will help them feel like it's not out of touch, it's not out of reach and the apathy is something that should be available to them, that they have the capacity and the necessity and that they must act. >> host: >> guest: i think it'so important to young people to understand, i was at the march. read my story. also come in and visit laces all across america. .. to walk through the pieces of history. to make a contribution. i was deeply expired -- inspired by rosa parks. i met her when i was 17. i met president kennedy when i was 23.

and worked on kennedy's campaign. all of these people help make me the people that i am today. >> you've a lot of people here at the national book festival watching it right now. a bunch of young people here as well. what do you tell them? >> their parents want to know. thank you for being here. stay in school get the best possible education that you can get be helpful, be optimistic and be happy. don't get lost in the sea of despair. >> here is the book. as the illustrator. nominated a frat national book award. this is again a book three representative lewis has written to others in graphic

novel form. for longer conversation with congressman lewis. they sat down with him for three hours on her our in-depth program. if you go to our website type and representative john lewis include the word book otherwise you will get all sorts of videos from the sea stand archives we sat down for three hours.

you can put them together, you can put free-market economics and your values together and your politics >> that's what i was so fascinated about in your book because the book is as you talk about, this emphasis of faith and ethics, economics, public service and the fact is as a lot of people seem to know you and your surprise victory, as a house majority leader you are the only person of the history of the us house to be a house majority leader and bats as you note in your book when a lot of people here about dave brat and all the media shows up but one of the things about your book is it tells you who dave brat is and i'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the synthesis and overview and will go into detail on some of the things here about how there is this sight line between ethics and economics and politics.

>> guest: that's primarily why i wrote the book. sometimes conservative ideas go back to reagan and the founders and the primary goal was to show no, it's about a 4000 year tradition and i wish everything with was a synthesis these days when you go to grad school these days and phd in economics or whatever all the incentives are highly flawed, you do some narrow little thing whereas all previous scholars of the last thousand whatever hundred years it was about synthesis, all the greatest people, socrates and the judeo christian tradition all the way up through enlightenment thinkers, jefferson, madison, they all took the classics. hebrew, latin and they took math and sciences and rhetoric and the language and that was a liberal sciences education.

i taught at a liberal college for 18 years, i believe there's so much in that synthesis that i wanted to show folks hey, whether i did a great job were not , it should hang together and the ethics don't match up with the economic byproduct like karl marx. he couldn't line up economic incentives with his ethics and its due to failure whereas adam smith and the enlightenment guys with jefferson and madison, those guys do lineup and mesh and i see it in the book but most of them wanted a large number of small competitors. market ideals and madison, he wanted a large number of actions and people competing against each other and that works, both of those go together and these are not teaching enough of the kids enough of that these days i wanted to put out 200 pages, it's a first edition,if i get better over time . >> guest: one of the things i was struck by with this is the elementary aspect of as you put it in the subhead, ethics, economics and politics and this is from page 27. i was really interested by this. you said god worked six days

and rested on the seventh. that presumes private property. you're not covered, that will presume the right to hold that maybe commented . the basis in judeo-christian religious tradition that permeates public policy from your perspective i find to be fascinating. you set on page 27, our founding was an important part in the history of faith. can you tell us more about why you see our founding as important in the history of faith? >> the one thing our founders did not see, they saw very clearly in the constitutional structure but you just got added. they could not see a day where the judeo christian tradition wasn't taken as a given. they were there right now, that's debatable so there's all this debate now on jefferson's wall of separation between art and state. we want that, the first

amendment is about that, the tradition of church and state and the press and etc., no establishment of a religion but free exercise thereof so that third edition but it's interesting, the left, i say the left a little in the book in terms of the soul of the american university, that's one of the books i referenced and i went to princeton seminary and we said let's make a deal. let's move the seminole seminary across track. we found it. the puritans, 1640, same thing. we found these great traditions and said a secular society, we are sharing, a win-win group. we takethe school, the seminary across what you've got to teach ethics. it was assumed. it was going to be socrates, plato, aristotle in the catholic tradition . now the left has not only taken those schools but said you can no longer teach ethics. those there's no natural law, if you bring up tradition in

a brown bag you get left out of the room. everyone talks about separation of church and state but it's interesting to see, paul riley when he looked at the first bus the multi-left out his chair. that kind of separation, no law? no 10 commandments in our secular society? i don't think so. i show compassion and love code up about zero. rome was the most loved society. that's the example, cold and sterile and brutal society that encompasses the love at zero. you want separation of compassion and love from tradition? to the left, i know what they mean. theydon't want religious establishment but if you do the total separation we also , the left agrees with us on human rights claims and human rights are only in western europe at about 1400 out of judeo christian tradition so those rights we argue in our tradition, they precede the

