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tv   In Depth Steven Hayward  CSPAN  January 6, 2023 11:24am-12:10pm EST

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>> buckeye broadband along with these television companies support c-span2 as a public service. >> how would you describe the perfect conservative. what does that person believe? >> guest: i am not sure there is a perfect conservative. i always like to say there's 5 or 6 kinds of conservatives and i love all of them. i'm the old-school fusionist, that term has fallen into disrepute but it's like the parallel of the blind man and the elephant, treetrunk, the snake, hard to see it but it is someone who has a generosity of spirit for what can be learned from the other camps rather than having theological disputes about who is right or wrong about particular points. >> host: you have written as much about ronald reagan as
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anybody and several other books, those different kinds of conservatives you talk about. what kind of conservatives were ronald reagan? >> the idiosyncratic conservative. he was not that conservative in a couple ways. reagan was fond of quoting tom payne, the radical sympathizer of the french revolution. he love to quote thomas paine saying we have it in our power to make the world over again. george will at the time saying anytime anywhere, that is nonsense, the most unconservative thing you could say. people say that is optimism and creative spirit and there is a certain truth to that but on his head stoneware he's buried at the reagan library, the word is i know in my heart that man is good. so to look at the good side of humans, that leaves out the christian doctrine of sin which other conservatives keep in the
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forefront of their mind. that's why reagan was in idiosyncratic conservative. he had the rotarian sympathies but traditional sympathies, he was his own special thing. >> host: when did ronald reagan become a conservative? >> guest: interesting question. probably starting maybe in the 40s. he adopted liberal anti-communism. he was a truman supporter in 48, member of americans for democratic action. and a 50s especially when he was touring general electric and hosting general electric theater. he was reading a lot of early conservative literature, whittaker chambers's witness, economics lesson, big conservative books in the 50s, he read them and worked them into his speeches. he didn't become a republican until 1962 but he was moving to the right for a time. >> host: what about becoming a republican?
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>> guest: i am not quite sure, he said once somewhere i finally woke up one day and realized i had been supporting all the people whose ideas i am criticizing now. time to make a change. he had been part of democrats for nixon in 1960. he moved to reporting so -- supporting republicans, but slowing changing his party registration. >> host: moving to reagan, the man. a quote from lou cannon you using your book, ronald reagan was accessible to people who had never met him, impenetrable to those who tried to know him well. why? >> guest: lou's theory which i will go with is this had to do partly with reagan's upbringing as the son of an alcoholic. there is good psychological evidence that people who have alcoholic or abusive parents become more remote.
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his father wasn't abusive but i mention that because is germane to the literature. reagan moved around a lot. he lived in a downwardly mobile family because his father struggled with jobs. he was always the new kid in school. that tends to make you shy. these are explanations why you carry this remoteness and distance into adulthood but it is not unique to him. a lot of people said similar things about franklin roosevelt. his own kids didn't get on with him very well. like reagan, roosevelt had a great connection with people. he understood people intuitively and connect with them. and roosevelt's case, reagan, radio and television. not an unusual trait for a politician at the highest level to be a little remote sometimes. >> host: the connection from his acting career, where did that come from? >> guest: partly the acting career. reagan as was often said never cared about the reviews of his
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movies, because they did good box office. he was always denigrated as a be actor and so forth but he understood box office and always understood there are two audiences, don't pay attention to critics. >> host: did he keep that his entire life? >> guest: in the political area, there are certain issues he seized upon that were showing up in the polls. when he ran for governor in 1966, he said people are mad about the chaos on the campus. all the political people, nobody is telling us that in the polls. in 1976, he opposed the panama canal treaty. that wasn't showing up as an issue in the polls. but when he gave the line about the panama canal and the speeches the audience erupted and he nearly sank the treaty when he was finished under jimmy carter.
