My pleasure to introduce David Davenport, the author of rugged individualism dead or alive. 0 also Research Fellow at the Research Institute and previously the president of pepperdine university. David, thank you very much for coming to share this with us. [applause] thank you, george, and ladies and gentlemen, its a pleasure to be with you today. Occurred to me as we collected up yet one more spring rain and were competing with the warriors playoff game and i assume the giants and the dodgers game, i dont need to give a talk on rugged individualism. You are rugged for show up. Youre also brave to come and hear an academic talk of many good stories i think. Scholars and academics can one i heard recently was at a Scholarly Panel i was attending, and the moderator of the panel was a federal judge, and he said, you know, we have some of us during referring to himself who are as Teddy Roosevelt himself a rigged individual once said, were in the arena. Our face is covered with dust and blood and sweat, and then he said, you have kind of out of the way up in their ivory towers the academics who are carefully watching the battlefield and then when the battle is over, they come down on to the battlefield and shoot the wounded. And then the proceeded to say we have the expert marksmen today on the panel. I have to shoot a couple of people probably not the audience but in history, as we think about rugged individualism and where its been been and going. So, my coauthor and i, gordon lloyd im not able to get us going, lets see if i can do here we go. My coauthor, gordon lloyd and i like to, as we say good, back to come back. We like to go back into history but not just for the purpose of staying in history but to see what we can learn some and bring that back to policy today, and so in this book we wanted to go back into American History and see what we could recapture that might be useful for Public Policy today, and we especially spend time in the new deal, and in fact one of the great speeches of Franklin Roosevelt that it up the new dole was given here at the commonwealth club, 85 years ago. Sory re be swound fog what he said here. Rugged individual jim has had an interesting history. My measure who just passed a. At age 99, whenned asked her about sported she would say, theres up and down, theyre up and downed. Thats kind of true of rugged vividdism. Henry kissinger says even a paranoid hass real enemy monday and rugged vesseleddism has had some enemies. Particularly during the progressive era, quite on economic critique of rugged individualism and that continues through today, and i would say theres also been a sociological critique of rugged individualism, form of selfissueness and people withdrawing from to site. Its had its up and downs, people say it is a alive. People say it is dead. So we offer you at the beginning of our book this matrix, where you can decide for yourself where you would place rugged individualism. Dead or alive, and then wherever you plate it, would you say place it, would you that it a good thing for bad thing. President obama referred to rugged individualism as part of americas psyche, but he felt that was largely a bad thing, he would good ton good on to say. And then dr. Loyd i believe that rugged individualism is alive, if only barely sometimes and its good its alive and it would better if it were even more robust. So there have been different people in history and even today who are in different places on this chart. The other thing i would say by with a of overview is that we in the book address this in two different ways. We try look at the political realm and what that has done for and against the idea of rugged individualism, and then we also look at the intellectual realm of ideas. What ideas are about in our society and how have they affected rugged individualism let me take off my giant watch to keep track of time. So individualism was very much planted, would say in americas dna at the founding, and it was gk jesterthon said that america is the only nation founded on a creed and part of the creed of americas founding was individualism. And id said if theres nothing else you remember about individualism to me this describes it right here. The founders of this country no longer wanted the important decisions 0 about their lives to be made by churches or kings or queens or the social class into which you were born. They wanted to make the key decisions about about their own lives as individuals. Thats the found idea of rugged individualism. We want a country where we are free to make the key decisions about our lives. So, of course, declaration of independence, as we know very well, talks about individual rights, how the king how king george abused peoples individual rights, and how that really that was the purpose of founding this country, was so that people could pursue, life, liberty, pursue happiness. These were the individual rights they wanted protected in this country. And the constitution, the companion document, is very much drafted toward protecting individualism. And i speak in part, of course, of the first ten amendments, the bill of rights, a list of individual rights that the drafters of the constitution thought needed to be protected mostly from the danger of their own government, but there are also parts in the main body of the constitution that are very much about protecting individual rights there are checks and balances. There are balances of power. Separation odd of power, all 0 keep the government or majorrist factions getting together and taking away peoples individual rights. So very much stated in declaration, guaranteed by the constitution, and now really entering its golden era, if you well, the golden era of rugged individualism, on the american