of the "national review." this week in his book the great d date edmund burke thomas kane and right and left. and that the founder and editor

of national affairs discusses the origin of the political left right defied are doing that today is partisanship began over the french revolution. this program is about an hour. >> host: thanks for joining us. i'm going to be growing you and your book a great debater and i will try to do my best which means a lot of profanity. let's start right off the debt. who is edmund burke. >> guest: he was a political thinker and writer in the late 18th century he was born in 1729 and lived until 1797. his political career is from the late 1760 until his death if and it was unusual in that it was

also very much intellectual career. from the very beginning he was as much a thinker as a politician and of the thinking that he did was about how to help his country through a period of intense change of tension and crisis. they were sustaining continuity through change, and so was an enemy of the radicalism of the french revolution but a former british institution. always in an effort to save them and fix them. so he's come to be known as one of the fathers of modern conservatism to sustain continuity in times of change. >> host: he is most famous for establishing who the father of the modern conservatism. was he the father of modern conservatism? >> guest: at the end of his life he describes them as the party of conservation.

the term conservative didn't exist exactly but he understood himself to be engaged in the effort to save the british constitution system at a time when i was genuinely threatened by political radicalism. it makes sense to think of modern conservatism that it can be misleading. he was a reformer of institutions and practices and opponent of slavery and always favored limits on the power of the king. and so he will send a person that would have been thought of as a conservative and continental europe at the time but the voice for the anglo-american conservatism he has been understood that we before. >> host: who was thomas paine? >> guest: and immigrant bourn to america. he was eight years younger and his story is quite different. he began life in a working-class family in england fruit eight

series of misadventures and found himself basically a bankrupt collector trying to figure out what to do with his life but an extraordinary self education and physical science and he encountered a benjamin franklin the representative of the colonies in britain. a suggested to him to get into america. in the intellectual circles in philadelphia he was the editor of a small magazine called the pennsylvania magazine and a writer and the american revolution and the struggle for independence and he wrote the crisis papers.

lesser known as he went to france and became an important spokesman for the french revolutionaries to be a really great champion to the speaking world and the case for the revolution in france to the british american audiences. he was a break with the past in order to undo the terrible injustice is that the european regimes in his view were coming in their people and he wanted always to find ways to apply the right political principle in society to we think of them as one of the founders but he was more radical than the american revolution in some ways much more at home and the french revolution he thought it was one of the fathers of modern radicalism and some aspects of the modern left. >> host: which brings us of the title of your book the great

debate. >> guest: first of all they were engaged in an actual debate in the french revolution. both of them more or less for backers of independence of course much more explicitly so so they basically supported the americans. but when it came to the french revolution they were on opposite sides. they had a real debate. they knew each other and met a few times and exchanged letters but most importantly they answered the published writing. some of the most important were in response to one another. the book argues that it predates that explicit debate and that for a long time for the entirety of their public career the two of them were laying out their views of the liberal society with a free society could be like. especially to become what ingalls liberalism is and where it's headed and what the purpose is and what it sounded and.

it tries to put the two world views against one another and not by leaving the actual explicit debate about the revolution. you come away with a coherent consistent view of what we ought to be as a free people and a free society. what the political life should be and i would argue these are identifiably conservative on the one hand and radical and progressive on the other. so we can see to the bottom of some of the the debate that continues. but the idea is the relationship to days left and right and somehow it is genealogical. today's from baroque exclusively but from these types of reviews emerge almost inevitably in the society and explicitly than we are used to seeing. can you think of other great

thinkers on either side of the pressing issue of the day that had this open argument. one of the problems you get in intellectual history is i would love to know. this is one of the cases where you actually have that can you think of any others? >> guest: there are a few others on the french revolution that freezes really profound questions at the time when there are people both in britain and america who are involved in politics and with serious political thinkers which is very unusual. and so, you find some disputes between jefferson and adams for example that come to seem a little bit like this debate and there is a strong public dispute in britain and america about the revolution in general, but i think that because they are engaged with each other so directly and because they disagree so profoundly -- and i also think that because of more

than anyone else that agreed with him express to the conservative vision of the liberal society explicitly and fully there are not a lot of other voices like his. and so she is what makes this what it is. but he answered him specifically and felt that he owed it to his readers and his friends to address the arguments. >> host: we should get some terminology out of the week. first the french revolution is why we are seen as actually determined left and right come out of the french assembly. and it had to do with the seating chart. >> guest: it was the radical statement of principles in the french revolution more or less sat to the left of the speaker and the original assembly and the people on the right were revolutionary that they were a little bit less radical either