existence of government. so do you want separation of that? therights of this, yes, sir no? i wanted to push the thinking a little bit . we are at war right now with a tradition who has a hard time with the first amendment and religious tradition so i wanted to push the ideas out in public and get a good debate going so that's part of what we want. >> guest: >> host: i mention the catholic tradition, later in the book how you delve into the works of saint augustin and thomas aquinas. i find that obviously my faith informs pretty much everything i do, how i live my life. how does your faith as it's clear in your book but talk about how your faith informs your public service and your approach to service in the us house of representatives? >> guest: it's kind of biographical. i was born in detroit, grew

up in michigan, moved to minnesota in ninth grade, thanks dad. my girl is starting ninth grade. you went to hold college in michigan, protestant tradition. went to work at arthur andersen in business in detroit for a little while and went to princeton seminary. the seminary, i went down to wesley in dc and american university and there was a great liberal friend of mine bill walton who wrote economics and ethics in the same book so that was the fire. i knew i wanted to teach philosophy and theology in college and once i saw that combination of economics and ethics in a book, that was it. i went to work for the army a little bit and for the world bank for a couple of years in the philippines on education sector stuff and my wife and was lucky enough, we moved down to randolph rankin college to teach economics and ethics. i ran the business department and the ethics minor program

for 18 years so that's how i live it out. it is my calling, putting those two things together and keeping the conversation going so a lot of this book is old lectures.>> host: this is not a memoir, it's a book about economics and philosophy. but you did touch on what you just mentioned here which was closing in on your phd. this is not a memoir, there's not much detail around that. i'm sure the viewers would like to know a little more story there. kathy and i consider you both friends, she's a wonderful woman. tell us how you keep the meter and then get married. >> guest: a mutual friend set up a blind date so it was awkward at first, one of those things, how are you doing? we started talking and we just had values in common. kids, family, and we said really?

in dc i met a normal person? i love it up here. i'm joking. we had the same judeo-christian ethics outlook. i'm catholic now so you see that one. i love where were going. >> host: married how long? >> guest: 21 years since johnson college so we've been a sad household. >> host: drop the oldest one off at college, any tears shed? >> guest: it hit me way hard. she's been home more and i'm up here three weeks out of the month so that's not good but it hits when you see an empty room walking by every night, it's not good. >> host: both mom and dad, jonathan not so much. >> guest: he's doing all right. he is working law at richmond, he's smart going to that one. >> host: a lot of people are. i wanted to come back to something else you talk about

in the book that i think is really telling because you touch on obviously our founding which is something those of us from virginia, obviously the founders so many of them and you talk about not just the horizontal separation but you mentioned senator mike lee area but also not just across the three separate branches of the federal government but vertical as well because as the states were about to be a check on executive branch authority and growth. >> guest: absolutely. >> host: doesn't seem to be working out in that regard. can you talk about what you're seeing in terms of the horizontal and vertical imbalances and the problem that creates as a country and the government . >> guest: i will go back real quick to medicine, i went to princeton seminary. and after he was done with his undergrad he studied hebrew.

this is a smart guy so the hebrew tradition, i was asking in my stump speech how long did it take human nature to fall? three chapters. if that's the tradition that informs your thinking and you're the author of the constitution what do you do? you break the power every way you can, horizontally, vertically and the separation of federal, state and local, there are 14 enumerated power in the constitution and since then we violated that beyond comprehension. mike has a picture in his office where in 2013 the house did about five inches bill and the executive branch did 11. if you get to the fence where we are upside down, we are and we all know that executive overreach for several years every day but we have to push things back and the easiest way to see

the direct bottom line is the data. federal programs are the ones that are installment. medicare, social security are both in installments by the board of trustees reports my 18 years. everything defense touches, in 10 years all federal revenues will go to just those entitlement programs. we won't have a dollar left for the military, education, transportation and that's not me. that's the best data up here, it's the main graph of the budget committee. that's kind of evidence whereas virginia is a very well-run state. people think we are antigovernment, we're not antigovernment. if you want power at the local level, vote on it. go buy flowers. you want to well-run state with transportation and education, education is in the constitution of the state . an excellent education. it's in the constitution. we have to, we should do that

but the fed, i've got pants on fire by saying we debated what on the education committee and we did, i don't know how they found it but check again you guys. but we debated. what's on the salad bar at the local school on a federal level. >> host: you note in here in this point, you said the vertical component is federalism and governments to the state and local level where it was intended to be. even if someof the implications are a few conservatives may not like and i thought that was an interesting point. the case . >> guest: that's right. if the people vote, the key is we are supposed to be democratic republic. that doesn't mean you get to win every debate, it means you have a fair process. if the folks vote more flowers and you are a fiscal hawk, you lose. then you move with your feet area. >> host: hold them accountable.

