>> thank you. i want to thank andrew. i think he was in my first class at grove city college. i think he literally was. thank you to pat foil and ron r robinson who is not here but thank you for all you do for young people and campuses around the country. ronald reagan conservatives was about preserving. thanks to c-span for being here, too. people call c-span and say thank god for c-span. there is not many sources as objective as c-span. they put it out there unedited. and let it speak for itself. there are so many talks that good on around the world and i say if there could be a camera here to capture and broadcast this and only c-span does that. what is a reagan conservative is my topic. and that is based on my new book "11 principles of a reagan conservative." this question, what is a reagan conservative you hear if you do a google search on the words reagan conservative it comes up with 30 million people trying to define and what it means. and a lot of that is because so many republican candidates state-wide, local wide, presidential candidates will say i am a reagan conservative. what is that? i don't think they totally know what a reagan conservative is but they want to have his political success and appeal. here is a man who won 44-50 states against an imcumbant president. one of the reason i think jimmy carter does so much is the lingering rejection he must have. and it is a good heart. i don't want to belittle that. but to lose 44-50. reagan was reelected by winning 49-50 states. and the only state he didn't win was minnesota which was the home state of his challenger. so reagan twice won states that republicans could only dream of winning. he won california twice. new jersey twice. massachusetts twice! people are laughing and saying this is ridiculous and this could never happen again. my home state of pennsylvania. the second election he won the electoral college by 523-13. there was no reason to recount florida. the combined was 1, 114-62. what republican wouldn't want to be like reagan in that sense? if you think about it, ronald reagan's presidency, not just getting elected but when he left left with the highest approval rating since eisenhore. prior to carter was gerald ford who never won the presidential election. and then prior to that you had richard nixon who resigned in disgrace. prior to that lbj's whose presidency went so bad he didn't try to get the renomiknacnation. if you go back before truman he talked about the presidency like a great white jail. he had the highest disproval rating of any president until george w. bush. go back to woodrow wilson. his terms ended in dispare. he had 2-3 strokes toward the end. reagan was elected because it was the best people could do to gate third term of reagan. we won one term. he lost in 1992 to bill clinton. clinton wins with 43% of the vote because of the third party candidate. bush gets in without winning the majority. and bush leaves office and around 2007 he had the worst gallop approval numbers since truman. obama wins in 2008. 2012, obama is the first president in history, the first democrat i believe since lbj to get over 50% of the vote. but in 2012, first president to get elected to do this with less poplar and electoral college votes. reagan won 49-50 and obama won 26. a bare majority. if you look at a map of counties it was a sea of red. under obama it was still a sea of red if you look at counties. speaking of obama, there was a poll down in 2013, after the 2013 -- after the second inaugural that asked americans if ronald reagan was to run who would you vote for? and they said reagan by 53%. how was obama elected? the youth vote. that same poll, they asked people ages 18-34 who would you vote for reagan or obama and they picked reagan. unlike the gallop, they do a presidents day poll every annual presidents day and they have been doing this 13 times since 2001. reagan placed first among the american public as far as the question who is your all time favorite question? 2001, 2001, 2011 and 2012. he usually finishes in the top three beating lincoln. imagine that. in june 2005, there was a poll done by aol and time warner, aol online surveyed americans and asked them to put in whatever name they wanted: who is the greatest american of all time? 2.4 million people responded which anyone tells you is far and away a representative sample. you only need 500 people to do this polling. and reagan won. greatest american of all time. what republican wouldn't want to be like reagan? who wouldn't aspire to that success? you now have republican groups all over the country. county and state groups have been holding annual lincoln day dinners and they have been changing them the reagan day. the dinners were the month of president's day and also lincoln's birthday and reagan's. i get asked which candidate is the most like reagan. where would reagan stand on this or that issue and that begs the question of what did ronald reagan believe. the standard barrier and icon of the republican party and what did he believe? reagan never gave a definition of conservatism. feb february 6th, 1967, reagan was speaking and he spoke at this event every year of his presidency. he was at c-pack every year. i have the full february 1977 speech. he said conservatism can mean different things to those that call themselves conservatism. conservatives seek to conserve and preserve the time tested values and ideas that they believe best serve the country, citizens and people everywhere. the idea that over time that have proven to work and be the best and in fact and recommendation and the definition given my russell kirk who is run of the philosophical speakers for conservatives. he wrote books in the 1950s-1970s. reagan said this in 1977: conservatives the common sense and decency of ordinary men and women working out their own lives in their own way. this is the heart of american conservatives. conservative