in britain or france the can to be referred to as left or right and radicals on the left, more conservatives on the right to get >> host: this is a european import in that in the british parliament, the seating chart went basically essentially and moved around the power so we never actually had the same category. >> guest: they sit to the right of the speaker and the opposition party on the left. it is a problem more than that because in fact, the left and the right of the french revolution have 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 sort of aristocrats and the don't have anything to do our politics or anyone's politics anymore.

where you find left and right is when we recognize and britain and america and around the same times of its right to say that left and right in merger of the french revolution but in a debate about the french revolution to bigot and it was basically held in english. >> host: ebullient audience, but when you say the liberal society, we are not necessarily talking about liberal in the way we talk about it today in a free society of classical liberalism. >> guest: it is like the one you would have found in the 18th-century through today like you would have found in america for today's society, where there is basic respect for the rights of the individual and the sense that government exists at least at some level to defend and vindicates those rights and there are limits on the government, but there is a strong government. and, you know, there is an emphasis placed on the private property. this is what we basically mean

by classical liberalism and so -- it describes the liberal society that way and it means the kind of society that we would recognize as our own. one of the important things to think about is that both sides accept the liberal society. it's not as radical as you would have seen in the european politics and some of what you still see it's not a debate in the far left and the far right. it's a debate between the liberal society and about the liberal society. it makes it more recognizable to us because it is a debate about who we are. >> host: everyone points to this has proved that he wasn't a conservative but talking about the european style conservative, blood and soil and thrown in all of that, and naturally defined himself as an old whig which is how he defined himself.

>> guest: other people were using it at the same time, but basically he follows the ideas in the glorious inglis resolution 168874 and freedom and liberty but in order to liberty and liberty as an inheritance. the essay on why i'm not conservative is now found at the end of the book the constitution of liberty, which is a very murky income book and it describes itself as health she is a burkian. i think the argument why he is not a conservative is the argument when he's not a conservative in germany or france, less than britain or america. >> host: the wants wrote a famous essay conservatism and ideology and radicalism are -- well, conservatism is the one ideologies that's always placed consistent and independent.

some conservative and portugal is going to mean something different than a conservative in the 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 sort of stanchions of the date on the leg of the store or whatever, not appropriate to come up with. why don't we start specifically at the beginning and talk about the different views of nature and history? >> guest: the book is structured in a way that takes it about the specific concrete political defense and pull it apart into themes that can then be understood in themselves so that you see will the disagreement is and what you learned in that process that you can apply to the political event and so basically the method of the political philosophy. it begins where they began. the question of the relationship with nature to politics they

would both claim that they were on the idea to answer to nature, human nature in some respects, they are very different ideas about what that was and different ideas about what nature means and has a lot to do with the views that follow. so he offers an idea of nature that is an enlightened science idea and he understands nature as a source of rules, and the rules that govern the behavior of individual particles of the well and that holds and in terms of society itself it is basically a function of those particles. it's like the physics apply not in a simple-minded way but he understood that it wasn't physics with the basic way of thinking about how we get to the truth of what is the deepest kind of truth in politics, he thought the way to get at it was to go to the origin of things and other historical origins of the national, the pre-historical

origins. for him that meant first of all understanding the human being in his pre-social state because the society is a function of human beings, many human beings together and so understand society you have to understand the human being. and this follows what is a fairly familiar to students of american political thought and british political thought to be the model of the state 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 lived together, if there was a mutual enforcer of the law that would protect the safety. that is how the societies for me and it exists in that purpose and has to be understood as answering to that purpose that any government and society that doesn't answer to that purpose and it violates our right doesn't protect our property from one another. it is an illegitimate government. it is a familiar vision and it's a liberal vision and it is a

sort of lockean vision. and from there he begins his political thinking so that means his political thinking is very individualistic and jerry wright space and is devoted to the idea of individual liberty as a kind of defining political life. he starts by looking at that and saying well, the problem is no one has ever lived that way. the state of nature is a thought experiment anyone would acknowledge, that it's a very implausible. no one has ever lived outside of the family. even outside of the society. and so, to understand the society based on what it would mean to live in a situation that no human being has ever lived may not be the best way to think about how i live. what struck him the most is the radical individualism of it. his approach to the political fallout and also to nature itself begins in holes, not in parts. you might say that his science and nature is more than a

