grand prize of 20,$000 was the deadline to submit video is january 20th, 2021. for competition rules, tips and more information on how to get started go to our website, studentcam.org. .. >> here are some programs to watch out for. on our author interview program "after words," democratic senator chris murphy of connecticut looks at the violence and firearms in america's history and the role they play in society today. history professor martha jones explores the efforts by black women to win their right to vote. and netflix founder and ceo reed hastings and author the erin meyer. for more schedule information, consult your cable guide or

visit booktv.org. now we kick off the weekend on how conservative principles can tackle today's political issues. >> good evening and welcome, i'm elisabeth, and i am joined by author rick tyler who is the author of "still right: an immigrant-loving, hybrid-driving, composting american makes the case for conservativism." he is joined by john clark. good evening, gentlemen. welcome to gibson's. >> thank you, elisabeth. thanks for having me. it's an honor to be with one of america's greatest independent bookstores. >> thank you for saying that, first of all. i will mention this book is available from gibson's. we do happily ship books all over the country, all over the world, or if you are local, we do offer in-store browsing and

curbside pick-up right now. tell me a little bit about this book, rick. >> so i knew i wanted to write a book, i always wanted to write a book, and i had lots of ideas, but i had to have the first book, and the first book -- if you don't like this book, i won't be writing any others, but if you do like this book, i is have lots of books in my head. [laughter] i wrote, actually, different proposals to the publisher, and i got rejected by a lot of publishers, like a lot of authors do. but i had one publisher who came to me from st. mark's press, his name is steven power, and i have to i say if it wasn't for steven, i don't think this book would have began because he actually edited my proposal, critiqued it and sent it back to me. and literally that does not happen. he says, rick, if you'll write this book, i would publish it. and i said i don't have the stature to write that book.

[laughter] just because i thought it was, it's a really -- to me, it's such a weighty, heavy topic, and so many people are so educated on conservative thought that i just didn't put myself in that category, and he said you can do this book, and i'm going to help you do it. so i put together a draft, and i want to take this opportunity to introduce john, john clark, he's joining us from sunny florida. john is someone we normally meet in a coffee shop, meeting at bookstore is actually sort of appropriate. we always discuss ideas and have robust debate and collaboration about ideas. so when i got the deal to do the book, i approached him and said, you know, what do you think, and he really just was engaged. so john's been really a partner in this whole book. because i felt, as i say, i felt swim -- intimidated. having him help me through all

these concepts, and there really isn't a chapter that john didn't help me shape. i wanted to write it for two reasons. one is conservativism is often bashed in the media, particularly to the center-left, and that almost kind of hurt my feelings. [laughter] and, because the things that they say about it, i just knew that they weren't true. and i wanted to set down a marker that conservativism is a rational governing philosophy. and i wanted to hold out an olive branch and say conservativism is rational. it's not my philosophy. my philosophy is conservativism, but 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 constitutional republic, and what that means is to get anything done at all, you have to compromise with people

who have different ideas than you in the same way that if you want to vote for somebody who you agree with 100% of the time, you should run. so that's one-half of the ideas. the other half were people who actually self-identified as conservatives but seemed to be more and more embracing policies that are just antithetical to conservativism. and i wanted to lay down that marker as well. so that people who -- and, of course, for people who were unfamiliar with conservativism at all east because they're -- either because they're young or just haven't paid attention, i think this book lays it out pretty well. i think i define conservativism actually the way john does, and he says it's ordered liberty. ordered liberty in the sense that if you take away the order, you just get liberty, and that really -- that's a libertarian philosophy which is not my philosophy. we don't automatically are

reject ideas because they're new. we test those ideas against established ideas, and if they're better, we can migrate to them. but if they're not, we juan throw out something -- we wouldn't throw out something that's working very, very well for something that isn't working very, very well. so i make that case on immigration, on trade, on health care, on the second amendment and many of the other issues that are in the book. so that's kind of, that's, that was my motivation for writing "still right." by the way, we just couldn't think of of a title, and we had all these ideas, and he said you got to call it "still right." the reason it's "still right," i'm an msnbc analyst and i get accused often of going to the enemy. there are more conservatives who appear willingly on msnbc on any

