slavery right? what happened ultimately? what happened? did slavery continue? . .

this constitutional question. >> okay i will give you one example. so let's think about the 14th amendment. part of the 14th amendment is citizenship so we asked the question upon whether or not they believe the birthright citizenship in the 14th amendment should be repealed? we didn't prompt him on immigration or anything like that. we just asked straight up question. that's part of the constitution, right? well if it was really just about conservatism, we have a variable in there for which we control that gets that constitutional conservatism. the basic whether or not how liberal conservative you are. so if you guys are correct that in this particular case and this is just an example, if it's

really just all about the constitution concerns about the constitution than people that support the tea party since we are about constitutional preservation should not want to repeal the 14th amendment. that's part of the constitution. is that correct? is that correct? well guess what? control for conservatism in which is a proxy for this, this preference for small limited government, low taxes, deregulation. even after we control for that stuff there is still an empirical connection that people that support the tea party want to repealed the 14th amendment so what about the constitution again? >> i would like to thank all of you for coming ridiculously if you are a conservative and a tea party backer. this is some tough stuff to hear

but you sat there patiently and respectfully and i really appreciate it. i want to thank chris for coming. this was a wonderful presentation. thank you so much. [applause] >> it's anybody that had an issue with what i am saying i'm happy to talk about it right now so we don't hold these other people up. i'm happy to hash it out with you. [inaudible conversations] up next on booktv "after words" with guest host jonah goldberg of the national review. this week's yuval levin and is look "the great debate" edmund burke, thomas paine, and the birth of the right and the left.

in it, the founder and editor of national affairs discusses the origin of the political left, right divide arguing that today's partisanship begin with the debates over the french revolution. this program is about an hour. >> host: hi yuval. thanks for joining us. welcome to c-span. i am going to be grilling you on your book, "the great debate" and i will try to do my best five -- which means a lot of profanity and we will see where it goes. i will just start right off the bat, who was edmund burke? >> guest: edmund burke was an irish born english politician, statesman and political thinker and writer of the late 18th century. he was born in 1729. he lived until 1727. his political career is really from the late 17 60's until his death and it was an unusual

political career and that it was a very much intellectual career. from the very beginning he was as much a thinker is a politician and the thinking he did was about how to help his country through period of intense change and tension in crisis from the american war through regency crisis or the french revolution and the european war that followed. work was the voice for sustaining continuity through change. and so he was an enemy of the radicalism of the french revolution but was a reformer of british institutions always in an effort to save them in to fix them. so he has come to be known as one of the fathers of modern conservatism for this effort to sustain continuity in times of change. >> host: russell kirk is famous for establishing him the father of modern conservatism. was he known as the father of modern conservatism before curt? >> guest: work describes itself as the longing to the party of conservatives.

he understood himself to be engaged in the effort to save the british constitution, the british system at a time when it was generally threatened by political radicalism so it makes sense to think of him as the father of modern conservatism but it can also need misleading. burke was a whig and not a reformer. he was an opponent of slavery and always favored limits on the power of the king. he wasn't a person would have been thought of as a conservative in continental europe at the time. but a voice for anglo-american conservatism. he has been understood that way before curt. >> host: who was thomas paine? >> guest: thomas paine was an anguished or an immigrants in america a contemporary of work. he was eight years younger and his story is quite different. he began life in a working-class family in england through a

series of terrible misadventures and found himself basically a bankrupt tax collector living in london trying to figure out what to do with his life that one with extraordinary self-education in philosophy and science. he encountered benjamin franklin the representrepresent ative of the american colonies in britain and franklin got to know him a little, very little and suggested to him that he should try going to america and starting over. payne did that and quickly became an important figure in the intellectual circles of philadelphia. he was the editor of a small magazine called the pennsylvania magazine, a writer and as the american revolution began to brew he became an important retort titian. he wrote common sense, the great pamphlet that persuaded so many people to back the cause of independence. he wrote the crisis papers and i think it's fair to call him a member of the founding