newtonian one. 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, the institutions that allow us to try it within society that he always reasons about man and society and sort of try to understand what liberty and equality means, what society means based on people in the real world. what have enabled people to live and just and happy ways? to him society has to answer to human nature, and human nature is not the same thing as a kind of physics of political science. of a human being is not just a rational animal so we do not just answer to rules. the human being is also the sentimental creature and an animal with animal needs and desires and the politics has to recognize all of that because to ignore those things is to set

yourself up to failure, create a system that would only work with someone other than human beings living in it. so his recourse to nature what he finds is the model of continuity, the model of the generation of inheritance, how overtime species improved and it happens gradually. he's writing of course well before the a solution but what he offers is a kind of evolutionary model change, a gradual change building on what we have starting with the real world. so from these two very different models of knee-jerk you already begin to see some very basic differences about how we understand society to get >> host: people should know i reviewed this book for commentary. i gave it a great review but i have to disagree with or quibble

about it and i want to come back to them but i want to flush this out a little bit more. for the modern year, the thing about was going to shock people the most in his thought is his deep skepticism about the power and the limits of reason. he believes you can freeze in your way out of any problem and burke almost laughs at that. payne because he believes and principles and what the political life is is the application of principles and human telomerase and understood again in an enlightened way that as an individual faculty of the logical analysis should allow us to find answers to social questions by applying our understanding of the rules and the circumstances. it's basically a kind of science of society. it's a high opinion of reason.

she's a very impressed with what the science is achieving and living on the century after newton. it's incredible for science and he believes that if you apply that kind of thinking to political life, you could salt social problems and solve the poverty and war. she's a kind of utopian. he doesn't think it will happen in a truly european way but he thinks that we could solve a lot of our social problems if we just apply our reason to the right principles and circumstances. that means that payne approach is the world, the necessary and a perfect world by being outraged at failure, at the fact things are not going well. and he could only understand injustice and failure as a function of people choosing to do the wrong thing. and especially of the powerful choosing to oprah's the week that is basically how he understands why there is war and

poverty and injustice and people are not free. he says it is much more complicated than that. and reason is an important part of what the human person is that it is in the four most part. he thinks that life in society because it is a lot of human beings living together has a lot to do with human sentiments with relational and social questions with pride and things that are not being a reasonable doubt of the system. some of the problems we have our permanent because they are functions of human nature. human nature is not a matter of applying principles to circumstances. so the enlightenment idea of reason cannot be applied to the society and it's one of the biggest mistakes that the radicals of the french revolution and english politics make is they believe if only they find the right rules and start it right they say we will

never know enough to build the whole society correctly. we can make the rest work like that and so the process of the social progress is of making society more like its best self. that is a gradual process and grateful process that tries to be impressed by votes working in society rather than what is sent. a kind of conservative process to save the best so that it can serve as a model for the best. >> host: i haven't read until of late when i dove into this. the phrase little platoon which has been around in the conservative circle as the is shorthand for the institution of civil society and the media structure that come between the individual and the state and robert putnam at harvard has done a lot of stuff on this and the bowling leagues, churches, schools, all of these things are

a little platoons, but you point out that for burke he's actually talking about social class. >> guest: he is devoted to the civil society institutions that stand and a big part of the date is that he makes an argument that institutions in the individual state are legitimate power sources and power centers and societies that are not elected. nobody chose to give authority to the wilderness between the individual and his rights. it comes in a passage in the reflection of the evolution where he is criticizing the wealthy french to turn against the wealthy who sort of join up with the radicals and decided to dismantle their society. he says you have to begin by

thinking about what it is you have to offer your society from where you sit. so you first have to understand the part of society that you are part of has to offer what's good rather than turn against the society as a whole and he makes the case for the economic class and it does argue that the little platoons that we are part of is as much a part of the economy. we will get back to some of the other chapters. >> host: downton abby i'd love to read the british left take on the show because you have the butlers and maids who are fierce defenders of their station and of their class and of not wanting to see class is lower

