so every good genocidal movement is to take them into the infestation in malignancy that they hardly count as human anymore. >> welcome to the cover off club. welcome to our audience. . .

individuals for showing up here tonight.mi thank you for coming. you're all so brave to come in here to an academic talk of good stories of scholars and academics. one i heard recently was a scholarly panel i was attending. the moderator of the panel was a federal judge and he said you know, we have some of us, referring to himself who are ase teddy roosevelt himself, a rugged individual once said we

are in the arena. our faces covered with dust and blood and sweat and then he said you have kind of an out of the way up in the ivory towers the academics who are carefully watching the battlefield and then when the battle is over, they come down onto the battlefield and shoot the wounded and then he proceeded to say we have three expert marksman on the panel today so i will have to shoot a couple of people probably not in the audience, but in history as we think about rugged individuals and where it's been and where it's going. so, my co-author and i -- uh-oh, i'm not able to get us going. my co-author and i like to as we say go back to come back. that is, we like to go back in history but not just for the purpose of staying in history but to see what we can learn an bring that back to policy today.

so, in this book, "rugged individualism," we wanted to goo back in history and see what we could recapture that might be useful for public policy today. and we especially spend some time in the new deal. and in fact, one of the great speeches, franklin roosevelt delivered 85 years ago this year. so in a sense i will be responding albeit a little bit e late to the commonwealth club. so "rugged individualism" has a history. my mother passed away at age 99 when i would ask about her sports team is she would say they are up and down. and that is kind of true of the rugged individualism. it has had its ups and downs. even the paranoid have some enemies. and "rugged individualism" has had enemies over the year

particularly during theera, thes progressive era there was quite an economic critique and that continues through today. and there's also been a sociological critique of the individuals. it is a form of selfishness of people kind of withdrawing from their society and we will look at both of those. so it has had its ups and downs. there are people that would say it is alive and people would say it is bad. you can decide for yourself where you would place rugged individualism. would you say that it's dead or alive and would you say that is a good thing or a bad thing? so president obama referred to rugged individualism as a part of america's psyche but he felt it was a bad thing he would go on to say. and then i would say we believe that it is alive if only barely

sometimes. and it's good that it is alive and it could be better if itop were even more robust. there've been different peopleo in history and even today were in different places on this chart. the other thing i would say by way of overview is we addressed this in two different ways. we try to look at the political realm and what that has done for and against the idea of rugged individualism and then we look at the intellectual realm of ideas. what are some of the ideas about in our society and how have they affected rugged individualism. let me try that again and take off my watch to keep track of time and go back. so, individualism was very much planted in america's dna at the- founding. america is the only nation that

was founded on the creed and i would say part of america's founding was individualism and i would say if there's nothing else you remember, to me this describes it right here. the founders of this country no longer wanted at th to be import decisions about their lives to be made by churches or kings or queens or the social class into which you report that they wanted to make point about their own lives as individuals. we want a country that we were free to make the key decisions about our lives. so that means the declaration of independence as we know goes and talks about individual rights and how they came had abused peoples individual rights and how that was the purpose of founding this country was so

that people could pursue life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. that's what they wanted protected in the country and the constitution sort of its companion document if you will is very much drafted towards protecting individualism and i speak in parts of course of the first ten amendments in the bill of rights which is kind of a list of individual rights that the drafters of the constitution plus needed tthat needed to be m the danger of their own government. they are very much about protecting individual rights and checks and balances of power. stated in the declaration guaranteed by the constitution,y and now entering its golden era.

the american frontier when you think about it is not just a place. it was not just a location, a geographic place. it was a whole spirit of the times of alexis de tocqueville, the french journalist who came to this country in the 18 hundreds and wrote about democracy in america said the theory of availability of land. it's part of what makes american democracy work and allowslo individualism to florida -- flourish. an academic at the university of wisconsin, frederick jackson turner, wrote quite a bit about

the frontier and in particular in 1893, he wrote a thesis and said america isn't just different from england by reason of geography. but again, it is a whole wilderness and those that have kind of grown up in america. and people gathering together, the fishing and hunting and building their own houses and so forth.rs there is a sense of rugged individualism although he didn't use the phrase i will share in just a moment. i make a note here that the frontier dead and good however collaboration. sometimes people say they weren't really rugged individualism because they had wagon trains and built parts together and worked together and collaborated and that is absolutely the case. but i think the key is rugged individualism means you have thg freedom to consent to join these various groups.no they were not regulated to joinn the trains and they were notea