of the other cable news networks. and one of the reasons i like to be on msnbc is i had to learn how to present a conservative case to a liberal, left-wing audience. and i think over time it's been pretty successful. i think that while i haven't convinced everybody who watches the network that they should embrace conservativism, i get a lot of comments that, you know what? i didn't really know what conservativism was, and at least now i understand it has a rationale. and so being accused of, you know, being a lefty -- and i am a trump critic, and being that, they say, oh, you've gone over to the left. no, i'm still right, so i thought the title fit. the internet-loving, hybrid-driving, composting american, which is all true, i think we should be a pro-immigration country. i do actually drive a hybrid. i love technologies that protect the environment. i have a whole chapter on the environment. and we compost here at the tyler

household, and we make 2-3 yards of dirt a year which we use in our organic gardening. and i never thought of that as a liberal idea, i thought that was actually a conservation idea. >> i will say our local town operates on a pay as you throw garbage removal where you pay for garbage bags, and composting has reduced our output by a third. >> isn't that amazing? >> yeah. >> wow. >> i will take this moment to say you've just given us your credentials, reduction. john, tell the us -- rick, josh, tell us about yourself and conservativism. >> so just briefly, rick and i actually met, i think we were working on a campaign. i had worked as a speech writer for a few candidates at the local level and the national level. so, rick, i think we met, we were working on a campaign together. my background, i have a degree in political science and economics, and i rap an investment firm -- ran an

investment firm for about 18 years. i sold my company, and i wanted to get more into the writing side because i thought conservativism 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 on that side of it, to the economic side of these arguments, and that's exciting. i don't think that's 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 that we believe. i think one of the fun things to me about writing is it's sort of stress testing my own ideas, do they work. and so, but i'm hoping what this does is, is starts a conversation, because i think right now the political environment is such that we just shout each other down. and that really doesn't help anybody. and i don't claim to have all the answers, by far. and, you know, i think that, you

know, over time i think my ideas have changed, and i think that's a healthy thing. i think that's a positive sign. and like i say, i'm hoping that that, it does start a conversation. what become happy to see in the reviews is people are saying i'm a lifelong democrat, but i don't really see much i disagree with in this book, so i think that's good. and i think it's time to start a conversation. >> being willing to have a conversation is a very good thing whereas shutting yourself off and having emotional, you know, making your choices emotionally on a rational subject -- so, rick, did conservativism need to be redefinedded, and for persons who may be joining us seeking to learn, can you briefly define conservativism for people who may have had a different idea about it? >> well, as i say in a nutshell,

william f. buckley never if actually defined conservativism. i think you can go back to the writings of william burke, and there are a lot of great conservative writers who, as i mentioned before, it was a little intimidating to write this book because i didn't feel the stature to be in that zone. but i really wanted to lay down -- and i don't define conservativism per i say. -- per se. conservativism, as we talked about earlier, is ordered liberty, is the idea that freedom, individual freedom matters. and, you know, it's in our declaration of independence. jefferson wrote life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and he put them in that order because liberty is of precious little use to people who don't have life, and very hard to pursue happiness if you're not free. and that combination -- and that government, by the way, was supposed to protect things in that order, life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. and that protection of particularly the pursuit has

made america by far one of the wealthiest with, most prosperous nations in the world. and we're having an argument about that, what does that mean. and i do think conservatives to an okay job of explaining the economic side. we don't always explain how conservativism addresses some of the problematic sides of our american society. for instance, people who are sort of glib and dismissive of, you know, pull yourself up by your boot straps, you know, be independent and work hard. and all those things are true, but, you know, there are people who are just never going to be independent, and they're always going the need help. and we we don't often explain, you know, the idea of decentralized government could actually help people. so conservativism in a nutshell, i'll tell you a little story. it's about franklin delano roosevelt who's probably the

greatest politician of the 20th century. i don't think he really had a rival, and roosevelt was running right after woodrow wilson. woodrow wilson was a democrat, and he was loyal to woodrow wilson, and he was going to run as a democrat. husband fifth cousin, though, he -- his fifth cousin, though, he modeled his career after him, teddy roosevelt. and fdr was also progressive, but 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. he he couldn't run as a progressive because under woodrow wilson, progressivism had taken a really ugly turn, and it stems from eugenics which was the so-called failed science that we could actually decide who gets to to create and who didn't. and that was a very -- procreate and that was a very ugly time. progressivism also brought us the women's right to vote, and that was a good thing, but it

also brought us popular elections of u.s. senators. i think, on balance, that was a bad thing because it cut the, it cut the responsibility or the leverage the state legislatures used to have over the u.s. congress, it just eliminated it. so state legislatures, congress can pass all these laws that state legislatures continually have to deal with, and they hurlly have no leverage to -- literally have no leverage to push back. that's not the case anymore. and finally, they a -- they passed prohibition right in the middle of prosperous times, if you can imagine. [laughter] you know, the roaring '20s, they're having a wonderful time, and they passed prohibition. so fdr couldn't one as aing progressive as he we'll wanted to, and wilson was a progressive. in fact, teddy and wilson ran against each other both with competing aggressive agendas but

