june, some 22 embassies came with representatives, laid a wreath and were joined by some 25 ethnic groups, chinese, korean, cambodian, laos and so forth, cuban and also laid wreaths. This has become, for foreign leaders, our memorial port of call. They will go to the state department and very often they will come to our statue. Host where was len from . Mr. Edwards he was born in america but his parents were ukrainian. We worked with the national cap diggnation National Captive Nations Committee for a number of years. It was very natural but i would go to him. He would help and made a significant contribution. Host right after john adams book by David Mccullough was written, he led a group to find a place to put a john Adams Memorial somewhere near the mall. It is not happening, it is not there, so, there are hundreds of statues around washington how much did it cost . Mr. Edwards it cost about 1 million to build it, to lay the to do the bronze replica, to lay the marble for the space there and so forth. It does not sound like very much, but believe me, trying to raise 1 million for a memorial to the victims of communism is no easy task. The government, by congressional resolution, gave us the land. About one third of it. About a third of an acre. Host who led that in the congress . Mr. Edwards it was bipartisan, it was jesse helms in the senate, Dana Rohrabacher in the house, bob torricelli, who was a liberal democrat in the house. Dana rohrabacher furry very conservative republican. Jesse helms was held off by liberal democrats. It was bipartisan from the very beginning. That was something we always insisted upon. Host what was the first step . Mr. Edwards the first step was to get a congressional resolution saying that this should be built. We had to go to that, drawing upon the support and the help of someone like tom lantos, a marvelous liberal democrat from california, holocaust survivor, the only one ever to serve in congress, and later chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee. Having his support was important. There we had Dana Rohrabacher and tom lantos together for this project. That helped us to get it approved. It was approved unanimously by the u. S. Congress. Host by that time had you raised money . Mr. Edwards we had begun raising money. Host where did the first money come from . Mr. Edwards the first money came from ethnic americans, vietnamese americans, lithuanian americans, hungarian americans. Host how did you get them to give you money . Mr. Edwards we went to them through the contacts that we had made through the National Captive Nations Committee. We knew foundations, we knew individuals who would be interested in our project. Frankly, also, we went through various lists which were accumulated over the years of conservatives, who were not only conservative, but anticommunist. Stepbystep, year by year, we were able to do it. We had to get, for example, our design approved by three different commissions. Host three different commissions under what mr. Edwards these were three federal commissions dealing with monuments in washington d. C. Host three federal commissions. Mr. Edwards yes, they had to sign off on the fact of the design and the existence of it. We had to convince them that this was really an american, as well as an international and global memorial. We had to point out to them that we fought the cold war against communism for 47 years. Coming out of that were all kinds of victims. We had to point out to them how many people had died under mao, under stalin, under fidel castro. All of these facts and figures had to be brought together to convince these commissions that there was a reason to have a memorial to the victims of communism. Host how did you decide, or try to decide where your spot would be . Mr. Edwards we had several different places. Finally, glen with the National Park service joined us by massachusetts avenue and new right on the corner from the georgetown law center. He said, this is something, what about this . Love it, because there were thousands of cars going by. There was not a lot of residential people there around. Therefore, we had to worry about getting people who lived in an apartment to approve the site. Finally, we discovered it was not good enough. All of these various commissions had signed off. We had to get the approval of a Neighborhood Commission. 6c. I said, how do we do that . The key guy is mr. Thomas. We have got to get him. He is directly responsible for this plot of land. I said, where is he . In a nursing home. We called up, made an appointment on a sunday afternoon. We visited mr. Thomas. He came in this wheelchair and he was africanamerican. We did not know that before we arrived. I am thinking, how can i convince an africanamerican politician to sign off on this . We began talking. Host why were you suspicious that he would not sign off . Mr. Edwards just that, what was his background . Did he even know what communism was . Did he know who stalin was or mao was . It was a sure thing he knew who dr. Martin luther king was, but did he know who Joseph Stalin was . Host did he . Mr. Edwards for two and a half hours we sat there, we stood and he sat, talking. We developed he had marched with Martin Luther king, a critical ally of mary m barry here in washington dc. At the end of two and a half hours, we are just about exhausted. He looked up and said, i just want to tell you one thing, i dont like communism. Host could he have stopped it . Mr. Edwards yes, he could have. Two days later, this was sunday, tuesday, he introduced a resolution at that Neighborhood Commission approving the building of a memorial at that spot. Host was he there the day you mr. Edwards he was there and personally introduced the resolution. He made a commitment that i will never, never forget his contribution. Host is he alive . Mr. Edwards no. Not anymore. Host what are the other major steps in this process . When did you i know from reading your book that you thought you would get 500,000, you had one million. When did you realize it would cost more . Mr. Edwards i would say we started incorporating the victims of communism memorial foundation, because you have to have an organization to be responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the memorial. Host who pays for that . Mr. Edwards we did and we still are in perpetuity. The Parks Service is theyre looking on, but the direct responsibility for it is ours. The foundation. Host but you had to give money to the National Park service, which has no responsibility . Mr. Edwards this is for if something major occurs, like an earthquake or a bolt of lightning, then they will step in. The day to day, week to week thing making sure things are , clean, polished and so forth, all of that is done by us. To we thought we had raised enough, then all of a sudden another hundred thousand. Came down to the fact that we had to raise 75,000 more. This was in 2006. We founded and dedicated it in 2007. I thought, where will we get the money . I remembered that jesse helms chief of staff was a man named Carl Anderson, and that carl had become the supreme knight of the knights of columbus. Host Catholic Organization. Mr. Edwards the largest Catholic Organization in america. Worked for jesse helms, a hardshell baptist. I thought, maybe we could get jesse to write to carl to send us a check for 25,000, which we had asked for. Contacted the office, and it turned out that senator helms had fallen on bad times in terms of his health, and he was in a nursing home and was in taking and wasnt taking visitors anymore. His daughter said ok, draft me a letter and i will see what i can do. She called a couple of days later, he approved it, mailed it to Carl Anderson. We heard nothing for a week. After two weeks, i was getting very, very apprehensive about what was going to happen here. In the mail came a letter, wonderful letter from Carl Anderson and a check for 25,000. I would like to say that Divine Providence brought together a hardshell baptist and the most prominent catholic person in catholic lay person in america to make this coming. To me that proves that this is something that is really part of what Ronald Reagan used to call, the divine plan. The dp. Host was there anybody that opposed the idea of doing this in the congress . Mr. Edwards there were a couple of people who, in the debate said, well, do we really need another memorial . Somebody even said, should we have memorials to the victims of capitalism . There was a little bit of kick back like that. When the final vote came, it was unanimous. Even those who raised, very small number of people, and by the way, this was a Democratic Congress. This was 1993, so it was a Democratic Congress and it was signed into law by bill clinton. Both a Democratic Congress dominated, and a democratic president approved it and enabled it to move ahead. Host how much time do you think you spent on this . Mr. Edwards i think in years, probably about 14 years, which we found out was about the average time that it takes to build a memorial. That is the average, about 14 years host are there other memorials in this town that have the same kind of situation as yours . Mr. Edwards they are all built by private money. That is part of the law. No federal funds. The Holocaust Memorial museum was built with private funds. The land was ceded to them by congress, by the government. But to build the incredible structure was done by private funds. Host their other ukrainian monuments around town that you cite in the book. The one down at 22nd and p, why so much of that and does the average american coming here to visit ever Pay Attention to this stuff . Mr. Edwards i think the average american would not, but we did some polling and we found out there are about 30 million americans of an ethnic background from eastern and central europe, even from china, from cuba, and that represents a sizable percentage of the american population. When they come to washin