c-span3, saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on lectures in history. sam houston state university professor brian matthew jordan on the 1864 civil war overland campaign, and sunday at 11:00 a.m. eastern, new monument at arlington national cemetery dedicated to already the almost 5,000 helicopter pilots and crew members killed during the vietnam war. watch this weekend on the c-span networks. the heritage foundation and the american conservative magazine this week hosted a discussion on the future of the republican party and conservativism. this is 90 minutes. >> good evening, welcome to the

heritage foundation and our douglas and sarah al alison auditorium, we welcome those on our web site. for this inhouse we ask that last courtesy check to see that our mobile devices have been silenced or turned off so it's always appreciated. and of course, those watching online as well as those watching in the future on c-span are welcome to send questions or comments at any time. simply e-mail us, a speaker@heritage.org. leading our discussion on what is conservativism is dr. lee edwards, dr. edwards served heritage about a distinguished fellow and conservative thought in our center for principles and politics. he is well known in this community and most of us consider him the historian of the conservative movement. he was the founder and chairman of the victims of communism

memorial foundation, has written numerous books, buying a graphs related to conservatives movement. is an adjunct professor tet catholic college of america. join me in welcoming dr. lee edwards. [applause] >> well, thank you, john, and good afternoon and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. it's beautiful day in washington and great day to be alive. particularly when we have an opportunity with such distinguished panelists to talk about one of our favorite subjects, which is conservativism. so, here we are. what is conservativism? well, we'll see. many have tried and few have succeeded in providing an agreeable answer. bill buckley, for example, polite he declined. russell kirk rote -- wrote a 478

page book, they conservatives mind. craig came with a knew theory called fusion, and hayak complained why he was not a conservative. and ayn rand, the flashed the sign of the dollar and that was her explanation so we are gnawing at this old bone, trying to answer what is conservativism. >> so here are few thoughts. in the forward to at the volume, american conservative thought in the 20th century, the liberal professor, leonard levy, describe william f. buckley's conservativism as the follow, quote: vigorously individualistic, in favor of ordered liberty, hostile to egalitarianism and pronouncedly

tolerant. well, the is stick in character, it welcomes nonbelievers, though tradition oriented and partial to continuity, rather than experiment, it has a deep streak of romantic utopianism. mr. buck buckley believes that conservative thought is addressed to shaping a visionary society and finds the 20th 20th century to be a hideously science-centered age with the passion for equality that subverts the ideal society. well, what does mr. buckley himself say about the philosophy behind the magazine he founded and which remains, i think we'd all agree, most influential conservative journal in america. well, he praises frank myer; a senior editor of national

review, for his development of fusionism, a joining of the ideas of freedom and virtue. the core fundamental of conservativism, myer wrote, is the freedom of the person, the central and primary end of political society, the state has only three limited functions, national defense, the preservation of domestic order, and the administration of justice between citizens. reflecting the views of the founding fathers, myer said that freedom and virtue are compatible, and indeed their correlation is necessary for the good society. myer wrote that at the declaration of independence, the constitution, and the federalist papers, demonstrates a simultaneous belief in moral value and the freedom of the individual. think we could agree or i would

argue, this is a consensus of contemporary american conservativism, practiced by barry goldwater and ronald reagan, the political icons of american conservatism and articulated by bill buckley, it's intellectual spokesman. fusionism was not a rhetorical trick but a recognition that conservativism was a house of many mansions. fusionismwas illogical as well as a prudent resolution of a seemingly impassable political divide. i personally believe that a new fusionism is the only solution for the present discontent of conservative moments, divide as i, and the 57 other variety's conservativism.

in this present crisis, i believe, conservativisms must come together to form a new fusionism based upon certain ideas, limited constitutional government, free enterprise, individual freedom, and responsibility, a balance between liberty and law, peace through strength, and a commitment to virtue, private and public. these are the core ideas bounded by the constitution on which american conservativism rests and by which its successful leaders, like ronald reagan, have sawing to governor. they're the tried and drew ideas that can get america off the road to cerf dom. and with us, rot.

dreher. bob merry edits northwestern conserve it. his books include: president mckinley, architect of the american century where they stand this, american president in thes i've voters and historians. brad birzer is a professor over and cofounder of the imaginative conservative blog. also a scholar in residence at the american conservative, which i'm pleased to say, and to share with you all, is celebrating its 15th anniversary this week. and they said it wouldn't last. so -- [applause] >> thank you. thank you, everybody. i'm rod dreher, up from the bayou today for this event, and

i want -- before i get started, i want to say what i think is going on with conservativism. i want to reverence walker percenty, a countryman, who was once asked, dr. purcey, do you disspare? and he said i like to drink beer and eat cray fish. that's despair? that's the spirit i want my remarks to be heard. i'm not optimistic but conservativism but i am hopeful and i hope to get the into the reasons why later. i'm on the losing side of the fusionist deal, the fusionist contract, which brought together traditionalists, cultural traditional u.s.es and the libertarians who are more concerned about economics and the matter of the overleaning state on the other. we did find 50 years ago we had a lot in common and that's where

the modern conservative movement came from. more in common than separated us. now, though in 2018, i wonder what -- as a cultural conservative and indeed a believing christian, i wonder what exactly the conservative movement has conserved? from my point of view the heart of conservativism is spiritual and religious. i believe it was russell kirk who said all political problems are at bottom spiritual problems because they're problems of a authority and meaning and transcendent meaning. i believe that in part because of our own neglect, but also because of cultural forces outside or control, religious conservatives have been routed, and it's regard for me -- hard for me to see we have a lot of hope in organized movement conservative tim, certainly not the republican party. i think our main error has been as religious and cultural conservatives, thinking that as

long as we took care of the politics and the law, that the culture would take care of itself. the culture is basically healthy. we have known for a while now that this is just not true. paul wyrick says we field but the lesson is style be learned on our side. when you look around, you see the christian faith is dying in our country. the numbers don't lie. among the millenials and those younger the faith is collapsing, and the quality of the faith as christian smith of notre dame, the sociologist has shown, it's very, very thin. for me as a conservative that is a primary concern because if we don't get that right, the rest of our freedoms and virtues won't hold. i wrote a book called "the benedict option," a strategy for shoring up the fragments against our ruin, so to speak, of

building resilient, faithful orthodox christian communities in a post-christian society. i'm a pessimist about our political future, and our immediate cultural future. last fall i was in paris, having coffee with a well-known french philosopher and we agreed the prospect for france and the west don't look good right now. for him, islam is the greatest challenge which they're facing in france, butles said, and i agree, we're losing our sense of purpose in and meaning in the west. i asked him where he found his hope him said i don't have any hope and he was serious. wasn't being glib at all. said die have hope and i said my hope is not optimism. my hope comes from the religious faith and i told him about that. he said, well, that's good for your americans but here in france we believe there's nothing beyond this life. when you're dead, you're dead.