>> guest: there's still freedom, there's a large number of options. >> host: people want to point out the federal government is the creation of the state. the states are not a creation of the federal government and its remarkable to me how few people realize that area i thought your point about the federalist checks and balances, it's overlooked a lot of the time because we are concerned about the sampling of the separation of powers between legislative and judicial branches and the separate branch abuse there is powerfully evident when it comes to overwriting properly the prerogatives of the state . we see so many cases in this regard obviously for virginians , how important it is for a power plant and the epa overviews and overreach there, it's been devastating for west virginia. 23 states have said we've got to stop them, we're not among them that i sure hope the legislative branch at the

federal level upholds the state prerogative when it comes to that executive branch overreach and put a stop to it. >> guest: it is important to note how this is come about. people think it's the executive branch doing a power grab, in some respects it's our own fault. toby weighed on the judicial side, there's hot button issues out there and politicians don't want to vote. they are tough votes, you take two or three tough votes you might get kicked out so we arranged to save the judiciary, now we are doing the same thing with the executive, giving them all sorts of power. we tell the executive branch of the government you're going to make the law, implement it, determine what the plan is and you given in law the federal government tremendous power and now like you say, power transfers in virginia is learning what that looks like. they're having a hard time staying afloat so we need to retain article on area congress shall make all law. >> host: .talk about fouts,

is that one of the reasons you raced on a proponent of term limits and are you term limiting yourself? you are. >> guest: i turned myself 12 years. i got a couple offers, and i just looked, leadership, and if you got your eye on becoming a leadership chairman, there's nothing wrong with that. seniority and wisdom goes along with that but the money is so dominant. we just had at the presidential level, on the republican side and democratic side 80 percent of outside votes going presidential and we put in all the income is again roughly in congress so it is an amazing power of the purse in winning elections. on top of the money part, people are finding themselves out to be chairman of a committee. people want to do that but if you vote in lockstep with leadership in order to get that flat, just start

looking, bothsides do this. you're not doing what's best for the country all the time . >> host: it's also consistent with the founders, with citizen legislature. as you know, i ran for the senate . it was then that i would serve no longer than two terms. i think it's important that that be the mindset and that be the mentality. speaking of the founders, do you have a favorite founder and who is it and why? >> guest: probably madison because of the secretary and i love his constitution, that kind of thing but washington is interesting to me because he stands out. there's all these guys in jefferson if you are in virginia is big and there are plenty, we are blessed with this history in virginia but washington, the more i read on him he's the one guy that everybody liked. you walked into a room and he's the man.everybody revered him. they just deferred

automatically so you don't quite get to see my wife but you just want to see what's look on the guys face, who is this guy that all these great men who have egos turned to him and say this is it. >> host: that's mine. i live on one of his old farms. in mount vernon and i'll tell you a story, i was over on a business trip in london and i was talking to a british historian and i mentioned to him, we were talking about the founding and i said many of us including me believe there's a divine inspiration and divine providence in the founding of america and we look at these founders and i told him about living near mount vernon and a funny point, he said it's possible the british empire could have defeated george washington george washington, thomas jefferson, james madison, benjamin franklin, john

adams, the whole lot of them no way. it's really remarkable. >> guest: it is remarkable. >> host: you're talking here again, this underpinning of the moral case for free enterprise that we make in this which i think is missing often from conservative commentary . and from the republican side. i believe like you do that economic growth and opportunity, upward mobility and as our republican party says, free enterprise system sets the fire of human needs and economic justice. you make that point impressively in the book on this page 198, freedom and earnings . the next graph shows the incomes of the people and the bottom, 10 percent of earners in four different countries from the least market oriented to the most free market oriented, more fare better under capitalism, always.

