you for your moderating. ãbthank you for this entire feelings and our producer beth ãthe video we posted later tonight or tomorrow you can find on at aspen digital, will have the link on our twitter accounts and for those of you that registered we are also mail it to you. thank you so much everybody, we will see you next time. >> you watching booktv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. >> good evening and welcome to gibson's bookstore remote. i am joined this evening by author rick tyler, who is the author of "still right: an immigrant-loving, hybrid-driving, composting american makes the case for conservatism". he is joined by friend and author john clark, good evening

gentlemen, welcome to gibson's. >> thank you elizabeth, thanks for having us. is an honor to be one of america's greatest dependable source. >> thank you for saying that. i will mention as one of america's great independent bookstores this book is available from gibsons, we do happily ship books all over the country, all of the world, if you are local we offer in-store browsing and ãb tell me a little bit about this book. >> i knew i wanted to write a book i always wanted to write a book i have a lot of ideas for books. the first book to be ãbif you like this book i have a lot of in my head. i wrote it in different proposals to the publisher and i got rejected by lots of publishers like a lot of authors do but i had one publisher who came to me from

st. mark's press he worked for thomas dunes books, if it wasn't for steve and i don't think the book would've began because he did what was unheard of in the publishing industry he actually edited my proposal, critiqued it and sent it back to me. literally normally that does not happen. he said, rick, if you write this book i will publish it. i said, i don't have the stature to write that book. just because i thought it was a really to me it's a weighty heavy topic and for so many people so educated on conservative thought i didn't put myself in that category and he said you can do this book and going to help you do it. i put together a draft and i want to take this opportunity just, john clark, he's joining us from sunny florida. john or someone we normally meet in a coffee shop so a bookstore is sort of appropriate.

we always discuss ideas and we have robust debate and collaboration about the ideas so we normally would be in a bookshop when i got the deal to do the book i approached him and said, what you think? he just really was engaged. john has been a partner in this whole book because i felt intimidated and having helping me think through the concepts and there really isn't a chapter here that john didn't help me shape but i wanted to write for two reasons, one is conservatism is often bashed in the media particularly to the centerleft and liberal left likes to bash conservatism and always hurts my feelings. the things that they say about it i knew that it wasn't true. i wanted to sit down a marker of conservatism is a rational philosophy that's actually attractive in government philosophy. i would have an olive branch to

my friends and say progressivism is rational and can be presented as a very attractive governing philosophy. is not my philosophy. i don't know that it serves anyone well to trash each other's philosophy when in the end we have so much to agree on. our country is a constitution every republic and that means to get anything done at all we have to compromise with people who have better ideas than you. in the same way if you want a book with somebody you agree with hundred percent of the time ãbthat's one half of the audience, the other half are actually self identify as conservatives but seem to be more and more erasing policies that are just antithetical to conservatism. i want to lay down that marker as well.

and of course people unfamiliar with conservatism at all either because they are young or never paid attention to governing philosophy. i think this book lays it out pretty well. i define conservatism, in the way that john does he says its order of liberty orbiter liberty in the sense that the take away the order you just get liberty and that's a libertarian philosophy which is not my philosophy, we don't automatically reject ideas because they are new, we test those ideas against established ideas and if they are better we can migrate to them but if they are not, we wouldn't draw something that's working very well for something that might not work very well or isn't working very well. i make that case on immigration, on trade, on healthcare, on the second amendment. and many of the other issues that are in the book. that was my motivation for

writing, "still right", john helped with the title too. we just couldn't think of a title we had all these ideas and he said you got a call it "still right" i said, i think that works. the reason it's "still right" because msnbc political analyst i get accused often of going to the enemy. i'm on msnbc. although i dare say there are more conservatives who appear regularly on msnbc than i do on any other cable news networks. one of the reasons i like to be on msnbc as i had to learn how to present the conservative case to a left-wing audience. i think over time it's been pretty successful. while i haven't convinced everybody watches the network that they should embrace conservatism, i get a lot of comments i didn't really know what conservatism wives and at least now i understand it has a rationale. being accused of being a lefty