i left that meeting feeling pretty despondent for france, a country i love very much, and this man, this philosopher who has moved to the right, very much a man of the letter early on but was mugged by reality and now considered a man of the right but didn't see any hope outside of a recovery of transcendent meaning which he believes is closes off to him. don't think is a closed off and i see the main cause of conservativism to rebuild and to restore and to make resilient christian culture in this time of decline. what does that have to do with organized movement conservativism? i recall after the ruling in 2015, iodism capitol hill, giving a speech, and had a meeting with some christian staffers from both the house and senate side, all conservatives, republican staffers, and i said, okay, we lost this one with

social conservatives. what's the republican party going to do for religious liberty? which i think is the number one fight right now for social conservatives. to protect the churches and the schools and individual religious liberty. nothing. what do you mean nothing? well, turns out there was no plans for the republican party to do anything but religious liberty because they it as a loser. they saw it as just a way to be called big gots, and they had no way to defend themselves. that made be realize we conservatives, we grassroots conservatives, religious conservatives, are on our own. that's no reason to give up. that's only a reason to take the fight to the local level, to build our little platoons at the local level in our churches and the schools will found and in local initiatives. i'll close by talk about a source of real hope i found recently.

was in prague, benedict option has been translated into european languages, most recently in czech. i visited the home of camilla, and she and her late husband were anti-communist distents and they're catholics. he then christians in the circles -- benda went to prison for five years for standing up to the government, the communist government, and his wife, camilla, had to take care of six kids on her own. they did it. survived. and today even though the check public is -- the czech republic is the most athiest but the conservatives are faithful and their children are, too. i asked camilla how they did it. the constantly educated their children about what us try and what guess and what us beautiful, and conscious awareness they were living in a

society of lies. camilla said something beautiful to me. she said every day i read to my kids two or three hours, every day, and their paper is lined with books. she said it was important that we feed their imagination, give them something to stand on, and she said toll kene was a big part of their childhood. i say why and she said we knew that more mordor was real. in our country we don't live in communist tyranny, thank god butted the greatest thing we as conservatives can do is to do what cam mail la -- camilla did anywhere i'm of persecution and darkness go back to the classics, our faith, live lives of great spiritual discipline and lives of joy. their paper was near the secret police headquarters in prague, and people knew that they

were -- people who had been interrogated by the government' tortured the police, knew that the bendas were people of integrity and light and goodness and they would find their way to benda apartment to be fed and cared for and restored. that i think is not only what christians should do but what conservatives can do in this darkness we're now living through. [applause] >> good evening, and i'm very, very glad to be here, and i'm brad birdier -- brad birdier --d birzer and my wife and i drove from michigan. and we are park behind a laundry so i hope it's is there when we get out. so we're here. thank you so much, lee, for health into the heritage foundation. what an honor as we walked in, couldn't help but think how much

this place meant to history -- to conservative and the public in particular. absolutely wonderful to be in this building. never been here before. thank you for host us and the american conservative for putting us up. yesterday i had the chance, and actually the duty, to finish my american heritage class at hilldale. the semester was over and finals next week. so the weather was glorious so you have the strange moments where students aren't sure whether they should be studying or out playing water sports. it was interesting to watch yesterday. here we're at the end of this semester, and i always end in the american heritage class by talking about ronald reagan and by think about what happened in 1989, and i am up remind -- i was born in the summer of '67,

the summer of love, but i was born in kansas so i'm not sure how much love there was that summer. grew up in a very solid goldwater household weapon had next to the fire place, goldwater's books books books al brittanica great books and is was part of the same thing. in 1981, may 17th issue got say reagan speak, his first public appearance after the near assassination that he went through and survived. in the spring of 1981 he spoke at the university of notre dame on may 17th, and i was only in seventh grade then but one of those things that radically altered my own life, thinking about what politics were, what the soviet union stood for, where america stood vis-a-vis the soviet union, anded opened

up a lot of things for me so like lee, even though we're a different generation, i see myself waking between lickber tarean and conservativism, and -- libertarianism and conservativism and the only way the right has been successful in american history is when we have seen those two aspects of the right, at least nonideology leftist thinking, come together. we have to ask, then, what is it we're trying to conserve and rod brought this is beautifully. what do we want to conserve? i worry about this but when i turn on the raidey and listen to talk radio, and i hear so much of what is being passioned as conservativism as either crass ness or commercialism. i find it disgusting, frankly. doesn't strike me at all what

conservativism was about when we go back to robert nesbit or russell crick or freed rick -- frederick hayak. i want to bring up what we need conserve. what matters in our conservativism. why this conservation or conservativism matters for us as americans and western civilization, so these three things are, number one, in some way fundamentally, the left has stolen our language for this but if you look in the 1950s, whether you're reading hayak or kirk or you're reading marcel or any of the christian humanists at the time, they're always thinking but the fundamental dignity of the human person and i think there were some people who took it to far. but i don't think others did. they had a very good grounded center? what the personalism was, and whether we call it an individualism or personalism --

i realize there are variations. i if we're reading -- it's not the same thing as hayak's individualism but i actually think in hindsight they have quite a bit in common. i think there's a lot we need to understand when we think about human dignity and it has padres to not thousand about john paul ii the second as the human person as unrepeatable person of liberty. that's better than anything hayak had and yet it's so hayakan, and understanding of where the human person is, where the individual was. think that's fundamental and i think when we look at the western tradition, whether we go back to socrates or cicero or st. augustine, they are constantly talking about this understand offering dignity, free will. where do we choose? with what point do we make

choices? and i think that's fundamental to who were as conservatives, whether it's 1953 or 2018. the second thing think is important to conserve is somehow -- this is related to the first point -- but we have to be able to conserve, and rod put this beautifully, talking but little platoons, how to balance what is universally true for all people in all places at all times. cicero said it doesn't matter if we're in assent athens or modern republican rome. doesn't mary itself we're in washington, dc or hillsdale, michigan, and frankly, doesn't matter if we're the second to last human who will ever exist or the third human to exist. there's this continuity, there's something universally true but the home person that copds to -- corresponds to justice. corresponds to knowing our place in the order of existence, me, for example, not to make this about myself but being born in