generation. 10 years later less known to us americans paine went to france and became an important spokesman for the french revolutionaries. he really was a great champion and made the case for the radicalism of the revolution in france to british and american audiences. he was a real revolutionary. he was a believer in the need to break with the past in order to undo the terrible injustices that the european regimes in his view were committing on their people and, he wanted always to find ways to apply the right lyrical principles to society and to arrive at a greater equality, greater individual liberty. and so we think of him as one of our founders but it was more radical than the american revolution was so in some ways he was much more at home with the french revolution did he started as one of the fathers of modern radicalism and some respects in the modern left. >> host: which brings us to the title of your book, "the great debate".

can you explain where the title comes from and what was the essence of the debate? >> guest: burke and paine were engaged in a political debate both of them more or less the backers of the americans. when it came to the french revolution they were on starkly opposite sides. they had a real debate. they knew each other. they had met a few times and exchange letters and most importantly they answered each other's published writings. some of their most important writings were in response to one another and with the book argues is that the debate actually predates that an explicit debate and for a long time really for the entirety of their public careers that two of them are laying out two views of liberal society of what it races friday could be like. the two are very much attention with one another in a% different ideas of what anglo-american liberalism is of where it's headed and what it's purpose is

and what it's found again. it's an argument about political philosophy in the book tries to drop by the putting their views against one another and not just their explicit debate about the revolution read what you come away with her to coherent consistent use of what we have to be as free people of a free society, what english and american political life should be and what i argue is these are views that are identifiably conservative on the one-handed radical and progressive on the other so they can help us see to the bottom of some of the left/right debate that continues. the ideas not exactly that their relationship today's left and right is somehow genealogical. it's not that today's conservatism has dissented from burke exclusively but these two views emerged almost inevitably in our kind of society and burke and paine express the more clearly and explicitly. >> host: for context, have there have been, you think of other great thinkers on either

side of the pressing issue of the day that had this open-air argument and one of the problems you get with history is you said gosh i would love to know what john dewey would say to hayek. and this is one of these rare cases where you actually have that. can you think of any others? >> is a very rare thing. there are few others on a smaller scale. the french revolution raise profound questions and at a time when there were people vote in britain and america who were involved in politics who were serious political thinkers which is very unusual. so you find some disputes between jefferson and adams all that come to seem a little bit like this debate and there is a very broad public dispute in britain and america about the french revolution in general but i think work and paine because they and gauge each other so direct way and because they disagreed so profoundly and i also think because work more

than anyone who agreed with him express the conservatconservat ive vision of a liberal society illicitly and fully. there aren't a lot of other voices like his and so i think he is really what makes this debate what it is. but paine took it seriously and asked specific landefeld he owed it to his readers and friends to address work's arguments. you really have a debate, a full on debate. >> host: we should probably get terminology here. the french revolution is widely seen, the terms left and right, out of the french assembly. it has to do with the seating chart. >> guest: basically the people that supported the declaration of the rights of man which was really a radical statement of principles in the french revolution more or less sat to the left of the speaker and the original assembly, they were still revolutionaries but they

were a little bit less radical and so in that press at the time both in britain and in france they came to be referred to as left and right and so radicals on the left more conservatives on the right. >> host: i have always wrestled that this a little because this is a european import in that the british parliament the seating chart went basically with the and the nays essentially and it moved around depending on who is empowered. >> guest: the government sits to the right of the speaker in the comments, still does in the opposition party on the left. in fact the left in the right of the french revolution had very little to do with our left and right. it's true that one of them was more radical than the other but the idea that left and right come from the french revolution is more wrong than it is right. the actual party to the french revolution, the aristocrats they don't have anything to do with politics. they don't have anything to do

