And worked on kennedys campaign. All of these people help make me the people that i am today. Youve a lot of people here at the National Book festival watching it right now. A bunch of young people here as well. What do you tell them . Their parents want to know. Thank you for being here. Stay in school get the best possible education that you can get be helpful, be optimistic and be happy. Dont get lost in the sea of despair. Here is the book. As the illustrator. Nominated a frat National Book award. This is again a book three representative lewis has written to others in graphic novel form. For longer conversation with congressman lewis. They sat down with him for three hours on her our indepth program. If you go to our website type and representative john lewis include the word book otherwise you will get all sorts of videos from the sea stand archives we sat down for three hours. You can put them together, you can put freemarket economics and your values together and your politics thats what i was so fascinated about in your book because the book is as you talk about, this emphasis of faith and ethics, economics, Public Service and the fact is as a lot of people seem to know you and your surprise victory, as a House Majority leader you are the only person of the history of the us house to be a House Majority leader and bats as you note in your book when a lot of people here about dave brat and all the media shows up but one of the things about your book is it tells you who dave brat is and im wondering if you could talk a little bit about the synthesis and overview and will go into detail on some of the things here about how there is this sight line between ethics and economics and politics. Guest thats primarily why i wrote the book. Sometimes conservative ideas go back to reagan and the founders and the primary goal was to show no, its about a 4000 year tradition and i wish everything with was a synthesis these days when you go to grad school these days and phd in economics or whatever all the incentives are highly flawed, you do some narrow little thing whereas all previous scholars of the last thousand whatever hundred years it was about synthesis, all the greatest people, socrates and the Judeo Christian tradition all the way up through enlightenment thinkers, jefferson, madison, they all took the classics. Hebrew, latin and they took math and sciences and rhetoric and the language and that was a liberal sciences education. I taught at a liberal college for 18 years, i believe theres so much in that synthesis that i wanted to show folks hey, whether i did a great job were not , it should hang together and the ethics dont match up with the economic byproduct like karl marx. He couldnt line up economic incentives with his ethics and its due to failure whereas adam smith and the enlightenment guys with jefferson and madison, those guys do lineup and mesh and i see it in the book but most of them wanted a large number of small competitors. Market ideals and madison, he wanted a large number of actions and people competing against each other and that works, both of those go together and these are not teaching enough of the kids enough of that these days i wanted to put out 200 pages, its a first edition,if i get better over time. Guest one of the things i was struck by with this is the elementary aspect of as you put it in the subhead, ethics, economics and politics and this is from page 27. I was really interested by this. You said god worked six days and rested on the seventh. That presumes private property. Youre not covered, that will presume the right to hold that maybe commented. The basis in judeochristian religious tradition that permeates Public Policy from your perspective i find to be fascinating. You set on page 27, our founding was an important part in the history of faith. Can you tell us more about why you see our founding as important in the history of faith . The one thing our founders did not see, they saw very clearly in the constitutional structure but you just got added. They could not see a day where the Judeo Christian tradition wasnt taken as a given. They were there right now, thats debatable so theres all this debate now on jeffersons wall of separation between art and state. We want that, the First Amendment is about that, the tradition of church and state and the press and etc. , no establishment of a religion but free exercise thereof so that third edition but its interesting, the left, i say the left a little in the book in terms of the soul of the American University, thats one of the books i referenced and i went to princeton seminary and we said lets make a deal. Lets move the seminole seminary across track. We found it. The puritans, 1640, same thing. We found these great traditions and said a Secular Society, we are sharing, a winwin group. We takethe school, the seminary across what youve got to teach ethics. It was assumed. It was going to be socrates, plato, aristotle in the catholic tradition. Now the left has not only taken those schools but said you can no longer teach ethics. Those theres no natural law, if you bring up tradition in a brown bag you get left out of the room. Everyone talks about separation of church and state but its interesting to see, paul riley when he looked at the first bus the multileft out his chair. That kind of separation, no law . No 10 commandments in our Secular Society . I dont think so. I show compassion and love code up about zero. Rome was the most loved society. Thats the example, cold and sterile and Brutal Society that encompasses the love at zero. You want separation of compassion and love from tradition . To the left, i know what they mean. Theydont want religious establishment but if you do the total separation we also , the left agrees with us on human rights claims and human rights