history, data is solid. those that don't have the book, go out and buy the book, "american underdog". this chart is definitive proof of that. and one of the things we also talk about here, we mention work . we understand there's not just economic value and labor, asa phd you know that's the case that there is human dignity to work . a market economy that has dynamic growth allows people to fulfill the dignity of work. but this data, why don't more people understand it and where is this being enamored by socialism? >> guest: unfortunately the political divide, i grew up with liberals and the liberal, the root word of liberal is liberty. adam smith is a classical liberal and so is adam smith

but the lines of gotten confused. it's not just income, i ran thousands of regressions on all indicators, all the things liberals want. guess where you have the cleanest environment? capitalism. guess where you have the most women in government #capitalism. guess where you have the highest paid rate for women, capitalism. most political rights? then you talk about the dignity of work and one of my favorite scholars is feature, she gets a six volume set and she's chicago train but i think she's done phd, phd in economics out of chicago and literature, well read. just incredible person. and her book says the cause of modern economic growth darted about 1700s. until 1700, every person on the planet made $1000 a year per capita income and in 1700, you get a hockey stick. boom, mass economic growth. she takes on 20 nobel

laureate. my favorite guys, capital, human capital, industrial revolution, trade, etc. they are all causal, she doesn't deny it but she says the primal thought is that 1700, that's the first time in history moral language change so that we started calling a businesswoman morally good and if you think that through, my tradition hasn't beenperfect on it. abraham, moses, jesus, gandhi, confucius, any tradition. aristotle, augustine . ohana, etc. nowhere in that line is someone saying

capitalism or free market is morally good. it's something you put up with but we changed the lingo and the problematic thing is that thesis is reversing so right now you ask, what are we teaching our kids in school? are we teaching kids that business and capitalism is morally good or are we saying it's kind of corrupt? it's business, wall street is nasty. unfortunately there are a few bad apples but the predominance of people in america are just basically good. every small business person wants to give their employees health care. when i knock thousands of doors, that's one thing i've learned. teaching economics, i shouldn't have knocked on more doors enough. people are basically good, they want to help their employees. we got to reverse that moral language and teach kids that work isn't just work, not just a skill, it's a calling. you'd better be happy and passionate about what you do every waking hour of your life or otherwise you will have a miserable life. we say this is good for you. and by the way, it's good politics because telling kids the truth and you are pumping them up on business. the left is a little clip critical, especially in higher end of this but i think we got a winning team

here. >> host: obviously a college professor and you joy that, it's clear from thebook . you enjoy being a teacher. that absolutely comes through here. we do encourage today your students to get involved in politics? >> guest: i do but in their i kind of, it's my idols. plato and the republic and augustine, they basically both gave the same counsel. they said do math until you're 30 and then philosophy until you are 50 and then politics at 50 when you are near death. in ancient greece that would have been the mortality age. so you're done withwine women and song and you've instilled wisdom in yourself, take care of the appetites . make sure you're done with that. so get in politics, do internships on capitol hill, get involved. so you learn but then go into

a vocation first. going to teaching two. the same thing, always major in your passion. i'd say make sure you do what you love. but minor in accounting, that wasa joke. minor in science or accounting or web design or something you can make a dollar just in case . follow your passion and that usually is good counsel. i've had people come to me later and say i'm glad i did that, i need a backup plan. >> host: it's great advice and that's something i always say. i know a lot of successful people, an external evaluation of success who are not happy. i don't know any have people people who are not successful. do what makes you happy and you will be successful at it. but if your goal is the success part, you may find yourself not very happy

absolutely. all the incentives from the video generation, they put too much on the glitter. but these kids, they are doing better. they like their parents more so there's a lot of good signs. >> host: a lot of them came up and we talked about the economy and kind of the lost generation here in terms of what they've dealt with in the economy and you make an interesting point, the economic dead end, chapter 12 , you said a couple things i want to come back to. first you note, even as those keeping track of nothing but the dow jones numbers and the slight uptick in jobs numbers tell themselves everything is back to normal and just fine, among most citizens there is an uneasiness that hints of a deeper problem. then a few pages later, this is a chapter called the invisible recovery. their calling our current problems a soundbite of increasing regulation without

growing governmentgreat recession, it's actually dangerously optimistic, calling it a great recession is optimistic. this diagnosis our current situation as a typical cyclical downturn, implying all we need to do to get out of it is weight . that's bad news if we've broken the fundamental drivers of the economy which you clearly think we have. a couple things, one is we've been told that this kind of flat recovery is the new normal. and that we just have to accept that growth rate between one and two percent, we're never going to see four percent, five percent again and your point is that this is because some of the fundamentals ofour economy are broken . kick off for the viewers some of those fundamentals we need to get right.