1967. why not 1867 or 2067? question is cannot answer but fundamentally matter for understanding who and what we are. my wife and i driving for eight hours. we had a great time. we have six kids. rarely do we get to talk. and i can guarantee you the moment we get into the car, my wife, she really likes to talk. and she really likes me to listen. and there's -- [laughter] -- there's a place there. a fundamental aspect of justice in knowing our position, knowing where we are, knowing how we respond to one another after 20 years of marriage and six kids. it was funny because even driving around d.c. we didn't get smithy but we're not urban people. what is this. >> guest: why is this guy walking across the street right now? these were confusing things and i said to deed da, no, this lane, you mean right or leather? this lane, i had no idea to respond, but i know my right

from left but there's an element of justice, something that is universal, but in a new situation we had to figure out the particulars and there we were. we got our words out, we're parked behind a laundry across the street. i have no idea itself the car will be there, it's 7:45 bet we're pray it will be. we had to work on that and see that in all times and all places. a universal order to things but always a particular manifestation. hellsdale, -- hillsdale, michigan, i believe it or not is not washington, dc and there are fundamental differences in funding the place. the final thing we need to conserve dish take this directly from dr. kirk and also what rod brought up about the czech republic. we have an absolute duty at differences -- this would have been taken for granted -- conservatives and i mean this broadly, those who believe in freedom and order -- we were the artists, the creators hundred years ago, 150 years ago.

the idea that the left has been able to capture the idea of creativity, the idea of innovation. this is something only in the 20th century in modern and -- we have to as conservatives conserve our tradition, and for us standing here in washington, dc, or sitting near washington, dc, that means -- i'll defer to bob on this because he just wrote a beautiful piece on this -- means the western tradition and there's nothing bigots about the western tradition, nothing knee jerk about it. it's not about white people or dead people. in fact one of the -- it is about dead people but one of the greatest persons who ever lived in the western civilization was a north african, st. augustine. the central figure between the ancient and modern world, the central figure between africa and europe and was not caucasian in any way we think.

one of the greatest. he may be dade, assume, being check -- not the best check -- i presume he is dancing in heaven and is gone from this world but at the same time unwere eye my great exemplars, not out of central europe and not blond-haired and blue-eyed by any mean. we have to anchor ourselves in tradition and that tradition, going back to socrates, understanding the notions of what is humane whatter thank you humanities, people like irvin babbot which clause have dealt with this. bag humanist in the proper sense, not of being a humanist as a secularist or athiest but understanding the place of humanity as lower than god but higher than the creatures. this is an element of free will, education, certainly with liberal education it's an element of the imagination. what to conclude with here and i'll turn it over to bob. again to go back, not just to

russell kirk but others who understood third beautifully, even socrates on the edge of death concluder the ultimate thing we can do when we think about what to conserve, we leave to conserve what is loving. we have to conserve what guess for the common good, the common thing, our duty at americans and duty as citizens of the west. we have to be wailing to stand up and say this is worth preserving. this is not. we have to be prudent, just, tell plant, fort -- temp plant, we have to have faith, hope and love and those are critical whether we're in a libertarian or strict republic, if we're not willing to give of ourselves to our neighbor or not willing to sacrifice something, whether it's teaching, love of a father, whatever it may be, we're nothing. we're nothing at all. and that imagination means nothing. community means nothing. and dignity means nothing,

unless we're willing to share those very virtues and share love. that's the highest thing we can conserve. [applause] >> well, i'm delighted to be here. delighted to have you here. thank you for coming. i'm delighted to be up here with these three people, two colleagues from the american conservative and, lee, i think we have known each other in this town for 35 years or so of mutual respect and regard. so it's a great pleasure. i'll see if i can bring this discussion down to everyday politics. i'm an old political reporter, just a gum shoe reporter masquerading as author and intellectual but i want to

take note of one. the truly remarkable 16-year periods in american political history. from 1964 to 1980, from the goldwater debacle, to the reagan triumph. from a time when conservativism seemed finished and repudiated to a time when it prevailed as the prevailing political force in the land. i think we need to study this as we ponder where we are today because i think conservativism today, as rod has said and many, many others, is in crisis. much as it was, one could say, back in 1965 after that debacle. tithe ill-defined, at war with itself, scatters and it's not clear what is represented by it if you attempt to discern what it is based on what people who

call themselves conservatives in the government are actually doing. so the first order of business by way of exploring this question is to ask what happened to reaganism? why did reaganism not last as a political force in the same way that the legacies of a jefferson or a jackson or a lincoln or the two roosevelts did? i think there are two things to take note of in terms of the political aspects here. one is that the republican party basically abandoned reaganism, and i'm going say here, and i say this very advisedly because i covered these people when i was a reporter for "the wall street journal," special especially the bushes, george h.w. bush, and president george,

and jeb. the cold war -- the end over the cold war created what we call the post-cold war period. has no name for itself. it only has names for what i is in relation to its previous era. that tells you in my view, that we are in what i call crisis of the old order, what arthur schlessinger jr. said because the older order of the world had died in 1914 and between 1914 and 1945, nothing had replaced it. think we're in sort of a similar situation. i don't believe that in political terms -- not talking bit philosophical terms but political terms conservativism has not come to grips with that fundamental reality of having to adjust to a changed world. so, when i say that the g.o.p.

abandoned reaganism, what aim saying it abandoned? to understand that i think it's nose give us a little bit of attention to what i consider to be a crucial political development in modern political history in america and that is the conversion of ronald reagan to supply-side economics. i think that's a key to understanding the history of conservativism since, say, 1976, because when reagan ran for president in 1976, supply-side economics because budding and jack kemp was talking about it but it wasn't a significant point of view politically, and -- but it was brought to reagan's attention during the campaign by bob bartley, and

others, and he didn't bite. he wasn't interested. but he did, by the time he ran in 1980, so we all know essentially what that is. cut tacks, marginal rates, et cetera, but two political ramifications for reagan that i think bear notice. one is, it actually worked. generated significant economic growth. after reagan got through the recession of his early presidency, which by the way was an induced recession. wasn't one that just happened like so many do. it was the federal reserve chairman, paul voelker, going to reagan and saying i'm going to squeeze inflation out of this and the are you going to fight me? reagan said, no. a remarkable political gamble on reagan's part and took a huge amount of courage. after he got through the recession he generated annual average gdp growing rate of 3.89%.