from different parties. wilson claimed hawk. taft was the third candidate. he got his clock cleaned. but fdr did something really interesting. what he did was he put out a progressive agenda but didn't call it progressive. you know what he called it? he called it liberal, which is interesting because up until that point the word liberal and liberalism had been associated with what we now recognize as conservatives. so that's where the word classic liberal comes from. john and i i would identify ourselves as classic liberals in the pre-roosevelt sense. he just called it liberal, and it stuck. and the conservatives ended up calling themselves conservatives, and that's been the monikers of the major political philosophies in our country ever since. and i would argue what's happening now is, you know, trump calls himself a conservative. he's not. it's demonstrable that he's not.

and unfortunately, many people who follow him call themselves conservative, and they're not. consider the republican party just had their convention, and they for the first time since 1856 in which nine of the six planks in the original republican party platform were civil rights planks. for the next hundred years, the republican party was the pro-civil rights party. they've lost that. and this year they didn't put out a platte at all as -- platform at all. they simply put out a resolution that says we're with the big guy. that's a sad thing because parties can't sustain themselves on a personality in the same way that in israel politics, parties come and go with their leaders. if but binetanyahu were to pass from the public stage, his party, i believe, would collapse because there's nothing under it except for bibi netanyahu. the republican party is now the trump party, and when he he

moves on one way or the other, it will collapse because it's based on one person. parties need to be based on ideas, because when we win -- and i've spent my career helping republicans win -- when we win, my question now is what do we win, what do we actually get. and if the answer is higher deficits, trade tariffs, mismanagement of a national public health crisis that ends up costing us trillions of dollars, millions in lost jobs, that's not winning to me. i would like to return to tried and true philosophy of governing, and conservatives have always been sort of at the kids' table even if they were ever invited to dinner. they got set at the kids' table. they drove the agenda for quite a number of years. now we don't even get invited to dinner, and a bunch of what i would call um posters sit at the -- imposters sit at the

table and call themselves conservatives while john and i are not even allowed to come to dinner. that's kind of where i think we are in a nutshell and why conservativism, i think, really needs to be revisited. and even if you read my book and you don't become a conservative, that's okay. my goal is accomplished to say, you know what? at least i understand why he's a conservative, and i understand his thinking on how it works whether i believe it works or not. that's one thing. but at least you'll know that it is a rational theory. >> so you mentioned earlier that your work as an analyst on msnbc forced you to examine your own beliefs in depth, and they do say that to teach is to learn. so for yourself as well, john, does teaching people, did that definitely reinforce your own beliefs, or did it change them? >> well, it's funny, you know, because i have nine children,

amazingly enough, and i home school them. i've home schooled all of them. what's interesting is that probably the greatest preparations for writing speeches is teaching my children and explaining concepts to them. so i think there's that. but i think you're absolutely right. i mean if, that's the principle, right? it's impossible to separate teaching from learning. and as i say, when we have these conversations, the thing for me from a conservative perspective is, is that that much of what we believe is that the private sector is able to come up with many of these solutions. i think rick did really an amazing job in the environmental chapter because he's explaining his -- that's his life. you know? that's the way that he's living his life. and the reality of it is he's not saying, hey, conservatives are sort of painted with a brush of we don't care about the environment. that's clear wily not the case. we're -- clearly not the case.

we're making the argument that conservativism, the private sector might simply be the best way to address this as opposed to leaving it in government hands. and, you know, again, i think that many of the areas in the book essentially make that claim that things may be better addressed. it's not that we we don't care about these things. of course we do. we're just trying to figure out the best way to get there. we're trying to achieve the common good, presumably the same as political progressives. we're just arguing about maybe the map in terms of how to get there, if that makes sense. >> and? >> i was -- and rick? >> i was so enthralled with john's answer, i forgot what the question was. [laughter] >> does that help reinforce your own beliefs? >> absolutely. when you have to explain to other people what you believe, and i'll give you two examples. when i first went on msnbc, i

started really going on the chris matthews show. now, john and i have been watching chris matthews for as long as -- literally as long as there's been cable television. like, he was a legend. crust matthews actually worked on the hill, he worked for three separate congressmen. he was actually a capitol hill police officer before he actually worked on the hill in politics, and i always had respect for chris because he doesn't pontificate because he just pontificates, he actually worked for the speaker of the house and worked in the speaker's office. that's an an experience you can't trade. so i was invited on his show "hardball" for the first time, and it was very intimidating. so my goal with chris matthews and "hardball" was, you know, get unviolated back, like -- invited back, like, just surviving. chris was very generous, and over the years i kept getting invited back more and more, but i was the person on there that people loved to hate, right?