mandated to build each other. but they are things that out of their own freedom consented to do and saw the value in doing. so, i wouldn't make the mistake of thinking that rugged individualist never cooperate. but we will talk about that more today. so, this was more of a heyday then the wilderness years of daniel boone wanting more elbow room. these are the days that we often think about with rugged individualism. but rugged individualism came under the attack of those progressives. and in 1890 if you want to put a date on it, the american census bureau said it would no longer count migration to the west. we had reached the pacific ocean and that was the end of the migration west.

so we were no longer going to keep track of that. it was in effect close now in 1890. according to the census bureau. so the argument of the progressives was this is going to create a big change in our country. it is now going to be if necessary to band together and live in the cities and we have to have more government. we have to have more regulation if we are going to live together in this way. we will need to look to europe or because they've been looking at these boundaries much moree. than we have.en, the attack and then i wrote an essay called the myth of rugged individuali individualism. obama must have been channeling his inner charles beard when he gave his famous you may think you build a business but you didn't really build up. you didn't build the roads and infrastructure.

it's really build a lot. they want a love of government help and he makes quite a list of 15 or 20 things that business people want bridges and canals and railroads and so forth so hm calls it the myth of rugged individualism. individualism. another progressive, john dewey, more in education philosopher and anything else talked about the ragged individualism. we've now reached the end of thh frontier because of the west and moved to the west because we can finally get rid of thiswhich ha individualism that has been more sort of a curse on the society. now, in that same timeframe, rugged individualism have some defenders. and ironically, the person who

coined the term was herbert hoover. i think in a way if you reach that essay that i mentioned about the pieces by frederick jackson turner, he should have e named it. he described in greater detail. he didn't just stick the landing and get the actual colorful phrase and so it was left of her hoover in a campaign speech.ll e to call the american system of individualism, this was important because if you remember your history, hoover had spent most of his career up to that point as a minings engineer in various countries around the world. world. and especially during and after world war i. he led major food relief efforts in europe, especially belgium. he wrote not a hero in this country that a national hero in belgium.

so when he came back from europe he said i'm glad to be back in america because over in europe, they are taking on all of these various forms of totalitariani totalitarianism. they are becoming socialistic fascists and communists. all of these sort of collectivist totalitarian ideas. he said i'm glad to be back in america where we have thein american system of rugged individuals. and then he would always ask him if he would say now this is nott a laissez-faire take the high most kind of individualism because we also have in the country as herbert hoover would say the quality of opportunity. people have an opportunity to enjoy their individualism and so herbert hoover is the one that pointed out the expression of rugged individualism and as i said for him and it was always accompanied by the quality of opportunity. now, then the new deal, franklin roosevelt's new deal that was previewed at the commonwealthi

club became i would say a near-death experience for the individuals because roosevelt felt part of the problem, and indeed part of the economic problem that was causing the great depression was rugged individualism where business people called the economic titans on wall street and new york who would run the business out of their own selfishness and people that needed to be taken care of in the economic system. so, herbert hoover would say when they ran for president iner 1932, this is not a contest between two men it is is a cont between two philosophies of government because roosevelt wants to move away from individualism, what hoover called the system and he hasas this new deal that is very different.

the american system versus the new deal was about expert administrators, more central government planning, emergency measures, government growth in all of this was part of the new deal roosevelt would bring along. and the way gordon and i characterize it or actually caricature it if we were better artists in our book is the forgotten man and the rugged individual. those are two cartoon characters that sort of capture this deba debate. we have the rugged individual on the left and roosevelt's five the forgotten man on the right. he basically say we need to replace the individual with the forgotten man as a focus ofnt government policy. the secretary of interior said we have turned our backs for all

kinds. it's bad, we are turning our backs on it and we are now focusing on the forgotten man. so r so we argued this is the second book together and the first one that needed to. it's the new deal system that was put in place. interestingly, although in the 1920s we had a series of presidents that try to roll back the government growth caused by world war i.g to hap we might have expected the same thing to happen after world war ii but it did not. eisenhower did not roll back the new deal measures.