than them treated as equal to them and the idea of servants in the upper class as much as more so than aristocrats. this is something i want to come back to as well. they are writing about these things that only makes sense to the certain extent in the context of british culture. it translates to the society has he discussed. but can you sort of talk about the role that could his arguments have worked in europe in the way they do in britain because in britain their something in the british culture where people have a huge wave

that maybe this is the lack of feudalism and that maybe wouldn't have, those arguments don't play as well. in the description of social class his time was much more free and equal than continental europe and much less so than america as he acknowledged in both cases. he doesn't -- his argument is not an argument of slavery. he acknowledges he was an early opponent of slavery and was easier to be one in britain than america because basically it's all pretty stopped, but he was. he was one of the first signatories of the world of force petitions and so on. he recognizes the different societies and the different circumstances and certainly part of his argument is about the

particular genius of what he calls the constitution which is not a written constitution but a whole system that included an important class component that he thought had its merits. he wasn't a defender of the status quo per say oral change. he wasn't an opponent that people could rise to that system. he had done it himself and began what we thought of as a middle class family and not just middle class but an irish middle class family. and made it really to the upper tiers of the british political system. and wanted the way to be open to other people to do the same. but he did believe there was a kind of stabilizing influence of the aristocracy that made the british open to his way of thinking about the free society. in ways that were essential. he thought the french could have saved their system by looking to their own history rather than assuming that there was only that. he understood they were a different species than english

and that while the of the same rights of english men and that in fact that is what they were fighting for in the american war , that in america of the equality reached far more deeply than the class system didn't exist in the same way, but i think that what he offers is a disposition and i.t. with a free society is that translates pretty well to america much less so than in europe. the european path to democracy is very different and the idea of the social democracy is quite different and i do not think that he is all that applicable to continental europe. people have tried to apply to him in ways that were very perverse and lead to a certain kind of historicism. people felt that they were following him in some respects and he wouldn't have thought so in any respect. but, i think that it translates to america -- there is always hagel. but i think that he translates

to america much easily because in a funny way, one of the things that we americans of the left and of the right to granted and assumed without thinking about it too much is that the american revolution was the beginning of something brand new. but of course the american revolution was the extension of a certain kind of anglo-american way of life and we of thinking. it's quite different in the developed for a long time in american life. in his speeches in america keynotes a couple of the differences. they are much more alert to their differences and much more suspicious of the government than the british were, but their basic idea of the relation of the individuals in the community to the rights is an english idea and the disposition towards the society that he articulates is useful to america and it isn't translatable. but i think it plays a part in what we think of as conservatism very much. >> host: as we understand, and

correct me if i'm wrong coming your dissertation was a slightly different title triet i'm not trying to imply i think it is your fifth book or something like that? fourth? but the title of the dissertation was in the weight -- >> guest: it was called the great law changed. the meaning in the past democratic wife. >> host: it looms very large for both of these. can you talk about that? >> guest: that is where the book ends. to the serious interpretations of their differences and it ends on the question of the meaning of the past because a lot of the

distances and disagreements about other subjects amount to a disagreement about the past should mean to the present to the at the end of the day, he believes human beings exist in a context that we are all born into a world that existed before us and that this is an inescapable fact. you don't have a choice about it and so to understand the society as a fundamental trees is a kind of mistake. society answers to the hon chosen obligations and it should be set up in a way that allows us to meet the on chosen obligations. to the family, the community, the nation with people around us. he thought we could not easily the past, not only that but we shouldn't want to because it is the only reason why we do not live in savagery. the inheritance that we get, the social and cultural is the reason why we can make progress. so, he's a certain kind of conservative. he's traditional but he's a forward looking. he believes the present is better than the past and not worse. a lot of traditionalists think that the past was a perfect

state in one way or another or that in the past we have access to a perfect truth that we don't anymore and we can only reach it by living the way that our fathers did she thinks that things have improved over time and things can be better still but only if we sustain the means by which the president has become better than the tax to the capacity for him it has become a way forward. again, because he believes fundamentally in the human being as a rational choose your and we should understand the society has a choice and as existing to protect our freedom of choice, he believes the the weight of the past that should be as light as possible. every generation should be as free as it can be and as first generation was to determine its own destiny, to set up its own goals to make its own hall and create its own civilization. the difference between them turns out to be an enormously important difference.

