This is a really special evening for me because i am welcoming my dear old friend frank foer, editor of the new republic. Frank and i have known each other since 2000 when he first came to the new republic as a brilliant young writer from u. S. News. He established himself early on as the magazines most thoughtful and penetrating commentator and was tapped as editor in 2006. He briefly left and came back in 2012 where he has presided over a renaissance of this extraordinary magazine that i love so much and have been lucky enough to work at since 1991 when i joined them as my first job out of law school. I was hired as Legal Affairs editor by Andrew Sullivan who was the editor at a time. This was due to no great shakes on my part, but only because i had gone to college with andrew. I like to say on the Harriet Miers of legal journalism. Its pure nepotism but its the luckiest of my life because it launched this extraordinary career in journalism at this beautiful magazine and led to what has become one of my most meaningful friendships with frank. This is an extraordinary birth book. Its a collection of some of the most intellectually serious and galvanizing work in american letters over the past century. Reading it, i was overwhelmed by the sheer intelligence of the essays and the magnitude of their ambitions to transform american politics and cultures. Its a work of high seriousness and its also beautifully written. It has a serious of tremendous cultural importance of this great magazine, which is why we have so much to talk about tonight. I have to put in a brief plug for our upcoming programs. Next week, the first hand account of reagan and reykjavik. And then on bill of rights day we are so excited to be opening our new george h. W. Bush bill of rights gallery which will include one of the 12 original copies of the bill of rights displayed along with rare copies of the declaration of independence, the constitution a thrilling new interactive that will allow people in the gallery and around the country to click on any provision of the bill of rights and see the spread of that liberty across the globe. It will take place on a day filled with school kids and book talks, our first ever constitutional book fair which will include four interviews with wonderful authors on subjects ranging from John Marshall to the first amendment. Bill of rights day the 223rd anniversary of the ratification of the bill of rights will stop these come and join us. Frank, welcome to the National Constitution center. Im so excited about our conversation. You begin this book with a beautiful introduction talking about the high ambitions on which the magazine was founded and the fact that the Founding Fathers were at the center of the framing because the founder of the magazine believed it was important to resurrect a hamiltonian vision of american democracy to counteract what he thought of as dangerous jeffersonian tendencies will stop tell us about that tendency. Herbert croley was an incredibly eccentric figure. He was born to two incredible parents. His mother was the first advice columnist in the United States and his father was a newspaper editor who was kind of a nostradamus who wrote these addictions under the pseudonym sir oracle. His father was deep into french philosophy and put all sorts of pressure on his son to become a philosopher and you know what happens when you put too much pressure on your kids, you cause them to have a nervous breakdown. He had a series of nervous breakdowns and never graduated from harvard. He became an architecture critic and woke up one morning in his 40s and set im going to make one last run to fulfill my fathers expectations. So he wrote this book called the promise of American Life. An eccentric book with moments of literary beauty and all sorts of wonkish depressions written by an autodidact. He does this long and very interesting dissection of American History that became fairly influential to a generation of liberals who followed him where he said in the gilded age of america, we have seen the jeffersonian idea of radical individualism has run amok. It is to be checked. The way to check it is by reviving jeffersons nemesis, alexander hamilton, who propose having a strong stick. He saw all the problems with hamilton and understood his leds and his elitism and knew that was dangerous. He also thought them is no other alternative to managing the great corporations that had evolved in this country. His view of the corporations was itself not a total revelation because Teddy Roosevelt was moving in the same direction at that moment, which was to say theres no reversal of the corporation. Bigness is a fact in industrialized country. But the only way its tolerable is if you have a countervailing institution capable of checking them. The only countervailing institution he could income was the state. Youve written a thrilling essay in a recent new republic channeling Louis Brandeis who denounced the curse of bigness and suggests amazon, with its concentrated control over culture might be rife for the kind of breakup brandeis suggested. When the new republic was founded, all the major president ial candidates all were opponents of cultural bigness. Eugene debs was imprisoned in a way that had a freespeech consequence. Opposition to bigness was not an issue by 1890. By 1912, 1913, all the major candidates are hamiltonian about their agreement of the danger of bigness. For my money, the most thrilling election in american political history, mostly because you had these guys competing for the heart and minds of people who had been like me in 1912. Its a fascinating question because economic concentration was something that had haunted america. It was a fact of American Life and a wellestablished fact