quite remarkable. and the other thing i would note is that it serve as an underpinning for a particular brand of what i'm going to call populism. some people will say how do you call this populism? i'll try explain it in the moment. it's not a pitchfork brand of populism with venom and inger. it's more sophisticated than that. directed at expansive government, and in many ways, although reagan didn't use this term, what amounts to crony capitalism. the two foundations were, a faith in the ability of ordinary people to conduct their own economic affairs without a lot of intrusion from the government. secondly, a distrust of economic and governmental and especially combination of economic and governmental elite that control economic matters through tax

code and currency manipulations to their own benefit. so, this brand of populism had two major political affects. first, it made it possible for reagan to draw to his coalition those so-called reagan democrats and a lot of young people who had not been voting or interested in the republican party. and seb secondly it fort -- fortified him from the allegation of democrats he was just a country-club republic -- republican who was a call of the privileged. hes a an antidote. they attacked him with that barrage, and that allegation, as they have every republican since. but it didn't stick with reagan,

unlike every republican since because he had the antidote and i think it's because of that particular brand of populism, and by way of explanation, let me explain how this works, why i call that populism. i'm going to use an analogy from the early decade when the federal government found itself with a great deal of land in the west. the question is how to dispose of the land. and the federalist and the whigs wanted to sell that land at very high prices because that would tabling a lot of money into federal coffers that could be used by the government elites to create bridges bridges and canad roads in the interest of national greatness. that was henry clay's american system. they had good purpose but the democrats, the populists, the jackson union's, and -- said

north texas silt or give it away so people will flock out there and take that land and develop the land and they will build communities and churches and they'll build up america from below as opposed to the elitists, henry clay view, that the elite would build up the country from above. so, now we have george herbert walker bush, and i covered the early reagan years in congress, the budget and tax legislation so got to know those people, and i covered the reagan white house after the '84 campaign and got to know the bush people. one thing that struck me was they didn't believe in reagan. they didn't understand his success. they didn't understand the core of his success, and they thought that when they got power, they would know how to do it right. and so they basically cast aside

both the substance of the populism, that is to say, tax cuts, no new taxes becomes tax increases, which led to significant drag on the economy, but it also -- they also abandoned the reagan populist rhetoric that made it possible to were stand the assault -- with stand the saul from the left and pull the former democrats to the circle. and so when bush threw away reagan's antidote, he threwway his presidency. the problem for reaganism is when he lost to bill clinton, it wasn't just viewed as a rejection of bush. also viewed by many as rejection of reagan.

and then bill clinton. what is interesting is that bill clinton, not withstand thing assault on reaganism in the republican parent, reaganism has a pull and bill clinton said my aim is to repeal reaganism. two years later after he tried govern from the left and had his head handed to him in the 49-elections and the said the era of big government is over and crafted a mean getting himself just to the right position, left of center, so he could govern as a democrat fairly successfully, and the reason that he did that and the reason he had to do that is because of the ongoing pull of reaganism. and then we had george w., and if george herbert walker sort of out of disregard did a job on

reaganism, george w. just basically attacked it. constitutionalism aggrandizement of the executive spending and foreign policy. turned the party over to the neocons to disastrous effects. so, the result of that endless wars, middle east chaos, unnecessary tensions with russia, widespread popular unease about which the neocons don't care very up. unlike reagan, by the way, who always knew he had to find a way to craft his policy busy his rhetoric and his narrative in a way that resonated with the american people. now we have people, our elite, running foreign policy who simply don't care about that. so, in abandoning reagan style

populism, the republican party got instead trumpan pop jim. not a great tradeoff in my view. so, in practical political terms, american conservativism offers not much of a coherent governing philosophy with any chance of capturing the country. so we're back to the 1965 post-gold water period when conservativism seemed to be totally reputate. it wasn't dead though appeared to be dead. is it not he dead now but happens to be nori bu und. don't have the answer but that's my question. [applause] >> well, bob, i know people want to jump in it but in 1964-'65, i

was there and conservatives looked at that crushing defeat of barry goldwater, which a number of us were a part, and what did we do? in the face of liberals who said we were through, we were dead, buried, stone cold in the cemetery, that's it, goodbye, to goldwater and to conservativism, we did two things. we decided that we were going to become politically active and so, therefore, we founds the american conservative union. the political arm. trying to figure out where to go from here, how do we build on the fact that 27 million people did vote for barry goldwater. frank myer said, you know, you can build a pretty good political movement with the base of 27 million people. on the intellectual side we

started the philadelphia society. and who was there at the beginnings of it in chicago, talking about what is conservativism, that what's topishing what is conservativity. where milton freedman and russell kirk, and coming out of that was the beginning of, where are we, what are the ideas, what can be some kind of philosophical foundation for a political movement? because up until that time we had been more of an intellectual than political movement. but following with goldwater and our experiment with that, we were very fortunate because along came just as you know, very shortly thereafter in 1966, ronald reagan. so we were able to transfer all of that energy and excitement and dynamism that we gendered with bearry goldwater to ronald reagan and that was certainly a

key thing. reagan was many things but the reason he was so successful, man of intense ambition. we forget that. hi really wanted to be president. there's been some recent research on this which has shown that he was really trying very hard to get the nomination in '68. i didn't realize that in my own research that's came to light. >> closer than lot of people knew at that time. >> right. tom reed and others as well. man of intense ambition and also willing to be pragmatic about things and reach out to people. so, if we're talk talking about leadership, we need practicing matties leadership. agree with you, the 16 years were key between '64 and 1980.

>> can i jump in? >> please. >> i became a conservative because of ronald reagan. entered college in 1985 as a liberal and left as a conservative because of reagan and the intellectual dime mitchell and all the best arguments and writing was on the right, and i became convinced. wonder if today, if a ronald reagan is even possible or if we expect too much? not only has the he media landscaped fragmented but the whole idea of authority has frommed. in then 8's su yesterday three national review and american spectator and magazine outside read and people you looked to as authority figures to tell you what conservatives meant and to do, and today do we have that? is that even possible? i think part of the answer to these questions is, where we go, what we might do to resurrect

conservativism, is asking ourselves what do we have to give up from the reagan era or what we idealize from the eight eight era, what we have to give up in order to get -- we have to be not too backward looking and forget that reagan emerged out after specific time and specific place to confront pick problems and he won. now we have different problems, and i don't think anybody here suggesting this but i think do we really -- i think it's fire ask some conservatives, is the problem we face now really we need more tax cuts and we need more foreign wars? i don't see what conservativism has to say much beyond that. believe the sort of tradition does but popular conservativism, not seeing more than that or just saying no to whatever the

