loved poetry. she taught me at home. she had me reading shakespeare. she had been reading the romantic poets. at the same time my little brotheand i would sneak away in the afternoon and listen to this new music. we were listening into everything from eric b. and de la soul. a tribe called quest. the nwa. all of these things going on. even as a kid i said there is something that connects these two. it took going away to college to finally grad school and studied with amazing scholars studying with the imminent critic of poetry, it took going there to find the language to be able to some describe this.

that ishat i have been able to do. the black world tradition and all its richness with this new form that we see emerge over the last several decades. ..

>> now, by way ointroduction, i should note that i am not an expert in political ideology. as a matter of fact, political categorizations alludes me as an economist. but i will tell you something that has puzzled me since my childhood. i grew up in seattle, washington, in a liberal tactic dimmick family and i literally did not know any conservatives in person. going up. not one person i knew voted for ronald reagan. as a matter of fact. but i did about conservatives growing up. i heard, for example, that they did not believe in progress. i heard that they were generally grum, and that they were a sensually stuck in permanent conflict with a changing ciety. as i grew up i noticed that certain things remi didn't seem

to square with these facts. the liberals that i knew seemed to be generally the ones w were standing for history, talking about 40 year-old entitlements and 50 euros grievances and. meanwhile, the conservatives i knew tended to be wildlife radicals. they were school reformers, entrepreneurs and crusaders against the public sector that they believed at least made life harder for most americans on tax day, payday, for that matter on almost every day. when iame to aei, i found that it was the most buoyant spirit of reform, and even utopia that i could possibly have imagined. aei is a place within an abiding belief that the world can be a better place with the tools of individual opportunity and free enterprise, if we choose to make it so. so here is what i wonder. i wonder whether i had it wrong about conservatives,

conservatives and conservatives all ese years. or perhaps whether liberals or did. well, sam tanenhaus is here to help sort some of these out for us. his new book, "the death of conservatism," is making a considerable impact. it is a real tic of conversation and it is a work that many of us here at aei admire. we are honored to have him here to talk about his work. after his remarks we will have comments from two of aei's own. we will start with steve hayward who is and after that henry olsen the vice president of aei's national research initiative. after that we'll have discussion with the audience. and at 7 p.m. we will break for a reception outside to honor our speakers. before we go to our program, i want to know that so that you have it in your datebook, that one month from now, october, approximately october3, tuesday, our next week at the bradley series will be marty peretz. and now please join me in

welcoming sam tanenhaus to aei. [applause] >>hank you, everyone who is here. in particular, my good friend doctor sally who first suggested i speak here. actually, what we now remember collectively was in the winter of 2007 when i first discussed some of the ideas, if that's what hey are, that i've set forth in this book. and you have invited me back again. sometimes i wonder why she did it but then i remarriages psychiatrist and maybe all this is very amusing to her. it's interesting when arthur described conservatives as radicals. that is what is what's interesting to me about the movement. not the conservatives are ldlife, but there has been kind of a radicalism and what we think of a moderate conservative movement.

with this book is about, for those who haven't had a chance to look at it, is about the rise and ascendancy in trium, and then i think that the client of conservatism. i maybe wrong about all of these things. it is a work that deals essentially with the great thinkers who came out of the movement, or created the movement. and some other political figures. and ambiguous roles they occupied within the movement. and i say ambiguous because conservatism, in my view, is really divided between two impulses. one, which i describe as realists, or maybe arthur would save reformers. and that is a conservatism that essentially looks at the state of affairs, look at our politics, looks at our culture which i think as important as the politics.