wisdom and principles are derived from a willingness to learn not from what is going on now but also from what happened before. the democracy of the dead. the idea that our ancestors have something to say. we should stop and heed and think about what they learned before us. that doesn't mean everything done 200 years ago was right. the definition is time-tested values that have endured over time. reagan continued the principles of conservatism are sound because they are based on what men and women have discovered through experience in not just one generation, or a dozen, but in all of the combined experience of mankind. you don't just throw everything out because you think you know better now. reagan said when we conservatives say we know something about political affair and what we know can be stated as principles we are saying the principles we hold dear are those that have been found through experience to be ultimately beneficial for individuals, families, communities and nations. found through the often bitter testing of pain and sacrifice and sorry. it comes up all the time. the issue of same-sex marriage is so dominant in this discussions. that is a case where the conservative position on that isn't to try to be mean and deny people marriage rights and so forth or tell people who love each other cannot come together. the conservatives believe there is something to learn from an institution that has been the way it has been for multiple thousands of years. and to be real careful where an issue in 1993 the entire party and the clintons defined marriage as man and a women and anyone who disagrees is a bigot and all sorts of names. the conservative would say hold on a second. just 20 years ago you were where he are now. the conservative says let's stop and look back and see what we know about this through experience. reagan said that a real true conservative needed to be an a social and economic conservative and reagan was both. he was the total complete conservative. not on some issues but social and economic. i lay out 11 principles of reagan conservatives. i don't know how i came up with 11 other than i laid them out and counted them and there were 11. others said you should do ten and make it like the ten commandments of reagan. and i said there is not ten. there is a 11. and they said do a dozen. 11 stabenow is an odd number. here they are. there is going to be a quiz at the end of this so make sure you take notes quick. actually you have a cheat sheet in the book and on c-span you have a dvr. freedom, faith, family, dig nity of human life, speern exceptional, the founders wisdom and vision, lower taxes, limited government, peace through strength and anti-commune ism and believe in others. i will not have time to go through all of them but i will a few. contracepti the first of these is freedom. ronald reagan spoke of freedom over and over again. the time for choosing speech, which he gave on behalf of barry gold water on october 27th, 1964 said mankind from the swamps to the stars, the long assent from the swamp to the stars has above all struggled to be free. my reagan's reckoning people everywhere needed freedom. when he wrote that speech, freedom was looking in the communist world. and reagan talked about a cuban boat person who was escaping castro's cuba and he said how lucky he is that he had a place to escape to. and reagan said if we lose freedom here in america there is no place to escape, too. this is the last stand here. if we lose freedom on earth there is no place to escape. and reagan felt americans needed to understand this. they needed to understand this freedom thing. and need to understand it today, too. in his farewell speech on january 1989, beautiful speech written by peggy nunan and that is one of the four speeches in the back of the book. reagan talked about what he called a freedom man and i will quote. he says he has become increasingly pensive in the last few weeks as he is preparing to leave washington and go back home to california about 40 minutes up the road from where he are at. he talked about looking at the whitehouse window saying i have been thinking about at the window and reflecting on the past eight years and what they have meant. the image that comes to mind like a refrain is a nautical one. a small story about a big ship, and a sailor. it was the height of the boat period. these were the vietnam boat people after we left and vietnam was communist and we had thousands of people flewing like in cuba as well. the american sailor was hard at work on the ship patrolling the south china sea. the crews spied a leaky boat and there were refugees inside hoping to get to america. they sent a launch to bring the ship in to safety. as they went through the choppy seas, one saw the sailor on deck and looked up to him as the sail sailor held out a hand and he yelled, hello american sailor, hello freedom man. imagine that. this boat person, at that moment, he is more than a boat person. he is the spokesperson for freedom. as reagan was at that moment. you have a symbol here that is more profound and deeper than the south china sea. he doesn't look up and say hello military man, or sir, but hello american sailor, hello freedom man. he is the freedom man. reagan, a small moment with a big meaning, a moment the sailor who wrote it in a letter couldn't get that out of his mind and i could not stop it. that is what it meant to be an american in the '80s: we stood for freedom. freedom has many manifestations and you will hear this freedom mantra but freedom can mean regulations. it is easier to open a business if you are not burdens by regulations. you need to freedom to be able to open and start a business and in some countries you can not because of all of the the owner regulations. taxes rob you of freedom. if 50% of your income is going to taxes that is 50% less. you could use that to do lan