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>> host: polls today versus polls during reagan's time, how much the president paid attention? did ronald reagan care? >> guest: yes he did. his pollster was a very good pollster. we do a poll every 15 minutes and just overload on polls. i joke if i could wave a magic wand and make one change i would outlaw polls. reagan did pay attention to the polls. he was known as the great communicator and the legend is reagan gave a speech, he gave some effective speeches, but there are some in particular on central america, especially nicaragua which was a good flash point and lead to a big scandal in his second term, he gave a couple speeches in 83 and 84 and polls show public opinion didn't move at all and reagan found that discouraging but he did pay attention to the polls but didn't talk about it publicly. >> host: ronald reagan is the subject of two of stephen
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haworth -- steven hayward's books, a huge history on ronald reagan, "the age of reagan: the conservative counterrevolution, 1980-1989" is the latter of the two, the former, i'm sorry, "the age of reagan: the fall of the old liberal order, 1964-1980" just some of the 8 books by steven hayward, we are talking about all of them on "in depth" this morning if you want to join the conversation to the phone lines in the eastern or central time zone 202-seven forty eight-eighty two hundred. in the mountain or pacific time zone 202-748-eighty two oh one. you can send us a text, 202-748-8903, include your name and where you are from. also on twitter is@booktv. steven hayward will be with us until 2:00 pm eastern joining us throughout this entire conversation of "in depth".
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i want to talk about ronald reagan and the relationship with mikhail gorbachev. he died on august 30th just last week. what was their relationship like when they were both in office and later? >> guest: an extraordinary story. they were inclined not to like each other. right after gorbachev took office in 1985 he wrote in his diary, people tell me he's a different kind of soviet leader. reagan set i'm too cynical to believe that. reagan always said he hoped someday to sit down with a soviet leader and see if they couldn't make a breakthrough. part of his confluence served another aspect and gorbachev turned out to be that person but not initially. gorbachev for his part thought reagan was a dinosaur. >> host: what was the age difference? >> gorbachev was 55, 56, reagan, 20 years almost. doesn't mean he was a dinosaur because he was old.
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gorbachev -- he said he was a creature of the capitalist class in america, very orthodox marxism. but they came to like each other. my perception is they came to like each other because they argued directly for the first time in a way no american president and soviet leader had. they argued fundamental ideological differences between the two countries. some of the transcripts of those are fascinating. we didn't learn about them until the 90s, these private exchanges between them were very frank and serious and earnest but also jocular. >> host: what was the setting? >> guest: the most interesting one was the reykjavík summit, it was so dramatic because it looked like they were on the cusp of a deal to aluminate strategic nuclear weapons. and thinkable decades before that. off apart because reagan wouldn't exceed to gorbachev's demand to get rid of the star
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wars missile defense plan. that was always the drama everyone concentrated on. i got my hands on the soviet transcript of their face-to-face meetings which was more complete than the state department, there's always a notetaker in the room. they would have these arguments on ideology, and you have a 1-party system a one party system, the 1-party system is the clock of history, and gorbachev says i respect your system and we have to coexist. i want to persuade you to be a member of the republican party. gorbachev is nonplussed, interesting idea. can we get back to nuclear weapons now? there are other interesting arguments in that meeting. >> host: did the public know that they were having these meetings? >> guest: there were drafts that came out especially that first face-to-face meeting in
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front of a fireplace in geneva in november 1985 where they were both smiling. reagan was tough as an egg but also friendly. reagan came back from geneva saying no, he's a different kind of leader. margaret thatcher is right. we can do this. they started liking each other better. still had sharp disagreements. one of the things gorbachev brings up himself at reykjavík was, all i can tell, you still believe in that talk about the evil empire, your speech from 1982 how the soviet union will end up on the ash heap of history, he was very defensive. sounds like you want to wipe us out. reagan had to reassure him we have no intention of that. this is what i think. the argument goes on. >> host: how did he go about reassuring him? how do you walk back some of those statements? >> guest: reagan says we are the only two people who can