with anyone's politics anymore. were you really find left and right is we recognize emerging is the politics in america written around the same time so i think it's right to say that left and right emerged around the french revolutiorevolutio n but they merged in a debate about the french revolution a debate that was basically held in english. >> host: so when you say, growing and audience obviously but when you say liberal society talking about liberal the way we talk about this today, a free society class of liberalism. >> guest: yeah a society like you would have found in britain and the 18th century to today like the one you would have found in america. a society where there's basic respect for the rights of the rights of the individual in the sense that the government exists at least at some level to defend and vindicate those rights. there are limits on the government but there's a strong government and you know there's emphasis placed on private

property. this is what we basically mean by classical liberalism and american liberalism so you describe the society is that why is the kind we would recognize as around. one of the things about the work paine debate in our left right debate is it's not as radical a debate as some of what you were seen in european politics and in fact what you still see in european politics. it's a debate within the liberal society or about the liberal society. that doesn't make it less divisive. it doesn't make a it less intense. it almost -- it almost nexa more so but it makes them more recognizable because it's a debate about who we are three of. >> host: friedrich hayek gave us the essay why i'm not a conservative and everyone points to it but he was supposedly talking about the european and he defined himself as an old whig.

>> guest: other people were using it around the same time but basically as a whig who follows the ideas of the whigs and the english revolution so a real believer in freedom and liberty but in ordered liberty and liberty as an inheritance. hayek, the essay why am not a conservative is now found at the end of hayek's book the constitution of liberty which is a very working in book and describes itself that way. it opens with a description of how hayek is a burkean. in that sense he is a conservative. that is not the entirety of what conservatism means but i think his argument for why he is not a conservative in germany or france less than britain or america. >> host: the famous essay conservative mess medicine ideology. conservatives demand ideology -- conservatism is the one ideology that place consistent

independent. a conservative in portugal will be -- then a conservative united states where we are basically trying to conserve a liberal revolution. so, let's start, you divide these chapters up into these different aspects of the stanchions of the debate, the legs of the stool or whatever appropriate metaphor we can come up with. why don't we start very much at the beginning and talk about the different views of nature and history. >> guest: the book is structured in a way that tries to take a debate that was about specific concrete political events and pull it apart into themes that can then be understood in themselves so that you see what the disagreement is and what you learn from that process you can reapply to political events. so it's basically the method of lyrical philosophy. and it begins where they began in an important sense. it begins with the question of the relationship of nature to politics. berkin paine with those claim

that their political views are tastes in an idea that politics has to insure to human nature or to nature in some respect that they have different ideas of what that is and different ideas of what nature means in political debate have a lot to do with the views that follow. paine offers an idea of nature that's very much in enlightenment science. he understands me -- nature as a source of rules and rules that govern the behavior of individual particles if you will and society itself is a function of those particles. it's a little bit like physics applied to politics not in the simpleminded way. obviously he understood that politics was in physics but the basic way of thinking of how do we get at the truth of what is the deepest kind of truth of these politics. he thought the way to get at was to go to the beginning, at the origin of things. not the historical origins.

for him that meant first of all understanding the human being in his pre-social state because society is just a function of human beings and many human beings together so understand society you first have to understand the individual human being. in this he follows what is the fairly familiar to students of american political thought and british political thought very the model of the state of nature the way of understanding society so let's imagine society begins with independent individuals coming together and deciding we would be a lot better off if we live together, if there's a mutual enforcer laws and a protector of property and safety. that is how societies form. they answer to that purpose and every government in any society that doesn't answer that part is that violates her rights and doesn't protect their property and doesn't protect us properly from one another is an illegitimate government and we have a right to overthrow it. this is basically his vision.

it's the liberal vision and awlaki and sort of vision and from there he begins his political thinking. so that means his political thinking is very individualist, it's very rights-based and it is devoted to the idea of individual liberty is this defining principle of life. edmund burke starts by looking at that in saying well the problem is no one has ever lived that way. the state of nature is a thought experiment is anyone would acknowledge but it's a very implausible thought experiment. no human being has ever lived out of family say even outside of society so to understand society based on what it would mean to live in a situation that no human being has ever lived in may not be the most useful way of thinking about how we ought to live and what struck him most was radical individualism. burke's approach to political thought but also to nature cell against in holes, not in parts. you might say his nature is morgan aristotelian science.