so we all is have those people. we watch because you can't take their eyes off of them because you just hate them so much. [laughter] it's enjoyable and entertaining because they're nuts. and that was me. i would argue and loved to argue, but i wasn't very likable. and then over time i decided and i worked on a presidential, several presidential campaigns that if i was ever going to be effective in promoting the conservative philosophy, i was going to have to learn how to convince people that it was reasonable. and so i had to learn how to speak to people who didn't believe what i believed. and find common ground. and i think that's worked very well, and as john said, he's read the reviews. i've talked to people who have read the book, and they are just very surprised. in fact, i've had conversations with people who read the book who said there's just so much in here unit understand, i didn't know.

and that's been very gratifying. and, again, it's all about starting a conversation. i also taught people how to run for elected office to thousands of people all over the world, from israel to rome, to greece, qanta and mostly the united states -- canada and mostly the united states, and you've really got to think it through. the one who rewrote my failed proposal, when i sent him the manuscript, you know, he he -- i can't remember, 7,000 words of questions. [laughter] like that's lincoln at cooper union's speech length number of questions. [laughter] that is a lot. and it was hard because i really had to think very deeply about health care, people who don't have insurance, people with preexisting conditions, how to reconcile my second amendment

rights with fred guttenberg, who i write about, who endorsed the book, by the way. he lost his daughter at parkland high school in florida. and so i write about him. and so in every chapter, i i try to think of some of -- i was once, i was already accused of putting out, you know, strawmen. and that wasn't my attention. i did not want to put out strawmen. i wanted to answer questions that had been asked of me. so i tied to take -- i tried to take what proifgs ask, really hard questions for conservatives to answer, and i wanted to answer them, and i wanted to start there. here's the theory, if i can start a chapter where they're nodding their head yes for the first three pages as opposed to throwing my book across the room, then i might have a chance to actually get to the ideas,

and they might finish the chapter. if i could just do some storytelling, connect with them at the gunning of the chapter -- at the beginning of the chapter, that they might read the rest of the chapter where it might get a little hard going. and i think the strategy might have paid off. >> well, i will take this moment to remind people that the book is available from gibson's bookstore. we are including signed bookplates, which rick was very kind to send to us. thank you very much. so can you tell me some of your biggest frustrations about how -- [audio difficulty] and political conservativism has been changed by public perceptions through the republican party? >> well, yeah. there's a lot of issues there. let me start with trade, and then let me move to health care and then immigration. i think those are the three

topics that are illustrative of conservative thought and the way the republican party's decided to go instead. god, please don't talk about trade -- [laughter] because it's such an i soar thetic -- i esoteric -- [inaudible] here's the heart of trade. the human being is designed to create. it's our most precious gift, is to be creative. it is what has made great artwork, it's what has made great music, it's in 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 their service over somebody else, that has led to in the ago reregate -- ago are e gate trillions of different transactions of all those people competing for dollars in the free market.

and what trade does is it says, oh, your government decides we don't want you to buy these kinds of products because of whatever reason, because they have different labor practices, they have different form of government, etc., etc. it's one thing to say i don't want to buy products from a company because of uighur enslavement camps, and that's a real concern. that's a moral perspective, but in the broader sense we have trade deficits with other countries -- mostly china -- precisely for the reason you have a trade deficit with your local supermarket, right? you keep buying stuff from them voluntarily, no one forces you to buy, and every free market transaction is a voluntary transaction and is not a compulsory transaction. and they never buy anything back from you. [laugher] which is a very interesting story about hong kong. the way -- they traded porcelain

and rice, other agriculture products from hong kong, but the chinese won't buy anything from the british, nothing. it was a one-way street. sounds familiar, right? same way today. and they would only take silver. and it became a crisis in the british empire because they were literally running out of silver because they were sending all their silver to hong kong. so the british came up with an idea, and what it was was they were going to sell to something, something to the chinese that they couldn't recyst, and -- resist, and it was opium. they sold opium to the chinese, and they said, ah, we're so sorry, but we only take silver for the opium, and that began the great outflow of migration of silver from hong kong back to the english. and meanwhile, millions of chinese became addicted to opium which led to two separate wars which finally ended years later in a british treaty acquiring