and then tries to find ways to improve or alter and in some instances accommodate an older set of values to those changed conditions. and then there is a conservatism that i call revanchists. a term that is already met with some controversy, though i am pleased to see that some at ast seem to understand this is a descriptive term. it is a metaphor. is not an attempt to say that the conservatconservatives of ou time are 19th century europeans who want to reclaim something. it is really an idea of reclamation and restoration. and so as i wrote the book, what i try to do was look for key instances when these two notions of conservatism seem to be in

conflict, sometimes within the mind of a single figure, a figure like wiiam f. buckley who's a biography i have been working on for some time. or whittaker chambers, whose biography i wrote completed about a dozen years ago. and political leaders like richard nixon who i think is one of the least appreciatedf modern politicians. i belong to that very small group of nixon o. files. he was actually the most remarkable political figures of the last half-century. and also, ronald reagan, who personified the competing strands of conservatism here and then i tried to do one other thing, which is to show how it seemed to me conservatism at its very best, when it was most vibrant, and in my estimation, my analysis, though so maybe not

the years many would think of to my mind they were the years 1965 to 1975. not to draevery one too far back in time it but i think that's what conservatism emerged at the great political philosophy in america. this is probablyhe place to say that this book is in many ways a celebration of conservatism. i was interviewed just a few moments ago by nick gillespie of reason magazine, reason tv. and he said, he asked me could have written a book called the death of liberalism as well. and my immediate response was ye i could do it. but now i would answer that a little tivoli. i would say just, i could prably do it but it wouldn't be as interesting. because i don't think liberalism in the past generation has been particularly interesting. where conservatism has been the

great modern american philosophy. that's not to say i agree with all its precepts, or even with many of them. that it has been the most stimulating, it has been the most original. it has done more to make liberals think and rethink, then liberalism for a very long time has done to make conservatives think and rethink. i am not a policy person. i can't give you the ends and outs of domestic or foreign policy. is not what i do. a sensually literary person. so i'm interested in ideas and their expression. and one of the themes i pursued was this remarkable as for essence, intellectual conservatism that began, i

think, in the 1940s. the essential text is james burns gradebook, managerial revolution. there is some dispute and debate out this particular text that was written when burnham had detached himself from the left. he had been a leading theorist in the united states. actually collaborated with them himself and begun his movement to the right. and tried have a marxian analysis to the way americans and all democratic societies seem to be working in his period. that they become essentially bureaucratic society. and that the wielders of power in the great countries, d he went with this geopolitical compass he had through all of western europe, the united

states. also nazi germany. and soviet russia. and he saw similarities in all of these advanced technological societies worked. they had, to borrow a phrase from one of the thinkers he admired, and i'd love oligarchy, that and the lead in a sense actually dominate what we think of as purchase of a tory democracy. that was the first insight of consvatism. if this was taken up in turn by william f. buckley, jr. in a national review. and then later by the neoconservatives, including irving kristol, who in his youth had also been a follower and reader of burnham, you will see in his memoir. neoconservatism. i think this is a sing foundational premise of modern

conservatism. and it is a very important one i think what happened is at a certain point that analysis became a dogma, and it created a contradiction for modern conservatism. if one sees a culture and society and government dominated by secret contrary, then one is almost logically predetermine, predestined to be at war with much of the institutions in the society itself. and i think once that notion took hold, i think a president who personified it most amatically, again, was richard nixon. then what had begun as a conservative critique became a

kind of what we now call the culture war here and at that point, conservatives seized to see themselves engaged in a debate or conversation with liberals who might share common ends with them. and broke off and chose instead to politics, of what i cal cultural entity. so one of the themes in the book, one of the motives it traces are moments when this committee was tracended by conservatives and liberals alike. that's why focus on the 10s. i think that was a great moment when american conservatism came of age. and a key fire was buckley. utley, who in his youth, many of

you know have been quite fervent supporter, ally, of senator joseph mccarthy, who led a kind of vigilante attack on the government itself, the state department, the cia, the white house, the army, during the eisenhower years. buckley had without ever repudiating those views developed a very different approach to socty and its conflict. and it emerged during the upheaval in the 1960s. in the book, i qte a number remarkable columns bill buckley wrote during the 1968 campaign. and those of you here who have actually remember those years or are old enough to remember them, to remember the period of virtual anarchy in this country. to political asssinations and

one president i the year. riots in both cities, chicago and miami were naonal conventions were held. and some of the political ferment in that election in a few months before when lyndon johnson, who as recently as 1966 had been described as, quote, the julius caesar of american politics, unquote. that is the most powerful chief executive the naon has ever had. it was a quite remarkable essay. i think was march 31, 1966, he said that theodore roosevelt dreamed of jt having on d, one week where he would control the entire government, could do everything he wanted. anything he wanted. and morgenthaler was quite liberal. said well, it has come under lyndon johnson, and it proceeds