it's now a given that's where we lived with today. so, we talk in the book about the two modern political revolutions of the great societ of the revolution and the ronald reagan revolution. he was such an abusive character one time he stopped at a and aca campaign stop. actually, he wasn't supposed top stop you speak he was just at a motorcade carrying he reached out and took out a blow horn and he said in this campaign we are for a lot of things and against quite a few. that is kind of a summary and a great society. he wanted an attack on poverty

to improve education and improve the city and the areas. he really wanted the government to improve the society in every possible way. but when he made the changes he did he never left room at the table for the rugged individuals and so under lbj blank healthcare, he added a safety net if you will come in medicare and medicaid for the seniors dow with needed. but for others, he said if you want to keep your own healthem insurance if your employer provides health insurance, if you want to take care of your own, you can still do that, but we will create a health care safety net for those that are not able to do that ford actual themselves. and actually, we hold that up in our book as a bit of a model. whether you're the room at the

table for both the forgotten man and the rugged individual would we want to leave room at the table for both of these important icon in our history and in this grandiose he did that. then the ronald reagan revolution really did a lot forr the individualism rhetorically. but it didn't really turn back to turnout the government as much as ronald reagan would have liked. but he did i sort of rhetorically redefine the role of government in our lives. he famously said that the government is not the solution to the problems. government is the problem. and he did kerry have some very significant tax reforms and he m did with the policy from the federal government of the state government. but as i said it was more of a rhetorical victory and a policy victory. and then, we also have philosophical debates in

particular in the realm of economics. i'm going to skip forward to the debate today. the economists are still debating rugged individualism versus the forgotten man today and this version of it if you will, i skipped over some others back in the 50s but it's led by thomas, n. the 21st century income inequality which president obama called the defining challenge of our time. one of the things we think happens in our society today ise just another fellow said in his book intellectuals in society, what happens today is intellectuals come up on a problem that they write about or talk about and then the policy people sort of proud of that and try to find and implement policy solutions. al gore and climate change are the sort of classic example.

scientists already developed tha ideas and al gore sort of packaged them up and went out on the road and began talking about it and then it became both domestic and international policy. i would say that is what is happening today on the economic side. in the 21st century income inequality is becoming the latest version of should we do away with rugged individualism and move towards the collective set of ideas. so, he argues that it is a pretty bold book if you have not read it it is a little thicker than you would like. but safety nets are not the solution.go education is not the solution for the forgotten man.n. we have to have income redistribution. and the only fair to strip her of many is the federal government. and he argues the federal government should be spending more like 50% of our gross to

mystic product rather than the 25 to 30% now spent. saddam is a pretty radical set of social ideas saying that in fairness education is notet enough, safety net is not enough. we need to redistribute money into the government needand thee control. the second critique of rugged individualism comes from the realm of sociology. and i would say these books capture it. the heart by robert and some of his colleagues and bowling alone by robert putnam. what we always feared, what de tocqueville said in the 18 hundreds is that individualism could become selfishness in america. people could trust withdraw from civic life and be content andan happy in their own careers and in their own lives. they both argue that is what is

happening. people are bowling alone if you go and it leads to other forms of civic participation that are going away. and that needs to be addressed. my own view we point out in the book is there's plenty of evidence to the country. there's plenty of evidence that america is still the most philanthropic and generous country in the world. still the country that generates more churches, nonprofits, social organizations and any country so i'm not sure that it's right to say some of the old forms of civic engagement have gone away. i don't belong to a bowling leaguleague at an italy that i g to some other things and i thati participated in it so it may be the forms of civic engagement and change have gone away.

i think that he makes an interesting observation that americans might be anti-statist but they are not really selfisha so it may be that they don't like the government telling them what to do with their time and money but they are not really selfish, they are pretty generous with their time and their money. so, this is a bit of aso philosophical debate from the sociology side. and then of course, we have lots of policy debates today. one that still goes on about obamacare and the testing is the illumination of individual choice. it was based forgotten money on the forgotten man. there was no room left for the rugged individual. i remember when both of my sons each called me up and said our health insurance was just

declared illegal and i said why. they said it doesn't have pregnancy care but we are not planning to get pregnant. well, this is the kind of lack of choice that you have. so, here is the case of individualism sort of losing out if you will in the policy realm. so, we close the book with hope for the future. i guess it is probably good to have some hope. i remembered i lived in la for 25 years and i remember a bumper sticker on the 405 freeway in large letters there is no hope and then smaller letters, but i could be wrong. so maybe that is the message i have here. it seems a little hopeless but maybe i'm wrong and maybe there is some hope. so we close our book with reasons to be pessimistic about individualism and some reasons to be optimistic. i'm in terms of pessimism, certainly the political climate doesn't seem to be very helpful to individualism.

