historian of american conservatism on his life, career and key moments in the conservative movement spoke about his book just right at the hoover institution. this is just over an hour. good afternoon. for those of you that don't know me welcome. a more parochial absent all the

official papers are at the hoover library archives in palo alto and we have failed themselves of that when writing the book and the acknowledgment makes the point that it was lost or maybe you had forgotten about so i would suggest you talk about the book in your life. what is it like to go through all of your archival papers and find things you completely forgot about? >> do i seem that stupid that i said that. those of you that do not know lee, he is one of the great historians of the conservative movement and he's written over 25 books and is a great biography of barry goldwater and

history of conservatism in different angles and history of the heritage foundation where he is a distinguished fellow in conservative thought where i got to know him over the years and have come to admire him so much. what everyone should know about is it's going to come to full fruition next week. he is the board chairman of the fund which ended up as a memorial here in washington dedicated byn president george. bush and as you read through this you will see all the different pillars of conservatism and anti-communism and preservation of liberty that brought a set of concerns in his true passion and if you look in the jacket you will see what

he's done in the major program to look at and examine 100 years since the bolshevik revolution and it's one of those things if we could aspire to leave something behind it is admirab admirable. he wason a fellow at the instite at harvard university a number of years ago. why don't you talk about your life and then we will turn to some questions. >> it is typical that you are so generous in your remarks. i appreciate them and being here at the office as you say i did put my papers in the archives

because of so many other conservatives and anti-communists at hoover as a rich trove and for those of you that are interested in writing about or learning more about communism and anti-communism, the place to go is the hoover institution which was founded by herbert hoover in 1919 as a matter of fact you should know the president's essay is going to be on mr. hoover out in a month or so, so i've been out doing some of the research but unfortunately he was saddled with the idea that he was personally responsible somehow

for the great depressioput the t that isn't the case. what i tried to do with this book is a if you think about it there are conservative chileans who walked the earth in the last half of the 20th century. they were in my opinion ronald reagan, berry goldwater and bill buckley. as a matter of fact i wrote biographies of all three of them and so trying to sum up what do they have in common they were charismatic leaders that believe the free enterprise could bring morein prosperity to more people

than any other economic system. they look to a transcendent being for guidance and inspiration. they were practicing men of faith and they use the constitution as the northstar. it wasn't just something they did on their own. if i were to ask the audience who was barry goldwater they might have an idea that he was essential to the movement as a matter of fact he sparked the

revolution. he wasnd the grandson of a jewih settler who made his way to san francisco during the gold rush that didn't pan out so well and came next-dooroo to arizona, mae his way down and ended up in phoenix where he turned his operation into a leading department store in phoenix. he was a college dropout and that was it. what happened to his father died unexpectedly and hean had to go back to run the business. though he was a a college dropot he wrote the conscience of a conservative. 120 some pages. if you haven't read it, i would counsel you to do so. it sold 3.5 million copies

published in 1960 and still worth the read to hold up very well. 3.5 million copies. i would even settle-- for 100,0. never smoked a cigarette because of his mother's injunction, never had a cup of coffee, but he did keep a bottle of old crow in the senate refrigerator for after five sitting and he would bring senators over from the other side of the dial where democrats anaisle wheredemocratd sit down over and form relationships and friendships

and how i wish we could have more of that today. there are many wha leftists in politics. but if there had been a presidenten goldwater, we coulde sure of two things. the vietnam war and would have brought the troops home for whatever force where necessary no nuclear weapons. these are either going to win the war or certainly there would have been no land war. he would have taken the lead from general eisenhower and general macarthur as a matter of principle, america shouldn't get involved in a land war in asia and very goldwater took that counsel.

that truly another experiment wouldn't have been attempted. i was the director of communications for the goldwater for president committee and the directodirectors of the draft committee. i wasre hired late in the year s a matter of fact, consider this. my first day at work was supposed to be a full day but i've been a volunteer assistant for months and months. november 25, 1963, november 25, while, november 22 came first, the day that kennedy was assassinated. ii was the news director and i ran back to the committee

headquarters as soon as the announcement was made and i was in the eye of the storm. you can imagine handling inquiries from the press and the media because everybody's assumption was who killed him, somebody on the right. there was no knowledge of who did it. we had people banging on the doors yelling at us. there was a bomb threat. we had to bring in some police but we were under a tremendous pressure and then came the announcement that it was someone that had been with the fair play for cuba committee and we were

so relieved because we knew that this was a front. we could say that it wasn't one of ours but there was one of the heirs. who was responsible for the death. he was a very blunt guy that spoke directly and that is why we love him and i can see a couple of young people out here with their buttons and i can remember the first time i have my formal meeting with senator goldwater as the director of communications and i ha have put together this comprehensive campaign. i was going to be talking about how he had flown food and supplies to those that otherwise might have perished how he had been a member of both the urban league and e. naacp did phoenix.

