right moment is with the right person. >> host: jonathan allen and amie parnes authors of the new book hrc. very much. i also want to thank our students from iowa state university and a special thanks to media, indications for sponsoring today's bus visit. the students did great so thank you for all those questions. .. a

>> real america, films from the 1930s from the 1970s by government and educational institutions. >> up next, yuval levin and his book on "after wards." he is the founder of the quarter national fairs. he spoke with jonah goldberg of the national review. >> host: hi, yuval levin.

i am going to be grilling you on your new book, "the great debate" and i will try to do my best brian lamb which means a lot of profanity and we will see where it goes. let's start off the bat. who was this about? >> guest: an irish-born write and his political career was unusual. he was a thinker as much a politician from the beginning. he thought about helping the country through the american

war, french revolution and the european war that followed. he sustained through change and he was a reformer of british institution in an effort to save and fix them. he has come to be known as one of the fathers of mod conservatism for this effort to sustain continutity. >> host: was he known as this before burke? >> guest: the term conservative didn't exist, but he understood himself to be engaged in saving the system. it makes sense to think of him as the father of conservatism.

but he was a whig, an opponent of slavery and favored limits on the power of the king. he wasn't a person who would have been thought of as a conservative. >> host: who was thomas paine? >> guest: he was an english born in america. he was eight years younger than burke. his story is different. he began life in a working-class family in england. found himself to be a bankrupt accountant. and he encountered benjamin

franklin and he got to know him a little and suggested to him that he should try going to america and starting over. and thomas paine did that and became an important figure in the circles in philadelphia. he was the editor of a small magazine called the "pennsylvania magazine" and a writer. as the american revolution brew, he wrote common sense, the great pamplet that persuaded female back the cause of independence. he played the part. and ten years later, less known, thomas paine went to france and became a spokesperson for the french revolution. he made the case for a radlicalism for the revolution in france through british and american audiences. he was a believer in the need to

break with the past in order to undo the terrible injustice the european regimes were committing on his people. he wanted to find ways to arrive at a greater equality and greater individual liberty. we think of him as a founder but he was more radical than the american revolution and more at home in the french revolution. he is thought of one of the fathers of modern radicalism. >> host: which brings us to the title of your debate "the great debate". what is essence of the debate? >> hos >> guest: they were engaged in a real debate. they both backed independence. when the came to the french

revolution they were on stark opposite sides. they exchanged letters and answered published writings. some of the most important wrat writings of each is back and for forth. they lwere laying out ideas on what a free society could look like. and they are at tension with each other and present very different ideas. and so it is real argument about political philosophy that the book tries to draw out by putting their world views together and not just reading their debate about the revolution which is two idea of

english and political life should be. they are conservative and radical and progressive on the other so they can help us tee -- see -- to the bottom of the left and right today. it isn't that today's conservatism is descended from burke. but brook and paine express them more clearly >> host: can you think of other great speakers on the day who had this kind of open-air argument. with history you say i would love to know what so and so would say to each other and this

is a rare case where you have that. can you think others? >> guest: it is a small scale. but the french revolution proposed profound questions and at a time when people in britain and america were involved in politics that were serious thinkers. jefferson and adams is there and the broad dispute about the french revolution in general. but brook and paine because they engaged directly and disagreed profoundly. and anyone who agreed with burke expressed the vision of the conservative society excluse h excluseively. but paine answered him

specifically and felt he owed his friends to answer the questions. >> host: and first the french revolution is widely seen as -- the terms left and right -- come from the french assembly and it had to do with the seating chart. >> guest: the people who sorted the declaration of rights of man more or less sat to the left of the speaker. the people on the right were revolutionaries but less radical. so in the press they were referred to as left and right. so radicals on the left, more conservatives on the right. >> host: i have whistled at this because this is a european import. in the british parliament the

seating chart with the yays and nays is moved around. >> guest: exactly. the government sits to the right of the common and the opposition party on the left. it is a problem in more ways than that. the left and right of the french revolution have little to do with our left and right. but the idea that left and right comes from the french revolution is more wrong than right. the actual parties don't have anything to do with our politics or anyone's politics anyone. you find it in britain and american emerging around the same time. it is right to say they emerged around that time but from a debate about the french revolution that was held in