and i'm a trump critic, being a trump critic they say you've gone to the left i say i'm still right so i thought the title for. the immigrant lemon, hybrid driving, composting american, it was all true, i think we should be pro-immigration country, i drive a hybrid and i love technologies that can do to protect the environment. i wrote a whole chapter on the environment. we compost here at the tyler household and we make 2 to 3 yards of dirt a year which are using are incorrect organic gardening. i never thought of that as a liberal idea, i thought it was a conservation idea. >> i will say our local town operates on a pay as you throw garbage removal where you pay per garbage bag and composting has reduced our household garbage output by 1/3. >> isn't that amazing i will

take this moment to say, you just given us your credentials, rick, tell us a little bit about yourself john and conservatism. >> just briefly, rick and i met, i think we were working on a campaign and i have worked as a speechwriter for a few candidates, at a local level to the national level. i think rick, we met we were working on the campaign working together my background i have a degree in political science and economic and i ran an investment firm for 18 years. i sold my company about 10 years ago as my business partner and wanted to get into more of the writing side because i thought conservatism wasn't getting a very fair hearing and i thought i could maybe help a little bit with that. so i can bring my finance what i learned in that to the economic side of these arguments and i don't think they are presented well, i'm hoping what this book can accomplish is that we start a conversation because we used to try to win the hearts and minds, we wanted to really know what it is we believed one of

the fun things to me about writing is stress testing my own ideas, do they work? but i'm hoping what this does is starts conversation. i think right now the political environment is such that we just shot each other down. that doesn't help anybody. i don't claim to have all the answers by far. i think over time i think my ideas have changed and i think that's a healthy thing, i think that's a positive sign, and hoping that that does start a conversation, what i'm edified by seeing in the reviews for rick's book is that people that are saying i'm a lifelong democrat but i disagree i don't see much i disagree with in this book. i think it's a good sign that starting the conversation what's being willing to have a conversation is a very good thing whereas shutting herself

off making your choices emotionally on a rational subject can be problematic. does conservatism need to be redefined, for peace into maybe joining us seeking to learn, can you briefly define conservatism for people who may have had a different idea about it? >> in a nutshell, william f buckley never actually define conservatism. you go back to the writings of william burke and a lot of great conservative writers, as i mentioned before, it's a little intimidating to write this book because i didn't feel the stature to be in the zone but i did really wanted to lay down i don't to find conservatism per se conservatism as we talked about earlier his order of liberties, the idea that individual freedom matters.

it's in our declaration of independence, jefferson wrote, life, liberty, the pursuit of happyness. he puts it in that order because liberty is a precious little use to people who don't have life and very hard to pursue happiness if you know you're not free. that combination that government was supposed to protect those things in those order in that order. life, liberty, the pursuit of happyness. that protection and particularly the pursuit has made america by far one of the most wealthiest prosper nations in the world peace that we have an argument about that. we don't explain how conservatism addresses some of the problematic sides of our american society. people who are in need, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, be independent and work hard

and all those things are true but there are people who are just never going to be independent. we don't often explain the idea of decentralized government can help people. roosevelt was running right after woodrow wilson, woodrow wilson was a democrat and he was loyal to woodrow wilson he was going to run as a democrat, his fifth cousin he modeled his political career after that was teddy roosevelt. that he was a progressive. fdr was also progressive but he had a problem, he couldn't run as a republican because hoover was a republican and hoover was in the middle of an economic collapse so that was out.

you couldn't run as a progressive because under woodrow wilson progressivism took a really ugly turn and stems from eugenics, which was the so-called settled science we could actually decide who gets to procreate and who didn't and that was a very ugly con. progressivism also brought us the women's right to vote so that was a good thing but it also brought us popular elections of u.s. senators and i think on balance is a bad thing because it cut the responsibility or leverage the state legislature is used to have over u.s. congress just eliminated it. so state legislators congress could pass all these laws of the state legislatures continue have to deal with and they have no leverage to push back in the old days they would've said, keep asking and we will bring you right back home. that's not the case anymore. finally, they passed

prohibition right in the middle of a prosperous times, the roaring 20s fdr couldn't run as a progressive as he wanted to and wilson was progressive, teddy and woodrow wilson ran against each other both with competing progressive agendas but from different parties. will send claimed to talk, ãb ......