i was talking about how he had gone down the columbia river on a boat but that was also dangerous. i was about two minutes into my presentation when all of a sudden, this big hand comes out and says stop. if you try any of that madison ave. crap in my campaign, i will throw you out of the office and out of my campaign. is that clear? >> was a two star general, i was the corporal and i said yes, sir. he said this will be a campaign of principle, not of

personalities. if we had been more able to talk about the human side, it's possible people would have said he doesn't sound or look like a warmonger or somebody that is going to destroy social security.e but that is just the way he was. he was going to offer a conservative choice and not an echo in the campaign. the other thing we should talk about in the campaign is what happened in the last week to a particular tv program called a time for choosing a. a number of california republicans decided to buy time on a tv network and present a time for choosing by ronald

reagan praising barry goldwater. the day before it was to be telecast, goldwater calls ronald reagan and i happened to be there when this was going on. he said my staff isn't very happy about this tv talk of stores. it talks about social security, and we really would like to run something else, we would like to rerun this half-hour that we have at these birds and he says while nobody likes the tv address i've been giving it and i can't help you come you've got to talk to the people that put up the money for it. he said have you heard it? i have not.

let me listen to it and i will call back. so, they ran an audio version of the time for choosing and he said what the hell is wrong with that? that made ronald reagan a political star overnight and raised $1 million within 24 hours, changed thousands of votes and lead to a bunch of republicans saying we want you to run for governor the following year. one could say no, candidate goldwater but i think now, president ronald reagan. that is so important tha how imt

speech was. extraordinary. ronald reagan, my first meeting with him, serious meeting was october of 1965. he's been spending the last several months testing the waters to see if the people of california wanted him to run and pretty much made up his mind but i called him up and i said i was working on a profile of him from the "reader's digest" and i said can i come out and visit. i invited her judgment and she had been an editor and fellow co-author with me. so, there were four of us, i was

in the back and ronald reagan was over here. it's like a piece of luggage and i had that between us. i asked about the political philosophy. he quoted a 1947 interview in which he said it comes from management or labor or government or the right or left or center, whatever and poses on the freedom of the individual's

tyranny. that was his philosophy over the years of study reflection. at the end of that second day of course we were convinced as we said he's got it. he said come on up too the houe and have some iced tea. you've been working hard, so very modest of him actually, not a great big sprawling mansion filled with all kinds of gimmicks because he'd been working for all those years. the library dan was very small really and there were all these shelves of books, so what did i

do? history, politics, volumeti aftr volume. i began looking at the titles. there were those in particular that i will mention the road to serfdom, witnessed by whittaker chambers, economics in one lesson, the classic of it's time and the book which i haven't read, the law. i learnedi later that 19th century economist freeis enterprise and someone who would influence many people including ronald i reagan.

maybe haven't read them so i began taking the books ou booksf officials said no, don't do that. there were underlined phrases and i'm not saying that he read every book that's closely, but the classics i am talking about, yes he had and here was anything in the end of reasoning person t would arise the old-fashioned way one book at a time. i said right then and there ronald reagan is an intellectual. he is comfortable with ideas. he understands the power of ideas and with that kind of intellectual foundation, a

political leader can do all kinds of marvelous things which as we know is exactly what he did. it's the story arguing about the freedom in their countries and the americans said look, i can go into the oval office and say i don't like the way you are running this country. i can go into the kremlin.

i don't like the way that he is running his country. [laughter] it is a great story and funny as all get out but there is a mor moral. it's how we must break down the barriers. you think about this in the early 1980s you had john kenneth galbraith visiting moscow coming back after being over there for weeks and weeks.

we now know the soviet union was an economic basket case. when he came in and 85 just a couple of years later he was horrified because they had been spending so much money in the arms race. so what was ronald reagan saying at the same time as his messenger he was telling the parliament you go back and find people were sort of polling that but he was absolutely right and before the end of the decade, the berlin wall was down.