english. >> host: when you say liberal society, we are not talking about liberal in the way we talk about it today. free society, classical liberalism. >> guest: a society like the one you would find in britain in the 18th century through today. one like in america through the 18th century through today. there is respect for the individual, a sense the government exist to defend and vindicate those rights. there are limits on government, but a strong government. empicize on private -- emphasis -- on private property. both sides accept the liberal

society. it wasn't as radical as you would think. it isn't a debate between from far left and far right. it doesn't make it less divisive or intense. but it is more recognizable to us because it is debate about who we are. >> host: this essay was written called "why i am not a conservaticon sfsh t conservati conservative" but he was talk about the european conservative and he designed himself as an old whig which is how burke described himself >> guest: right. a wig who follows the ideas of the english evolution in 1688, a believer in freedom but ordered

freed. this essay is found at the end of a book that is very burke-like. so in that sense he is a conservative. that is what the entirety of what conservative means but i think he is saying why he is not a conservative in germany or france. conservatism is the one that is always dependent. a conservative in the united states is different from one in portugual. let's start in, you know, you divide the chapters up into different aspects of the stanchions of the debate. the legends of the stool or

whatever appropriate wording we come up. talk about the structure. >> guest: the book takes specific events and pulls it apart into the themes that can then be understood and you see the disagreement and what you learn you can reapply to political events. it is the meted of political philosophy. it starts with the relationship of nature and politics. politics has to answer to human nature they would agree on but they had different ideas of what that nature is. thomas paine nature is like an

enlightment science idea. he understand it as a source of rules. and rules that govern the behavior of individual particles, if you will, and society is a function of those particles. so it is like physics applied to politics. the way of getting at what is the deepest truth in politics he thought the way to get to was going to the natural origins and that meant understanding the human being first in his pre-social state. society is a function of many human beings together so you have to under the individual human being first. he follows what is familiar to students of american and british

political thought the model of the understanding of nature to understand society. let's imagine it starts with independent individuals coming together and deciding we would be better if we lived together and a mutual enforcer of laws and such. it is formed for that purpose and has to understand we need to answer to that purpose. and any government that doesn't answer to the questions is a government that is not legit and we have the right to overthrow it. from there he starts his political thinking. so it is very individualist and right-spaced and devoted to the idea of independent liberty as the primary part of life.

edward burke looks and says the problem is no one lives that way. that is an implausible experiment. no human being lives outside family or even society. so to understand society on what it means no human being lives in isn't the most useful way to think about how we live. and what struck him the most was the radical individualism. you might say burke is more of an aristtillion science. he says human beings have lived in society and we need to understand the human beings and the path that allow us to be happy, the institutions that allow us to thrive and tries to

understand what society and equality mean based on how people have lived and on what has enabled people hto live in just and happy ways. society has to answer to human nature and that is not the same thing as the physics of political science. we are not a rational animal, we are sensitive as well and an animal with animal needs and desires and politics has to rise all of those things because if you don't you set yourself up for failure. this resource to nature and what he uses is a model of generation inheritance and how over time

species improve, societies improve and this happens gradual gradually. building on what we have and starting with the rear world. >> host: trial and error. >> guest: exactly. >> host: i want to come back, people should know i reviewed this book and gave it a rave review. but i had some things i want to talk about i will come back to. but i want to flush out a little more. i think the think that would shock people the most in burke's thought is the unsure about the power and reason and paine

believes you can reason your way through any problem and burke almost laughs at that notion. >> guest: yeah, because paine thinks that political life is the application is principles. and a logical analysis should allow us to find answers to questions by applying the understanding of the rules to the circumstances. he has a very high opinion of reason. he is very impressed what science is achieving in his way. this is an incredible time for modern science. he believes if you play that kind of thinking to political life you could solve social problems. really solve them.

he is a utopian. he thinks he could solve a lot of social problems if we just apply our reason to the right principles and succecircumstanc. so paine approaches the world absolutely upset at failure. he only understands failure as a function of people choosing to do the wrong thing especially of the powerful oppressing of the we weak. burke says human life is much more complicated than that. and reason is an part of what the human person is, but it isn't even the foremost part, yet alone the only.