it seems to us and individualism has become a bit of ao young distraction. they don't really see how it is meaningful to them unless their health insurance was declared illegal because males need pregnancy coverage or they decide you can't have a 16-ounce cup for your soda but you could buy two of the 8-ounce cups. so the individual liberty appears to be more pragmatic and not practical. but i think especially for the individual liberty it's a little bit of an abstraction. a reason to be pessimistic about the individualism is the sort of calling if you will of people today. the so-called helicopter parents and also on the college campuses

and the need for safe spaces, the need to avoid micro- aggressions or. they said that's how i deal with it that isn't very successive. we are developing young people who are pretty sensitive and pretty well taken care of anddi individualism is not muchh encouraged for them. reasons to be optimistic. we think we are entering some new frontiers that could be positive and hopeful for the rugged individualism and i will talk about that further in justo a moment. they are pretty interested in the individualism. immigrants we think more than nativeborn people have come to

this because they want to start businesses and build a better life for their children. so many of the immigrant see communities we see people who are engaged and interested in individualism and of course what is donald trump need for the rugged individualism and i can say we are not sure.ve do you remember the first we not only studied presidential address at the first was about the forgotten men and women who have been heard and they will not be forgotten again an agains inaugural address was full of fo references again to the forgotten men and women. so i'm on the telephone with my co-author and said as this c franklin roosevelt's forgotten

man coming back to life and we discussed it and said you know, we think it is something different this time. roosevelt's forgotten men were people that he thought were forgotten by the economy that the big business was sort of running over people and people, the common man if you will need it the power of the federal government to check the power of big business and allow the forgotten man to have that protection. there are people that have been facing forgotten by their own government or that are being ran over or are not being well protected and cared for by their own government. and that is the forgotten man that we think donald trump isd h forgotten about the men and women that are not being well cared for were attended to by their own government.

they are interested in the individualism or is he interested in the sort of big government collectivism but aimed more to protect those kind of people. and there is some evidence we can talk about. as we said, we see a little hope for the future because young people are living on very different frontiers if you will of individualism which is sometimes called network individualism. i have three children in their 20s and 30s and they'll spend more time on their own by themselves in their own rooms than i did in my teenage years were at their present age is. interestingly of course, they are connected to other people.

they seem to be more interested. the second kind of hopeful aspect is on the business sidein people seem more interested in doing their own thing and joining the big new york company and working for 50 years if you go down the street to my office from the stanford business school, you meet young people and they are inspired to start their own business and join a startup company to do something on the social side with their lr lives. differena friend from the old bs you will.iration if we see in the social media bias and their business lives greater interest if you will but we don't know how well that is going to translate to the political life.

so people are interested more and more in socialism. it seems a disconnect between me and the individual likened the kind of political systems thatan protect that and the interest in socialism. again a topic we can take up in a moment. so, at the end, we actually turn to the revelation chapter three and verse number two where they are addressing some churches are dying and the authors is that his advice to them is to awaken and strengthen what will remainu so we awakened to the value of the individuals and we need to find ways to strengthen it. to to identify these liberty moments where the liberties are being challenged to guard the checks and balances not to do away with it, we especially think we need more civic education today. i mean, when young people don't know who their senators and they

think that judge judy is on the supreme court and we can go clearly if we are going to have a system of individualism that protects the republic we need more civic education.? but at the end of the day, will it really change? businesses, civic groups thatf evolved into the groups and will the government really change, it is hard to see the government devolving into something nimblee smaller.le at the end of the day do they at least deserve a seat at the policy table i'm in favor of the safety net and herbert hoover was in favor of equality of opportunity we'll have disagreements on how that is carried out.n' so i am not arguing we shouldn't have a safety net that i amd arguing we should also have opportunities for the rugged int