that sense of humor in decembe december 1981 i wanted to present a copy of this him and my publisher said be sure to have a chapter about the attempted assassination, so i added that to the tradition and he said we are going to do something special on the cover. i'm a big black letters complete through the assassination attempt it was very tacky. i don't like that. it would be complete through the assassination attempt back and forth. so, there is ronald reagan

looked like about 5 50, big smi, he just made you feel so good. i said mr. president, here is a copy of the biography. so it was a photo op and they were taking pictures and chatting backta and forth. i could see complete through the assassination attempt. i'm sorry i messe missed a poor ending. [laughter] whoo could make a joke out of somebody trying to kill him? amazing. bill buckley rescued me from myself. i have been over in paris occasionally going to class, but spending that spending a lot ofe

doing research at the various cafés and testing the alcoholic content of thet various stren strengths. but i wast also writing, and i was going to be the next scott fitzgerald or ernest hemingway. i kept getting back rejection slips. i got very depressed, came back home sitting in my parents home thinking what am i going to do, write another novel or short stories. i took time out to write an essay about france where i had been looking saying unless they elected a leader like duval, they were headed for the bottom.

i sent this off to the national review and they accepted it and published it. i said the market is telling me something. that was my first professional publication in the national review. and so, i put aside the novels and short stories and poems and began writing nonfiction and i guess i could. as i mentioned and i will finish up, let me say one more thing about l. buckley because it's important that we get ath questn about this. i think an important lesson to be taken from his career in life is this. we need to practice fusionism.

when buckley started on the conservatives, libertarians and anti-communists, those ared the three major strings at the time, then welcomed people like paul and others. they were putting together a broad coalition and that i submit is the new fusionism. now, not even because there are more strains of conservatism today. i haven't read the post this morning. so maybe there is a new one. but i would say they all were

anti-communist and that is how i got into conservatism. living in paris i was there in october of 1956 with the hungarian revolution that occurred i was so exhilarating and excited all of these young age wereomen my standing up against the soviets and then of course two weeks later, the troops came back and killed thousands of young people my age, thousands, tens of thousands fled and i kept waiting for my government to do something and they did some perfunctory matter-of-fact statement. i was looking for action and result atlv that point whateveri could do the rest of my life to support those that were opposing communism and tierney i would do whatever i could to help them.

we dedicated that memorial in june of 2007 a decade ago, two years ago, we are fortunate president bush was there to accept it for the american people. there is were 24 steps and we went through all of them. seems that time, dozens of nationalen leaders visited the memorial to say a prayer and this past june some 22 embassies in the ceremony were joined by more than 20 ethnic groups as well particularly those in

china, korea, cuba and vietnam. we are going to continue to disseminate the truth about anti-communism and those regime china, vietnam, northm, korea, cuba. and as mike said, a week from today we are going to have an anniversary, not a celebration of the marking of the anniversary of the revolution and we will invite you all to it when all of the remaining captive people of the nation are free and didn't. we are sure that the day will come because the truth will make you and keep you free and that is what we are all about.

[applause] i didn't realize the phd you have this something you pursued and acquired later in life that you have been living a full life as an activist involved in different aspects as you say in theov conservative movement but then you decide to get a phd in history i assume, or politics, okay. that is a big decision. maybe give a little background on that and also once you get into the thick of that, is there any intellectual tradition of the writers and thinkers at that point you haven't become aware of and what is the aspect of this? >> i have my own publicaffairs firm in washington working with conservative and anti-communist

candidates and under the presidential campaign he was a client of mine and there were a number of congressmen, republican national committee, the white house. so that was all great fun, but i was burned out after 20 years. and i said no more. that's enough. i had always wanted to teach and i had been writing all along. i said if i want to teach, i must have a phd and i gave a lecture at the university on the 1980 election and predictive ronald reagan would win and someone from the politics department said why don't you come over and get p a phd from e university so in that

encouragement, i did. another reason why i did it is our book keeper imbecile of us, stoleol from us several thousans and thousands of dollars and people said you ought to declare bankruptcy. i said i am going to pay off everything that we owe. but that also persuaded me that perhaps the time was to close down the doors. intellectually i now have an opportunity to read into such depth for the first time the conservative mind, the road to serfdom, the constitution of liberty and other classic conservative text into the whole array of books about the foreign policy, international relations and so on. and i just loved it and i began