he says human beings have always lived in society and we need to understand the human being and the path that allow us to be happy and institutions that allow us to thrive within society so we always reasons about manic society and in turn tries to understand what liberty means and what equality means and what society means based on how people of that in the real world. what has enabled people to live in just unhappy ways? to him, society has to answer to human nature and human nature is not the same thing as a physics of political science. the human being is not just a rational animal so we don't just answer to rules vary the human being is also a sentimental creature and is also an animal. politics has to recognize all of that because to ignore those things is to set yourself up for

failure. to create a system that would only work with something other than human beings, so his recourse to nature, what he finds useful in the model of nature is the model of continuity, a model of generation of inheritance, but how over time species improve, societies improve and it happens gradually. he is writing of course well before darwin and evolution but what he offers is an evolutionary walk -- model, gradual change, building on what we have starting with child and error. and so from these two very different models of nature you already begin to see some very basic differences about how we understand society. >> host: want to come back to some of that because people should know as a matter full disclosure i have reviewed this book for commentary and totally trashed it. i asked to give it a rave review but i disagreed with some

quibbles about it and i want to come back to them but i want to flush flesh out just a little more. i think the modern year, the one thing that would shock people the most in burke's thought is deep skepticism about the power and the limits of reason. paine believes that you can't just simply reason your way through any problem and burke almost laughs at that. host -- >> guest: so paine because he believes what nature gives us his basically principles he think lyrical life is the application of principles and that human reason understood in an enlightened way that as an individual faculty of logical analysis should allow us to find answers to social questions by applying our understanding of the rules to our understanding of the circumstances. it's basically a kind of science of society.

he has a very high opinion of reason. he is very impressed with what science is achieving in his day. only a century after and it's an incredible time for modern science and he believes that if you apply that kind of thinking to political life you can solve social problems, really solve them. salt property, salt war. he's a kind of utopian. he doesn't think it'll happen in permanent way to truly utopian way but he thinks he can solve a lot of our social problems if we just apply our reason to write transit pulse. that means that paine approaches the world and unnecessarily perfect world by being absolutely outraged that failure, the fact that things are going well and he could only understand injustice and failure in society as a function of people choosing to do the wrong thing and especially choosing to oppress the weak. that's basically how he understands why there is war and why there is poverty and why

there is injustice in why people aren't free. burke says human life is much more complicated than that and reason is an important part of what the human person is but it's not even the four most part let alone the only part. he thinks life in society because it's a lot of human beings living together has a lot to do with the sentiments with relational and social questions, with pride, with all kinds of things that aren't being reason that we are going to get rid of. some of the problems we have a permit problems because they are functions of human nature and human nature is not a simple matter of applying principles. so his view is that the lightman idea of reason can't be corrected and applied to society. it's one of the biggest mistakes at the radicals of the french revolution mates that they believed if only they find the right rules they could start over from scratch.

burke says we will never know enough to build a whole society correctly. what we can do is see what works in a society we have and make the rest more like that. essentially the process of social progress is the process of making society more like its best cell. it's a grateful process that tries to be impressed and a conservative process that ensures a model for the rest. >> host: one of the things i didn't member or didn't know of late until i dove into this, the phrase little platoon which is bandied around a lot particularly conservative circles as shorthand for the institutions of civil society mediating structures that come between the individual and the state. robert putnam and harvard has done a lot of stuff on this. bowling leagues, churches,

schools all of these things are local platoons but you point out that for burke when he actually coined the phrase he's talking about social class. >> guest: in a way it's intolerable to say that burke is devoted to civil society of all those institutions to stand between the individual in the state. he thinks it's essential in a big artist debate with paine or those because paine makes the argument that institutions between the individual and state are legitimate power sources and power centers of society. nobody chosen to give authority and exercise enormous authority. burke does defend those but the term comes in a passage in the reflections of evolution where burke is criticizing the wealthy friends turned against the wealthy. so joined up with the radicals and decided to dismantle their society.