landscaping, pay off student loans, higher a plumber, give the charity. the more the government takes away in your taxes especially as you have a bigger growing government the more you lose of your personal freedom. freedom in america can be the freedom to educate your children in the school where you would like to send them. to a private school, home school. reagan talked about freedom of religion and religious tolerance. the freedom to immigrate. think about that. when reagan was president everybody behind the iron curtain lacked the ability to immigrate. reagan's secretary of defense said any time i mentioned the iron curtain to an audience and he said this a year before he died. he said any time you mention the berlin wall ask the audience which direction did the east german guards point their guns? right? east. on their own people. you are talking to a former secretary of defense. walls are usually kept to keep enemies from invading. this was a wall to keep people who wanted to be free from leaving. there was barbed wire on top. the person of the free speech flew over and there was raked gravel that was there so that if footprints were seen there the night before because one of the east german guards let someone go free they would be held responsibility. reagan said only when people are free to worship, build and create and decide their own future benefit from risks do societies become prosperous. he talked about the freedom to extract oil and energy. you know how much energy would be extracted if the government allowed them to do so? the freedom to do that. and freedom was said not just the exclusive domain of americans. it is one of the deepest and noblest aspectofs of the human spirit. conservatives need to be freedom fighter and keepers of the flame of liberty. second principle. getting these down. first one. 1-11 is less than 10%. faith was the second one. consistent with reagan you have conservatives talking freedom, freedom, freedom but what reagan understood and what conservatives is about is freedom needs faith. they are dependented upon each other. faith is like the moral rudder to freedom. freedom without faith can be just license. it can be vice but not virtue. it can be las vegas not the city of god. and freedom is elevated when you have faith to infuse it. faith provides a kind of grace to freedom that elevates the free will and allows us to aspire to our better angles. reagan worked a lot with pope john paul ii who he was close to and he made a statement reagan could have made: freedom without faith can become confused, preverse and even lead to the destruction of freedom for others. you can think of examples for that. pope benedict the 16th said the west serves from a confused ideaology of freedom and because of that we are suffering from a dictatorship of relativeness. a scripture verse says use freedom to serve others and love your neighbor as yourself. russell kirk, who i mentioned before, his 1974 classic the roots of american order talked about ordered liberty. you have to have an inner order before the country can have outer order. george washington talked about self-governing one's self before a nation can govern. you have to have a nation of self-governing people before you can have a successful nation. john adam says this constitution was made for religious and moral people and if you take away you are in trouble. reagan quoted john washington on prayer. reagan said the image of george washington nailing is in the snow of valley forge was the most sublime image in american history. why? because it personified people that knew it wasn't enough to depend on their own courage and goodness. they must seek help from their father and preserver. bill clark and here and we co-authorered bill clark's bio. he was close to reagan and told me his favorite quote was from lincoln who said i am drawn to my knees as i have nowhere else to go. reagan feared what happened to a fear democratic society when it scraps religious faith. here is another speech at georgia town in october of 1988. reagan said at its full flowering freedom is the full cycle of the society and freedom can't exist alone and that is why the theme for is so apt: learning, faith and freedom. each reinforces the other and each makes the other possibility for what are they without each other. and then he wrote a quote from the writer of democracy in america. 1835. despitism may govern without faith but liberty can't. religion is more needed in democrat cites than other because iowa you have to freedom to do things. so to control things and have order you need people that absence of law providing that order will self govern themselves before you can self-govern the nation. reagan warned learning is a good thing but unless it is tempered by faith and a love of freedom it can be dangerous. the names of many people that were educated are on the roles of infimny. reagan said that the twin beacons of faith and freedom that brighten the american sky. not the beacon alone. but the twin beacons of faith and freedom. principle three. family. the trinity reagan worshiped -- father, son, and holy spirit -- was family. he argued it was foundational to civilization. reagan constantly made statements on the family. this surprised me. i had no idea how true that was. this is one of the last principles i added to the book because when i saw the sheer frequency of these references it became clear. reagan said the family was quote the most basic and important unit of society. the family is the nukeilous of civileration and the cornerstone of american society. and as the country disappears the country is in trouble. families stand at the center of society as the very foundation of freedom and children belong in a family. here is a very conservative thought and sentiment from reagan. it is in a family that children are not only cared for but they are taught the moral values and traditions