liberals want to put out there. i'm happy for that but we need to have more than that. and finally, something bob said remind me a speech i heard from senator ben sasse. speaking to evangel philanthropists live never mentioned politics one. he said we have entered and will gwen tony go toe go into a time of intense turmoil, the like which we have not seen for a long time is in country. he said you exceed to devote your time and treasure to helping build resilient local communities. he said social science tells us that there are four things people need to be stable and happy and to thrive. they need to have a religion or philosophy that explains suffering and death to them and

reconciles them to that. need to have a family. need have a core group of good friends to count on, and they need to have meaningful work. senator sasse said we're in a time that all those will be challenged and we have to help people to stay resilient in the face of all those pressures. i notice he didn't mention politics once. politics are important but i would say that focus on the local culture and building -- facing these problems that the senator identified, that is the most important thing that conservatives can do. >> brad. >> well, i would just -- i love what has been said and there's so many thing that could be said about reagan in particular. if we look back to 1953, when kirk published the conservative mind in may of that year, there were just as many divisions, if not more, than there are now and i think there probably were much

of the time after gold water and friar reagan. their classical liberalism, the agrarianism of the southerners, the fabulous bradbury, the humanism of babbot and moore and elliott, and one thing kirk was able to do is take that decentralized aspect of things and give is a coherent voice for a while but that does -- that kirkan and that hayakan agreement. i will admit, so much like rod, reagan was shot when i was in seventh grade. i remember our vice principal coming on and telling us he was dead, which he was not but that was the worry after the assassination attempt in 1981 and i remember sitting in the hall in notre dame and

watching the wall fall and reagan will always be that president for me and hard to think objectively about him. say this probably more as just brag but it strikes me that reagan gave us whatever else he gave us 20 years, 20 years abroad and 20 years at home. the economic success. seven fat years, we lived off of that 2008 abroad. one reason he credited the 600 ship navy and the military was not so we would become an empire we could end an empire and retrench. i think reagan made a calculation. his calculation was we'll do everything possible to defeat the soviet union, and hopefully people in the future, after that victory, will do the right thing, and as bob said, so el queenly, they kicked reagan to the curb and i think that reagan vision salvation we had in the

west lasted 20 years and we blewed. we have troops now in 150 out of 200 countries. military bases everywhere witch don't leave any coherent foreign policy, just go and react. all things that reagan would have just abhorred in every way and i don't think he would have seen what has become of his legacy. it's certainly not his fault but we have kicked him to the curb. >> i would draw one significant dinks between 1953 and today, not to take away from your point, brad. totally apt. but in 1953, we knew what the issues were because the world had been recreated through the cataclysm of world war ii, and franklin roosevelt created a new world with america at its center and that was clear to everybody. we had the cold war and that was a problem and a menace and

certainly had psychological emimplications but we knew what the issues were. today we don't. and i think that makes much, much large challenge for conservatives and for liberals and for americans and for anybody in the arena. that's one of the reasons why in my view, we are -- our politics has back to venomous and poisoned and that's going to continue until some kind of a new era emerges to replace the old one with -- and to replace the transition between to hold and new we are living in today without realizing it. >> we're going the audience for q & a but want to make one point, brad, talking about wars and getting involved in them.

the reagan era and the reagan doctrine in the 1980s. if you study that decade, you'll see how very, very careful reagan was in his use of force. over and over again. that if there was a problem, mass grenade dark yes lexer would use force, but more thanked a do it solve that as quickly as possible with the minimal loss of life, and particularly he said, i'm not going send men to fight in nicaragua or in afghanistan. what he did was support anti-communist forces in both of those countries. so he was someone who truly believed in peace through strength. a phrase, by the way, first used by dwight david eisenhower which reagan borrowed and i remember speaking with a kgb colonel who was trying to pump me for information on reagan and i kept

telling the man, i said, he doesn't want war. what he wants is an opportunity -- this is early '80s -- to sit down and talk to you guys but you keep dying on him. so, you can get a leader who doesn't die, then reagan will sit down and talk with him from strength. he said he's not talking about dropping a bomb on moscow. he's talking about sitting down at the bargaining table. of course that's precisely what happened. and by the way, one more little thing. so the last time i met with this was -- with my kgb buddy, 198 5 gorbachev had just been picked as general secretary of the communist party, and my friend looked at me and looked around and he said, about gore chaff -- gorbachev, he's different. so even a kgb guy could see there was something special

about gorbachev, and that's the way it turned out to be. >> to finish up here so we can watch "the americans." it's on tonight. >> we'll see what our deadline is. so, questions from the audience. do we have a -- yes, here we are. please. if you would be so kind. ... is that a good description of conservatism today and should it be? >> i'll be happy to tackle that.

i'm fine with it. i think where my problem may arise is on strong foreign policy i don't know what that means. but if it means the american foreign policy since george w. bush post-9/11, i'm against it. and so i'm against a strong foreign policy. but i'm not against america being in the world. we have too much power and too many interests and too much of a role to play toward stability but going overseas in search of monsters to destroy and to remake societies in our image and you will of that it is disaster. it will continue to be a disaster. i suspect we'll continue to do it, maybe on a big scale next time. so i'm very worried about it. >> about the culture of traditional religion, i don't know that is fair description at one point. i don't know that it is at all.

i'm not only talking about collapse of the religious faith among the young, but falling apart of the family. i think one of the most important stories of our time is the collapse of the white working class. the african-american working class has been suffering through this for a long time. now let's move to the white working class. we see middle class people too of all races, young people, suffering from grade anxieties, a loss of a sense of purpose. on and on. you can read lots about this. this is not coming from -- this is a manifestation after weak culture, of a weak traditional culture. i gave a talk a few years ago at a conservative christian college and i was talking to the professors there and i said, well this must be a really good place to teach. you must see good things among the students. actually, we worry a lot about these kids, they come here with no cultural background at all.