it's crucial to the different kind of liberal radicalism and it's crucial to the description of his own liberalism, the conservative liberalism, which is a gradual building on the past and it is essential to his radicalism. he wants to enable people to be free of gun shows and obligations. some especially to be free of the obligations that present themselves at the juncture of the generation. he wants us to live as though it were not the case that we were born into a world that existed before. and so the place of the past and the meaning of the past is essential to the difference between them and i think it is crucial to the difference between right and left still. you see this in what we think of as the social issues. a lot of the amount to whether the obligations we have of that are in fact obligations or whether we should work to make it so that we can choose them. so that everything is optional and we do not know anybody anything that we don't want to.

conservatives in the social d date often just say this is the world we are given. this is as the human being is and we have to live with fat rather than find ways to initiate some radical break from it. >> host: just out of curiosity what did he think about the family? >> guest: payne is a little coy about it. he was supposed to inherent privileges and powers and to inherit property. but payne at the end of his career he writes an essay that lays out a basic outline of the welfare state and he shows us any way other radical individualism leads to state some and it's a very important thing to see. the entire thing is funded by the inheritance tax because he says that nothing happens in that juncture in that intersection between the

generations. you basically have somebody getting something so that is a place the society can legitimately tax people. he doesn't make a radical argument like marks or klayko that the family should be broken up and parents and children separated because that is the only way to enact a radical social change. a lot of what he does suggest as much or the links between generations should be loosened if not broken. he doesn't go quite as far as some people but the smartest radicals have always understood that the family is the foremost obstacle to their goals. from plato and on so communism up to marxism and less pernicious way is. the first thing they did is raise children in common and take them out of the house because it is simply troup the relationship between parents and children is the foundation of the social order and to change

the social order fundamentally you have to break that. >> host: hillary clinton, much more like msnbc a couple months ago said we as a country need to move beyond the idea if there is anything such as someone else's child and she says we need to move to the idea, move away from private ownership to collective ownership but the reason i brought it up is that it's very clear he understands that the family unit is essential particularly in the 18th or 19th century it is a dictatorship. babies are not born with a lot of rights in the context of their own families. so i wonder has he considered that to be on just as a mother or father tells their children when to go to bed and what to eat and what to wear. >> guest: he offers an answer to this which is to say that liberalism is suspended in the

family until the age of maturity and liberalism or liberty requires the reason and that human beings are born with an undeveloped faculty and reach that maturity that is a maturity means. sure you don't have it when you are 4-years-old. and so, effectively parents have this right to treat their parents as almost the property up to eight-point while the children are young. paine echoes that here and there, but she makes an argument about this. the book he wrote about the french revolution makes the argument that one shouldn't be able to buy into another piece as the parliament of 1688 down

bus to the marquee for ever she says no parliament combines the future to anything ever. there shouldn't be anything that we do because of the past generations had so. >> host: what does he think about the constitution then? >> guest: he is critical without ever explicitly criticizing the constitution. not only of the way that it binds the future, but he is critical of the checks and balances and of the bicameral legislature. he thinks the democracy should be as direct and simple as possible. he doesn't think it's necessary to divide the channel keeping people from their rights. he never says he would have opposed the constitution and he was in france when he was being decided on but he seems like he is critical of the constitution. and we know very little about what he thought of the

constitution that was a little bit more in line with his way of thinking about the government and its one of the scholarships. there is a way that they sent them a copy of the federalist and the letters she was in ireland said he didn't see them free often and interesting arguments the one time he came to britain and came to london, he sent this book ahead and said let's talk about it when i see you kirsanow you will know what he thought about the federalists otherwise we would have. but that we thinking about the government is more amenable than thinking about paine. it seems he would have been critical of the constitution. >> host: this is one of those areas moving it to the contemporary issues when you see the inside because generally speaking, the left feels constrained by the u.s.

constitution, a lifting constitution has john is back in the white house said a couple of years ago that because of the republican obstructionism in the congress said that the political system sucks and that frustration with checks and balances is very much the party of the government that doesn't contain government and curtails the government. but there are other areas where, you know, i will ask since you are the author here. why is there so little discussion about in the contemporary life you set up this argument that these are precursors for left reverses right and then by the end, they are doing a very far trying to