he says you know you have to begin by thinking about what it is you have to offer your society from where you sit. you have to first understand the part of society that you are part of has to offer that's good rather than turn it in society as a whole. he makes case for economic class really and does argue the little platoon that we are part of is as much a part of the economy that we are we are part of this the part of society that we are part of. a lot of people use that phrase and mean something very different. >> host: it was funny in that discussion and we will get back to this in a second but one of the things that came to my mind was down at the. downs and abbe, i would love to read the british left laughs take on the show because you have butlers and mazen house servants who are his fierce defenders as they are class and

of not wanting to see classes lower than them treated as equals to them and the idea of his servants sitting with the upper crust horrifies the serving class as much as it or even more so than a horrifies the aristocrats. he got me to thinking on this is something i want to come back to as well, so much as what burke is writing about these things only makes sense to a certain extent in the context of british culture. i think it's british exceptionalism he is talking about and it's one of the reasons why don't think it translates as well into american society as you discuss but can you sort of talk about the role that, could his arguments have worked in europe the way they do in britain because in britain there's a culture where people

people -- their station in a way that maybe this is lack of fuelism or whatnot that maybe wouldn't have, those arguments don't play as well. >> guest: i think that's true in part and sure in relation to his descriptions of social class and the people's relation to their stations. anyway written in his time was much more free and equal than cotton and the europe and much less so than america. as he acknowledged in both cases. burke's argument -- burke was an early opponent of slavery. it was easier to be one in britain than america because it is sickly at already stuff but he was. he was one of the first signatories of the wilberforce and so on. burke recognizes that different societies exist in different circumstances.

certainly part of his argument is about the project are genius of what he calls the english constitution which is not a written constitution but a whole system that included an important class of employment that he thought had its merits. he was not a defender of the status quo per se. he was not an opponent of all change. he had done it himself. he came from what we think of as a middle-class family and not just a middle-class but in irish middle-class family and made it to the upper tiers of the english political system. and they wanted the way to be open to other people do the same buddy to believe there is a stabilizing influence of the aristocracy that made the british open to his way of thinking about free society in ways that were essential. he thought the french could have saved their system by looking to the best of their own tradition. he understood the americans were quite a different species of englishmen.

while they have the same rights of englishmen and in fact that was part of what they were fighting for in the american war, and america a quality reached far more deeply the class system didn't exist in the same way. i think was burke offers is a disposition and an idea of what the free society is that translates pretty well much less so to continental europe three at the european path to democracy is very different and the european idea of democracy and social democracy is quite different and i don't think that burke is all that applicable to cut into europe then people try to apply in ways that were very perverse and that led to a certain kind of historicism. people like hagel thought that they were following burke and burke would not have thought so in any respect. i think it translates to america. >> host: there is always hagel. >> guest: he translates to

america much more easily because in a funny way one of the things that we americans of the left in the right take for granted and assume without thinking about it too much is the american revolution is the beginning of something graham but the american revolution was the extension of a certain kind of anglo-american english way of life and thinking. it's quite different and it developed differently for a very long time in american life. burke in his speeches on america notes a couple of differences. americans are much more alert to threats to liberty and much more suspicious of government and the british were. but their basic idea of their relation of the individual to the committee and its right is an english idea. a disposition toward society that burke articulates is useful to america. it's not simply translatable but it plays a part in what we think of as conservativism. >> host: one last bit from the actual book.