very source of sense of religion or doctrine or anything like that. they come from really broken families. one of the professors said, i really doubt most of our students will be ever able to form a stable family. i was shocked. this is conservative evangelical college. i looked out the table and all professors nodded. i said why not? because they have never seen it. the decay is pretty deep here. i'm not saying this to we have to get back to the bible and all that. a lot of that 1980s style religious, political fundamentalism is out of fashion and it has become kind of repulsive with what some of the religious leaders have done under trump, we know that i'm talking about a more fundamental traditional but cultural. our friend patrick deneen speaking at american

conservative gala. he said something really shocked me. he wrote a column that got a lot of attention a few years ago. he talked about his students at notre dame. these are the best and brightest. they come here. they worked hard. they ticked all of the boxes off. they're blanks. they don't know anything about where they came from or where they're going. they know nothing about the history and culture of their own country and their own civilization. it scares him, frankly. and it is not the fault of these kids. it is the fault of we adults who have failed them. >> questions? these in the back or in the front here. okay. we'll come down there. thank you. >> my name is avi. i want you to speak to the role that immigration plays in our current conservative crisis, in our current system we obviously have a lot of immigration without efforts of a simulation. is it even sustainable how to

conserve what we have, we allow number of people who are unaware of what our culture has been? >> i would be happy to take the first stab at that one. i think that the metric to watch, to look at is percentage of foreign-born in the country at any given moment, and that percentage is reaching, i think it is probably exceeded now 14%. the last time it hit 14% in our nation, there was a very significant backlash in the 1920s as a result of the immigration. large waves of immigration, mostly from eastern and southern europe from 1890 forward and what strikes me about the open border people and the people who don't care about this and don't see it as anything other than healthy, development in american history is that you can't get them to tell you what they think

that number should be or any number that reflects the level of immigration because it is not just a question of bringing people in. it is a question of a simulation. and 14% in my view, i think, i think the american people sense this collectively, and they sensed it the last time, that constitutes a challenge of of assimilation they could be very deleterious to the nation ad large, especially if it continues. should be it 18%? is it heading to 27%? after that point your question becomes very abser. i think we reached the point where assimilation and closing off the influx to extent that assimilation can happen much more normally and naturally is in order. >> if you don't mind, bob, is it

avi? yeah. it's fascinating to me, and i think i'm probably contrary to a lot of modern conservatives on my own views but historically to look at just how peoples have moved, we know that peoples move almost anytime they can when they don't have security. that it is just a constant in world history. the only time they stop, when they don't have the technology. so for example, getting stuck at the atlantic until they can cross the atlantic, or in the pacific and vice versa. brian: we see that constantly. in the american tradition we had very long period, almost 100 years when john quincy adams was secretary of state, all the way up until 1921, with the exception of the chinese and gentleman's agreement with the japanese, we had almost completely free borders. we have movement of capital,

incredible, just motion every war in the united states. and now of course these problems that bob is bringing up but she is are serious issues but our tradition always has been allowing peoples to move pretty freely. we don't see any major restrictions until 1921 and then in again in 1924. then we have to wait until 964 to 65 for major immigration restrictions. for me, i'm speaking very personally here, i missed when suddenly the republicans became the party of closed borders. that happened during my lifetime but i don't remember a moment where it suddenly transitioned. i remember talking to people in california upset about immigration from latin america and texans very happy about it. and suddenly it became something different among those conservatives who became very restrictive. >> i think, we must talk about

it and i don't see kind of conversation that we're having right here and now being conducted at a national level. i don't see members of congress doing it. i don't see members of the senate doing it. frankly i don't see conservatives doing it. we need to get at this and talk about it. i think that what brad is saying all of a sudden, oh, that's interesting, what does that mean? do we ignore those 100 years or do we say we're in a different period or do we draw upon that? i don't know what the answer is but i think we need more talk, more discussion, more debate on there is no more vital issue seems to me than immigration. >> one point i would think i would make whatever those policies were during those 100 years they did not manifest themselves in terms of a foreign-born percentage anything approaching 14%, brad.

so that was because of the technology factors you're talking about. massive influx was not possible. so it didn't create that question or that problem or that challenge that i'm referring to. but let's point this out. in the first debate, first republican debate, 2016, actually was immigration came up and donald trump, the crude one that he is, you wouldn't be talking about this if it weren't for me, that is absolutely true. because all of the establishment politicians wanted to finesse that issue throughout 2016. why? because they can't control it in the middle of a campaign. they can control it more in the legislative session, in the legislative setting, that is what they wanted to do. let's not talk about it. then, trump comes down the escalator and in his crude, very, you know, awful manner,

says what he says about mexican immigration. and it couldn't be ignored anymore. my own view is that because the establishment parties ceded the issue to this crude guy, because they were trying to finesse it. in my view they ought not have been trying to finesse it. they have should have been responding to it in a responsible manner. >> i used to be on the editorial board on the "the dallas morning news," in 2000s, immigration was the issue. our board took an aggressive stand at immigration reform at the national and state level. i don't have particular passion about immigration one way or the other but i noticed after a while everybody on our board, whether they were republican or democrat, we had a good mix, we also had white, black, hispanic,

everybody thought immigration was a good idea and we did not see the people in our own city who suffered from immigration. i actually went out to some of these neighborhood that were really suffering from, they're overwhelmed by the tide of immigration, illegal immigration from mexico. and it was striking. it made me going out actually seeing these neighborhoods and talking to people, made me realize all of sudden, editorial board, we were all middle class people. we, our impact or our meeting immigration was in the restaurants where you got great ethnic food. getting good gardeners. getting good people to work for us but we didn't have to send our schools to the schools that were suddenly overwhelmed by kids who didn't speak any english. the schools had to deal with them. we didn't have to use the public hospital, parkland hospital like poor white and black people and

latino people who were citizens did. these were, these were invisible to us. so therefore the immigration issue, i came to feel, was in many ways a chance for to us virtue signal. we're not like those redneck bubbas out there who can't stand mexicans or whatever. i thought about that a lot when trump came out and was so successful about that i don't agree with the way trump talks about immigrants, it was ugly many ways. he at least was talking about it, not ignoring of concerns of people that we middle class people in the media, dallas, just did not see. if we saw them it was only to put them down for being bigots. and secondly i want to say real quick, if you haven't read this new book by the yale law professor amy swaq called "political tribes." i recommend it. one of the things she says history shows us in polities

where there is no one dominant minority and things become unstable and can turn into violence. she doesn't say this will happen to us. we have to, we have to be careful about it as america transitions being majority white nation to being one in which no particular minority dominates. this history shows us, looking around the world, shows us that could go really bad for us if we're not careful with how we manage it. that i think is probably the best reason to put a cap on immigration right now until we can, we can stablize things. >> i think we can see from this just how this issue just generates some real strong opinions. i just want to throw in myself one thing and that was an idea, a book i think, the americanization of emily, i'm trying to think where that was? bob, a novel? to me that is a major issue when