frontier. And the american frontier, when you think about it, is not just a place, was not just a location, geographic police, place, but it was whole spirit, a whole ethos of the time. And alexis de tocqueville who came here in the 1800s and wrote about democracy in america, said the very availability of land, the vast expanse that allows people to go find more elbow room, to relocate when they want to, is part of what makes democracy in america work. Its part of what allows individualism to flourish. And so he felt that this expanse, this wilderness, that we had in america, was part of democracy itself. An academic at the university of wisconsin, Frederick Jackson turner, wrote about the american front tee, and in particular in 1893 he wrote the frontier thesis, and he said, you know, america is not just different from england by reason of gee gigi geography but is an american ethos in america, and people gathering together, the fishing and hunting, and bill building their open houses fosters a sense of rugged veileddism. He did not use the phrase. I make a note here that the frontier did include, however, collaboration. Sometimes people say, well, you know, they werent really rugged individuals because they had wagon trains and built huts together and they worked together and they collaborated and thats absolutely the case. But i think the could i is the key is rugged individualism means you have at the freedom to consent to join these various groups. They were nothing regulated to join wagon trains or mandated to build each others huts but people consented to do, wanted to do saw the value of doing. So i want make the mistake of thinking rugged individuals never collaborate or cooperate and well talk about that when we talk about america today. This is really sort of a heyday. The wilderness years, the daniel boones, wanting more elbow room. These are the hey days we often think before about rugged individualism. Then as i mentioned earlier, rugged individualism came under attack from progressives, and in 1890, if you want to put a date on it, the American Census bureau said it would no longer count migration to the west. We had reached the Pacific Ocean and that was the end of the migration west so were no longer going to keep track of that. The frontier was in effect closed now in 1890, according to the census bureau. So the arguing of the progressives was, well, this is questioning to create a big change in our country. Its now going to be necessary for us to band together and live in cities, and were going to have to have more government, more regulation if were going to live together in this way. In fact well need to look to europe more as an example, because europe has been living with these limits and boundaries much longer than we have. And then the attacks became more focused. Charles bead wrote the michigan of rugged american individualism. Ive sometimes said that president obama must have been channeling his inner Charles Beard help he gave his famous, you didnt build that talk. You didnt ready build that. You didnt build the internet and roads and infrastructure needed. Now, my reaction was, well, did pay the taxes that built those. That should count for something. But his Central Point was, government really builds a lot of what you needed. That whats argue. Of Charles Beard. Business team talk about rugged individualism but in fact they want a lot of government help, and bored makes bored makes a list of 150 or 20 things Business People want, bridges and canals canals and railroadse their businesses work so the calls the myth of individualism. John dewey, on education philosopher, called it ragged individualism. He said thank goodness we have reached the end of the frontier, the end of the move to the west because we can finely get rid of this ragged individualism which has been a curse on our society. Now, in that same time frame, rugged individualism had some defenders, and ironically, the person who coined the term was Herbert Hoover. I think in a way if you read that is say i mentioned about the frontier thesis by fredic jackson turner. He should have named it. He described it in great detail. Just didnt stick the landing lg and get the colorful phrase. So it was left to Herbert Hoover in 1928 in a Campaign Speech to call the american system, as he said, system of rugged individualism. And this was important to hoover because if you remember your history, hoover had spent most of his career up to that point as a mining engineer in various countries around the world, and specifically during and after world war i he led major food relief efforts in europe, especially belgium. Habit Herbert Hoover is still a National Hero because the saved them from starvation. And so when hoover came back from europe, he said, boy, im really glad to be back in america because in europe theyre taking on these various forms of totalitarianism, becoming socialist, fascists, communists, collectivist to toll tarean ideas and he said im glad to be back in america where we have the american system of rugged individualism, and then he would say, now, this is not a laissezfaire, devil take the hind most individualism. He would say we have equality of opportunity. People have an opportunity to enjoy their individualism. He had the phrase rigged individualism and he always accompanied it with equality of opportunity. Franklin roosevelts new deal became almost a death of rugged individualism. He clearly felt that part of the problem and the economic problem he thought causing the Great Depression was rugged individualism. Were Business People, he called them the titans, economic titans on wall street and in new york, who would run the businesses out of their own selfishness but would not be mindful of other people who needed