individuals that the policy would take them into account and not be simply federalizing everything in favor if you will. needless to say, i could go on. there's nothing worse than an author talking about the same book. i remember the essay a third grader was asked to write and he thought he could handle the subject in three sentences. he wrote socrates was a philosopher, he talked a lot, they poisoned him. so i think it is always good to remember that if you are a public speaker it is possible to go on too long. the saved the opportunity now for questions and comments and i think george suggested how weau might carry that out. >> i would like to remind everyone online that you were listening to the co-author of rugged individuals and the research below that talked about the ideas in the book. one cultural thing that renews

this over and over that of rugged individualism and the ideas and in the early 60s, john kennedy called it the new frontier and he mentioned we have to reinforce the equality of opportunity on this. it didn't have as much time toto do it and he worked on that when the jobs took over. but hollywood does have picked up on that image because the movie hollow west was won and came out with all the big stars and it was really a way of mythologizing the whole takeover. i happened to have a really interesting experience with that because i was a 10-year-old boy and we went on to houston texas for a conference. they showed this on a big cinem cinemascope screen. everything was huge and there was a scene maybe 20 or 30 minutes in where jimmy stewart brothers the robbers and he take us a barrel of powder and throws

it in the flame and it explodes. so it is thrown into the fire cover,there is a huge explosiond the entire screen goes blank. it turned out lightning struck the building right at the moment that scene was. so the audience of about a thousand people, that was very dramatic and it took about a power to the movie back together. i thought it was interesting that everything in that film, then the switch by the end of the 60s and early 70s of all of the movies countering all that, like little bad and so forth. and hollywood changed and we can't have the rugged individuals because it is aaue little too much. >> i think that is very true that rugged individualism is most encouraged and most hospitable with frontiers. but the west is not the only frontier. so i think you are right.

john kennedy pointed to space as one example of a new frontier. and i just saw recently the movie giving figures because p6 hidden figures to sort of make all of that work. then in the end although they thought they had a new idea that was going to take care of everything, well, they had to call for the rugged individual n to make sure that this really played out. as i've mentioned, we think social media presents new frontiers for young people and the new world of work if youu will is a different frontier. so i think the notion thatatindu individualism is encouraged by new frontiers is absolutely right but they don't all happent to be the west. there's other frontiers.r questn >> i had another question about rugged individuals. clearly come individualism isn't always a minority position because -- what do you think of

different parts of american history, what percentage of the american population prefer rugged individualism to being taken care of because an because society and democracy and majority of the democracy,aj whetherwo the majority but in general wit what would you think even at the height of rugged individual or would you think of the percentage that engaged in its? >> that is a good and hard question. i would say when you survey people historically say on the economics that poor people havel nevertheless been in favor of capitalism because they see the opportunity if you vote even if it is not their present reality. they don't want to close off the opportunity that they might benefit from that kind of a system. plenty of evi so there's plenty of evidencee y that people really like theee freedom of opportunity if you will but they have in the system

like this is some of rugged individuals. what we are experiencing right now in our society is once youoe have given people more than a safety net if you will come you've given people a kind of their anti-something like sometl healthcare, then their opinion begins to change. obamacare was unpopular, very unpopular until recently when it appeared it might go away. so it is a hard debate and it's still a very current debate because as i said there's often a middle ground where you can create a safety net and you can also leave the opportunity. we argue in our books a book the individual mandate for example in obamacare wasn't really necessary to make it work as it has been argued. as a fact, it's been eaten up by exceptions such that it hasn't really worked. so it probably wasn't really necessary and effects to havein the individual mandate and

federalize healthcare. so again, i think that is our plea is can we find ways to make policy that addresses both thevi forgotten man and the rugged individual.hat you sa >> in the history of the 20 debate could 20th century for how this will develop it seems to me a little bit that the communism in the totalitarianni states but especially the communism in russia and the soviet union was a competitor for the united states and freedom, capitalism especially during the depression and the fear that actually does what they'll do this welfare capitalism that seems to be a more stable thing which is a combination of its new ideas. because it takes care of different parts of society in different ways basically. >> again i think timmy that is s an accurate reading of history and it's constantly finding thec right balance.