permanents. no one dares challenge it, the urts, the media, the people. all are at his command. at approximately s or eight months later, republicans made a majobig through in 1966, off year election began in 1968, of course, johnson withdrew, decided -- from the presidential election, decided not to seek presidential election. that was a key motorcade in ow in the primary by someone from the democratic party, antiwar wing, eugene mccarthy. the dump johnson movement. there is a misperception that mccarthy actually won that primary. he did not. he lost i think about five percentage points. 47-42. it was enough to persuade or to dissuade johnson from seeking reelection. and this might have been, i think in our climate, left

and/or right. this would be a moment of triumph for the out party. because a very powerful president was now being taken down, but within his own party. and is almost. here did a victory for the republicans in this case but that's not what bill buckley said. buckley wrote a wonderful column was that he said, you know, to the follower of edmund burke and john adams, there is something very unsettling about the thought of an elected president of the united states being essentially removed from office by carload of college student driving across the border fr new hampshire and massachusetts. many don't knows that mccarthy opposed the war in did not. they just went there to vote and punish the president. and buckley said it gives one pause about how our democracy

works. to me, that is a high point in modern american local journalism. here is a columnist with a normal influence. buckley was the most influential conservatives in america. the product of the campaign he had run in europe city in 1965. and buckley saw the organic unity of society and the stability of government as being more important than whether his side won or not. and one would be hard-pressed today to see an equivalent statement made by a liberal or a conservative so described in our culture. there is one her account i want to give. it occurred right about the same

time, 1967. daniel patrick moynihan, who was one of the figures that i've read about in some detail in this book, who had been the intellectual architect, the war on poverty which was sometimes we forget what s began under john f. kennedy, begin to rethink those prograis. particularly, after he and richard goodwin, another figure i describe in the book, had a remarkab speech delivered here in washington, june 5, 1965, howard university. a speech called to fulfill these rights. , not from the equation of independent. with the first line it is quote the earth as a home of revolution unquote. d what lyndon johnson described in that speech based

on research and analysis provided by moynihan it would help draft him, it was that while the country had cured or salt to a great extent the legal injustices of jim crow segregation, it had not solved the social question, economic questions of inequality. and the government wld now try to dohat through a rash of programs. and there was so much interest in this speech, it was the most celebrated probably since eisenhower's great speech the soviet union in 1953, i think it was ear that everyone wanted to see the report that moynihan had written. so the white house leaked it.

and is spoken very direct blunt language about the condition inner-city families in america, and used a phrase tangle of graphology, which moynihan had actually barred from a gre afrin-american social scientist kenneth clarke. and moynihan who saw himself a great friend of the opera and the disadvantaged. now saw himself labeled a racist and dual, or an advocate of the white power structure. by leftists, what he called the liberal left in the united states. he wrote about this in a memorable essay in commentary magazine. and as an aside, i should say having spent more time than a healthy person would reading through these journals, in the years 1965 to 1970, the most

interesting penetrating, nonpartisan and thoughtful journalists he found was in the pages of the public interest, commentary magazine. and often in national review. i am a contributor now, and again, to the new york review of books. which resorted my book. and in 1970, national review was a better publication, by far. cannot say that because it was better written but because it took the ideas big and fat in the new york review far more seriously than the contributed to the new york review would have ever taken the argument of thnational review. so moynihan began trethink just what course liberalism had set for the united states. and he gave a very famous speech

here, again in washington. to the americans for democrac action, 1967. and he sd, well, we have seen riots in some of our great cities. and we have a war th@t we maye losing. anwe may be facing a period, i potiphar used this word, terrorism in the united states. and he said we liberals, liberal democrats can't blame anyone but ourselves because guess who has been in power these recent years? guess who has had their way with the system of government. and he said the time has come for us to find republicans and conservatives who share with us the ideal of, quote, the politics of stability. because at this point what the nation needs is to band