as i understand it and correct me if i'm wrong, your dissertation was slightly different title and it was on -- it is your baseline, right? is isn't your fifth book? >> guest: forth. >> host: okay, slacker. the title of the dissertation was in the debt of the past? what was the title? >> guest: was called the great law of change, a edmund burke and thomas paine. >> host: you touched on it a little bit in the nature of rights. >> guest: that is where the book and spray the book goes through a series of thematic interpretations of their differences in it and on the question of the meaning of the

past. a lot of their differences and a lot of their disagreements about other subjects amount to a disagreement about what the past should be. at the end of the day burke believes that human beings exist in a context that we are all worn into world that existed before us and this is an inescapable fact. you don't have a choice about it so to understand society is fundamentally a choice as a kind of a mistake. society answers to unchosen obligations and should he set up in way that allows us to meet unchosen obligations. the family, the community and the nation and the people around us. he thought we could not escape the past and we should to because it passes the only reason why we don't live in savagery. the inheritance we get, the cultural and social and intellectual inheritance is the reason why we can make broad rest area's burke is a traditionalist but a forward-looking traditionalist. he believes the present is better than the past, not worse.

a lot of traditionalist archers as big as you think that past was some perfect state in one way or another or in the past we had access to perfect truth and we don't anymore. we can only reach it by living the way our fathers did. burke thinks things have improved over time in the future can be better still but only if we sustain the means by which the president has become better in the past passover hymn traditionalism is a way forward. paine again because he believes fundamentally in the human being as a rational chooser and because he believes we should understand society is a choice and is existing to protect their freedom of choice believes the weight of the past should be as light as it can be and should be as free as the first generation was to determine its own destiny, to set its own sentence sentence -- goals to create its own civilization. that difference between them turns out to be an enormously important difference.

it's crucial to burke's criticism of a liberal radicalism and it's crucial to burke's description of his own liberalism, his conservative liberalism which is a gradual building of the past and it's essential to paine passmark radicalism. paine wants to -- to be free of the applications that present themselves at the juncture of generating. he wants us to live as though it were not the case that we are warned to world that existed before us. so the place of the past and the meaning of the past is absolute essential to the difference. i think it's really crucial to the difference between right and left still. we see it especially in what we think about the social issues. a lot of it really amounts to whether the obligations we have and that are choosing them are in fact applications or whether we should work to make it so that we can choose them. so everything is optional and we

don't owe anybody anything that we don't want to. conservatconservat ives and social debates often say well this is the world they are given. this is the human being as a human being is and we have to live with that. rather than find ways to initiate some radical break with them. >> host: what it paine think of the family? >> guest: yeah, pain is a little coy about it. he didn't leave in inherited anything. he was supposed to inherent privileges to inherit power and property. paine at the end of his career writes an essay that lays out a sort of basic outline of the welfare state. he shows us in a way how radical individualism leads to statism and it's a very important theme to see. the entire thing is funded via inheritance tax. he says nothing of use happens

in that juncture and that intersection between generations. you basically have somebody getting something they didn't burn so that's the place where society can legitimately tax people. he doesn't make a radical argument like marx does her like plato does actually that the family should be broken up, parents of children should be separated because that's the only way to in-app are really radical social change. a lot of what he says just as much or at the least of just links between generations should be loosened if not row can. he doesn't go quite as far some people let the smartest radicals and revolutiorevolutio naries have always understood that the family is the foremost obstacle to their goals. >> host: from plato's republic on. >> guest: from communism to marxism and in less pernicious ways to kibitz movement in israel the first thing they did was raise children and take them out of the house. this temperature that the relationship between parents and

children is the foundation of social order and to change the social order fundamentally you have to break that relationship. >> host: hillary clinton once said that i'm getting partisan by the way much like melissa harris-perry from "msnbc" a couple of months ago hillary clinton was that we as a country need to move beyond the idea of there is anything that there is -- the reason i brought it up if it's very clear that burke understands that the family unit is essential particular 19th century. the family unit is a dictatorship. aps are not one with a lot of rights in the context of their own families so i was wondering does paine consider that to be unjust, a father or mother who tells the children went to go to bed and what to e and what to wear? >> guest: john locke offers an answer to the old who follows