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prevent the destruction of the world. once it became clear they were sincere about wanting to do that, it broke down not just over strategic defense initiative but technical details about the arms-control thing got complicated. everyone thought we never had fundamental conversations about this, the differences between the countries and about how we unravel this. >> host: it makes me think of what you described in the book, fairly certain he was talking gorbachev at the time, reagan wanted to tell gorbachev if the earth was invaded by aliens, they would have to work together to fight the aliens. >> guest: reagan said that, reagan's little green men speech. has aids, george scholz, colin powell was on the national security council, this sounds so crazy. then reagan went and told that story in a speech a couple
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weeks later just off-the-cuff. lou cannon had a great line on that. i'm sure gorbachev was nonplussed at wondering what the right marketing for this line was cooperating with imperialists to defend against martian invasions. it used to be in summits, nixon or carter or whoever would sit down, very slow affairs, they would be delayed translation, then the russians, including the premier the would have to have a prepared response to a statement. there is no page on alien invasion. gorbachev didn't do that. that was the first summit they had simultaneous translation at a few notes, referring to briefing books, that made it different from everything they had done before. >> host: 1990, time magazine selects mikhail gorbachev as man of the decade. what did you think about that? >> guest: gorbachev deserves credit. he was a genuine liberal
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reformer. he did want to end the arms race. he did repudiate the brezhnev doctrine that said we defend it by force which is what the soviet union had always done. he announced in 1988 unilateral reductions in the soviet troops in eastern europe. now he gave us that with no concessions from our side which was remarkable. the part of what is going on, imagine if especially, you had gone to graduate school to study soviet psychology. the soviet union didn't exist anymore. you are back to the nobel prize gorbachev got, time magazine's person of the decade. part of that was a lot of the media establishment and academic establishment couldn't stand it that reagan had been so effective and been vindicated against all their
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criticisms, people said this is a disaster about arms-control and then you have the real deal, made him all look bad. he embarrassed them and i think that was one way of getting back at reagan, ignoring him. >> host: did they have an relationship later in life? >> gorbachev, don't remember if he was still an officer had left but reagan at his ranch in santa barbara, pictures of him there, they are getting together and sharing some jokes. i do know that gorbachev said he was unimpressed with reagan's ranch, reagan -- it is really tiny. a big ranch. gorbachev thought the president of the united states should have a big mansion, not this little ranch house. cultural differences i suppose. >> host: ronald reagan and his journey to becoming a conservative, what was your
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journey? >> guest: i grew up in a conservative town with conservative parents. true story. my mother and dad were big and the goldwater sam -- campaign of 64. everybody, i was going to win by a landslide. after the election as a first grader not only did goldwater lose but lost by a lot and that was -- the rest of the world must be different from my neighborhood. from there, i joke i have conservative cell structure but i started reading "national review" in the eighth grade. i had seen buckley on firing line. i don't understand what this guy is saying but it seems fun and interesting. >> host: when did you start understanding what he was saying? >> early on. as a freshman i recall looking up words to use in his books and magazines.
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in high school, had to do vocabulary, and all the rest of that. all these crazy words from "national review," my teacher said where are you getting these? i'm getting them from buckley. i was precocious that way. >> host: where did you go to college and what did you do after college? >> i went to lewis and clark college in oregon, didn't want to go to a gigantic university. and was a student journalist, started learning how to write op-eds. after college, we may come back to this, i went to work in washington as an intern. hugely formative experience but in washington i noticed, don't think anyone notices if you look around, capitol hill is
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run by people in their 20s. all smart, eager and ambitious. i got to thinking i don't want to be part of that scene. if i ever come back to washington, i need to know more to be a serious journalist. i went to claremont graduate school starting 40 years ago this week and i thought about chicago and other places, when it was close to home, second, it had a number of notable conservative professors -- >> focusing on american politics. your first book on winston churchill. churchill on -- "churchill on leadership: executive success in the face of adversity". >> guest: i was stuck in a leadership seminar that i didn't like very much but he kept mentioning churchill.