from that thinking what kind of classes can i put together. i just completed my 30th year teaching at the university as an adjunct and i'm going to be doing the politics of the 80s in the spring. i was doing things in the evenings and weekends and so forth and things got a little tight shall we say at this point

how about we turn to the audience for some question. i always enjoyed hearing you tell storiesou about political conventions when i think you you were in about 10-years-old. i would like to hear what you think about the political conventions now as opposed to those we were attending as a childd. >> the political conventions, first in 1948 when i was 15, 14, something like that. my father was with a political reporter and covered the white

house, washington, d.c. from the 1930s to the 1970s covered from fdr to next income every political convention from 1940 to 1972. so he brought me along in 1948. what i remember of course that i was still quite young how noisy it was. it was bright and vibrant and something vital going on. my own personal first convention in 1960.

nixon might very well have run. conventions are important because platforms are important. that is still my argument. they lay down a foundation for the workers of the party whether it's the democrats or republicans a. they are formed in a convention. today we have the primary system and so much of what is determined has already beenlr determined by who would want this or that primary. i wish there were more of a balance. bringing in the collective wisdom is important and i don't

want half a dozen people to sit around to make the choice that there should be more input from them and i think this idea only depends on what the primaries determined that i think that is going a little tooo far. thank you for your work and all you've done in the pursuit of liberty.er we cannot thank you enough for all that you've done. i want to talk more about fusionism.e there is a new group that has formed includinged bill kristol and theyet have said support the mueller investigation. how do we come back when there are so many different factions

now. we have the people that want to support donald trump, no matter what. what. it seems to be more divided. the fusionism was easy 40 or 50 years ago when bill buckley first conceived the idea. today you have maybe ten. i do not mean to make fun of that, because in my mind, it has

many more elements in strings, no question about that. all of that to me is the indication of vitality. people want to be in the position to lead and direct the movement in this direction are about and we have been fighting over the control of something in portland, quite the contrary. what is vital seems to me in the first case number one there was charismatic principled leadership and bill buckley intellectually, and ronald reagan politically. then there was a threat which was the soviet union and liberalism as it was reflected in the great society. what we need today and i've written i about this and i think

it is going to be international affairs in the next issue or two, to focus on one or two demonstrable visible threads. the heritage foundation did a study in the last week or two with 98 terrorists attacks. there's the police, the fbi

getting involved and so forth, so that is the external threat. i take the appeal very seriously. they think socialism is just one more politicalor philosophy. but it is far more than that. it is a direct threat to our way of life and a system of looking at economics. i was asked what do we do about it?ti the next time someone says i don't see anything wrong with beingg a socialist, just to say what you like to give up their right to have anything personal that you own? you no longer can have anything personal but you can call your own. or you willing to believe that

the individual is not important and only the group is important, are you willing to give up all of your individual rights to the group into the country, and finally our fe you willing to gv up god and any belief in a transcendent being because those are the things they are all about, those are the two threats and the other thing we need is that charismatic principled leadership that isn't obviousio right now, but i think that it will come to light because i don't think that we can sit back and expect the conservative movement to do nothing.

i think quite the contrary is beingri challenged right now too what it has done in the past. the [inaudible] i was an undergraduate school in california and it is an honor to meet somebody that finds assurance statements so i wondered if yowonderif you can e that leads to the famous document in connecticut. >> if you ar were a young conservative in 1961 are your alternatives?

you've got john kennedy who is a liberal democrat and it's really basically a moderate richard nixon so where do you go what you believe in the individual responsibility or strong national defense and all these compromises that are going on within this party and that what you need is an organization committed to conservatism. bill buckley said that makes sense to me. i would be happy to host a meeting so about 90 of us showed up at the home in september of 1962-pound of the young americans for freedom and you might be interested there were

two arguments. number one is whether or not the phrase god given rights should be in it. and we debated that and there was a vote taken on and it was 44-42 teeth the vote. there were libertarians appear at the beginning as part of the coalition we are putting together. now what do they do, do they block out back >> we are going to see where it goes and so forth and make a commitment. so they didn't walk out. the possible names for young conservatives of america and

weaver for the young americans for freedom anfor freedom and wn inclusive and reach out to as many different people as possible. we were quite full of ourselves and thought we could change the world but we didn't. we made a difference in american politics and he had some impact on the world. >> i have a three-part question. my name is heather. are you the one who came up with the bumper sticker?