in my view, we live in a sort of controller society. things will swing to the left and then people say that's gone too far and if the that they sw a bit to the right. elections are a current mechanism, constant prot constitutional protections. even roosevelt faced those in ad some of his early new deal initiatives. we are stalked by the supreme court. it's going to far and going back to the drawing board.ves as you so, we have these correctives as you say to sort of keep a blended system working. >> who would like to ask the first question. >> if anybody has any questions you can line up over there. thank you for the talk. i have two quick questions. so, the first is you talk a lot about how the quality of opportunity is a really important part of the system where the rugged individualism exists and thrives. can you talk a bit about why

there's such athere is such an f actual outcomes in our society so is it a problem that the individualism has gone too far that creates a sort of its coming where particularly minorities or people who are, you know, socioeconomically challenge for an essentially are not able to, you know, rise in for the social status ofd then s incomes. and then the second question is about what type of welfare system you would design to essentially have principles. you talk about how the stanford students are excited to join this new startup economy, but as you know, a lot of people have been left out in this economy. we have labor force participation rates that are

abysmal right now. they had a welfare system in place now and veterans disability and welfare disability is not working. also allowing the increasing number of unemployed and potentially unemployable people.

we are having a debate that we are missing a couple key points. the professor said very memorably the heresy isn't an untruth, it is an over emphasish on one part of the truth. one is difficult. it wouldn't be so much the inequality of incomes if you will, but the income of the scale and historically in this country the income mobility possibilities have been veryle high. people can go from the very bottom to the top and they can go from the top to the third. there's been a lot of fluidity. one of the problems of bringing about to the debate is there are long-term studies.

they are basically ten-yearwhil. studies. the last one has been a while. shows income mobility was stillt pretty good but a bit dated. so i think to really evaluate what we are doing is i can get a bit more behind the mobility than i can behind outcomes. the second one that is lost or distorted as others have said in their books, but it is a big book to read, the problem is not of the 1% level, it is of the upper 1% of the 1% that has distorted if you will income inequality. it's the entrepreneurs and steve jobs come is the hollywood stars, rock stars. these are the incomes that have really distorted income

inequality. and of course addressing that is problematic. that is a part of the debate we do not have enough information about. we focus on the things we can really do. the same question of course if i were the designer of welfare and i'm not an expert on welfare this is more a book of political philosophy as you will either say that in general this introduces the people that have been in poverty for a long time coming and it addresses the newer members of this frustrated economic class that came out and

surprised everybody by voting for trump in the rust belt of the upper midwest and so forth. and that is education. by that i don't just mean the equality of the education. quality of the education. that is part of it. and even though to be more conservative i am not in favoren of testing. r we don't have the right incentives for training people but they are going to need somee re- training and at the moment we have a tax system that this incentivizes a lot of the re- training. so for the tax code and investment of education to be a more promising approach.

i have this question that is like american ideology and does it work in other countries? i used to train with the u.s.eya marines. when i look at asia for example and japan but still has the key point and korea is becoming more of a socialism country because of the production that we had two weeks ago. i believe it is not quite working. what do they think about the? i >> as once about something else isn't one that has been tried and failed. it hasn't been tried a lot in other countries. one requisite is sufficient

freedom and the constitution for people to have individual liberties. it's to have the start of business and you work hard so your son or daughter could have a different kind of economic life and career that there could be some payoff for that. and then as others argued, to also have the land available at. least in the incubation period. one of things that i think is an interesting question to study is further while we were trying to promote democracy in other countries and it sort of became a question of how can you buildd a greenhouse to sprout and grow faster. if you go into the country that is landlocked and then ask a very political powerful system, there's not a lot there.ome othb

what will they do in the name of solving some of the problem prou can't we keep enough of this stuff the table. >> certainly all i know are the myths about austria. certainly you have the myth of people living more of that kind of life. a governmen but i am a government point of view i do not know enough to get give a good answer to that question i'm afraid. to my first question about inequality of outcomes is more along the lines of what you wers

talking about witches the ability to essentially the mobility. so, what i am wondering is this might just be a perception that i have that the mobility is extremely low among particularly like african-american and poor communities. is this because of an excess of rugged individualism where a certain group has co-opted the government power to set up a system where they are able to thrive or is it more some sort of inefficient government explanation. what i'm wondering is if they're too much rugged individualism sometimes in the created system where once the powerful have a lot of money they can afford the lobbyists, x. y. and z. and power becomes concentrated.