>> guest: the biggest one is the one that i just said, it's the pathogen for business. people feel beat down so adding the education back, the entrepreneurial period. the work ethic, the capping tradition is the same thing. we've got to get that back. only the regulatory overhang is tremendous. it's 2 trillion out of an $18 trillion economy and talk to any small business person starting with obamacare. you can disagree on healthcare but now the results are in is that premiums are going up conservatively, being fair, 15 to 20 percent, the deductibles are 2 to 5000 for the poor and all the economic studies lately show the average family has $400 on hand. you put that together, it's devastating. the average family knows i

can't make it through another downturn. the fundamentals in the economy, we are growing at one percent and that's with the deficit this year, 550 billion. the fed has 4 trillion on its balance sheet. that's not money to the bank fault and it can be can become money if loans ever go out. if you are growing at one percent, it's a huge stimulus. i get in debates with fed guys and whatever were like, come on. if you raise interest rates to present what would happen to this economy? it would crash. markets would get incinerated. last month is the recent thing, just at the debates, over a quarter point generated. two percent would be normal. >> host: four percent is what you call a sugar high. >> guest: the classic solo economic growth of no health, the number one is always capital accumulation. capital, not financial but machinery. who's willing to put millions into a physical capital base right now, a plant with the

you're going to make on the next 10 year window? nobody.>> host: it has in effect, all this uncertainty. you don't know what the next regulation is going to be. it hinders any investor's ability to make a bet. >> guest: that's it. if you're not making a positive bet, if everyone is looking to cross the sea or where can i park my thing to get two or three percent, that's not the entrepreneurial spirit we need. let . >> host: let me talk about something in terms of these economics. you make a point in here on page 49 and you made it through out this book and you said washington should not be in the business of picking winners and losers of our economy in the private sector. the best way to ensure a vibrant economy is to allow innovators to thrivebased on consumer demand for products and services , not on the powerful friends they have in washington . this gets to, i talked about this president, president obama over the past eight

years, it's who moved our economy away from an economy where based on the premise that what you know is more important than who you know, it's one where who you know is more important than what you know.this effect, what we're seeing is the decisions of 100 million americans every day in the private marketplace on healthcare choices you just talked about, energydecisions . internet, you name it . they are being supplanted by the decisions of 100 political appointees in this city. and that has a dampening effect i think and i call it the influence economy read but you are right about this proportion of the incentives and people being rewarded more for just the better targeted tax credit than they are for building a better mousetrap but talk a little more about this in the book.

>> guest: that's what you are seeing, the american people have figured it out, the new media where you go on the web and for good or bad, it's a little coarsening of the language. i haven't gone to stem, i try not to get negative but the educational upside is huge so people are figuring out what's going on right now. on the republican side you have 80 percent of voters going for outsider candidates, trump and cruz and rubio and all the outsiders and on the left it's 50 percent of the vote, unheard of to see that much energy because people have seen the small guys get left behind in the dust and if you don't have a lawyer, lobbyists, etc., the big ones do. they can get through the regulatory take, they don't like it but back in the 50s or whatever, general motors and the common sense saying, as general motors goes, so

the nation goes. all of our ceos, we had aetna, the ceo, i don't know him but he gets 11 out of 15 exchanges and still have to say complementary things about the exchanges so that shows you, somebody is scared of the federal government. when you are losing 200 million per quarter and you back out of 11 to 15 you still say the exchanges are okay. holy moly. just the pressure on the biggies even, you can imagine what the small guy is undergoing. that small farmer in my district and got to see every bass on or put a huge rainwater runoff tank on the restaurant for $200,000, 200,000. that's four years through the university. >> host: is an onslaught of regulation. that all of a sudden helps your drainage ditch so it's negative navigable water. >> guest: the free-market people, that's the hardest thing to teach is that you can trust prices but that's

what our country is built on that we allow prices to dictate. walmart, how do they know how to put batteries on the table? because prices, every time they scan on that's what we purchase so that information those shooting to the supplier and they say make 10 more, more car tiresand diapers. that's amazing.no central planner knows that . the day you start picking winners and losers like the smart guys up here, that adds a little error but it can stop the country going forward, that's the main reason i wanted to run for office was convey that logic. >> host: you touch on this in the book and you point out the private sector business folks are subject to corruption. people commit crimes all the time and yet there's this notion that that person in that position, and a government entity enterprise making this decision are somehow immune from any of this area and is the view of the left that i've always