>> no. [laughter] that came out early by somebody with a scientific background but people loved it because it was so different i different and pod there were bumper stickers and things and so forth. i was 8-years-old and that was the beginning of my learning. [laughter] the word conservative has taken on a terrible distinctions of the liberal media has made it come across that way if the new half -- have a new word called progressive. any idea of how that happened? >> liberals always call themselves progressives coming back to what robles and there is nothing new aboutro this.

i think it was fdr they liked the word liberal more than progressive and wanted to go back to the origins and were pleased to call themselves progressives. i have to respectfully disagree. we worked hard for 50, si 60 yes and i think we shouldn't give it upot at all. it's a very honorable word you can play around with it and talk about conserving things like the founding principles of the country, western civilization, all kinds of thing. got to get out of washington. >> my final question i hope it is not embarrassing. why haven't i ever heard of you? [laughter]

>> i will let you answer that. >> my exposure in washington and circles as a major player you are right a lot of it is behind the scenes. walking into the room wanting everybody to know he's there and he's accomplished what he's accomplished through grace, style and modesty with intellect. [inaudible] [laughter] that's why he has a great biography. i'm waiting for my invitationai from cato.

japan native u.s. citizen. this has nothing to do with what you were talking about today, pardon me for that. president trump is leaving to the asia pacific for a trip that is very important. if you have an opinion on that, it is kind of vague but i would appreciate it. >> i have visited asia over the years i had a particular interest because of a man that was a very important adviser on the u.s. asian in particular china for many years to a number of presidents from truman to ronald reagan as a matter of fact. i thinki it is a very important

trip and we could see what the president is doing over there in china. he is being very aggressive in this challenging us and i think we have to be prepared to answer firmly but not belligerent. .. >> >> i think he needs to rethink that with an open debate and we could help

percolated in important trip we are the asian power still to have an influence. >> i just finish my ph.d. here. and with those democratic values with hungary with that confidence with that populism so more in in those

communist regimes so that great issue for what we should do to fight against this. >> to be careful about overreacting with the actions taken place like hungary and poland. those people are comfortable with the nationalism as they define it. because they're still

democraciesde a.m. the criticism that the samebu time they have given the two-thirds majority in of parliament to the majority party with the same thing in poland. but still considerable. so to be very careful to dismiss nationalism. with that democratic context it seems to me is permissible and allowable but the people went at this particular time. so to be very careful is so easy to be distracted by mr. trump. is in that? it is so easy to be caught up in the twitter game.

so with regard to mr. trump and the president won more important track is to look at what he is doing and as a conservative five very much i like us supreme court justice neil or six nominations and is given just a couple days ago what happened in their like very much the deregulation campaign that he carries out. and his tax cut as a conservative those are all good things. some of the others with immigration, that is not something, but the other twitterve is the track. yes you cannot ignore rivage you cannot allow it to consume the other tracks so of the more important parts of this administration

and what is being done and accomplished and a little less of thee rhetoric. may be just sit back and try to enjoy it as some sort of game that he is doing to smile at the at regis is of it -- outrageousness of it. >> looked around the world and turkey is there a role? and with that attempt to cut with public diplomacy elements of the state department and other

agencies with radio free europe. so with those soft power diplomacy role to help citizens fall under the sway of the authoritarian is of -- authoritarianism. >> look at break-in or what they would say today they would not be forever america first but isolationism is not possible and they would say that the cause of freedom concerns as we should encourage it ever promoted and publicize it wherever we can and however we can. leading to specific programs but also i faulted the

president for this but at the same time we can see he is reaching out and going to asia he has had meetings with leaders of other countries so i think there must be a balance in which we say be concerned that what effects us first ed also affects the l rest of the world the speak up when we see dangers to the freedom weather in europe or asia or latin america. is a heavy burden that we're still the sole superpower in the world that carries with it a very solemn responsibility which we

cannot ignore. >>. >> things for your book chris buckley wrote a devastating book about his parents and what was your reaction? even a guy wish he had not written that book i think it added a little to the life and career and impact of the buckleys but obviously he had to ride it and he had to get off of his chest and outis of his mind off his spirit so he did but

although that was a devastating portrait in the last year of bill buckley's life, chris and the bill were reconciled. chris moved into the home in stanford and with that last he was with his father might and day and was there the day that he died so i've been that says more about chris they'll of the book that he wrote. >> any more questions? with that thank. [applause] >> i will sign books and tell my arm falls off. [inaudible conversations] smithn

institution is just over an [inaudible conversations] [applause]