he thinks it has a lot to do with it relation and social questions and sentiment and things that are not being reasoned out of existence and we will not get rid of. some of the problems are permanent problems because they are function of human nature. his view is that the enlightment isn't the same. burke says we will never know enough to build a whole society correctly. he said we can see what works and try to make the rest more like that. so essentially the process of social progress is a process of making society more like its best self. that is a grateful process that

is trying to deal with what is working in society rather than outrage at what isn't. >> host: one of the things i didn't remember or know i have not been reading burke of late and the phrase little platoon which is pand banded as the m d mediating leagues that come between the states like churc s churches, bowling leagues and all that. but burke is talking about social class you find out. >> guest: that is right. burke is very devoted to civil society and all of the institutions that stand between the state and the people.

pa paine makes the argument they power source and they are not elected and no one give them authority but they have authority. burke does defend those. the term little platoon comes in a passage during the reflection of the revolution where burke is criticizing the wealthy french who joined up with the radicals and decided to dismantle their society. and he says you know you have to begin by thinking about what you have to offer to society that is good rather than turn against society as a whole. and he makes the case for

economic class. and argues the little platoon we are part of is as much part of the economy as a part of the society. so people use that phrase to mean something different. >> host: in that discussion, and we will go back to the other chapters, but one of things that came to my mind is downton abby. i would love to read the british's left take on the show. you have butlers and such who are defenders of their class and not wanting to see the classes lower than them equal. and the idea of a servant sitting with the upper crust horrifys the servant maybe more so than so. and it got me thinking, and this

is something i want to come back to, but oh so much of what burke is writing about these only makes sense in the context of british culture. it is one of the reasons i don't think it translate to american society as you discussed. >> host: can you talk about the role that -- could -- his arguments have worked in britain because there is something about british culture where something hew to the station because maybe a lack of feudalism that those arguments don't play as well in fran france. >> guest: i think that is true in part and true of people's

relations to the station. britain was more free and equal than europe and less so than america as he knowledge -- acknowledged -- >> host: not counting slavery. >> guest: yes, absolutely. burke recognizes that different societies exist in different circumstances. he cal he was not a defender of the status quo per se. he wasn't an opponent of all change to the class system or the notion that people could

rise through the system. he came from a middle class irish family. and he made it up to the top and wanted or -- others to do that. he thought the french could have saved their system by looking to their own history and the best of their own tradition rather than assuming there was only bad in it. and he understood the americans were a different species. they had the same rights as englishmen and that is what they were fighting for in the american war. in america, equality existed far deeply. the class system didn't exist in the same way. but burke offers a disposition

and an idea of the free society that going more to america much more so than europe. the european idea of social democracy is different and i don't think burke is all that applicable to continental europe. i think it translates to america more. >> host: they told me there was not going to be hagal. >> guest: there is always hagel. it translates to american easier. we americans, of the left and right, take for granted the idea that the american revolution was something new. but it was the english way of

thinking and it is quite differently. burke in the speeches on america note the differences. they are much more suspicious of government than the british. but the basic idea of the individual to the community and the rights is an enlish idea. and the disposition toward that burke uses useful to america and plays a part in what we think of as conservatism. >> host: once last bit from the actual book, as i understand it, your dissertation was on a different title and i am not trying to imply you are

recycling your books -- this is your forth book? >> guest: yes, forth. >> host: the title oof the dissertation was -- >> guest: the great law of change. and the meaning of the past in democratic life >> host: so the past is looming very much in both of these. >> guest: very much so >> host: can you talk about that? >> guest: that is where the book ends. it goes through a bunch of interpretations of their differences and ends with the interpretations on the past. a lot of their disagreements about other subjecother subjec t adispount -- dismount to what the end of the day should be. burke thinks we are born and we have no choice so thinking

society is a choice is a mistake. society answers to unchosen obligations and should be set up to allow us to meet those to the family, nation, people around us. he thought we could not escape the past, nor should we want to because the past is the only reason why don't live in savage. the inheritance we get is the reason we can make progress. so burke is a certain kind of conservative. he is a traditionalist but believes the past is better than the worst. a lot think we had access to a perfect truth in the past and can only reach it living the way the fathers did. but burke thinks things have improve and the future can be better but only if we sutain the

means that made the better. pai pai paine, because he believes man is a choser and we should under society as a choice, believers the weight of the past should be as light as possible and every generation should be as free as the first generation was to determine their own destiny and goals and laws and create their own civilization. and that difference between them turns out to be an enormoenormo important. this is a building of the past and it is essential to paine. he want to enable to be free of

obligati obligations from the past. he wants us to live as though it were not the case we were born into the a world that existed before us. i think it is crucial to the difference between right and left sill. and you see it especially in what we would think of as social issues. a lot amount to whether the obligations we have without choosing are in fact obligations. or we should work like we don't have to chose to. conserve tfsh say this is the world we are given and we have to live with that rather than find ways to find a radical break.