that give order and stability to our lives. what happens when there is no longer an understanding of those traditi traditions? it is important that you affirm an older set of values. the time-tested values. and here another conservative sentiment. it is up to families to pass on the values we most cherish. our conseptember of the family must withstand the trends of lifestyle and legislation. reagan worried about progress that redefines family according to the latest lifestyle. in one of his final formal proclamati proclamations as president. this was days before leaving the president in january 1989. he said this: we must teach youngsters the beauty of the loving lifelong relationship between husband and wife that is marriage. here he is defining marriage as the loving lifelong relationship between husband and wife that is marriage. patty reagan said she thinks her father wouldn't have stood in the way of gay marriage and i was asked by the press where reagan stood on this. he never commented on it because in reagan's time this wasn't thinkable. anybody that proposed that idea in the '50s or '60s would have been taken to an asylum. that was out of anybody's mental framework. reagan when you see these sentiments the family has been with us from the dawn of human history, he said, what can each of us do as a father, daughter, mother, son or grandparent to strengthen this divine institution and he envokes the holy family as a model and warns of those forces that would weaken or destroy the family and he said above all this is, i think, significant, doctors will use this same phrase and in other contexts but reagan said the government first of all should do no harm to the family. first of all. first and foremost do no harm. 4 is dignity of human life and santa ctuity reagan said in 198 high administration is dedicated to the presservation of a free land and there is no cause to affirm that to the right of all human beings the right that without no other rights have no meaning. there can't be freedom of assembly, immigrate, without first the right to life. that comes first from which all others flow. reagan supported a human life amendment to the united states constitution and a lot of pro-lifers thought you don't have to mess with the constitution on this. had they done that it would i n inserted the paramount right to life is invested in each human being from the moment of fe fertlization without regard to health, age and dependency. the obama hhs mandate that requires americans to fund abortions would have been unconstitutional and directly violated the human life amendment if such an amendment would have been implemented and passed. that would have been a long shot and probably never happened. bill clark used to point to reagan's experience as a lifeguard in dixon, illinois at rock river. he patrolled the waters for sever seven summers and saved the lives of 77 people as a lifeguard. ages of 15-22. we have lifeguards in here. i have students who have been lifeguards and they say i didn't save 77 people. but that instilled in reagan, clark argued, a fundamental respect for life. it was also an outgrowth of his faith. january 1984 speech to religious broadcasters reagan said quote god's most blessed gift was the gift of life. he sent a priest as the babe in a manager and compared to abortion movement to slavery. new york times went nuts when he did this. this nation fought a terrible war so that black americans would be gaiven their rights. today another question begs to be asked how can we survive as a free nation when some decide that others are not fight live and should be done away with? i believe no challenge is more important to america than restoring the live to all human beings to without that right no other rights have no meaning. and he said suffer the children to come into me for such is the kingdom of god and ended with that. reagan said every human person is a resecra. that is a sacred reality. and every human being is infuseinfused with a sole that soul -- soul that means they are eternal. and they are more important than a state because states are not eternal. souls and human beings are. reagan gave a july 1987 speech to a small room of pro-life leaders. i had to go to reagan library to find this. he talked to them and said i know some of you have been accused of being single-issue voters but what issues is of greater significance than this. he ended with this: uled i would like to leave you with words from terence kirk and he wrote this the gift of special life is no less beautiful which acco acy with illany illness, lonliness, or anything else. human life gains extra splendor as it requires special care, concern and reverence. it is through the weakest vestals vessels the lord reveals love. a former student of mine who has a down syndrome child, i shared that with him and he said that is so true. another principle of reagan conservative. american exceptioanaliexception. reagan thought america was a book beacon to all humanity and the last hope. he said that for 30 years before the presidency. i found a speech he gave to a tiny women's college wall william woods college in missouri not far from where churchhill made his irony curtain speech. and in that speech, reagan said america is less than place than an idea. chew that over. america is less of a place than an idea. it really is. the bases of this country and our religion and the idea that deep within the heart of each one of us is something so god-like agustus said we have have a vacuum that is god shaped and only god fits that piece. there is something so god-like and precious that no individual or group has a right to impose his will upon the people so well as they can decide for th themselv themselves. and reagan said over and over again and was ridiculed for this thought: i in my own mind think of america as a place in the scheme of things that was set aside as a