question which is to say liberalism is suspended in the family until the age of maturity and the reason is liberalism or liberty requires reason. reason more or less has paine understands and human beings were born with and undeveloped rational faculty and they reach it at maturity. >> host: as parents we can agree with that. >> guest: is certainly true. i'm sure you don't have but when you're four years old so effectively parents have this right to treat their children as almost their property up to a point. while the children are young. paine echoes that here and thern explicit argument about that and it's in direct response to paine so in a response demand the book that he wrote about the french revolution makes the argument that effectively one generation shouldn't be able to bind together. it's actually a criticism of

burke where burke says the parliament of 1688 down this to the monarchy forever and paine says no parliament binds the future to anything ever. there shouldn't be anything that we do because of past generations said so. >> host: what about the u.s. constitution than? >> guest: it's a great question. paine is very critical of a lot of what's in the u.s. constitution without ever explicitly criticizing the constitution. not only at the way in which it lines the future, use critical of checks and balances. he's critical of a bicameral legislature. he thinks that democracy should be as direct as possible and as simple as possible. he doesn't think it's necessary to divide power and channel it great he thinks these are ways of keeping people from their rights. he never says he would have opposed the constitution and he was in france when it was being debated on what it seems he is critical of the constitution.

and we know very little of what burke thought of the constitution but it was more in line with his way of again about government. it's one of the great frustrations of burke's scholarship there is a plan or in which a friend of his cinematic copy of the federalists. this friend, letters to this friend in ireland were the source of some of the best things of burke. he was in ireland and they had interesting arguments. the one time he came to london he sends this book ahead and says let's talk about it when i see you. now we don't know what burke thought about the federalists otherwise we might have. that way thinking about government is more amenable to this way of inking of paine's. >> host: seems that paine would have been critical of this. this is one of these areas moving it up to contemporary issues, this is one of the areas where you can see the left and right divide. generally speaking the left

feels constrained by the u.s. constitution. once a living constitution, as john podesta who is back in the white house now set a couple of years ago because of republican obstruction in the congress said that u.s. political system and that frustration with checks and balances and all that is very much -- the party of government doesn't like it and curtails it. but there are other areas where you know, i will ask it since you are the author here. why is there so little discussion of how this stuff actually plays out in contemporary life? he set up his argument these precursors for a left versus right and then by the end you are fairly uninterested and

really going very far in trying to score these things in the contemporary political debate. >> guest: it's a book about burke and paine and i certainly thought about whether should and with the kind of what would burke do and what would paine do chapter. in the end i decided that would take away from the discussion itself is if u.s. burke paine. >> or themselves and they're not shy in their clear about about what they think i held -- i think it helps liberals and conservatives understand the views of the others better and understand where they differ from people that i describe as their own origins of thinking. it's more useful as a presentation of one of the first instances of the left-right divide than an attempt to show how the line goes from here to there. ..

>> it becomes very clear morceau so there is very little sense for their ideas come from but paine met a fellow or about society are all the motion about moving. progress, in motion but

burke metaphor is based to create a space that society can exists that is the purpose of politics that is what government does and without hope defining it he believes to sustain it is progress not only made possible but it defiance by what happens in that space. it is maintained at to certain principles by sticking to some key prepositions but politics is not about principles but what we want and how to get it and what to achieve. everyday politics is not a constant appeal to any other idea with the end to change everything how we live to live in a very different way. so for that kind of approach

to government tremendously powerful to allow you for disagreement within the space. the strakes girl always holding you back did you cannot transform everything at once hopper you'd never get that majorities so this is the biggest problem. >> host: i know lot there would be no hegel but but i would argue it has changed lot we get the first president that says the decision of where the country needs and prior to

wilson but to protect the country does not guide the entire politics in a certain direction. with. >> burke would say the leader is where it is going. >> host: when i read burke stuff about reason. i know you like to reply to the same sentence as burke, i think i put it in the review, i did not get biology wrong but they are founding fathers but then so many generations the genetic