>> host: what did thomas paine think of the family? >> guest: thomas paine is a little about it. he didn't believe in inherited anything. he was opposed to inherited privileges, power, to inherited property. at the end of his career, he outlined a welfare state and showed how radical individualism leads to statism. and the entire think is funded by inheritance tax. you will have people getting something they didn't earn and that is place we can tax people in society. he doesn't make an argument like marx or plato that the family should be broken up and parents and family should be separated.

a lot of what he said suggest as much or links between generations should be loosened, if not broken, he doesn't go as far as some people, but the smartest radicals understood the family is the foremost focus. >> host: from plato's republican on? >> guest: yes, and the kubutz movement was real. and this is the foundation of social order and changing that you have to break the relationship. >> host: hilary clinton once said much like perry from msnbc said that we need to move beyond the country that there is anyone's idea there is someone

else's child. and perry said we need to move toward collective ownership of children. but i brought it up because burke understands families are dictat dictatorships. does paine consider that to be unjust? a father or mother tells their children when to go to bed, what to eat, what to wear. >> guest: burke said that it is suspended during childhood. he said human beings are born without the factalty -- faculty -- and you reach it at

maturity. >> host: as parents we can agree. >> guest: i am not sure they ever reach it but certainly not four years old so parents have a right to treat them as property while young almost. paine echoes to a degree, but burke makes the argument that one generation shouldn't be able to -- paine -- says no parliament should bind the future to anything. nothing we do should be from past generations. >> host: what does he think about the united states constitution than? >> guest: that is a good question from both of them. paine is critical of what is in

the constitution without explicitly criticizing it. he is critical of the way it binds the future but also of checks and balances and a bicaramel legislator. he thinks democracy should be as simple and direct as possible. he thinks these are ways of keeping people from their rights. he never said he would oppose the constitution, but he is critical of it it seems. and we know little of what burke thought of the constitution. but it was more inline with his way of thinking about government. it is one of the great frustrations about the burke followers. there is a letter from a friend of the federalist and these letters to the friend in ireland

were very good. he sent a book ahead and said let's talk about it when we see you and now we don't know what burke thaubt -- thought about the federalist. -- it would seem paine was critical. >> host: and moving up to issues today, this is an area you can see the left/right divide. the left feels constrained by the u.s. constitution. they want a living constitution. as it was said a couple years ago, because of republicans in

the -- said the progress sucks. the party of government doesn't like it because it curtails government. there are other areas where i should say -- i will ask since you are the author. why is there so little discussion of how this stuff actually plays out in contemporary life? you set up the precursors of this is left versus right. but at the end you're fairly uninterested and going far to score them in the contemporary debate. >> reporter: this is a book about burke and paine. i thought i would end with a what would burke do and paine

chapter, but in the end i want to let the book speak were itself. i think it helps liberals and conservatives understand the views better. understand where they different from people. i think it is more useful as a presentation of what seems to be one of the first instances of the left right divide. and in an attempt to show how the line goes from here to there. the line, of course, isn't going to the same way. a lot changed about the left and right and also our circumstances. socialism and capitalism are not part of this debate and that changed things some. they are showing you where the

basic differences of approaches and definition between left and right, are different understandings of what the liberal society is, comes from and what they look like in their original form. one of the reasons why paine and the left cave under the constitution becomes clear reading paine, versus today's people. paine's metaphors are all about moving. progress and motion. burke's metaphors are all about creating space. and without defining what happens in that space, he believes by sustaining that

progress, you make progress because progress is made by what happens in that space, and defined by what happens. the space is maintained by hewing to key propositions and within that space, politics isn't about principles. it is about crudeance and what we want and how to get it and what we can achieve. every day politics isn't a constant appeal to an a galitarian ideal. it is about improving what we have to solve problems that come up. so the constitution is a powerful instrument because it defined the space, allows you to sustain the space and allows you disagreement and change in the space. but if you want to constantly keep going forward, the