the 236 square miles of the greater hong kong territories. hong kong itself is very small, it's like 7 miles by 7 miles. but -- and i'm not advocating colonialism in the book, don't get upset. what the british gave to chinese in hong kong was freedom. and what we're seeing today in hong kong is, is a pushback on the chinese that they know the goose that's laying the golden egg, and i don't want to kill that goose, but they're about to do it. they simply got contract law, independent judiciary, freedom of press, freedom of religion and all the rest of it, and, you know, people say they want to take something out. well, that's how hong kong became because they don't have any natural resources. they don't have gold, silver, oil, natural gas, they've got some fish and some agriculture, but they became wealthy because

of sheer creativity. donald trump had renegotiated the south korean trade agreement, and it offered almost nothing significantly better than what the previous agreement had had despite his problem proclamations to the contrary. the one thing i could find in it that was significant was americans are not allowed to buy south korean pickup trucks until 2032. and i thought to myself, what if i wanted to buy a south korean pickup truck? i mean, what if the south korean pickup truck is the truck that i need? what if t the truck that i want? why does my government want to keep me from buying south korean pickup trucks? and when government interferes in the market in that way, they're propping up one or nitpicking winners and losers. so i'll give you an example. i was also very -- as our trade policy, with by the way, with china has led to the greatest -- [inaudible] we've ever seen, and it put the gm bailout, it dwarfed the gm

bailout, made it look tiny by comparison. that was what barack obama struck, and people say it was good because it saved the plant, saved the company, saved jobs, and that's all a great. i don't begrudge that at all. and it made money. and all of that is true, but here's the problem: when your government decides to take your money and give it to a company and you don't get a service or product in turn, in other words, i didn't get a gm car or truck or even a door handle or even a rearview mirror. i got nothing. but gm got the money. and it was all the same -- [inaudible] the lordsville plant in ohio. and the lordsville plant is now closed. it's not because of unfair trade practices or labor laws, it's closed in ohio because americans didn't want to buy the chevy cruze, and they made the chevy

cruze. and they had to close the plant. now, that was painful. but when -- but here's the bugger problem and the problem i like to focus on which never gets talked about. all that money that went to gm arbitrarily or because the politicians decided it should go there didn't go to their competitors. didn't go to the upstart companies like a tesla, and there's others, who are actually designing cars that i might want to drive or that i might want to buy. and what we lose is we lose tomorrow's future innovation because the government literally took your money and sent it over and put money into a company that was failing. and i know that sounds harsh, but over time why is it fair to take american consumers' money and give it to a company whose products or services they don't actually consume? that's trade, that's the -- i'll wrap up a little quicker on

health care. i think the republicans, in short, in short -- the democrats have always had somewhat of an advantage in proposing policy solutions, and it is this: the democrats can always point to a large or massive government program and say this is our answer to health care, right? whereas the conservatives and the republicans have been at a disadvantage by pointing to the private sector which allows the democrats to say you see they don't have a plan because knotts a government plan, right? -- it's not a government plan, right? you follow me? but here's the problem with the republican plan, they didn't actually have a plan. i think it was four weeks ago when donald trump announced on chris wallace that he was going to unveil a huge health care plan. well, have you seen that? there's no health care -- health care is incredibly complicated. and it isn't one thing. obamacare, by the way, is just 7% of the market.

93 percent of the market is not obamacare because you have private insurance, union insurance, tricare, you have medicare, medicaid, you have indian health services. it is extraordinarily complicated, and there's tons of money in health care. my argument with health care is there's actually no free market in health care, and i can explain that later if you'd like. and then finally on immigration, the conservatives, ronald reagan was pro-immigrant. it was 1986, the immigration reform bill is a testimony to that. he was never anti-immigrant. the republican party was never anti-immigrant. and what i say about immigrants is the fear that trump generates, which is all encapsulated in the mythology of the wall that mexico didn't paw for, by the withdraw, trump did build. we have 5 new miles of wall, that's it. but what the wall encapsulated

was people who are fearful of two things, economic insecurity and the overwhelming of our culture. and i remind them the, i say, well, you know, when the italians came, we didn't all speak italian. when the irish came, we all didn't become catholic. when the germans came, we all didn't have to learn german. and now the muslims9 and the hispanics are getting the same horrible treatment that we've always treated our immigrants. so i don't suspect any of us who are non-muslims will be praying to mecca in spanish anytime soon. no immigration, west virginia of immigration is -- wave of immigration has ever overwhelmed the american culture. quite the opposite. it's made our economy better and stronger and made us better as a nation, more innovative, more traditionally diverse. i'd argue that we're a monolith