are only in western europe at about 1400 out of Judeo Christian tradition so those rights we argue in our tradition, they precede the existence of government. So do you want separation of that . Therights of this, yes, sir no . I wanted to push the thinking a little bit. We are at war right now with a tradition who has a hard time with the First Amendment and religious tradition so i wanted to push the ideas out in public and get a good debate going so thats part of what we want. Guest host i mention the catholic tradition, later in the book how you delve into the works of Saint Augustin and thomas aquinas. I find that obviously my faith informs pretty much everything i do, how i live my life. How does your faith as its clear in your book but talk about how your faith informs your Public Service and your approach to service in the us house of representatives . Guest its kind of biographical. I was born in detroit, grew up in michigan, moved to minnesota in ninth grade, thanks dad. My girl is starting ninth grade. You went to hold college in michigan, protestant tradition. Went to work at Arthur Andersen in business in detroit for a little while and went to princeton seminary. The seminary, i went down to wesley in dc and American University and there was a great liberal friend of mine bill walton who wrote economics and ethics in the same book so that was the fire. I knew i wanted to teach philosophy and theology in college and once i saw that combination of economics and ethics in a book, that was it. I went to work for the army a little bit and for the world bank for a couple of years in the philippines on Education Sector stuff and my wife and was lucky enough, we moved down to randolph Rankin College to teach economics and ethics. I ran the Business Department and the ethics Minor Program for 18 years so thats how i live it out. It is my calling, putting those two things together and keeping the conversation going so a lot of this book is old lectures. Host this is not a memoir, its a book about economics and philosophy. But you did touch on what you just mentioned here which was closing in on your phd. This is not a memoir, theres not much detail around that. Im sure the viewers would like to know a little more story there. Kathy and i consider you both friends, shes a wonderful woman. Tell us how you keep the meter and then get married. Guest a mutual friend set up a blind date so it was awkward at first, one of those things, how are you doing . We started talking and we just had values in common. Kids, family, and we said really . In dc i met a normal person . I love it up here. Im joking. We had the same judeochristian ethics outlook. Im catholic now so you see that one. I love where were going. Host married how long . Guest 21 years since Johnson College so weve been a sad household. Host drop the oldest one off at college, any tears shed . Guest it hit me way hard. Shes been home more and im up here three weeks out of the month so thats not good but it hits when you see an empty room walking by every night, its not good. Host both mom and dad, jonathan not so much. Guest hes doing all right. He is working law at richmond, hes smart going to that one. Host a lot of people are. I wanted to come back to Something Else you talk about in the book that i think is really telling because you touch on obviously our founding which is something those of us from virginia, obviously the founders so many of them and you talk about not just the horizontal separation but you mentioned senator mike lee area but also not just across the three separate branches of the federal government but vertical as well because as the states were about to be a check on executive Branch Authority and growth. Guest absolutely. Host doesnt seem to be working out in that regard. Can you talk about what youre seeing in terms of the horizontal and vertical imbalances and the problem that creates as a country and the government. Guest i will go back real quick to medicine, i went to princeton seminary. And after he was done with his undergrad he studied hebrew. This is a smart guy so the hebrew tradition, i was asking in my stump speech how long did it take human nature to fall . Three chapters. If thats the tradition that informs your thinking and youre the author of the constitution what do you do . You break the power every way you can, horizontally, vertically and the separation of federal, state and local, there are 14 enumerated power in the constitution and since then we violated that beyond comprehension. Mike has a picture in his office where in 2013 the house did about five inches bill and the executive branch did 11. If you get to the fence where we are upside down, we are and we all know that executive overreach for several years every day but we have to push things back and the easiest way to see the direct bottom line is the data. Federal programs are the ones that are installment. Medicare, Social Security are both in installments by the board of trustees reports my 18 years. Everything defense touches, in 10 years all federal revenues will go to just those entitlement programs. We wont have a dollar left for the military, education, transportation and thats not me. Thats the best data up here, its the main graph of the Budget Committee. Thats kind of evidence whereas virginia is a very wellrun state. People think we are antigovernment, were not antigovernment. If you want power at the local level, vote on it. Go buy flowers. You want to wellrun state with transportation and education, education is in the constitution of the state. An excellent education. Its in the constitution. We have to, we should do that but the fed, ive got pants on fire by saying we debated what on the Education Committee and we did, i dont know how they found it but check again you guys. But we debated. Whats