score these things in the contemporary and the political debate. >> guest: it is a book about burke and paine and i certainly thought about whether it should end with a kind of what would he do chapter. in the end i decided that would take away from the discussion itself because if you let them speak for themselves and they are not shy about what they think, i think it helps them as conservatives to understand their own view is a little bit better and the views of others and understand where they differ from people who live described as a tv origins of their own way of thinking. i think it is more useful as a presentation of what seems to have been one of the first instances of the left and right divide in a recognizable way than an attempt to show how the line goes from here to there because of course it doesn't go in a straight way to a lot has changed about the left and the right and a lot has changed about the circumstances. i would say especially at a long

century about the socialism and capitalism they are simply not a part of the date and i think that has changed things some but what they do is show you where the basic dispositions and different approaches and definitions between left and right there are different understandings of what the liberal society comes from and what they look like in their original form. and when you point to helps you get to that so when of the reasons why in the progressive i think it has a very little sense of their own intellectual history. the metaphors about the society are all motion metaphors. they are all about moving.

progress and motion. they are all hot space metaphors that is the purpose of the politics is and without defining in that space, he believes that by sustaining that it allows for progress because progress is not only made possible by what happens in that but it's defined by what happens in that space. the space is maintained by certain key principles, buy sticking to some key positions but within that, the politics is not about principles, it's about prudence. what we want and how to get it and what we can achieve. and so, everyday politics is not a constant appeal to an egalitarian idea or in the other kind of idea for an end towards changing anything about how we live so we could live in a very different way. it's about improving what we have to solve problems that

arise. for that kind of approach to government, something like the constitution is a powerful and appealing instrument, because it defines this space and allows you to sustain and allows a great deal of disagreement and change within the space but if what you want is motion and to keep going forward, then the restraints on the government in the constitution are just they feel like they are always holding you back. things moved much too slowly and you can't transform the whole thing at once and you never get the kind of majority that you needed to do what you want. for burke this would have any features and for paine it's the biggest thing in the system. >> host: i always said i know that there would be no hagel, but you're right. one of the reasons i would argue the left has changed is for this dialect, which we get a lot from woodrow wilson. the first president who says the vision of where the country needs to go.

prior to wilson, the president was not just a night watchman but he had a defined set of obligations to protect the country to do this and that, but not to guide the entire body politics in a specific direction. he would say the leader needs a vision of what the country is and not where it's going >> host: when i read about reason, which i enjoy and i think it is a point very well made, i know you like being put in the same sentence, but there is a lot -- i think i put it in their review they are sort of -- i understand this gets the biology wrong, but they are founding fathers. so this left and right debate

there were so many generations that the genetic material has gone all over the place and so the family resemblance is that you can find on the left and right. when i read them talking about reason, i get a strong whiff of the critical legal studies of the postmodern left and i got stuck within college, rejecting this sort of thing. and i get a very strong libertarianism coming out of it to the it seems to me that of the most poignant element is more that he parties than it is the democratic party. >> guest: i think that is true and some ways for a number of different kind of reasons. i think there are a lot of libertarians to start where paine starts in some ways libertarianism contains multitudes of different things

and some forms are very burkian and it is the essence of his view. but some forms are very rational lipstick and really believe that the society by applying certain kind of roles including principals far more scientific as they understand them can maximize the freedom and therefore maximize happiness. what paine shows us in the course of his own thinking and the evolution of his own thinking is, the radical individualism leads to the state is some and the gis lawyer from the reliance on other people which i would say is the essence of the goal and leads to the creation of the kind of provider of the material benefits and

there's a tendency among the american conservatives to think of the welfare state. our welfare system is not bismarck. it's more like the welfare state the purpose of its use to enable the individual to have the kind of illusion of independence. in the dependents of people around you is the only condition. there is no way around that. should be formed around the fact there's on chosen obligations to people immediately especially in the family should be the core of the society. he says in order to break that, we have to actually have a distance of the provider of material benefits to the poor.

that is what it more or less looks like. in the democracy in practice although a lot of the arguments around it now are found. it is much more than the right in america. it is in the local libertarianism and the sense that they should take their bearings from individual preference and the warrant above all. libertarians are over the left right to fight. i think that is true so it makes sense for them to be on the right they are not conservatives >> host: they tell you that

they have split off the conservative economic thinkers are libertarian economic thinkers and share the same baseball cards. >> guest: there is also why think it's increasing the libertarianism in the society has this kind of fun guided organic thing that should be allowed to grow and experiment. they should have different views about what the limits are on that but the basic view of society is not a rational plan but it's a growing organism. >> host: i have long argued that its utopias and most conservatives find one. it's the college campus now in the class of the society is this place to have college kids who especially in the week colleges,