is there a need for every once in a while the rugged individualists to be cut down to size so that everyone can have that opportunity? >> i would say the answer is yes in any kind of a mixed system or hybrid system you can have heresy, one side or another. i personally doubt that is the explanation for the inability to address the inequality. as i said, if it is correct that the problem is that this very top, that is not stopping us from doing things in otherining places. the kind of people that could afford to come tonight areare nt probably not draining money out

of the inner city. i think it is probably more that we haven't come up with good solutions to problems of poverty. and i acknowledge i think on when herbert hoover said it works because we have the quality of opportunity i would say it: the opportunity is tougher to get now than it was. and so if i wanted to boost the rugged individualism i think i would have to work on thewo opportunity hybrid for that to work.e book can >> either from personal experience can you address if you have seen any correlation between maybe the strength of organized religion and on the one hand it would seem like religion encourages more interdependence and community antithetical to the rugged individualism but a closer look

at history it might seem when it was strongest in the usa u.s. it thrives, so any correlation atat all or any thoughts? >> we are giving the book that one of the roots if you will or a part of the dna of the individualism that was planted in this country was religion, specifically christianity and a certain form. this was part of the dna that was planted in this country. so the key part that we pointed out is the individual accountability that sure you can elect or consent to join a church. we will not have state churches that everybody has to join or follow, but in america you have freedom of religion you could join by your own consent or not. if you join by your own consent, you accept some community

activity presumably because it's your own choice and decision. but ultimately, the religion in america has been more about man or woman's individual accountability so we think that is a strengthening if you will of individualism and it's been a good thing. and maybe one of our challenges today. >> i have like 18 questions to ask you. >> i used to the spoiled as a student asking questions for ano hour. what would be a fun question to ask is how do you see the psychological elements of rugged individualism assisting in the turmoil we are experiencing in washington right now where we have that kind ofwho is individualistic president who isn't being accountable to the other checks and balances we

have created by the population who isn't necessarily in favor of a lot of the policies. i mean it may be a good time toi tap into that idea if it is able to blend in with a lot of the progressive ideas aroundnd obamacare. the example that you give is very good on that. do we need to have as a mandated policy and i would imagine we may have left that out at the same time, it should probably be illegal for insurance companies to deny pregnancy care to women. there is another half to pull se holes of individualism could still exist and be helpful tod today. >> we are already at work on our third working title of this book is how do public policies become

a war and not of liberation and that is how we describe what is going on. it about winning and the war. the president is encouragingy that further. i would also say congress has not been helpful. it takes whatever there are good things to be done. i remember i was working in dc a couple of years ago when it looked like they were finally going to have a debate about what we should do. finally we are going to come together on this and what did congress do, they declared an early holiday to go home and campaign so that they wouldn'tey have to take any heart notese before the election. one of the congressmen said just bomb the place and tell us abouf it later. this is our system of checks ano balances now. so i agree with you that checks and balances system has been broken for a long time and i

think to restore any sense ofret deliberation we need to bebeto strengthening that and i would love to see congress stand up and say no to the president. he has bad ideas and then sit down and work out some better ideas. one thing you can say in favor of the current president is he does seem willing to negotiate sometimes you try to find a deal if you will. so maybe they can take advantage of that. good question. >> just as a follow-up. they asked for a good explanation and is it blue trim capitalism [inaudible] we have a unique and difficult

set of circumstances right now. and believe me, i feel like i'm donald trump right now. believe me when i tell you gordon and i will have the solution to this in the next book, but not this one, so give me a couple of years and i will come back. thank you. [applause]ou got the opportunity versus the quality of outcome and another part of the whole debate, mark twain said when this was being discussed in the 19th century, he said if you equalize all the money across all the people within three years we would be back in the same hands as it was before. .. everything. and i have personal experience. i came up in a very large family. at i have 11 brothers and sisters and my parents were very , trying to make it equal all the time.

even to the point where we guide green grapes they would pick out 10 in each and we be at 10 but the outcome of course is completely different across-the-board as adults. it's all based on personality and other things. you can figure out how to do the incentives just for economic reasons but you also add in all the personalities and say everybody has $100. everyone does different things with it. it's a very difficult subject. very nicely addressed with the basic ideas are struggling between here and there so thank you very much for your book and for your talk. it's the 115th year of enlightened discussion. thank you very much. [applause]