felt the profit motive is inherently evil and the political motive is somehow inherently good. that is the mindset but you talk about that in this book and kind of expose the fallacy of that which i think is healthy. >> guest: that goes back to the madisonian logic and adam smith, the last thing you want is a concentration of power anywhere. when you've got a $4 trillion budget, out of an $18 trillion economy, that is a concentration of power and the executive branch now has disproportionate control over that $4 trillion budget. i wish we were in regular order right now because i'm on the budget committee that would mean the budget would go from committee to the floor for a vote by people's representatives area without a budget process that's such a mess, five or six people are going to determine the budget for the united states in the next month. so i tried to call out the

red flags on that and tell people to go to cbo and educate yourself on budget numbers because it's a big deal . >>. >> host: huge deal and another thing you talk about in terms of the budget committee that i thought was interesting, you talk more about the debt and the deficit in the few pages in this book and we will hear on the nightly news. >> guest: it's amazing. >> host: you talk about not only the economic aspect of it but the moral aspect as well. i remember in past debates and discussions about the future of the country, a huge debate over, and i worked on the hill, we used debate that we got to a balanced budget for the first time in four years and it seems to have fallen off the radar somewhere and yet the deficit just double . 18 trillion, 19 trillion area and yet it doesn't get much attention, why is that?

>> guest: both sides get overcommitted so you've got a bunch of good bills, they are called economic goods. not economic bats. everything is good. you want more education, more roads, more this or that. as i said before, unfunded liability is a promise to pay a medicaid, social security is 100 trillion so in 10 years, all revenues will be used only for mandatory spending, not a dollar for military and this kind of thing so where's the ethics? the ethics are everybody does lobbying appear on behalf of all these goods is forgetting one group of people called the kids. the kids, when medicaid and medicare and social security are insolvent in 14 years, seniors under social security will get a 20 percent clip in 14 years.

that's in the law right now. medicare is not far behind. the kids will get way more than 20 percent clip so that the ethics. i taught those. that's one of the reasons i went into this. i said i'm sticking up for you guys. i want to go to the hill and i go to the press, i'm one of the few people that died in the middle of the press and i get tortured because it's my calling and i want to do that. if i go out every day and say here's those numbers, they say here comes brad again, we know what he's going to say but it is a moral calling to show what's going to happen in the law. you have to run a bill through the house and senate, vote for a veto, we can't do it on the budget committee and most people don't even know the basic facts and you say why and thewhy is because

if you yell too loud they say, what are you going to do about it? i get constituents, they say what then day, you have done anything? i say i'm one guy, i'm out there doing everything i can. i'm trying to influence folks, i got balanced budget amendment bills in, it's a heavy lift talking with democrats , one of the biggest fallacies is that there's this war between the right and left personally. we all get along personally. i debate my good catholic friends in the morning and we debate religion, power, everything and these guys are the democrats, their friendly, good people. they didn't get to that level by doing jabs and putting people down. we get along great. it's the press that thinks there's this big right-wing left-wing divide and it's not true. the true power is right in the middle. weber's guiding that 4 trillion area that's not being led by the right and left. go do a quick scan and you will see who's controlling for trillion. >> host: i've always felt the media tends to, they really extol the virtues of those who are in the middle doing that kind of thing but everybody plays a role in the process. but they tend to diminish the

importance of those who are like you and on the left who are making the argument for either side and i used to say you can't split the difference. it's the difference letters who get all the glory to a certain extent and those who are defining the difference playing a very important role in the public political process are marginalized or dehumanized mostly. >> guest: i appreciate it, you take a little thump but there's a few keywords you've got to learn how to govern and compromise and unified. i talked to fifth grade classes all the time and if you got $550 billion deficit to kids, do we increase that number or decrease it? when the fifth-graders get it, we're talking about compromise and unify, i'm willing to compromise with anybody but it's got to be in

the same direction. if you have one percent economic growth i'm willing to compromise as long as the one percent goes up. any policy that willincrease economic growth, you will see me at the table. >> host: that's one of the things, we increase economic growth about the deficit, that would do more than anything to bring down the debt and reduce deficits , economic growth . >> guest: absolutely. >> host: there's this false sense of security because of the relatively lowand unemployment rate . i know it's a poor economic indicator but there's lot underneath that for example as you know in the commonwealth you saw we now have a $1.5 billion revenue shortfall. we got a 3.7 percent unemployment. how can that be? under it as you know is that we aren't just like the country we had a declining laborforce participation. we are at a 10 year low in virginia and people on the workforce, that contributes to a low unemployment rate. we've got a lot of people working 28 hours, a lot of