liberals in the pre- roosevelt signs, bu that he called its liberal and its stock. the conservatives ended up calling themselves conservatives and that's been the major political philosophies in the country ever since and i would argue what's happening now is demonstrable and many people call themselves conservative and they are not. consider the republican party just had their convention and the first time since 1856 in which nine of the six and a platform for civil rights for the next hundred years the republican party was pro- civil rights party. they lost that and this year they didn't put a platform at all. they simply passed the resolution that says we are with the big guy whatever he says, we are behind. that is a sad thing because

parties can't sustain themselves on the personality in the same way that parties come and go with their leaders if netanyahu were to pass from the public stage does nothing except into the republican party is now the trump party and when he moves on one way or the other it will collapse because it is based on one person. parties need to be based on the ideas. i spent my career helping the republicans when. my question now is what do we actually get and if the answer is higher deficits and trade tariffs, mismanagement of the national public health crisis that ends up costing trillions of dollars, millions of lost jobs that isn't winning to me. i would like to return to try

to. they put john and i are talking about coming to dinner is a. my goal is to sa stay here know what at least i understand why and he is thinking of how it works, whether i believe it works or not is one thing, but it is a rational theory forced

you to examine your own beliefs and they do say that to teach is to learn. so for yourself as well, does teaching people that reinforced your own beliefs or did it change them? >> it's funny because i have nine children and i've homeschooled all of them. what's interesting is one of the greatest preparations for writing speeches is teaching my children and explaining. when they had these conversations from the conservative perspective is the

private sector has come up with many solutions and i think that really is an amazing job in the environmental chapter because he's explaining that is the way that he's living in life and the reality is that conservatives are sort of painted with a brush we don't care about the environment. that is clearly not the case. we are making the argument that the private sector might simply be the best way to address this. it's not that we don't care about these things. of course we do. we are trying to achieve the common good, the same as the political progressives. we are just arguing about how to get there if that makes sense.

>> re-examining your own belief, does that help to reinforce your own belief? >> when you have to explain to people what you believe, and i will give you two examples, when i first went on msnbc i started going on the chris matthews show. jojohn and i have been watching chris matthews for literally as long as there's been cable-television. like he was a legend. he actually worked on the hill and he was a capitol hill police officer before he actually worked on the hill in politics and i have respect for him because he doesn't pontificate because he just pontificate, but because he worked as the speaker of the house. that's the experience you can't

trade. so i was invited on the show hardball for the first time and it was very intimidating so my goal on hardball was get invited back. he was a very generous and over the years i got invited back more and more. i was the person people loved to hate. we watch because you can't take your eyes off them. they are just enjoyable and entertaining. that was me. i would argue that i wasn't very likable. then over time i decided and i've worked on several presidential campaigns that if i was ever going to be effective i was going to have to convince people that it was reasonable so

i had to learn to speak to people that didn't believe what i believe and find a common ground. as john said they are just very surprised. i've had conversations with people who dragged the puck and senators so much i do not understand and i didn't know and that has been very gratifying. it's all about starting the conversation. i also talked people how to run for elected office all over the world that israel, rome, greece, the united states really have to think it through.

that is the cooper union speech line question it's hard because i had to think very deeply about healthcare. people who don't have insurance, people with pre-existing conditions. it wasn't my intention to i wanted to answer questions that have been asked of me so i tried

to take a. that i might have the chance to get to the ideas of a. they might read the rest of the chapter where it might get a little hard going. and i think that strategy paid off we are including signed the plebookplates with the purchasef the books. can you tell me your biggest frustrations about how to put on

the republican party. >> well, yeah, there's a lot of issues there. but we start with a trade then move to healthcare and immigration. those are the three topics that are illustrative of the conservative thought and the way that they decided to go instead. the here is the heart of trade. but human beings designed to create the most precious gift to be creative. it is what has made great