you start talking about immigration is, assimilation, education and americanization of people coming here whether they're particularly, of course if they're legal, they should be willing to accept our culture, our language, our ideas, and so forth and our ideals. that is also a part of this greater debate which we need to conduct on immigration. we'll keep on going but i want to do on that. yes, please. gentleman in the front row here. >> okay. i'd like to evaluate heritage of richard nixon. i will start by giving my own opinion. he was not really a conservative but in many ways he was kind of a much more intelligent and much more moral character version of donald trump. he was able to appeal to the

same sorts of people. and giving my opinion but i leave it with you. >> i'm sorry, who are we talking about? >> richard nixon, what did you think of him as a character especially versus trump? >> because he was considered -- [inaudible] >> well, no, he was not and i think that many ways he was a brilliant politician. he was also a tragic figure, his own worst enemy. there has been a lot written about him. i think the most recent book by, oh, heck, jack, i'm drawing a blank here. wonderful, wonderful book, that sort of, looking at him from the left but attempts to understand what was driving this guy and ultimately the pressures of the presidency drove him to his, sort of tragic political end.

in political terms he was, something of a phony really. he didn't believe in anything and he certainly was no conservative. he didn't govern as a conservative but managed to get conservatives behind him. that was a rather interesting trick. >> isn't that what trump has done? >> to a very large extent. trump has some conservative instincts but he is not a conservative by any stretch. >> from the conservative point of view richard nixon was remembered by many conservatives as the man who got alger hiss. because of that, conservatives forgave richard nixon and again and again. and, being able to do that, getting alger hiss, which was such a key issue, 48, 49 and '50. if alger hiss had survived, that

would have done, really mortal blow to the cause of anti-communism. with his conviction, his going to jail, it showed it was possible to be an anti-communist and part of that coalition which ultimately became fusionist conservism. >> i agree. the author was john farrell. jack farrell, i was trying to think of. wonderful, wonderful book. >> howard, thanks for the question. i don't have a great opinion on nixon one way or another. i did when i was working on russell kirk. you may have seen this as well, lee, i found a great letter from 1962, a guy from general motors who was raising money for goldwater. he says the problem, it was jay hall. the problem with raising money for goldwater, when he would take goldwater, nixon around to various groups to get money, nixon would say, yes, yes, whatever the group wanted and

goldwater would lecture them why they were wrong. they could never raise money for goldwater. i always thought that was a great story to compare those two. >> yes, please in the back. here, sorry. we'll get here. >> i just wanted to say, with, when reagan ran for president he did not have much conservative infrastructure. there was no "washington times," no talk radio, no internet, no leadership institute, and so now i'm rather hopeful that there is a huge conservative infrastructure in place in the country with lots of information. you can now research milton friedman and see videos on youtube. so with that in mind do you have a greater hope that conservative s can do better. >> i loved earlier when rod was

saying, we have to think about all this decentralization. everything is decentralized now. part of bob saying, well we have this kind of populism, i guess i would use the term probably charisma for reagan, more than populist, i understand what you're saying the good versus bad, but i do see, personally i have not had the experience rod had at the christian school. certainly my students at hillsdale, i won't say they come in fully formed, because they're 18, but they're pretty amazing. they dazzle me every year and i'm humbled by them every year. granted i'm in a place is probably a little bit weird and little unusual in the best sense. dr. arn, if you're listening this is all good. i do think there is a hunger. i have seen a lot of great scholars, young scholars, incredible scholars, lauren hall, abby hall, alex salter, i think a number of their people in late 20s, early 30s, now

doing fantastic things in political science and economics. i think someone on fox news like kat timpf doing very interesting things. i think there is a lot of possibilities. i think the decentralization, while it always is a problem also has so many opportunities and there are some things as long as we can find someone to find a voice, give us a voice like reagan did, kirk in intellectual way and goldwater, there is someone to be able to grab the imagination of a generation. i don't want to pontificate too much, my own experience, as students contrary to immoral or lost, they want stories of truth. they want stories of heroism. they want exemplars. they want to hear about those things because i think they're looking for the answers. they're not as subjective as we think they are as we look at them from age 50, whatever we

are. >> yeah. >> i will say very briefly, that i have a, i have a love-hate relationship with the conservative industrial complex. on the one hand i absolutely know that institutions are critical for the formation of the next generation. that is one of the reasons i believe so strongly the republicans have to fight for religious liberty. we have to protect the ability of our institutions to educate, inform the next generation. that is what is under threat right now. at the same time though, i wonder, having lived in washington and enjoyed working in washington, but also having seen how some people come, young people come to washington very idealistic about conservativism. they become part of the borg. they lose the idealism that originally brought them here. they come to be enamored just

holding on to power. i think this is one of the reasons the republican party has lost its way. i think a renewal, genuinely renewal intellectually and morally of conservatism will need this infrastructure in place you're talking about. i'm glad we have it. we have to nuture ideas outside of the imperial city, to bring the renewal in from the outside, from outside the, the system. >> did you say borg, from "star trek"? >> i did. >> great. >> just making sure. >> here, please, thank you. >> i wonder where you see the challenges from conservatives and risings nationalism? >> i think it's a huge problem and a huge danger. i don't think nationalism, outside of maybe poland and ireland, i don't know of any real good nationalism can be healthy. i find it very problematic.

its tribal. it is dangerous. it is exclusive. i think it is very anti-liberal in the old sense of liberal education. i think it is very anti-western traditionally, certainly against the socratic tradition in almost every way. >> on other hand what donations like poland, hung todayry, czech republic have to defend themselves against the eu and globalism if not nationalism. i don't like nationalism either but it is all they have at this point. >> yeah. >> seems to me that the nation-state has been written off and saying in its last throes yet keeps coming back, keeps coming back. as long as that national system balanced i think there is a place for it. after all we are an exceptional nation. i believe that myself. it seems to me that that is something that ought to be honored. >> every nation thinks they're an exceptional nation.

every nation is right about that. i mean i don't, when i go to france, i love france. i want france to be france. i don't want it to be absorbed into this generic shopping mall federation. >> indeed. >> you know. >> goes right back to my point the nation-state is important whether it is france or whether it is america. do one last one. one last question. >> thanks, george with the center for national interest. i spent my career studying the soviet union and then russia, and i wanted to ask but the relationship between liberty and virtue, something that you had brought up in the discussion because that has been a very prominent question for me looking at that part of the world. the soviet union was a good example of country that had neither liberty nor virtue. made it easy for conservatives to unite around anti-seven yet.

and then russia in the 1990s had liberty but no virtue. that didn't work out as well. in the united states we have a specific case of an area where there is a lot of liberty and not very much virtue and that is silicon valley. a part of our country seems to believe very much in liberty, but pairing it what you might call liberty teenism. this doesn't seem to be working out very well. i wonder if you can comment how conservatives approach the specific topic, social media, internet freedom, large, almost monopoly business practices and virtue? how do we approach that vexing problem? >> do you want to?