on the salad bar at the local school on a federal level. Host you note in here in this point, you said the vertical component is federalism and governments to the state and local level where it was intended to be. Even if someof the implications are a few conservatives may not like and i thought that was an interesting point. The case. Guest thats right. If the people vote, the key is we are supposed to be democratic republic. That doesnt mean you get to win every debate, it means you have a fair process. If the folks vote more flowers and you are a fiscal hawk, you lose. Then you move with your feet area. Host hold them accountable. Guest theres still freedom, theres a large number of options. Host people want to point out the federal government is the creation of the state. The states are not a creation of the federal government and its remarkable to me how few people realize that area i thought your point about the federalist checks and balances, its overlooked a lot of the time because we are concerned about the sampling of the separation of powers between legislative and judicial branches and the separate branch abuse there is powerfully evident when it comes to overwriting properly the prerogatives of the state. We see so many cases in this regard obviously for virginians , how important it is for a power plant and the epa overviews and overreach there, its been devastating for west virginia. 23 states have said weve got to stop them, were not among them that i sure hope the legislative branch at the federal level upholds the state prerogative when it comes to that executive Branch Overreach and put a stop to it. Guest it is important to note how this is come about. People think its the executive branch doing a power grab, in some respects its our own fault. Toby weighed on the judicial side, theres hot button issues out there and politicians dont want to vote. They are tough votes, you take two or three tough votes you might get kicked out so we arranged to save the judiciary, now we are doing the same thing with the executive, giving them all sorts of power. We tell the executive branch of the government youre going to make the law, implement it, determine what the plan is and you given in law the federal government tremendous power and now like you say, power transfers in virginia is learning what that looks like. Theyre having a hard time staying afloat so we need to retain article on Area Congress shall make all law. Host . Talk about fouts, is that one of the reasons you raced on a proponent of term limits and are you term limiting yourself . You are. Guest i turned myself 12 years. I got a couple offers, and i just looked, leadership, and if you got your eye on becoming a leadership chairman, theres nothing wrong with that. Seniority and wisdom goes along with that but the money is so dominant. We just had at the president ial level, on the republican side and democratic side 80 percent of outside votes going president ial and we put in all the income is again roughly in congress so it is an amazing power of the purse in winning elections. On top of the money part, people are finding themselves out to be chairman of a committee. People want to do that but if you vote in lockstep with leadership in order to get that flat, just start looking, bothsides do this. Youre not doing whats best for the country all the time. Host its also consistent with the founders, with citizen legislature. As you know, i ran for the senate. It was then that i would serve no longer than two terms. I think its important that that be the mindset and that be the mentality. Speaking of the founders, do you have a favorite founder and who is it and why . Guest probably madison because of the secretary and i love his constitution, that kind of thing but washington is interesting to me because he stands out. Theres all these guys in jefferson if you are in virginia is big and there are plenty, we are blessed with this history in virginia but washington, the more i read on him hes the one guy that everybody liked. You walked into a room and hes the man. Everybody revered him. They just deferred automatically so you dont quite get to see my wife but you just want to see whats look on the guys face, who is this guy that all these great men who have egos turned to him and say this is it. Host thats mine. I live on one of his old farms. In mount vernon and ill tell you a story, i was over on a business trip in london and i was talking to a british historian and i mentioned to him, we were talking about the founding and i said many of us including me believe theres a divine inspiration and Divine Providence in the founding of america and we look at these founders and i told him about living near mount vernon and a funny point, he said its possible the British Empire could have defeated George WashingtonGeorge Washington, thomas jefferson, james madison, benjamin franklin, john adams, the whole lot of them no way. Its really remarkable. Guest it is remarkable. Host youre talking here again, this underpinning of the moral case for Free Enterprise that we make in this which i think is missing often from conservative commentary. And from the republican side. I believe like you do that Economic Growth and opportunity, upward mobility and as our Republican Party says, Free Enterprise system sets the fire of human needs and economic justice. You make that point impressively in the book on this page 198, freedom and earnings. The next graph shows the incomes of the people and the bottom, 10 percent of earners in four Different Countries from the least market oriented to the most free market oriented, more fare better under capitalism, always. History, data is solid. Those that dont have the book, go out and buy the book, american underdog. This chart is definitive proof of that. And one of