together, the idea tha birkin idea that moynihan had been reading bue at the time. the politics of stability is really based on the notion of civil society. which repudiates ideology of any kind. this is what we forget about burke who is a source for all of this. is burke's theories of conservatism were written at a time of great political revolution. the french revolution. and he in no way made serious defense of the regime in france. he didn't say that was a perfect system. he said the probm is we have a new group left to create a perfect society and will sacrifice our initutions on its altar. and the obligation of any society and any government,

burke used the word society and government almost interchangeably, if you read his reflections on the revolution of france. it has two purposes, to conserve and toorrect. you can serve the great institutions. you correct the thgs that need correcting. that is the classic mode of conservatism. so moynihan drawing onugust and this weekend was reported on the front page of "the new york times" because it became such a shock to democrats and libals. and bill buckley wrote a column about it, in which he summarized moynihan. and said liberalism faces a crisis and there will be a series philosophy, government philosophy or not. and then he said anything we conservatives can do to help, just holler. that is to say, there was a

shared ideal that left and right, two parties, would observe. thir is the thing that disappeared i fear from our politicsere i not to say we should have debates and quarrels. and they shouldn't be intense. anyone who reads bill buckley on liberalism knows that he didn't pull his punches. but he also believed in the foundation of society and the government. so he found himself in a position in 1959 defending the universities that he had attacked in his first book. fending free speech. those who attended campus is what descred academic freedom as, quote, superstition, unquote, in his first book. so these are some of the issues and my book seeks to explore and

in a kind of narrative essay that looks at the different tabs conservatism has taken. and i am a terrible prognosticator so i don't ever attempt to predict. but here is the one question i will put my colleagues here. into the audience. might it not be time for conservatives to stop thinking of themselves, yourselves, as belonging to a movement? movement are an odd phenomenon in america and politics. they don't like consort. what garry wills called the motives of a democratic process. movements seekore than politics ideally offer.

because movements demand victory or redress. they become in the term i used. and the reason i think conservatives ought to abandon the move of philosophy or crusade is because conservatism has one. we live in a very conservative culture and very conservative society now. when i was coming of age in the 1970s, if somebody had told me that gay people would seek to marry and hav children, it would have sounded like a joke. it would have been -- it would have been inconceivable, unthinkable. yet this is wt we see. and i think the conservative who values institutions, what one would see is a group excluded

from the institution that now wants to belong to it. just as wennberg assessed the american revolution, he thought the colonists had a grievance when they were denied parliamentarian representation. by the way, he thought that defied the precepts of sound government and virtuous mocracy. so when i ask everyone in the room to consider, and to dispute, i may be entirely wrong on this, that if conservatism is to revive its self and move forward and become as vital a force as it has been for many decades now, my abandoning, jettisoning, removing the attributes, the punitive view of

culture, the demonization of liberals, the labels, can go maybe a day or two without hearing barack obama call us socialized? it ia democratic socialist, maybe dwight eisenhower was to. and elevate the discussion, i am not expecting the liberals to do it, but conservatives have a history of doing it and i think this is thedeal time to re-examine, rethink, look back at this glorious history and see how to build on that. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, sam. i guess maybe i should begin by declaring a small conflict of interest, i suppose. over the weekend, the times book

review created by new but very nicely and seriously. thank you. it takes me an e-mail. so i have been mumbling all weekend, damn, now i have to be nice to cannon house. although i enjoyed the history did escape with one small caveat. i think that outreach and between buckley and moynihan was limited between those two guys that i would miracle from edward around 1969 or 1970s which i think captured the spirit of little better. he said something along the lines of liberals would sooner, this is exactly right, liberals would sooner die than accept construction from conservatives. so i don't know. i think there maybe a little little sentimental romanticism there that we can quarrel about. my main point is sam's book is challenging, engaging, rh and also i think in central point mischievous. i'm going to get what i think is at the core of his misievous this. he did not deny.