>> i am not sure there is a solution to it. if you look at the trajectory of the west, you have to conclude that the west is in decline and it is in decline for a host of ways. one of those ways has to do with the disciplines of life. the per suit of virtue that was part and parcel of our civilization in an earlier time and now isn't. and we can watch how that got infected through the sort of elite intellectual elites in the 19th century in europe for example and, what is interesting about that is that those people look down on ordinary people, on the middle classes, burr -- emerging middle classes without conception that the middle classes would absorb all of that

and would become part of their popular culture. it is progressive degradation to me. silicon valley, i agree. it seems to be part of an on going, an ongoing trend that rod has been grappling with so brilliantly. i think so helplessly for a long time. [laughter]. >> you're right. it is really hard to know, bob, where we stand, where to stand because the effect of this technology on everything, on the way we live, on every single then about us is immense and will get more immense. there is a guy i follow on twitter. he used to work for facebook. he is doing a piece for "wired" magazine on virtual reality pornography. he had to look at some for the story he is doing, he said it's over. something to that effect.

meaning that how do we, how in the world does the people they have given themselves over to this sort of technology, how do they find the strength within to do anything? i think it is not really a joke. he was being somewhat snarky about it but it is not really a joke. i don't know how we deal with it. i don't think silicon valley is in favor of liberty but much as libertyineism. there is interesting book by historian called homodais. it came out last year. he talks with great excitement about what technology and silicon valley which is the promised land of the technical utopians without kind of power it will give us to reengineer what it means to be a human being. i don't know that there is any way politics can stop this at

all. but i think individually we don't have to surrender to it. this is why i, whenever i go give talks about my book, the benedict option, people say what is first thing we can do as family, take the smartphones away from your kids. don't give it to them. don't get caught up in that either. once you go down that road, it is very hard to get out of it, you will loose any sense of virtue. you will become so disassociated or disconnected from the real world there will no be coming back. i feel so direly, i talk to people on college campuses, and elsewhere, seeing what this is doing to young people and their inability to focus or inability to know of anything beyond their immediate desires. i say this as someone who makes his living off the internet, who really loves the good things that technology has brought us. but, i believe that we have to

work very hard to be the master of it, not let it become our masters. i don't know this thought even occurs to most people though. >> it seems to me that, you know, as i talk from our own experience, and i've been fortunate to be an adjunct professor at catholic university for 31 years, part because klaus wren did not lower the standards. he made me work my fannie off to get my degree. grateful to see you, klaus, for doing that. i say to my students first thing, put away the iphones. put them away. put away the pads and all the other things. we're just going to have a discussion and lecture here for hour 1/2. and that is the way it is. and every now and then i will look down, i will see somebody has his head, sort of lowered and he is doing this. i know he is cheating a little bit. but there are some wonderful young people. maybe because i work here at the

heritage foundation and i see interns, 250 of them come through every single year. because i know the work of isi, the institute and the fund for american studies and young americans for freedom and students for liberty too, not just only conservative organizations. also leadership institute. hundreds, maybe thousands of young people are being educated that way, are being influenced that way, with the good and the true. so i'm an optimist, and i always have been, and i will be and i think maybe if you can capture a little bit of that here this evening, along with i think some very good, solid, and even brilliant analysis by our three panelists. so please join me. [applause] >> how do you feel about

crawfish and beer? >> let's get some right now. [inaudible conversations]. >> president trump travels to ohio this weekend to talk about the tax bill he signed in december. his speech in cleveland starts at 1:20 eastern on saturday. live coverage on our companion

network, c-span. >> this weekend c-span's cities tour takes you to tyler, texas, with the help of our cable partners, we'll explore tyler's literary scene and history. saturday at 12 p.m. eastern on booktv. robert discusses his book about the texas governor and state senator bill ratliff. >> everything he did in the senate was a problem-solving mode. how we fix this particular thing for texans. how do we make this better. he did that without ideology, to getting in the way. he did that without partisanship getting in the way. so that made him well, greatly loved in austin. he was hands down, both parties, he was a person people could work with. >> on sunday at 2:00 p.m. eastern, on american history tv, we visit with bobby evans, former engineer for the tyler

district, texas department of transportation. and the father of the adopt a highway program. >> 1984, i know we took a trip to south dakota, to a highway meeting, i had to give a speech to a civic club. had a portion of that speech i challenged you to adopt a highway, to get rid of the obscenity of litter. and, of course that was just a part of my speech, i didn't expect anybody to jump up and do anything but the more i thought about that, you know, that might be something we could try. >> then we'll visit the smith county historical society, to hear about the history of race at robert e. lee high school. >> the school board, you know, all white, decided to name the school robert e. lee high school, which, you know, the white community would say, this is just to honor our past and our history. tyler has a rich history

connected with the confederacy but in the black community, this was very much seen as, you know, a thumb in their eye and a, a gesture of defiance. >> watch c-span's cities tour of tyler, texas, saturday at noon eastern on c-span2's booktv. and sunday at 2:00 p.m. on american history tv on c-span3. working with our cable affiliates as we explore america >> congress is back from its week-long recess coming monday. the u.s. house next week will take up legislation to speed up the process for nuclear waste storage at yucca mountain in nevada. a resolution to overturn the the consumer financial protection bureau on auto loans. senate continues debate on appeals court judges. senate confirmed 15 of president trump's circuit court nominees. when the congress is back in session next week, see the house

live on companion network, c-span and the senate live here on c-span2. monday on landmark cases a case on capital punishment, gregg v. georgia. in 1976, troy leon greg, a convicted armed robber and murder, challenged his death sentence. his case and four other capital cases were considered by supreme court. the supreme court ruled against him, but established stricter guidelines for states wishing to oppose the death penalty. our guest to discuss the landmark case, carol steiger, a professor at harvard law school. she has argued against the death penalty in a number of cases before the court. she was also a former clerk of supreme court justice thurgood marshall. kent shidiger, criminal director of the legal justice legal foundation, in favor of capital punishment and more swift