artwork and great books but it also makes great products and services. people's ability to create, to try to get people to part with their dollars to buy their product or service over somebody else and that has led to in the aggregate trillions of transactions of all people competing for those dollars in the free market. what trade does is says your government decides they don't want you to buy these kind of products or those kinds because of whatever reason because they have different labor practices owere forms of government etc.. it's one thing. because of the labor camps, but in the broad sense we have trade deficits with mostly china precisely the reason the u.s. trade deficit was here with the

supermarket. you keep buying stuff from them voluntarily. no one forces you to buy every free-market transaction. a. of those products became a crisis in the british empire because they were literally running out of silver because they were sending over sulfur to hong kong. so, the british came up with an idea and what it was was they were going to sell something to the chinese that they couldn't resist. and it was opium and they sold

opium to the chinese and they said that if you buy the opium, we are so sorry but they only take sulfur. and then began the great outflow of migration back to england and meanwhile millions of chinese became addicted which led to two separate opium wars. don't get all upset that i'm advocating it what we are seeing today. hong kong has become one of the wealthiest places in the world

they elected leadership and the freedom of the press and religion. it offered them something significantly better than what the agreement had displayed to the contrary. the one thing i could find in it that was more significant was that americans are not allowed to buy south korean pickup trucks until 1332. and i thought to myself what if i wanted to buy a south korean pickup truck. i mean, what if the south korean got truck is the truck that i need.

what if it is the truck that i want. why does my government want to keep me from buying the south korean pickup trucks. when the government interferes in the market in that way, they are propping up picking winners and losers. they will give you an example, also our trade policy by the way with china has led to the greatest welfare program we have ever seen and it puts the gm bailout it made them look tiny by comparison. it's what brought the bomb and they said it's good because it saved the plant, companies, jobs, and that's all great and it made money and all of that is true but here's the problem. when your government decides to take your money and you don't get a service or product in return in other words i didn't get a gm car or truck or door handle or rearview mirror, nothing. you've got the money to the.

they could and so the chevy cruz and had to close the plant. that was painful but here's the bigger problem and the problem i like to focus on that never gets talked about. all that money that went to gm arbitrarily because of politicians they decided they should go there they didn't go to their competitors, didn't go to the upstart companies like tesla and others who are actually designing cars and bikes onto drive or might want to buy and what they lose his

tomorrow's future innovation because the government literally take your money and said it was into a company that was failing. over time why is it fair to take the american consumers money and give it to a company whose products or services you don't actually consume. i will wrap up a little quicker on healthcare. i think the republicans in short the democrats have always had somewhat of an advantage. the democrats can always point to a large or massive government program and say this is our answer to healthcare fare as a the republicans have been at a disadvantage by pointing to the private sector, which allows the democrats to say they don't have a plan because it isn't a

government plan but here's the problem with the republican plan, they didn't have a plan. i think it was four weeks ago now when donald trump announced on chris wallace he was going to unveil a huge healthcare plan. have you seen that health care e plan, there isn't one. it is incredibly complicated and it isn't just one thing. obamacare is 7% of the market. 93% of the market is not obamacare because you have private insurance, union insurance, try care, medicare, medicaid, health services. it is extremely completed. there's tons of money and healthcare. my argument is that there's no free market in healthcare and i can explain that later if they would like and then finally on immigration, the conservatives, ronald reagan was pro- immigrant 1986 immigration reform bill is a testimony to that. he was never into immigrant.

the republican party has never been into immigrant. and what i say about immigrants is the fear trump generates, which is all encapsulated in the mythology of the wall mexico didn't pay for, either way, trump didn't tell i know if we e five new miles of wall, but with the wall encapsulated was people who were fearful of two things come economic insecurity and the overwhelming of our culture and i remind them and say well, you know, when the italians came we didn't speak italian, and catholics came, we were not all catholics were worshiped. when the germans came we didn't know german and now the muslims and hispanics are getting the same horrible treatment that we have always treated people. i don't expect any of us that are non-muslims who have been

praying in spanish anytime soon. no immigration ever overwhelmed at ththe american culture. it's never happened in history. quite the opposite is made of the economy better and stronger, better as a nation, more innovative. i would argue we are a monolithic culture but people do bring a lot into the country. their ideas, their food, tradition. why wouldn't we want to keep going in that direction. wha direction. why is it we would suddenly decide now we might as well look at the low-wage workers that happen to be latina. they maybe deliver amazon packages or restaurants.