it is as he calls them accommodationist. at first pass you might say let's paraphrase mark poignancy the death of conservatism is greatly exaggerated, which sam has hedged against now in his book. but i think is a mistake. i mean, i have myself been contemplating some long essays on the dumbing down of consertism that i see, the flatline brainwave dicey in certain. and i've been telling people who will listen that we suld not let the reversal of conditions of the patient at the moment brought on by the steroid of a botched health care reform initiative others into thinking the conservativeatient has returned to fitness. liberals made that mistake in the '70s and 80s and it cost them dearly. second pass, you might try to that sam's framework as a majority restatement of the famous dilemma of the epic of responsibly pursued the epic of ultimate ends.

i think that is a mistake also. i actually think that the best mmary judgment and critique of sam's book can beound 100 years ag how is that for true conservatism? in this that is at e java progressives to go on making new mistakes and it is the job of conservatives to keep mistakes from being fixed. [laughter] >> i think it conservatives adopted or embraced sanz announces in prescription or at least the way i read it, it would ratify conservatives mostly being the actuari of liberalism, or ask newt gingrich more pungently put about bob go, but conservatives at tax collectors of the welfare state. despite the overwhelming temptations that sam's prose killing stop, i actually think we should accept this framework and his conclusion at least provisionally, because i think it provides us with a window into an unstated or unacknowledged premise that liberals take for granted in the modern world.

but which conservatives do not actually recognized to the great detriment. and i think the best way to do this is to pick on two particular examples in sam's book that serve as my data points. as much as i enjoy sam's writing and his narrative of the intellectual history of conservatism, there were times in the book when i thought that we have slipped into some universe or spock has a goatee and captain kir is a raving lunatic. how else can you make sense of this sentence. david souter may well endure the most authentic conservative in the supreme crt's modern history, closed quote. now have practiced lithosphere and sam would be right to protest the way i've done that because of the longer quote as an important center of toussaint's analysis that i will read the whole thing. as i paraphrase he is saying conservatives need to face historical reality. and he sees in souter's jurisprudence immersing himself in the study of history to see

if he can't eliminate and make certain constitutional rules more rich. okay. i don't think that it actually to about him but that is a subject for another day. but we see here in the waistband uses history, the premise of the past as a prologue to the future. and by mktter liberals or progressives as they have started calling himself today much more accurately, often presume without having established any foundation for the idea that history is moving purposely in the direction in conformity with the ever-expanding social vision. it is perfectly understandable that within that bubble of presumption you would think that only a high boundary action they could believe otherwise. in other words, if thinking nservatives is only look more service at the flow of history like justice souter made, they realize they're on the wrong side and get with the program. i think it's necessary to go back even further than sam's history of the right to seek the grasp at this point.

when you use his real progress in this way, we don't really mean history as just a sequential recording of events, or just progress of materials and were things getting better and better as we get smarter a smarter. but rather as an intelligible process. and we still commoners revoke the american mind describg the american intellectual about 100 years ago said the following, quote, what destroyed were thinking roughly 100, 120 to go, oh, almost every historian of that generation felt that he was on the verge of some discovery that should do for history what darwin had done for nature, closed quote. it's really quite seems bizarre now to go back and read some of the philosophers of history of time but they thought were on the verge of discovering the laws of motion for history. like the motion for physical objects which would unlock the secret of change and allow for the leral changed in the first time of the human story.

and it was suggested literally at history would be removed from the humanities and place in the physical sciences in our universities. in political terms of this involved the date of the state. and i do mean that literally. he wrote that quote the state capital, is the divine idea as it exists on earth closed quote. one person who took him literally was woodrow wilson. more about him in a moment. one of the leading political scientist 100 years ago, a friend of woodrow wilsol was john burgess who wrote the proposition at the state is the product of history, means that it ishe graal and continuous debug of human society out of a grossly imperfect beginning through crude but improving form of manifestation towards a perfect and universal organization of mankind, closed quote. in other words, this progressi movement would cite as a movement, these were not revolutionary, nonsocialist

utopians. i mention woodrow wilson was powerfully affected by this. he said his two great intellectual guides were hegel and edmund burke. so when sam recommends that erican conservatives should be more burkean. i say we shoullook at the way woodrow wilson falkenberg, no source a all. birk proved to be no work against ever-expanding liberalism. i think the second sign might be the idea that david brooks advanced in which they briefly refers to in his book which is that behold, barac obama has some affinity for burke. or so david brooks rorted. it easy to accuse hegel andfound berg, i'm loong for to a future memoir from obama what he gives a burkean to tunes and union views.