promise land. like america set god aside for a special purpose as a promise land. i believe that god and shedding his grace on this country has kept an eye on our land and guided it as a promise land. and any country so incredible and blessed and if it were to turn its back on the god that showered it. what might happen to that country once it no longer gave gratitude where it is due. he talked about the shining city. that comes from john whinthrop. it is required at grove city college. how many have read him? he wrote it to describe the american he imagined. he was an early pilgrim. an early freedom man. he journeyed here today on what we called a little wooden boat. remember the ricty boat rather it is coming from cuba, the south china see, a boat person from vietnam. he was looking for a home that would be free. i spoke of the shiny city all my life but i don't know if i communicated what i saw. it was a tall city build on walks and wind swept and god blessed. a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and crea creativity. the doors were open and anyone with the will and heart to get there was able to. that is how i saw it and see it, too. reagan said that in his farewell address and that is fascinating because usually it is review what for reagan with a was like a civics lesson he is going to give. so i have 11 principles and those are five. i'm going to hit two more and i will go through them quicker. all right? okay. the founder's wisdom and vision. reagan more than any other president plainly rediscovered the founders. he quoted them constantly. so with the public papers of the united states which is printed by the government office went through and tried to count the number of times that presidents cited the founders. jimmy carter and gerald ford did the least. which is odd because they were right around 1976. president's kennedy, nixon, johnson and bill clinton commonly cited them about 100-200. lbj was the highest at 240. cited them 850 times. president obama doesn't cite them very often. i have checked this. he doesn't. and he gave 4th of july statement just a few years ago where he referred to the founders at men of property and wealth quote. but reagan would refer to the founders in this glowing language. here is the 1964 time for choosing speech. alexander hamilton a nation that prefers disgrace to danger is prepared forked for a master and deserves one. should moses have told the children to go to ahead rather than deal with the wilderness? are we to believe the people in history died in vein. he is saying step up and accept the risks and fight for freed. he loved the reading of tom pane. his favorite quote was we have the power to make the change. the battle against conservatism was able to do that. he told richard alan a few weeks after jimmy carter was inaugurated and alan came out here and he said dick my idea of foreign policy is simple: we win they lose. what do you think of that? and around would have thought you are crazy. you are going to defeat the empire and the soviet union? reagan thought he would do. lower taxes. reagan conservatives from a policy perspective most identify with lower taxes. and lower federal income taxes in particularly. and even more specifically the federal progressive graduated income tax. anybody know when the income tax was permanent in america? 1913. it is little over a hundred years old. passed by woodrow wilson and congress. this required an amendment to the constitution. young folks watching. they had to amend the constitution to be able to tax property. the idea of a permanent progressive income tax is new in america. this was 140 years after the declaration of independences. when was put in place this this was going to be a tiny tax on the richest americans. put in place in 1913, it was a 7%, that was the highest rate on incomes over $500,000 a years. incomes in 1913 dollars. by 1931, woodrow wilson's final year in office that 7% upper rate was up to 73%. part of that was for world war i and people watching are saying that is because of the war. for the world it was 1914-1918 for america it was april 1917-1918. we didn't send troops until real late in 1917. that 73% wasn't to cover the cost of the war. the war was over in 1918 and this continues until 1921. it goes up under fdr to 94% that was the upper income rate. 94%. read burt folsom books and he considered a 99.5% rate on incomes over a $100,000. now reagan who argued the progressive income tax was from the communist manfesto. it was written in 1948 and he listed ten-point plants and the top 2-3 points one is a graduated income tax. reagan was a progressive fdr democrat. a bleeding hard liberal. and reagan who people made movie he was one of the top five box office draws. reagan made more than b-movies. reagan was one of the top five box office draws at warner brothers. they would make 3-4 movies a year. he realized once he hit the 94% rate there was no point in make another movie when you will lose 94 cents out of the dollar. he learned he as rich guy wasn't hurt. who suffered from that? the people that work at warner brothers, the camera man and the blue cull callers. so the top rate was 70% and he brought it down to 28%. he came in and there were 16 separate tax brackets right? by the time he was done the were two. he simplified the tax code and this simplified and eliminated it removed 400 poor from the rolls. 