to be taken care of in the Economic System. So, Herbert Hoover would say when they ran for president in 1932, hoover said right hi, i think, nose a contest between two men. This is a contest between two philosophies of government. Roosevelt wants to move away from individualism, what hoover called the american system, and he wants a different system. The new deal is a different kind of system. This american system versus the new deal. The new deal was about expert administrators, more Central Government planning, emergency measures, government growth, all of this part of the new deal that roosevelt would bring along. The way gordon and i characterize caricature if we were pet are artists the forgotten command the rugged individual. Those are two forgotten man and the rugged individual. Those or two cartoon characters that capture the debate between roosevelt and hoover. Youve have what we think of as the rugged individual on the lift, hoover, and then we have roosevelts forgotten man, here on the right. Roosevelt would say we need to replace the rugged individual with the forgotten man as the focus of government policy, and in fact his secretary of interior said we have turned our becomes for all time on rugged individualists. Its dead. Were now focusing on the forgotten man as a focus for policy. Really, gordon and i argue in fact this is our second book. The first book we argue the new deal is the paradigm for American Economic and domestic policy today. We West Virginia it would expanded by president johnson and expand again by president obama with health care, but its basically the new deal system that Franklin Roosevelt put in place. Interestingly, although in the 1920s, you had a series of president s who tried to roll back the government growth caused be world world war i, mit have expected the same thing after world war ii and the new deal but it did not. Eisenhower did not roll back the new deal measures and other president s grew on it and the growth of the Administrative State is now a given. Thats what we live with today. So we talk the in book, moving to modern time is, about two modern political revolutions, the Great Society revolution and the reagan revolution, and interestingly gist tell this one anecdote about the Great Society. Lbjs Great Society where if possible it was said he wanted to outroosevelt, roosevelt was his mentor, and he was such a effusive character. One time he stopped at a Campaign Stop actually he wasnt supposed to stop and speak, just in a motor cared but the took down and puck awesome bullhorn, were against a lot of things and for for a mighty few him wanted to attack poverty, to improve education, improve the cities, improve the rural areas and want the government improving our Great Society. But when he made the changes that he did to health care for seniors, medicare and medicaid. He nevertheless left room at the table, if you will, for rugged individualism, and so under lbjs health care, he added a safety net, if you well, medicare and medicaid for seniors who would need it, but for others he said if you want to keep your own Health Insurance, if your employer provides Health Insurance, if you want to take care of your own you can still do that, but we will create a healthcare safety net for those who are not rugged and able to do that for themselves. We hold that unin our book as a bit of a model. Would there be room at the table for both the forgotten man and the rugged individual . Wouldnt we want to leave room at the policy table in america for both of these important icons of our history . And as i say, even lbj in his grandosty did that. Then the reagan revolution did a lot of rugged individualism rhetorically but didnt really turn out to trim back government as much as reagan might have liked. He did, i think, rhetorically redefine the role of government in our lives. He famously said that government is not the solution to our problems. Government is our problem and he did carry out some very significant tax reforms. He did move policy and money from the federal government state governments in many ways, but it was really in some ways more of a rhetorical victory than a policy victory. Then we also have philosophical debates in realm of economics. Im going to skip forward to this debate today, the economists are still debating rugged individualism verse the forgotten man today and todays version i stepped cover Milton Freedman and Michael Harrington and others in the 60s and 70s but the debay today is led by Thomas Pikett and i hit capital in the 21st 21st century, income inequality, which president obama called the defining challenge of our time. One thing we think happens in our Society Today is, as thomas sole, another hoover fellow said in his book, intellectuals and society, what happens today thats intellectuals come upon a problem they write about our talk about and then policy people grab ahold of that and try to find and implement policy solutions. Al gore and Climate Change an example. Scientists came up with the ideas and al gore packemmed then up and win on the road and talked but immigrant then it became both domestic and International Policy and that is happening today on the economic side. Thomas and his capital of the 21st century is the latest version of should we do away with rugged individualism and move toward much more 0 of a collective set of ideas and so he argued its a a bold book. He says, safety nets the solution, more education is not the solution for the forgotten man. We have to have income redistribution, he argues. And he said really the only fair distributor of money is the federal government, and he argues that the federal government should be spending more like 50 of our Gross Domestic Product rather than 20 to 30 it now susp