well, the sort of stiff foremothers of history of progress have receded into literally anymore what was thought of 100 years ago but the sentimental ridue i argue lingers on. and the underlying attitude of history as an intelligible process has become so embedded in the furnishing of the liberal mind that its pedigree is no longer be called. it explains why liberalism presumes the illegitimacy of conservative orthodoxy without having to argue the matter. the ideological terms if you reallyee this among the so-cled progressive community is called a soap winners are calling us of a movement in there and constrained vision of perfect justice requiring ever more ambitious political interventions in society and in insatiable drive for imperfect perfect calibration of egalitarianism. i think it is this blatant premise that sustains liberalism attitude that it is the primary agent of human progress.

but this defect of the liberal mind fd its parallel in the conservative mind which i think sam unknowingly brings forth that conservatives need to be a acmmodation to where the tides of history are taking as. let me quote sam again. two chambers, an avid student of history well schooled in marxist argument it was obvious that the growing dependency on government was a function of an unstoppable rise of industrial capitalism and the new technology that brought it forth. and the right had better adjust, closed quote. i think we get close to the net of the matter. chambers was of course a pessimist, noted for thiing he was joining the losing side. i have often thought as a director at what he would've made of ronald reagan and the collapse of the soviet union. but his pessimism was rooted partly in what he saw as the asymmetry between economies work and the radical left which he thought was more ruthless and to

soften week western nations. but i also think that his pessimism was really informed by the fact that although he traded his communism for christianity, he never really shared his marxist historicism. james burnham poussin is mentioned, and i think this represents a self-inflicted rehabilitation for conservatives. for all the differenc between chambers and buckley review circle tt sam talks about, i think we can see that neither chambers nor the conservative movement as it was shaped by buckley ever explicitly contested the left over the idea of progress. over the terms of how human advancement are to be understood. i think, by the w, this has something to do with reason tt buckley abandoned his big thi book he was i going to write about a conservative peasant of the world. it will be interesting to see how s handles that episode and

buckley's life in the biography. remember that national review's famous rallying cry was stand before history yelling stop, rather than grabbing hold of history and sending it in a different direction. chesterton also reminded us all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you ave them as they are. buyou do not. if you leave anything alone you leave it to a torrent of change. that's obvious at a burkean that. chesterton no dispute where fond of talking about progress but at is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. sam is i think partl right that conservatis are to take heed to burke's view of understanding change, but i think it needs seriously and especially contesting liberalism with the meaning of progress, thereby making liberals come to grips with tir own automatic pilot way of thinking about progress. i think there are only two conservative political figures of note in modern times who have done this at all. it would be ronald reagaand newt gingrich.

it's not a question is that they more than any other conservativ politicians cause more trouble for liberalism than any other contemporary conservatives. and i think it's also not a coincidence that both were unorthodox conservatives, which mimic the partly conformed to sam's understanding and approach of the subject. i don't think you'd call them accommodationist. we can argue about that perhaps. if conservatives do not learn to contest liberalism for the meaning ofrogress, they will remain little better than a crew to liberalism's which is the worst form of accommodation is an. i uld just say to sam challenge, maybe the conservative movement can think about seizing as a movement at the same time they progressive movement keeps stopping of itself in the same way. good luck with that. we may need reagan d gorbachev agreed to work out that deal. [applause] >> i think it's time that sam

defined 1965 to 1975 a high point of conservatism. because whatever that point represents intellectually, it represents in fact an idea of the conservative power in the modern age. republican party starts that era with 145 seats in the house, 32 in the senator and the ending objective measure at least third of those are centerleft. it ends up that period with 145 seats in the house, 36 in the senate, with any objective peri examination, a third of those people on the central left. conservatives are engaged in that point precisely because they are locked out of virtually all organs of clinical power at the federal, state and lol levels. and that feeling is what animates the amazing rise of conservatism as a political as opposed to intellectual force that starts in the later part of the '70s you can basically dominates the remaining 30 years