19 1984, 1987 and 1982 he raised taxes but never on the income tax. reagan said not all taxes were equal and not all tax cuts were equal. federal income taxes were the centerpiece of this. just a few statistics here: in the 1980's real income for a median african family had dropped by 11% from '77-'82. from '82-'89 it rose by 17%. in the 1980's there was a 40% jump in black households earning $50,000 or more. black unemployment which has increased under obama fell faster than whites in the 1980's. the number of black-owned businesses increased by 40% and the number of blacks who enrolled in college in the 1980's increased by 30% whereas white was 13%. hispanics is the same. the number of hispanic businesses grew by 81% and enrolled in college jumped by 45%. again for whites it was 6%. liberals love to emphasis the income gap women ent from 60 cents to 61 cents. their employment and median earnings outpaced men and women enrolled in college in record numbers. and young folks ask anybody at your table every night you turned on tv in the 1980's you had dan rather yapping about the homeless. 2-3 million homeless and one thing printed said in chicago alone there were 250,000. hud did a report in 1984 thereat estimated the number of homeless was 250,000-300,000. it is hard to calculate them because it isn't like the unemployed who register for benefits. that was all you heard about when reagan was up for reelection. reagan had around 300,000 homeless. in 2012, when obama was up for reelection, the national alliance to end homelessness, estimated 636,000 in america. more than twice the number under obama as under reagan. we are looking at 47 million americans on food stamps with obama and reagan it was about 18 million. last one and this is very quick. limited government. this was an important different. conservatives are not anti-giment government. they are anti-big government. anti-nanny state. they are against what reagan called "creeping socialism. ". reagan said it isn't my intention to do away with government, quote, he said when it comes down to it, the federal government has new functions other than its core functions they do few things better than the private sector of the economy. he said in the crisis government isn't the solution to the problem, what? government is the problem. contrast to obama in 2009 who said the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back into life. it only government that can break the vicious cycle with jobs lead to loss of people. so obama does $800 billion government stimulus package. ... >> is a source for a lot of the economic data professors. really good. it is all indisputable. i mean, those are government numbers. all right. questions? [silence] >> yes, sir. >> thank you so much for all of your detailed research. i really do appreciate the effort. >> and made it all up. [laughter] >> i certainly hope not. >> that had to do it all again now would not be allowed to use the same numbers. go ahead. >> i was just taking a couple notes here on what you said, and i was wondering, reagan was very bold about what he believed. he said that we ought to wave the banner of bold colors instead of pale pastels. >> right. >> i was wondering, in today's current culture which is very conditioned against conservative values, you have things like the welfare state which is very entrenched, and tenements, things of that sort. if you say were going to cut taxes, limit government spending and welfare benefits, people are kind of repulsed or repugnant. i was wondering, how what a true conservative market himself to the american public while still standing on true reagan ideals, but in a way that is appealing to the public in a way it can achieve political success. >> and that's exactly what reagan did. bear in mind, these principles are principles. reagan said, you need a principled conservatives. you can't run away from the principles. you need to hold fast. if you look at these, none of these are mean. none of them are bad. freedom, faith, family, limited government, cutting taxes, belief in the individual, and the communism. reagan said there is nothing more and i freedom and communists. communism is the antithesis of freedom. reagan did such a great job of articulating this eloquently, skillfully, in a very reasoned way and with a smile, and with a smile. he was so good. one of my great frustrations with george w. bush was how he would not even respond to a lot of the criticism. i don't know if he was being told that, advised that all white, there were times when somebody would go out and say something vicious. remember when he landed on the deck of the aircraft carrier? i think it was the senator from west virginia, robert byrd, went out and just jump all over him. reagan would have had to come back. well, he's jealousy doesn't look as get in a flight suit, something like that. break-in was great at. bush just kind of grow up in a fetal position and not say anything. with reagan he responded with what, with a winsome quality. barry goldwater was conservative and with a frown. reagan was conservatives and with a smile. the book was written not that long ago called the wit and wisdom of a great communicator. reagan had that. he had that would. some of our spokespeople, they need that. i would say, too, that they need reagan's fearlessness and willingness to understand. i would advise this to attach crews in particular, marker rubio. takers and mark arubia are the liberals worst nightmare. they are conservative hispanics, and the last thing they want to see is that go to the republican party. they must destroy takers at all costs, no matter what. but what reagan realized is you will never make those people happy. they are going to vote for your anyway. it will call you names. one of the liberating things was he did not care what the new york times thought about him. he made the comparison between abortion and slavery, and the new york times went nuts. he smiled and one on. you need that sort of quality. modern republicans and conservatives need that quality. >> thank you. >> thanks. >> i'm from college of the ozarks. recently the state of the union from one of our lounges on campus and noticed that. [inaudible] and the fact that libya to public liberals fought back with 280 orders. >> i don't know. on a number of executive orders. >> would you say to my first response to that, the left attacks that is kind of