of american culture that people asimilar lit ad -- assimilated to, but people do bring a lot into our country; their ideas, their food, their tradition. it's wonderful. and why wouldn't we want to keep going in that direction? why is it that we suddenly decide now, by the way, we might look at some of the low-wage workers who happen to be latino, and you've seen them, they work in construction, they work in lawn care, they may be delivering your amazon packages, they may work in restaurants, their children will be doctors, lawyers, ceos and, god forbud, congressmen. god forbid. because that's just the way immigration has always worked. people assimilate. what does nancy pelosi and rudy giuliani have in common? do you know what it is? i know john has the answer. >> i would guess that their parents are immigrants? >> they're both italian-americans, but it doesn't come immediately to mind

even though their last names give them away because the italians have so assimilate ared into our society, we think of them as americans. and one day i'll said rodriguez and hernandez, and people will say, i don't know, i give up. well, they're both hispanic. oh, i should have seen that. i didn't see that. and we're getting closer to that every single day. so i don't worry about the american culture, and i certainly don't worry about economics because the next time there's a caravan coming we should send buses and get them here as quickly as possible. if i don't know and i are going to recognize our and medicare, we need somebody to work. we're going to need lots of immigrants. >> do we -- so that was trade, health care and immigration. do you want to talk about the environment? >> sure. now i'll let john talk about the

environment. i have to admit, my environment aal chapter's a little snark i key. and my editor had a real problem with it. there was more notes in the margin on this chapter, by far, than any other chapter. and i really delve into -- i first give a background of myself. i tell a story about the grand canyon and why, and why it's my favorite place on earth and a little adventure i had there that really -- amazing. a god given gift. and so you can read about that. and, you know, i -- here at the tyler household we compost, we compost all our grass clippings, our leaf clippings, the cow manure, all the organics that come out of the kitchen. everything gets recycled. i take the recycles personally to the recycle center because i don't trust that the trash man is actually taking them there.

[laughter] i just have this terrible suspicion that it's just getting mixed in with all the other trash, and all our efforts to colate and -- collate and separate is not being met. so i do recycle myselfment i love the environment, and i think it is just foolishness for the republicans to cede the environment to the democrats. now, i make two recommendations, one to democrats and one to republicans. one on the republican side, the environment can be a great issue because it's a job creation issue, because it's an innovation issue, because it's such an exciting field. and at the same time, if we can help the planet, that's a wonderful thing. i identify -- and the democratic side, i'm a little more critical of the democrats. i just think the foolishness of just -- it's not an important issue, just politically crazy.

but on the democrat side, i'm a little more harsh. and it's because i've a had many conversations about the environment, and it kind of always leads in the same direction. oh, rick, are you a scientist? no, i'm not, is that okay? can we still talk about -- well, it's really settled science. if you're not a science, you're not qualified to talk about this. okay, so i can't talk about it. but i don't identify myself -- and then i'll say, well, if i say something about the environment in the most equivocal way, so let's say i believe that global warming is occurring, that the earth is occurring, but i'm not entirely sure to the degree of which anthro-- john, help me out. >> anthroto morphic climate change says manmade emissions are adding -- i don't know to what degree that's true. and when i look at the science,

you know, they say that rocket science is hard, and rocket science is actually by comparison easy because all the fixed variables are known. so that is if i'm going to get a rocket into space, i have to create a certain amount of thrust. the fuel weighs so much, my payload weighs so much, and i'm working against the force of gravity, and i've got to get it into the air at a a certain trajectory, you know, into a certain orbit. i can't do that math, but those are all known factors. and that's why we can dock up with the space station, because we have very smart people who understand and know how to do that math. environment's very different. there are hundreds of variables, and there may, in fact, be many variables that we don't necessary arely -- there are hundreds of variables that are known, but there are also variables that are known, but we don't know what they are. so we have to make estimations about the variables. they're called guesses, and that's fine. we may be guessing right, and

that's fine, that's good. i hope so. maybe not, because some of the conclusions are rather catastrophic. but there may be unknown variables. and so it is a very difficult thing to predict. and so one of the things i always get in trouble with is when people talk to me about the environment, they always refer to the weather. and then i'll make an example about the weather. for instance, hurricane laura went from a hurricane one to a three overnight, and nobody predicted that. oh, rick, that's a weather event. you can't talk about weather and make the case about climate change. oh, wait, you just dud. [laughter] and then if i say i'm not sure -- i believe we may be warming the planet, and i'm concerned about it, and i think we should prudently do something about it, they'll say i'm a denier. you've heard that word. that means i don't believe in climate change. well, i just told you i did. because i'm a denier, i must not