of american political life. what happened in tha period? what we have is at the beginning of the pebiod, a conservative critiques not been connected with american ideals. it remained an conservative intellectual circle by negative critique and less of a positive affirmation of traditional american ideals. and the republican party what we found is that during that period we had domination by what would be considered to be chambers conservatism. preemptive accommodation of moves of the left in order to, whenever they have the power to do so, or at least providing both an accommodation of those moves, to try and take those sitions and appropriate and for themselves. and the american electorate, rejects this. time and time again at the legislative level. and most of theime at the presidential level. so why is it that what chambers called the beaconsfield position, named after the earl of beaconsfield, better known as benjamin disraeli.

why is it that beaconsfield conservatism is inappropriate for american political conservatism? and what is it that american political conservatism has learned that we now understand that we can best understand american beaconsfield conservatism by looking at an american beaconsfield named russell kirk, who famously said that the definition of conservatism is that when it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change. what is visible here is the absence of any principle that allowed anyone, the decer to determine what is necessary and what degree of change is necessary. in a sense, burke and his followers have a full psychology between ideology and realism and they fail to understand what americans have undstood since the beginning of our revolution is that there is such a thing that ideals that can be married to circumstances that we can have non-ideological principled politics.

now, beaconsfield arises in the early 19th century. it deals with the political circumstances of 19th century england, rich elite that was threatened by democratic urges, that are different than the democratic urges in america. remember, england we like to think of as the mother of our country. but it did not have the democracy by american standards until 1918. you don't have full male suffrage in britain until after world war i, when beaconsfield and the toys are forming their politics. they don't have too revealed to him massive electric at britain also doesn't have a democratic revoluti. we were founded on a democratic revolution, dedicated to certain abstract ideals. they were reacting against a revolution that was nondemocratic, that proclaimed that were in fact quite different than american principles. they see this marriage

between ideas and this massive democratic action as leaving only to instability, only to revolution, and only i might add looking at the french failure to accommodate democracy leading to the destruction of political power on the wealthy and elite spirits of the british conservative party from 1832, it was only a brief interlude in margaret thatcher spirit, has adopted beaconsfld isn't as its guiding printable. and it is one of t majority of the british elections. that fact is often cited by people who are un-american beaconsfield. and electoral success. you can have it to. but that ignores the massive difference in political climates. britain is a class ridden society. and has a nondemocratic history which contie to use the politics that it has today. tories and sent to have always argued for one nation

conservatism. well, conservatives in america laugh a that notion when john edwards says we have two americas, a rich and poor. but the whole tory party philosophy is based on the idea that there were two britons. a rich britain and a poor britain. i have britain and have not been there and educated briton and a non-educated britain. and it was the duty of the ruling class to create one nation under their government. and even today you can see those things. who brings these notion that society acids and societies prefences precedes individual liberty. he has taken the torch which was the symbol of the tory party under thatcher and replace it with the tree, and organic syol of beaconsfieldism. as he collected political history. but america's elections have always been fought around the president of ideals.

the question of how to apply individual freedom and liberty to certain stance of our time. we had an election between beaconsfieldism what i call disposition, and american ideal basic conservatism. it was called the election of 1800 the federalists lost. the federalist of john adams is sensually had a beaconsfield field and they lost and disappeared from american political history. every re line election since then has been fought over the interpretation of american ideals of liberty. and no successful pitical party, no successful political movement can exist without an appeal to those ideas. sam has mentioned in his book that their are two examples in the modern era of great conservatives. he calls eisenhower and clinton on page 26 are the great conservatives of our era. i vocal from sam's book.