of American Life by the time the election of 1912 came along. You had an uprising against it the populist uprising of the 1890s, but i think it evolved. Teddy roosevelt was this great patrician who decided he hated the malefactors of great wealth and went to war against the. His successor, William Howard taft, continued on that tradition, perhaps more vigorously than Teddy Roosevelt had himself. Not quite enough to satisfy Teddy Roosevelt who sat on the outside watching taft rumble along in his view. Wilson had a completely different view of the corporations than Teddy Roosevelt did. Wilson channeled Louis Brandeis. His vision of antitrust was quite different. He said these corporations exist and our duty is to smash them to pieces to restore competition to the land, to privilege the small businessman, the almond farmer and producer. The yeoman farmer and producer. Where the differences seemed really start at the time, the hamiltonian vision of Teddy Roosevelt in contrast to the jeffersonian vision of Louis Brandeis seemed like it was one of the most epic ideological confrontations of all time. When we look act added in the light of the early 21st century, it looks like they were clustered over here in agreement where as opposed to now, people are clustered in disagreement. This conflict is deeply interesting and as you suggest both hamilton and jefferson represented to streams in liberalism. Jefferson who wants to set up competing business and brandeis who wants to rate get up and allow the flourishing of the small democracies he identified an agent reese and the jeffersonian agrarian shires. Throughout the new republics history, much of this book is a debate about the meaning of liberalism and what its definition should be. Trace the war between the jefferson and hamiltonian ideas for the soul of liberalism. Do we see a defense of Civil Liberties and the fear of an overreaching government . Give us a tour of the space. The new republic was founded in 1914 and was in ended to be a journal about these domestic restaurants, the questions of economic organization, but as bad luck would have it, the week the magazine was founded, europe went to war and that became the defining issue of the new republics was quote history. One of the other founding editors of the magazine was consumed by whether the question of the United States and whether it should enter the war. Walter whitman became the most famous columnist in america and when he started the new republic, he was a brilliant intellectual, someone who could discourse on a whole range of subjects. Helped bring freud into the United States and employed him into political thinking. They would go to lunch with Woodrow Wilsons righthand man. They would say keep it up boys you are doing so much to influence Woodrow Wilson, which was a bunch of hot air. In fact, the new republic was considered so influential in the Wilson Administration of doc program would rush to the news stand in Lower Manhattan the moment the issues came out and buy it out in order to presage which ways the political winds were blowing. They became enthusiastic supporters of world war i. They came up with the famous phrase peace without victory. Thats the speech wilson recited when he set us on the course of war. World war i as pretty much every supporter of world war i knows all of these hopes pinned on this war to make the world safe for democracy and remake American Society were all profoundly disappointed. One of the things that was most disappointing about world war i was the xenophobia that poured out of americans and the wave of repression that was so stifling. For croley and other liberals, it was profound. They supported the champion of the strong state here. It wasnt building solidarity in the sense of community. It was destroying popular communities. It tempered the hamiltonian strain and produces this marriage of having a strong state to promote certain social equality and economic equality. These hamiltonian and jeffersonian strains were reconciled into a coherent idea of liberalism. Beautifully put. Lets talk about the new republic and Civil Liberties after world war i. The magazines founders included informal advisers such as learned hand Justice OliverWendell Holmes would come to the house of truth and right unsigned editorials praising him. Hand and frankfurter works to change his mind about free speech invoking an article. Why dont you tell the story . White of you tell the story . You are more expert on that than i am. Theres a great book which tells this riveting story about how Oliver Wendell holmes had written several dissents upholding the conviction of eugene debs, the socialist candidate for Vice President for making the mildest of speeches denouncing the war, invoking a test which said speech can only be suppressed if there is clear and present danger. It is an incredible story. Chafee, who was a professor at Harvard Law School, wrote an article arguing although holmes thought this was an expensive test, clear and present danger was demanding and you should have two require an intent to produce serious lawless action and violence would result before you could suppress speech. This far more exacting test was peddled to him by hand and chafee. Holmes read it on his way to the summerhouse and changed his mind. He wrote one of the most beautiful essays on free speech talking about the importance of the marketplace of ideas suggesting speech can only be suppressed when it is likely to and intended to cause imminent violence. Louis brandeis played an Important Role in the story in the whitney case. Unless it was likely to ripen into eminent violence. This is my great passion. What do you make of the fact the magazine was so influential in transforming constitutional speech at this