people because of obamacare and the mandate for 30 hours and their counted as employed toward the unemployment rate and we've been trading out high-paying jobs for lower paying jobs . there's the dignity in all work and i use that but that's one of the reasons the revenues are down. so people are going to say we're going to have to raise taxes to close that gap. that's the exact wrong approach. we don't need more working virginians paying higher taxes, we need more virginians working . it seems to me that's the same thing at the federal level, there's this sense that the unemployment rate is down, the administration is always touting that just like in richmond but the fundamentals to your point and we talked about earlier are not sound. >> guest: i thought the piece you wrote last week, you're right on the money. right on the commonwealth and where we stand and the evidence that all this, racial tensions are at an

all-time high but we don't get that in the economy coming along. you get that when you are at one percent growth and there's animus because people are competing against each other for jobs. if you're humming along at three or four percent growth you don't see people getting on each other's case so the slow growth economy is causing that and we haven't educated the people when you talk about labor force participation rate, that's right on the money. that our kids are competing against the rest of the world. the chinese, indians and the chinese, they are working hard. i have indian friends here that are phenomenal at work ethic. so we're competing globally now. you can't make decisions in isolation but you asked for thecommonwealth of virginia to do minimum wage at $15, competitors across the ocean are laughing at us . you don't have productivity but you're going to raise the wage rate. there laughing, getting a chuckle out of it and we have

to put our productivity levels up. over the last 200 people years, people know the wages are the same thing as productivity. raise your productivity, wages go up. >> host: are they still trying? i thought there was a widening gap. >> guest: in the short run you get a little blitz but over the long run that's what we've got to focus on. >> host: this point you made, i mentioned to you that i've been reading in addition to this book, hillbilly elegy , he had in the national review was talking very much about what he talked about in terms of race relations in the us. the economic dynamic. but if you get a chance, that is a great book. it talks a lot about apalachicola, virginia as well. we talked about a couple other things while we got time. the book writing process.

so this is a very thoughtful book. and i've written a book. my college roommate 30 years ago said read a book, right on. [laughter] i did and i found the process to be therapeutic in some ways and enjoyable . i would try to carve out sometimes like a weekend or something because i would have to get in the rhythm and rights some people get up at 5 am and write books , they work out or after they get off the table. how did you as a member of the us house when you are home always having meetings with constituents, obviously a family man as well, how did you find the time? what do we have here, 200 something?

>> guest: a lot of it was already written, i'm an academic for 14 years. one on western civilization, you see a 4000 year thing and then i had a philosophical reader on logical positivism. if you are sleepy at night, go through that. it will ask you what is knowledge today. that was heavy hitting, that was socrates and plato open up the question what is knowledge and how do you know what you know? we've had a 2000 year search for that and no one found it. they broke this thing open wide open, bertrand russell and some of these world-class thoughts and nothing replaced it. the left is kind of what got me to putthese ideas, the left doesn't have a coherent philosophy that can name and i got in all sorts of hot water for saying that . because he owns this tradition or whatever. i want to give itto you for free. i don't own any . that crackup is knowledge.

when you can't do fine, we don't have any systematic theologians right now internationally, nationally, etc. after martin luther king, gandhi, kennedy, that. , there's been very little systematic thinking. i wrote a book on that and i had western zip up, economic notes from my lectures over the years and i had a few books in here, alastair mcintyre wrote a brief history of ethics, people who have read that will see a lot of that embedded in this book. neil ferguson, the oxford historian on the six pillars that midwestern city unique, you will find a lot of that in there so i had a good friend who's helping me write and i'm not jefferson so i have all these big ideas, i got together and he helped with it together. there's things you look back and you go i forgot to put that in. the hardest part was you have a ton of knowledge that you want to pump in the 200 pages

. >> host: that's not everybody's problem. >> guest: that's the way i did it and i would take big chunks. i'm not a 5 am, get up and write a few pages. i have a few days in a row or you can burrow in and start cranking stuff and get out the computer and carve it together. >> host: that's great. i wanted to go back to one more thing in terms of your teaching, you mentioned here, you didn't mention i think by name but at, i think it was in your graduate school, three teachers who were mentors who really had an impact on you. can you share with us who those are? >> guest: i had of hope college in holland michigan, i went right on lake michigan and i had a world religion, i won't name him and a philosophy professor and my preacher in a dutch reformed church who is a scottish reform presbyterian kind of

preacher but just, he had reinhold bieber and calvin in hishead, coming and going , just this systematic repetition and he can reach and had me over when i was a college kid. when you're in college you don't have your act together but all three of these folks cared for me as an individual and i saw what christian concern look like. i said not only am i thankful for this what the college has done for me, i want to do that with my life so i aim to be a professor based on these three and i had plenty more at american, my phd, he went and i was the guy that did economics and ethics, he was the minister to bill clinton so i'm bipartisan. i'm friends with both sides of the aisle and i had mentors that an american got me at usaid working on economic development, world bank i worked a couple of years.