believe. those are religious terms. that's like arguing with me about the virgin birth. we can't do it because that's what i believe as a christian. there's no use discussing it, because you won't convince me otherwise. sometimes i feel like i can't talk about the environment because it's a belief that's doctrinal, based on a doctrine that somehow exists, and it's religious terms, and i can't have a discussion about it. so i think, i mean, the democrats could win on the environment just the same way i recommend the democrats could win on the environment, but they've got to drop the henny opinionny meaning we're all -- penny meaning we're all going to die in 20 years. people should begin to lose credibility. when i hear 12 years, it's not fixable and it's all going to be terrible, i don't know that it's going to be terrible, and in 12 years we're going to find out, and i hope it's not.

but it just seems, it just seems to me that scaring people about the environment for long term is not a good political strategy because people just begin not to believe it because it's so big. but talking about the environment in positive terms and protecting the environment, creating jobs of the future, i think, is a very exciting field, and think that's the way we should go about it. and i think that's, in the end, far better for environmentalism than, you know, crying, you know, the sky is falling. john? >> yeah. well, i think that, you know, in the book there's a story of a man named nick, and he's -- he has an interesting background. his family, apparently, didn't have a lot of money growing up. so when he would, you know, ask his father or complain to his father, dad, i don't have this, his father had an interesting response. his father's response was go make it. go make one. i don't have a bike. go make one. so he came up with, essentially, developed the led technology.

and so instead of, you know, we had sort of the government lightbulbs that everybody liked for a long time, right? he invented the led bulb which now you can have, you know, i guess, pretty much any color of the rainbow? the energy is used for light as opposed to heat. it's much more efficient, it's cheaper, they last forever. i don't remember replace an led bulb. so i think from a conservative perspective it's clearly not the case that we don't appreciate the environment, as rick was saying. god wants us to care for the earth, i'm a christian. i would regard that as, you know, god's command to me, to care for the earth. but i think that the answer is supply side. i mean, if -- as with, as with the creativity, the answer lies in the creativity of man, and i think too much we we look at

things as manmade problems. there are man made answers. the reality of it is is what's the next led bulb? what idea will that be? i looked at the numbers, and there is a book many there. the amount of energy that is saved every year with the led bulbs, it's incredible. it's like the greatest thing ever to save energy. what's the next thing going to be? well, here's my guess. my guess is that someone is coming up with it now. maybe it's somebody who's had a conversation with his dad and mom and they're saying, oh, go make one, right? that's how things happen. and i think that by unleashing the creativity, maybe that's the best way to address what ails the environment. is simply let supply side operate as opposed to the government says, okay, let's go do this. our belief is things don't happen too efficiently by putting a government committee in charge of it. the greatest inventions didn't happen by government committee.

i think that's a great way to see it. or at least it doesn't seem to be that withdraw. i think that's where the answer lies, it's in the creativity9 of men. >> i think that's a good place to insert also this counter thought, and i agree with john, creativity of man has solved more problems than government does. but i think john and i also agree that there is a role for government in areas where there is no natural incentive to create. so, for instance, the l e d bulb -- led bulb was actually a government contract. the government contract went to the private sector to solve a problem. what they needed was an indicator that it didn't produce heat, and this is how the led got invented. but the government does do some things extraordinarily with. we talked about the moon shot or, you know, the space station. you know, the government did get us to the moon.

that was an incredible effort. and there was no natural market to go and explore the moon. so there are things that the government can do. there's basic science. and we talk about this in the chapter on health care. government does an enormous amount of work and research that leads to the development of drugs, and the private sector, in my opinion, unfairly profits from that. and that probably needs to be rebalanced. or there needs to be some licensing or -- but it's unfair that taxpayers pay an enormous amount into nih, national institutes of health, national institutes of science, and they do ultimately reap the benefit, but they don't reap the profits from them. and i don't want the government to become a profit enterprise. it's not. that's why we don't need a ceo or businessman to run it, frankly. but the government does amazing work in doing basic science at