time . Is reflective of a broader idea the magazine has always had and its an idea i find some what almost atavistic in our culture its passe. That you could write for a small audience and have this journal thats an entrepreneurial idea of intellectual life. Zechariah chafee would write a piece and it would travel to someone engaged in the arena. That person would transmit this idea into action and additional judicial opinion into government policy. When you are describing the magazine in the introduction you captured some of the romance. It is almost a romantic idea that this is the way the world would work. Somebody would write an article about it and that article would actually change the world. Thats something that when you look at the history of the magazine happened time and again. One great recent example is Andrew Sullivan, your first boss, wrote an important article in 1989 making the case for marriage equality. There were other people who had written about gay marriage before, but when andrew wrote that piece which is just an incredibly powerful example of logical, emotional morality based journalism, that idea helped set in motion a movement that transformed the way society and culture and ultimately a body of laws thought about love and human relationships. It was extraordinary to reread this piece written in 1989 when the public debate about gay marriage was sowed so different than it is now. Andrew is denouncing the idea of Domestic Partnership as an unconservative idea. Its unnecessarily complicated and he says with remarkable power these ideas for gay marriage seem socially conservative, thats no accident. Gay marriage is not a radical step given the fact we already allowed legal gay relationship. What social go is advanced by allowing the law to have these relationships the unfaithful and insecure . How often has the magazine transformed our debate in this way . We started chronologically in the progressive area. The magazine really developed the ideas that would culminate in new deal. The very name new deal the new republic did a lot to champion many of the ideas that would be part of the new deal. The idea of economic planning which was the dominant idea of something that had been meticulously pressed. Of course, the new republic is a magazine of skepticism. It did not stop them from hating the new deal and Franklin Roosevelt as a too timid, half measured type of guy. Some of the things, im ashamed to admit, in 1993, we published a piece by betsy mccoy who went on to become Lieutenant Governor of new york denouncing Hillary Clintons health care reform. She published a piece called no exit which predicted the depicted the Clinton Health care reform as this kafkaesque bureaucracy. It which read the american economy. That piece was faxed around in the day of the fax machine and was held up by republicans and played a fairly decisive role in helping to give cover to the opponents of health care reform. We also supported the iraq war which i think probably provided some intellectual cover for a lot of the moderate democrats who ended up voting for the iraq war. Nice started as editor in 2006, i felt like i was the great self flagellating editor of the new republic. We apologized for supporting the iraq war in the first place. The almost romantic part of the new republic is all of these arguments are ricocheting through the halls and end up ricocheting through the magazine. Henric hertzberg wrote a wonderful essay on the anniversary issue where he describes the debate over aid to the nicaraguan contras in the 1980s. The magazine published an editorial publishing a to the supporting aid to the contras but the editor of the magazine in the next issue, theres another piece denouncing it along with a diarist written by the owner of the magazine defending it. Only in the new republic could the editor to announce an editorial in his own publication. That conflict made me realize when i got there as a summer intern in 1989 that this was the most exciting job i ever had. My first assignment, i was a secondyear student in law school and William Brennan had just resigned. Marty who was skeptical of judicial activism wanted a did a denunciation of William Brennan. The editor was a fiery liberal. Marty took my right arm and brennan took my left arm and they were talking to make sure their views were met. There should be a firm difference between constitutional and political views. For liberals in particular, its important not to allow their politics and jurisprudence legal battles should be one in won in the legislatures rather than the courts and rather than try to impose liberalism by fiat, its important to let democracy have its way. I feel like that debate which is internal has reached its moment where it is put to the test because you have a system that is gridlocked where you have a court that didnt exist in its present form for some time. You got a congress that is incapable of moving. You have a president who has decided hes going to he is stuck in a situation where he cant get anything done. There are major x essential x essentiaexistential problems and their threats of the country that race the world where only a strong executive using strong executive powers can step in and move the debate. On the one hand, i feel like im getting torn between the two poles. On the one hand, the liberal in me says hot damn, immigration people here deserve to have a better life. There is a planet that is burning up that needs some sort of solution. On the other hand, you see the dangerous precedents when you expand federal power in a way where its about to get expanded. As head of the constitution center, as we recited together in our beautiful nonpartisan motto. Im strictly nonpartisan and i believe passionately ar