a woman boss from the philippines and singapore. so i just had great people all the way along the line and it helped me grow so i want to pass it on, that's why i want to teach the end of the day, congress, you say i'm done teaching, it's time to do it, let's put some of this in action so i gave it a run. >> host: was a typical day like now? you start again tonight on the day that we're having this conversation and then what's it like for folks who are, i know a lot of c-span viewers know this but you get up and do what? >> guest: it's weird because it's a presidential year. we just spent a month at home which is abnormal but the normal is three weeks in a row in dc, get up early, go

to the gym, work out with everybody, democrats, republicans, have a good time, watch the news and you start going to budget committee meetings. we've got to kick it off again tomorrow and throughout the day meeting with constituents. getting yourhead up on what's coming at us in terms of bills, working with your staff , then you go home for three weeks of that and go home for one week and do the politics and run for office again and meet with your constituents in your district where i have10 counties and i promised to be in every county once a month . i wasn't clear thinking when i made that promise, it's a doozy but it's been great, going around like crazy. >> host: we just had lines change in virginia and your lines changed somewhat, how that been in terms of what you're used to and all of a sudden losing constituents and voters, gain constituents and voters, that must be a little bit of a ... >> guest: it's okay but it's just politics, i don't know how it happened. i lost hanover, i got my students for 18 years and their dispersed through the region but to lose your, you

almost wonder if someone designed it intentionally. i lost state fran and picked up powhatan and amelia and i was there this past weekend twice. running through those counties so great people and it's fun, you get to meet new people but boy, it's hard work. new counties get to meet new people and introduce yourself, share in ideas. when you are new, i'm pretty skeptical of politicians and i think my approval is 12 percent or something so you've got to say hey, here's what i believe, here's the proof. you've almost got give proof. here's the way i vote, here's proof of what i am saying. >> host: you talk about what you believe it is clear in the book. what you believe but it's interesting because i've seen you on the stop and you know, you say the same thing back home you say here and anywhere else.

my senses and i think we see that people are very receptive to that conversation, i think they're hungry for it. don't you feel that? >> guest: i do and it goes back to the guys who talked about, newt gingrich, the concept of america. i ran on the republican creed of virginia and it's an american creed, it's not really republican. i'm interested in free market, people for every citizen under the law. you say that to anyone and they like it. >> host: provider of needs and economic justice. >> guest: the problem is not that people hold themselves to that promise when they're up here. friend marcus, they vote for everything that's not free market so i tried to do that and i getting all sorts of trouble but i always say you can predict my votes, follow adam smith in madison and you can predict every one of my votes. go check it out and see if i'm fudging or not.

>> host: here's something really important to try to get you impressed on, on november 12 in the hamptons. what is the prediction? >> guest: i've got to say go jackets although i got to flip a coin at the last game area he got a great relation, it's a love-hate thing but it's fun. the three captains came from hampstead. we all like each other and their free market. their economic department, they're all good folks. >> host: that's great. dave, thanks. had a great time with you, enjoyed reading the book and i encourage others to do it. thanks for takingthe time to write it . >> guest: good interview. i can't believe you took notes and went beyond. >> host: i went through with a yellow highlighter. >> guest: super job. >> host: thanks so much. >> guest: you bet. >> c-span, created by

america's television companies and brought to you as a public service by your cable or satellite provider. this is book tv on c-span2, television for serious readers. here's our primetime lineup. tonight starting at 6:45 eastern we bring you programs on the current presidential candidate. first up, david kjohnson critical talk about the making of donald trump . followed by dick morris on his book armageddon. how trump could beat hillary. also face the nation's don dickerson looks back at memorable presidential campaign moments on the book tvs after words program at 9 pm eastern. at 10, maria r moody details the danger of being a front-line journalist and we wrap up our sunday primetime lineup 11 with charles murray who presents his plan to replace the welfare system in

america with a universal basic income. that'll happens tonight at c-span2's book tv. now book tv is live with author and historian gerald horn. he's the author of several books on race and history including his most recent paul robison, the artist as revolutionary. for the next three hours, gerald ford will be answering your questions. >>