the private sector. and the internet is a perfect example. it started as daughter -- darpa net which is the way the pentagon protected the nuclear codes so they could send them around the world, and they wouldn't be physical lu stuck in one place -- physically stuck in one place. what the internet would have been like, you know, at that time. so, yes, government -- and the last example i use is the pandemic, because i get asked this a lot in health care. well, rick, if we had a national health care system, then we would obviously be able to deal better with this pandemic, and that a may be true. i think the pandemic had to be dealt with on a national level because it required a national response. it's a national health crisis. and it cannot be dealt with on an ad hoc, state-by-state, city-by-city, town-by-town

level, it needs a coordinated effort, and as far as i understand, that effort was actually in place at the beginning of the trump administration, it was dismantled, it was never really reassembled and was just punted to the states, and that's why our numbers are so dramatically bad as compared to the res of the world. to give you an example, our death rate of the united states is 20 times worse than all of the asian countries combined, 20 times worse. and it's twice that of europe. so we are really way behind the 8 ball on this because we didn't respond to a national pandemic in a coordinated, national way. >> i think of we have time for about one more question, and i think i might have john lead with this one. you mentioned you have a very large family. how do you recognize large political differences in personal relationships? perhaps in marriage or in parents or siblings. how, if you are a conservative,

how do you reconcile relationships with persons who disagree with you? >> well, that's a really great question. i actually like to hear the other side. i mean, i invite it. it's funny, there's -- rick was mentioning the coffee shop, and we sometimes get together. i invite those. i like to hear the, sort of the other side of things. i think that one of the things that's happened lately, i think this is -- it's gotten worse lately. maybe it was there 20 or 30 years ago, i didn't notice it as much, but people sort of really define themselves pretty create. -- politically. i don't think that's super e healthy. i think what we needed to do is, i mean, friendships are more important. i think rick actually talked about this a few times, the fact that we can get together and disagree. rick and i, i don't think we agree on everything -- [laughter] and, you know, that's okay. but the reality is that i like to keep the friendship in place,

and it's not -- there are things we disagree about, you know? if uma a browns fan and reduction is a patriots fan, that's okay. -- rick is a patriots fan, that's okay. >> [inaudible] >> what's that? >> rick is a patriots fan. [laughter] >> so but the reality of it is we need to listen better, you know? i think it all really starts there because we're not going to get anywhere until we do, because we're not -- as i say, winning over hearts and minds is important, but listening, we should listen. because as i say, we don't know everything. we're trying to adapt things and trying to figure out so they make more sense. and i think we have to stop doing that. we have to focus on the friendship and realize there are things we can kiss agree about, and -- disagree about, and that's okay. it really is. >> and yourself, rick? >> you know, i say in the book that relationships are more

important than politics, and they are. your relationship with your family, your relationship with your friends, you know, you want to preserve them really at all costs. and if your friend can't talk about with politics with you in a way that's not going to preserve your friendship, then you should agree to just not talk about politics. i have friends who are trump supporters, and we just don't talk about it. they may come to dinner -- they haven't since covid, but before that, we just find a million other things, there's a million other things to talk about besides politics. and, you know, i often on twitter, you know, occasionally i'll have a follower who'll say i just can't stand it anymore, this is driving me crazy, and i've often responded many times to say turn the news off, take a few days off, stay away from social mood e ya for a few days, clear your head, connect with nature -- it's really helpful. i think this is a deep connection human beings desire to have with nature -- and get

some perspective and get healthy because we need you to come back. but, you know, if you find yourself just getting, you're going crazy because of all the news, and the news is just nonstop, i mean, it's too much, and people need to take a break and sort out what's important and sort out those priorities. so my book may not do that for you, but maybe there might be a chapter or two that might calm you down. [laughter] >> well, thank you very much to both of you for joining us this evening. rick's book, "still right," is available from gibson's bookstore. we do have signed books which we are including with orders, and it is available for pickup curbside, in store and we do happily ship all over the country and all over the world. thank you very much, rick tyler and john clark. thank you, everybody. >> tonight on booktv in prime time, history professor martha jones explores the efforts by

black women to win the right to vote. former world bank president robert zoellick talks about the history of u.s. diplomacy. netflix founder reed hastings and author erin meyer disbecause the unorthodox workplace culture. democratic senator chris murphy of connecticut looks at the history of violence and firearms in the u.s. and the role they play in society. and the manhattan institute's james copeland argues that america is governed by non-elected agency officials. that all starts tonight at 7:30 eastern. find more schedule information on your program guide. >> sunday at 7 p.m. eastern, a live discussion with pulitzer prize-winning author bob woodward on his new book, "rage," which looks at president trump's national and foreign policy decisions. watch booktv on c-span2. >> hi, everyone.