both eisenhower and clinton struggled against movement forces of congress. both succeeded. old left office with soaring approval ratings. they are the modern heirs to conservative president and the two best. on page 26 of sam's book. but to borrow fromaul harvey, there is the rest of the story. i think clinton saw their party lose control of congress during their terms. not to regain in during their political and in dikes case physical lifetime. they were both unable to get their own vice president elected during times of close elections. they both try to create new political movements within their own party. ike called the third way if you read his memoirs mandate for change. and clinton had the new democrat movement. both were rejected by the left and the right and within a few years, you could see no series adheres to those positions within their own party. because they were disconnected

with the american principle, the american ideal of liberty and freedom that formed the only foundation for successful american political action. they provoke exactly the same extreme ideological reaction on both sides of the spectrum tha beaconsfieism is intended to show what works in britain fails in america. so innocent stance prescription for health conservatism suffers from precisely the same flaw that he accused the conservative movement of having, of failing to be appropriately relist, failing to recognize that politics is a marriage between se and soil and if you try and transplant an inappropriate idea into a climb that can't support it it will be rejected. american conservatism under reagan and american conservatism in the post-reagan era solve that problem.

it married the american ideal that rhetorical level with practical policies thaare consistent with this ideal, and marrd it with an appeal to moderate populism. that is the whole market every successful american political movement. it is what married lincoln on his attack with a southern slave owners. is what jackson did in 1828 marrying the attack on the bank of the united states would be appealed to the common. is what fdr did in his appea on a specific policy of the new deal with his attack on economic loyalists and malefactors of great wealth. so when liberals attack conservative for their appeals, attacks on education league and the government, what they are doing is they are attacking the successful invocation of the same sorts of principles that have always animated, liberals and conservative american

political success. so what do american conservative need to do to become healthy again? we need to recall ourselves to what has worked. we need to recall how we moved from being a movement that put itse toward the track of history to getting inside the agent until very recently steering the train to destination of our own choosing. and in doing so we need to look no farther than the example of ronald reagan. reagan instantly understood that american conservatism must be of the people, it must be for the ideal of liberty and it must be nonideological. and we can see this from the moment that some of the clinical stage in his famous speech a time f choosing, the goldwater campaign, he says quote you and i are told increasingly have to choose between a left or right. well, i would like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or a right. there is only up or down.

reagan's conservatism was not beaconsfieldism. that almost the just a ideology that is very much like cannon use. it was what he believed was human freedom. the national review asked him to write a columnriting on the debacle turkey said the conservatives had only lost the battle in the continuing war for freedom and that voters would rally to the conservatism once they realize that conservatives won't represent the forgotten american that simple soul who goes to work, and knows there ain't no such thing as free lunch. i think the greatest beach i have ever read was ronald reagan's february 6, 1977, speech where we are at a time where republicans are knocked down, conservatives are on there he appeared he stand up and said the future is bright. we're gng to marry economic conservatives to social conservatives under the principle of human freedom and regain power.

four years later, that coalition came to be at a time when it was so bleak that the republican party in minnesota talk out damaging to change them into independent republicans because it was common wisdom that republican name was history. is is the conservatism that we need to recall, not the conservatism of the english conservatives party. and sam's book does a great service and making us think about these foundational questions because only by thinking about them, that we can begin to nurse ourselves back to health. stance of opposing a wakeup call to all conservatives to make us realize it is our time for choosing. [applause] >> i would like to turn the floor back over to sam who prably has se comments. >> we want to take questions from the audience. >> i would just mention a couple of points here are heard a great

deal from steve about conservative ideals d heard a great bit from henry about american ideals, and american, human freedom and i don't limit it to of them define what those ideals and freedoms consist of. that the concealed position, yes. achieved during a time really not so much early 19th century later, in the 19th century. what he was reacting to was not simply a democratization of english politics. you know, the reform of 1832. but to the dangers of what he saw of a predatory capitalism. you will remember that russell kirk and the conservate mindset is u.k. centigrade disraeli as reversed marx but they're both reacting to the daer of industrial capitalism. when steve quotes my remarks on

chambers in which i mentioned that he was schooled in marxism. that is the one. it is the one that has been revitalized generation after generation. which is the possible dangers of unchecked industrial capitalism. we saw it i think when the stock market crashed in 2000. an interesting aspect of much of this to me, which was recalled, or brought home very forcefully for me in march i think it was when i went to the harvard club and heard some very intelligent journalistsalk about the dangers of barack obama's presidency. and i waited for one of them to say maybe some of the crisis, maybe some of the emergency exists a the moment was created in eight years of republican government. i didn't hear that set. i didn't hear the sense of acknowledgment of