the security, people clean up about them and very quickly because we are sort of running out of time, the current political climate, the tone of this scholarly form, credentialed in the sense not dismissive, but certainly skeptical i don't think i'm spoiling anybody, but you sided with burke at the end. so you're pretty much out of tempo with the time particularly on the right. do you think that the american conservative movement can move back to the more burkian temperament? >> guest: or forward it to the temperament. i think that part of the reason

for the book is to offer a different intellectual history of yourself. to find themselves it's where the left just doesn't. and i think too often when the conservatives in america reach for the history or philosophy, we've reached for the most radical version of the story of the american founding for the kind of jeffersonian tale of what america is, and we then squeeze lincoln into the story and it ends up being radical about ourselves. what he argues is a different way to understand the society. as an achievement, not a break from the past about an achievement of the western civilization, i think america is the greatest and was not achieved by throwing away what came before but making the most of what came of it.

therefore as a society that improves and grows by the gradual refinement of itself, by becoming more like its best self that is not a radical process and it's not a process that requires evolution. it's a process that requires conservatism. and i think one of the lessons we could take is that in part the process involves an engagement in government and policies. he was a reformer and thought you had to fix public problems before the invite radical solution. and so he was interested in the details and the reflection has the four tables of economic statistics. you don't expect them that that is how he works. conservatives today should do well little bit more of that. that is sort of what i do in my job, and this is why he did i think it's important to be involved in governing. i think it's also important to approach our society from a disposition of latitude and care

than to begin from a place of anchor at what is being lost. i am a marie about what is being lost and i think the left today is destructive to the american ideal and has too much power destroying the american ideal. i do. but the solution to that to persuade the people of a different path is to offer that different path in a concrete way and to make a case that is friendly to the present and the future that does not seem like because it is not like a kind of simple nostalgia. the idea that i have is not in the past. it is in a better future for america that looks more like the best of what we have and have had in this country so i think that conservatives -- the conservatism tone could do some improvement and may be any way the book has suggested the corrective to that at the very least that is just my own tone.

>> host: there is a book out about the british and i think it is de tocqueville that says that america is a british man left alone or something like that. and one thing that comes through in the book and i was trying to get at this earlier is that so much of what counts for the american principle in the american way and the constitutional order and all that is a cultural product in english and so the question i have to bring this up with two minutes left is if that's true as you say that our liberties are more conceptual than they are necessarily from abstract rights, then what does that say about immigration? where what burke come down on immigration and can you have the protection of the rights as a cultural product if he lost the sort of cultural cohesion and

the consensus that once took them for granted? >> guest: i think what it means that america is an actual lifting state and not just a set of ideas on paper. one way to think about that is that we need to have the cultural continuity so it is hard to come into the society but actually, what it can mean is that america is something that can transmit it soft the future generation. i was born in israel. i came here as a child a and i am an ultra patriotic american because the idea of the country and reality which are one appeals to me in a powerful way and that has been the case for generations of immigrants to america. so we think america is able to be open to immigrants because it isn't simply pretend britain. our way of life does not require that your family can trace itself continually to william the conqueror but it isn't

because it is defined by abstract principles it is because it is defined by the actual lifting the existence of an incredibly free and open society that allows people to experiment different ideas and to be constantly influenced and changed and improved provided that these ideas and changes are grounded in an american idea of the free society. with the conservatives want to conserve is that whole reality and not just the abstract principles, not just what we have made of them in the present, but the combination that makes possible the free society and issue of the world and the most open. so we can still integrate if only we try to. the problem is we don't really try to. we don't try to teach ourselves and so to teach outsiders about what american life is all about. i think we have a terrible failure of assimilation in the country, but if we can address

that then we don't have to be any less of a nation of immigrants than we have ever been. i don't know if that is what he would of thought but that's what i think. >> host: thank you for joining us. i hope everyone goes out and gets "the great debate." >> that was "after words" and which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, public policy makers, legislators and others familiar with their material. "after words" airs every weekend on booktv at 10 p.m. on saturday, 12 p.m. and 9 p.m. on sunday and 12 a.m. on monday. you can also watch "after words" on line. go to booktv.org and click on "after words" in the book tv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. ..

>> i have a little surprised because i checked 100 years ago today just data of