retraints on the government and constitution are braidles and they are holding you back and you never get the majority you want to do. for burke this was a feature and for paine this was the biggest problem. >> host: one reason the left changed is this kind of speaking and we get that from woodrow wilson that says the country needs a vision of where the country wants to go. and before that, the country was meant to guide the entire body in a specific direction >> guest: burke would say the leader needs a direct of what

the country is not where it is going. >> host: when you read, or when i read, burke's stuff about reason, which i enjoy and think the points are well made by you and burke. i know you don't like being in the same sentence as burke. there is a lot and i put in the review, these guys, it gets the biology wrong, but they are founding fathers of the left-right debate, but so many generations of genetic material all over the place and there are family resemblances you can find on the left and right. so burke talking about reason, when i read that, i got the post-modern left i was stuck

with in college of rejecting this thing. and when hit retain, i get a strong whiff of lib teertarian coming from. >> guest: i think that is true in some way and for a number of different reasons. there are a lot of libertarians who start where paine does. some forms of libitarians are very burke-like, the organic growth is the essence of his view. but some forms are very rationalistic and believes that

by applying certain rules can maximize freedom and therefore maximize happiness. what paine shows is how radical individualism leads to statism. the desire to liberate the individual from reliance on other people, which is the essence of paine's goal, leads to a creation of faceless provider of material benefits. he takes the steps and shows why they are connected. there is a tendency to think of the welfare state which isn't the same as bismarck. it is more like paine's welfare state. the purpose of it is to enable

the individual to have a kind of illusion of independence. to have people meet their material needs without being dependent on others. burke says society should be formed around that fact and these unchosen obligations to people around us should be the core of society. paine says in order to break that we have to have a distance faceless provider of benefits to the poor. that is what the american welfare statelics lo-- state looks -- like. it exist in a very radical individualism. the left in the right is more much radically individualistic

than the riot right. but in the libitarians you get the society should take what they want above all. the libitarians are in the no-man's land in the left/right. they tend to end up the right because they think the greatest importance is keeping government small.

>> guest: different views about the limits what limits should be set. >> host: i have long argued most conservativ conservatives find a utopian in the past. in college, you have college kids, elite colleges have the food provided, the shelter, security and people clean up after them and they think they are independent people. very quickly, because we are running out of time, the current political climate on the right

particularly, the tone of this scholarly, informed, credentials, and not dismissive, but you side with burke at the end. i am not spoiling anyone. that is much out of tempo at the time. and particularly on the right these days. do you think that the american conservative movement can move back it a more burke-like te temporment? >> guest: or forward to a burke-like temperment. this history is important to conservatives. we denine ourselfs that way. and i think too often when coverservatives in america reach

for philosophy, we reach if the most radical version of what america is. and then squeeze lincoln and ourselves and it is too radical. burke offers a way to under the liberal society as an achievement, not a break from the past, but an achievement of western civilization and i think america is the greatest achievement of western civilization by making the best of what was before. and therefore as a society that improves and grows by gradual refinement of itself and becoming more like its best self. we could learn from burke that

this involves engaging with policy. burke was a reformer and interested in the details. the reflection of france is full of tables of statistics and i think conservatives should be doing more of that today. that is what i do in my day job and i think it is important for conservatives to be a part of governing and to approach the side from a disposition of gratitude and care rather than to dpin begin from the place of anger at what is being lost. i am angry at what is being lost. i think the left today is destruction to the american ideal and has too much power and they are destroying the american ideal. but i think the solution of that

is to a different path in the concrete way and make a case that is friendly to the present and future that doesn't seem like, because it isn't a simple idea, the ideal i have is not in the past. it is in a better future for america that looks like the best of what we have and had in this country. so i think the conservative tone could be doing improvement and the book suggests a corrective to that. >> host: there is a book out about the british exceptional. and so much for what counts for

american principle in the american way is a culture product of the english. the question i have, and it is unfair to bring this up with two minutes left, but if that is true, and as you say our liberties are more a concept than they are from abstract rights on a piece of paper, what does that say about immigration? where would burke come down on immigration? and can you have these rights if you have lost the consensus that once took them for granted? >> guest: it means america is a living thing and not just a set of idea on paper is one they to think about that is it means we need to have cultural continuity

but also america is something that can transmit itself to other countries. i was born in isreal and came here as a child -- israel -- and i think america is open to immigrants because it isn't britain. our way of live doesn't require your family traces itself to william the conquer. but that is because our way of life is defined by the actual living existence of a free and open society that is allowing people to experiment and be improval