material is all over the place that is the very reason from the legal studies in with those that rejects that sort of thing and with paine i get is strong smell of libertarian. the biggest element is more the two-party then the democratic party. >> it depends what you mean. it is true in some ways there are a lot of libertarians who start where paine stars in some ways libertarianism has multitudes some form is very

burke like with the belief of organic growth which is the essence of burke view but some is very rational the stake and really believes that society by applying a special economic principles are not scientific as they understand can maximize freedom and therefore maximize happiness. but paine shows us in the course of his own thinking and devolution of his own thinking is powell individualism these two stages of the desire to release from the reliance of other people which is the essence of the goal of paine leads to the creation of faceless provider of material benefits. he takes steps and tells you why they are connected there

is a tendency among us tousing of the welfare state and of progressivism itself and in a lot of ways it is but a welfare state is very different. the purpose is to enable the individual to have independence and beat their material needs without being dependent but dependence on the people around you there is no real way around that. burke issue is formed around that fact the and chosen obligations to be the core of society. in order to break that we have to have a distant and faceless provider of material benefits.

that is what the american welfare support looks like it is not in the circle of democracy in practice although a lot of arguments sound that way but it exists in the left is much more radically individualist but where you fire radical individualism of the bride is the libertarians in the sense that the society should take its bearings. libertarians are in the no-man's land. in fact, they end up on their rights because they think liberty is government access and i think that is true. that makes sense but they're not exactly conservatives. >> but libertarians are changing. when people tell me

libertarians and conservative split up the was not the biggest of the importance and we basically share the same baseball cards. >> also what is increasing is a sense of society has be organic thing it could grow into experience to have different views whether limits should be set but that is not a rational thing as many share in common. >> i have long argued to utopia most conservatives find that in the past but the of modern day liberalism instead of the classless society the shelter or

security that get the most independent people. [laughter] so that we are running out of time the current political climate on the right, the tone of this not dismiss if but skeptical. i don't think i spoil it that you side with burke but it is out of tempo. particularly on the right to use think the american movement can move back to a more burke temperament? >> guest: or more for word i think part of the reason a

lot of the book is to offer a different intellectual history it is very important we define ourselves that way. too often when conservatives in america reached for intellectual history or philosophy it is the most radical version for the jeffersonian tale and then whipped what's us into the story that ends up to be too radical about ourselves. burke offers a different way to understand the legal society including our legal society. but an achievement of western civilization america is at greatest achievement and would not throw lay that making the most of the best for golf therefore has a

society becomes more like the best self this is not a process requires revolution but conservatism but one of the lessons we can take is the engagement of coverage -- governing the that you had to fix public problems before they got too big so he was interested in the details you don't expect them but that is what i do with my day job and this is why. it is important for conservatives to be involved with governing. also to approach society from a disposition of gratitude and care thing

begin from a place of anchor of what is lost for brian degree what is lost the last day is destructive to the american ideal was too much power and destroys the american ideal but the way to persuade those people is to offer the different path in a concrete way fed is friendly to the present in the future that it does not seem like a simple nostalgia. the idea i have is in a better future so it could do some improvements in the be suggested as a correction is is the only thing i can do.

>> do have british exceptional was some of the tokyo says the american is the british man left alone and one of the things i was trying to get at is so much what accounts in the american way is a cultural product so the question is if that is true but our literature is -- libertarian -- liberties are more than the abstract piece of the paper then what does that say? can you have the protection if he lost that cohesion and

consensus that once took them for granted? >> would it means is america is the actual living thing and not just a set of ideas on paper that one way to think about that is maybe to have cultural continuity so it is hard but america is something that can transmit itself to a future generation for our was born in israel and i came here as a child and old truck patriotic because the idea of this country and the reality appeals to be in a powerful way. that is the case for generations and generations. so america is able to be open to immigrants because our way of life does not require your family can trace itself continuously to william the conqueror brno