hypocrisy. >> let me address this because i think it relates to the point. presidents rely on executive orders not getting a lot of bipartisan support. liberals say, well, that's unfortunate for obama because he has had a republican congress cannot reagan passed this 1981 tax cut at the reagan ranch august 13th 1981. in fact, and the exhibit up here at the reagan ranch center the "washington post" call this one of the most remarkable bipartisan political triumphs in history. he did that with tip o'neill stenographic congress. reagan cut those taxes like that with the democrats in congress. so obama has not been able to do things like that. reagan convinced huge numbers of people not only to vote for him, but also the political opposition. this is a separate thought, but you mentioned obama's state of the union speech. he loves the work collective, which she uses often. at some point i want to give a content analysis and the number of times obama uses the word collective. dreams for my father bunch of times. in the state of the union speech he used the phrase something like the collector shoulder of the country. liberals are saying, come on. reagan used the term collective. but not in the same way obama did. get out of here. they use it in a totally different way. yet they -- if you have to rely on executive order to govern then you're not convincing enough people of your program. >> hello. >> hi. >> i'm also from college of the ozarks. i know that reagan really adores american hegemony and the hard power kind of approach. in today's world, especially with all the proliferation and everybody on edge, and the instability of our relations with that country, the thing that same approach is appropriate, or should we go more obama style? >> well, reagan, contrary to public perception because he was seen as a hawk because the increase in the defense budget so much, but he did that for the purpose of peace through strength. a strong military so you don't have the needed. the strong military is what deters people from acting. there have been for wars in my lifetime. none of them or because america was too strong or something like that. he had -- reagan used military force only twice, in grenada october 1983 which was fast and short and successful. in get the american medical students out that he feared could become hostages and feared that and i could become another soviet satellite or outpost in the caribbean. and in april 1986 a strike against libya. that was it. as of the only two times he used it. he is also seen as a hard-liner because of his rhetoric against the soviets. but reagan said, look, communism -- the soviet union is an evil empire. jails' its own citizens, shoots and kills people, and if you can't -- it stunned have some moral clarity in this relationship. jimmy carter literally how good taste. and that was june 1979, i believe. six months after that the soviets invaded afghanistan. and that's carters christmas present. while he is at the white house enjoying christmas with his family, you know, the national security visor's come in and say, mr. president, the guy you just kissed just invaded afghanistan. so that didn't do anything, but with reagan's approach, reagan thought this, too. words were weapons in the arsenal. he did not want to fire missiles, because that would unleash a nuclear exchange, but in a sense he fired burble cruise missiles which could become even more damaging. and at the same time those words like evil empire were incredibly inspirational and uplifting to the people who were being held in the gulag. and he was in the gulag his captors brought to him a cover and said, look. here is your reagan. here is your reagan. cowboy neanderthal cost us even empire. and as soon as they left he could not contain his glee. he was jumping up and down. the stars tapping in morse code on the cell wall to the guy next door. reagan called as an evil empire. next custers leaping upon them and start tapping. pretty soon you have -- imagine long long breaking with the words evil empire. the president finally spoken the truth commanded resonated. it made a difference. those words were more damaging than a fleet of cruise missiles. >> wrigley click on a follow-up, what do you think -- with that ideology what you think the reagan approach would do right now? have you think he would deal with this? >> a great question that i get asked all the time, and i'm always leery. what reagan had invaded? i can say, really good example, and i was critical of obama. june 2009 when the iranian streets first erupted and obama made some really weak kind of carter-like statements. even the democrats were astounded and really put. an inmate a series of much stronger statements, but reagan would have probably treated enron like he did with solidarity in poland. he would have said, people of ron who want freedom, who want liberty, we're with you. we stand at your side. we support you. you've got the support of the united states. obama was saying things like that, certainly not at first. you don't have to aid the iranian street or the iranian freedom fighters, whether there would be, just as reagan didn't give missiles and tanks to the solidarity movement, but ask anybody from poland in the 1980's, when reagan was doing solidarity day, solidarity week, solidarity not to making these statements about we are with you , that was extremely powerful and invigorating. obama's to do that because reagan believed that america was it, american exceptional as an. reagan conveyed that message to those people. as he put it, the captive people behind the iron curtain and needed liberty and need to be proclaimed. >> thank-you. >> sure. >> good evening. i'm from westmont college in santa barbara. i want to ask you a question regarding immigration reform. i want to ask you, you know, i was reading of pure research statistic that was stating that, you know, our amount of