what if nancy pelosi and rudy giuliani what do they have in common. i know john knows the answer. if you know what it is elizabeth? spinnaker because their parents are immigrants. >> it doesn't come immediately to mind even though their last names give it away they are telling them because they get so assimilated into our society we don't think of them as italian. we think of them as americans. i will give the same quiz and people say i don't know, i give up. i should have seen that, i didn't see that. and we are getting closer to that every single day. i don't worry about the american culture and i certainly don't worry about economics. the next time there is a caravan coming we should send buses and get them as quickly as possible because if we are ever going to

revise social security and medicare, somebody has to do all the work. we are going to need lots of immigrants. >> so that was traded on healthcarcreated onhealthcare a. do you want to talk about the environment? >> i have to admit my environmental chapter is a little snarky and my editor had a real problem with it. there's more notes in this chapter by far than any other chapter and i really delve into, i first did a background on myself. i told the story about the grand canyon and why it is my favorite place on earth and a little adventure i had here was amazi

amazing. here at our household we compost or grass clippings, meet clippings, organics from the kitchen. everything is recycled. i take it personally to the recycling center because they don't trust the trash man is actually taking them there. i just have a terrible suspicion is getting mixed in with all of the other trash in all of our efforts to culminate in a separate isn't being met, so i do recycle myself. i love the environment, and i think that's just foolishness for the republicans to see the environment to democrats. now two recommendations, one off them is aofthem is democrat ands republican. on the republican side, but it can be a great issue because it is a job creation issue, because it is an innovation issue and at

the same time if we can help the planet, that is a wonderful thing. on the democratic side i'm a little more critical of the democrats. i think foolishness dismissing the environment is not an important issue is publicly crazy but on the democratic side and a little more harsh in its because i've had many conversations are you a scientist, no i'm not a scientist. okay, it's settled. fine. if you are not a scientist you are not really qualified to talk about this. okay, so i can't talk about it. but i don't identify myself and then i say if i say something about the environment in the most equivocal way and say i believe that global warming is

occurring on the earth is occurring but i am not entirely sure of the degree to that man-made emissions of adding -- i don't know too much of a degree that that is true. when i look at the science, they say rocket science is hard and it's actually by comparison easy because all the fixed variables are known. to get a rocket in space i have to have a certain amount of fuel to get a certain amount of thrust and our payroll is so much and i'm working against the force of gravity and i've got to get up in the air at a certain trajectory and to a certain orbit. those are all known factors and that's why at the space station we have very smart people that

understand and know how to do that math. the environment is very different. there are hundreds of variables, and there may in fact be many variables that we don't -- there are hundreds of variables that are known but there's also variables that are known but we don't know what they are. so we have to make estimations about the variables and they are guesses and that is fine. we may be guessing right and that's good. i hope so. or maybe not because some of the conclusions are rather catastrophic. there may be unknown variables, so it is a very difficult thing to predict. so one of the things i always get an trouble with is when people talk to me about the environment they always refer to the weather. then i make an example of the weather for instance hurricane

lara. you can't talk about the weather or climate change but wait, you just did. and then if i say i'm not sure, i believe we may be warming up the planet and i'm concerned about it because we should do something about it, they would say i am a denier. that means i don't believe in climate change. well i just told you my data. to me those are religious terms. those are like arguing with me at the virgin birth. we can't do it because that is what i believe as christian and they are not discussing it because you will not convince me otherwise. sometimes i feel that if i talk to the left about the environment, i can't talk about it because it's the belief based on a doctrine that somehow exists in religious terms and i can't have a discussion about it. so, i think the democrats could win the same way i recommended

the democrats could win on the environment, but they've got to drop this that we are all going to die in 20 years because they said that 20 years ago and they are starting to lose credibility. when i hear 12 years isn't fixable and then it will be all terrible, i don't know that there's going to be. in 12 years we will find out and i hope it's not, but it just seems to me that scaring people about the environment for long-term is not a good political strategy, because people became not to believe it because it is so big. but in positive terms protecting the environment, creating jobs in the future i think it is an exciting field and the way we should go about it and in the end it's far better for environmentalism and then try the sky is falling. john? >> in the book there is a story