illegal immigrants has risen to such high levels that actually we are able to of mass deport illegal mexicans. we could actually have an of open jobs to employ all the unemployed. liberal democrats attacked me and say that i am too radical and that's discriminatory and racist. i want to ask you, based on conservatism and reagan's domestic policy in such, with that pressing issue right now in california, how would he have dealt with that? is this really too radical? it seems that it would work, and we are and constance deficit and a taxes keep going up and our economy is tanking. jerry brown has only exacerbated the problem by giving greater and greater facility for illegals to get college scholarships, driver's licenses without being legal residents. i want ask our true reagan conservative deals with -- >> reagan delegate. reagan had been california governor. but i quote this in the bark and should put this in the talk, the reagan -- reagan granted amnesty to a huge number of illegal immigrants in the 1980's. a think it was 1986. he is the argument that immigrants provide a valuable source of labor that not many jobs that americans will take making the classic argument year to date. rating granted amnesty, but the same time he did it in exchange for what he was promised would be a tighter border security that would allow people to enter the country legally. so really what he did was right, but what happened is the follow-up to what reagan did never took place. so that border security was not provided. there's a piece by peter robinson who wrote the tear down this wall speech. he wrote it for the "wall street journal" a couple of years ago titled something like what would reagan do on immigration. very good. any of the questions? are you all wiped out? getting light? andrew, do i get them out? my former students. it must be the sea are given. [laughter] no, he gotten any. >> as bono it talking about. >> of been waiting for this opportunity. [laughter] >> thank you, paul. >> thank you. [applause] >> of the next washington journal reporter don lee looks ahead to the federal reserve's next move on monetary policy. ian the daily reporter discusses a proposal from the epa and army corps of engineers which would amend the clean water act to give the epa jurisdiction over some streams and wetlands. and the pure research center talks about a new study that shows 18 percent of adults with internet access have important personal information stolen last year. as always, we will take your calls and you can join the conversation. washington journal live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> whether it's an award for good journalism, as a politician and declare an interest in not wanting to make a judgment on that. but an award for public service for possibly the greatest betrayal of our national secrets of all time strikes me as quite bizarre. and i do think that there is a real danger of a very cozy media world putting itself on the back with out fully understanding the consequences for the dangers that we face in a very dangerous world. i think that the dangers disconnect is there. as for the guardian newspaper itself, my view was that if i as an individual gave the names of operatives outside of u.k. jurisdiction, i would be in breach of a 2000 terrorism act. if that would apply to me as an individual, one not to a newspaper? >> this weekend on c-span former british defense secretary on edward snowdon, government surveillance programs, and privacy issues. saturday morning at 10:00 eastern. and on book tv, from taxes the san antonio breakfast will, including authors and panels on the stories that shaped san antonio and the in and say, big brother, and democracy saturday starting at 1:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. and on american history tv, toward the illness in national critical logic museum and learn about the making and breaking of secret codes and their role in u.s. history sunday at 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. on c-span three. >> next on book tv amy binder takes an in-depth look at the experiences and activism of conservative students on the campuses of america's colleges and universities. this is about an hour and 15 minutes. >> well, thank you very much for coming out on this rainy thursday. thank you very much to kristine and lori for inviting me to the center. for more than half a century conservative critics housed in think tanks, foundations, and the media have championed the cause of conservative college students who they say suffer on college campuses. in books with such titles as freefall of the american university and tenure of radicals critics charged that the american higher education has become the poison of liberal if not radical faculty in the classrooms, middle of the road students complacently consume their professors misinformation. moderate students are smog in feeling -- i'm sorry, liberal students are smart in front of their on the right to side of politics, and conservative students have to decide whether to endorse their professors tirades quietly or force their average run the risk of sacrificing a great. now, to mitigate the effects of the leftist campus conservative organizations have been put in place. david horowitz, for instance, has introduced academic bill of rights to illegally protect students from liberal orthodoxy while others like the young americans foundation sponsored conferences that introduce thousands of students on the right to celebrities and the movement. the policy institute was targeted while intellectual organizations like the intercollegiate studies institute started by william f. buckley on the federalist society of the institute for humane studies at george mason university provide internships and seminars for budding conservative academics and future jurors. the list goes on. with the support of foundations with many familiar n