of an interesting background. his family apparently didn't have a lot of money growing up. so when he would ask his father or completed his father his father had an interesting response. his response was go make one. he came up with developing the led technology. the pretty much any color of the rainbow the energy is used for light and supposed to heat. it's much more efficient and cheaper and they last forever. so i think from a conservative perspective, it's clearly not the case that we don't appreciate the environment. as a christian saying god wants

us to care for the earth. i would regard that as a command to be but i think the answer is supply-side. i mean it is is with the creativity of man. we look at things as sort of man-made problems. the reality of it is what is the next led bulb and what would that be. i look at the numbers in the and the amount of energy is the same every year. it's incredible. it's like the greatest thing ever to save energy. well what is the next thing going to be? here is my guess. my guess is someone is coming up with it now. maybe someone that has had a conversation with their dad or mom saying go make one.

that isn't how things happen. and i think that by unleashing the creativity maybe that is the best way to address what ails the environment, simply less supply side as opposed to the government says okay, let's go do this. or believe things don't happen to efficiently putting the government committee in charge of it. the greatest inventions didn't happen by committee that is it doesn't seem to be that way, so i think that's where the answer lies in the creativity of man. >> i think that is a good place to leave off. i increase the creativity of man solves more problems than the government does, but john and i also read that there is a role for the government in areas where there is no natural incentive to create. so for instance, the led bulb

was a government contract to to the private sector to solve a problem. what they needed was an indicator that it didn't produce heat and this is how i got invented. but the government does do something that ordinarily well. we talked about the space station. that was an incredible effort and there was no natural market to go and explore the moon. there is basic science and we talk aboutalkabout this in the n health care. the government does an enormous amount of work and research that leads to the public that drugs and i'm fairly processed from the end it needs to be some licensing but it's unfair to taxpayers pay the amount in the

institutes of health and scien science. but they don't reap the profits from the then and i don't want e government coming a profit enterprise. the internet is a perfect example of this was the way the pentagon protected the nuclear codes so they could send them around the world and the they we soon to be physically stuck in one place and that developed over time. no one would even imagine a would have been like at that time so the last example i wills thi willuse as the pandemic beci get asked this a lot in healthcare. if we had a national healthcare

system we would be able to deal better with the pandemic and that may be true. i think that it has to be dealt with at the national level because of required a national response. it was a national health crisis. the. it's 20 times worse.

>> how do you recognize the large political differences with. how a few are conservatives how do you reconcile the relationships with persons. >> that is a great question. i actually like to hear the other side. sometimes we get together and i invite them and i like to hear the other side of things. i think one of the things that's happened lately it's gotten worse lately. maybe it was their 20 or 30

years ago. people sort of really define themselves politically. i think what we need to do is the friendships are more important. greg talked about this a few times. rick and i don't think that we agree on anything this is wrong and that's okay but the reality of it is i like to keep the friendship in place and there are things we disagree about. if i'm a browns fan and he's a patriots fan, that's okay. >> she is a patriots fan. >> the reality is we need to listen better and i think it all really start there because we are not going to get anywhere until we do. winning over hearts and minds is

important that we should listen because as i say, we are trying to adapt things to make more sense and we have to stop doing that and focus on the friendship and realize there aryou realizee disagree about and that's okay. it really is. >> i say in the relationships are more important or the politics, the relationship with her family, your friends, you want to preserve them at all costs. your friend can talk about politics in a way that it isn't going to preserve your friendship. i have friends that are tromped supporters and we just don't talk about it. there's a million other things to talk about besides politics.

the i've often responded many times to say take a few days off, clear your head, connect with nature and reconnect the designer with nature and it gives a perspective to get healthy because we need you to come back. if you find that you are going crazy because of all of the news nonstop, it's too much and people need to take a break and sort out what's important and the priority is. my e-books may not do that for you. >> thank you very much to both of you for joining us this

evening. rick's book, still right is available for curbside and in person browsing or if we deliver over the country and all over the world. thank you very much for joining us. have a great night, everybody. >> thanks.