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i will come back to that shortly. at the end, you ought to write a book about his leadership style. such books were bestsellers. >> host: claremont in graduate school, one of the principal thoughts is the best way to learn about politics is biography. especially bhies of lincoln, churchill, both roosevelts, but in particular churchill which i found interesting, my parents were of the world war generation talked about him a lot. that is why i wrote about churchill, i knew about him already. what i learned about, better ways to approach it. that book coming out in 1997,
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fast forward 25 years. this year you come out with conservative what, you write this book had been called why stand evans matters. why does stan evans matter? >> guest: the reason i said that, there are short biographies of people, i thought he deserved biography. although stan died 7 or 8 years ago, already being forgotten by a younger generation. the reagan buckley area, all of us are aging out. stan was an important figure. as a journalist, as a thinker, who funded -- as an activist. they are usually kept separate. his last book was a pretty serious attempt at a
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vindication of joe mccarthy. he was everybody's favorite guy, he was like i said earlier friendly with everybody, he was funny as heck in person, seldom his writing. and he was a great teacher for a whole generation of conservatives, other people viewers would be familiar with, including and coulter, john fund, marketscott. i had a list of names, i am blanking on a lot of them. he influence a whole generation of conservative journalism. >> host: a sense of what he looks like and sounded like, this is stan evans from december 16, 1994. >> i am a conservative, no secret to c-span boot -- viewers. what i mean by that, the things i was talking about, i was
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interested in conserving certain themes not just because quite often i have been critical but conserving in this tradition of freedom of limited government which to the expression of the united states and western culture in general. because i believe in those values of conservatism, that is what i'm trying to do. >> host: stanton evans in 1994. what is the sharon statement? >> guest: the founding document of young americans for freedom. long story, the short version is coming out of the goldwater booklet of the 1960 convention. a lot of people said all these young people, let's try to capitalize on that, enthusiasm started earlier, they came up with young americans for freedom.
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stan who was 28 years old at that point was asked to write a statement, 350 words long or something like that. contrasts contrast with the port huron statement of the new left. this is conservative principles, belief in free market. and the primacy of individual freedom. this is the part that is archaic but could be repeated today pretty much verbatim. not the primary draft or of it. are of it. he would say, it is correct that i didn't come up with anything original. to express conservative wisdom. he never boasted about it. >> host: we as young conservatives believe foremost among the transcendent values for the individual use of
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god-given free will, derives his right to be free and restrictions, liberty is indivisible from a little freedom to not long exist without economic freedom, the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through presentation of internal order, national defense and administration of justice and it goes on from there. is the sharon statement still relevant today in conservative circles? >> guest: i think so. there are 3 or 4 directions you can go in analyzing parts of that statement. there is orthodox marxism which says consciousness is determined by material forces. descending from fat, 1950s, one intellectual current was behavior. and freudianism, they said individual consciousness is determined by subregional forces. pushing back against the idea
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that human beings are truly free, to be fancy about it, that we have genuine physical freedom. you can just interpret it as more simply and directly political, as love you the government should plan or supervise more aspects of your life for your own good. that is less than illogical but present form of the political divides we see these days. >> host: a half an hour into our interview with steven hayward, phone numbers if you want to join the conversation, 202-748-8200, in the mountain or pacific time zones 202-748-8201. 202-748-eighty nine zero three to text to. and freeland, michigan, glenn has been waiting, good morning. are you with us? go ahead. >> caller: thank you for taking the call.
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steven hayward, i would like to ask you what you think the overall current state of how american history is being taught, higher education especially stuff like the ku klux klan and the founding fathers, are basically on the same team, stuff like that that has really taken off, the george lloyd kind of national psychosis that happened in 2020 and specifically, would you comment on an article that was -- you comment on a little bit on your website, powerlines, it was an american greatness article called america never existed. thank you very much. >> guest: do we have a whole extra hour on this american history question? i could go on on that for literally days.
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the short version is the teaching of history has been decaying for long time and it is fully deplorable. maybe it started, has older roots but the famous book a people's history of the united states, never mind the factual errors in it but interpretive framework essentially is this. that the defect and sins of america represent the whole of america. i think that is wrong. new versions of like the 1619 project and so forth, want to reduce america to its defects and historical lapses in history. so from there i could go on a long time. the second part of your question, i may see him later today. glenn elmers wrote the article america never existed, provocative title trying to get people's attention but it connects to your question. what he was trying to suggest was, let me put it this way. i have asked this question to
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several people. if all americans leading educational institutions shift to the howard zinn view that america is rotten, our history is terrible, the constitution stinks, going down the checklist, can that country long survive in its present form? i am very worried, there's talk about heading into another civil war, seems unlikely because we don't have enough geographical division and so forth, but i do think when you are letting institutions teach you the country so defective as to not deserve any respect at all, that is going to be a problem for the longevity of the country. glenn was trying to say if those views become widely accepted by american citizens, the country may not fall apart, the united states might go on a couple hundred more years or more but it won't be the same country we used to cherish and celebrate for its great achievements and breakthroughs
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like the declaration of independence saying we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men were created equal which no one else said. >> host: what is powerline? >> guest: a blog i write 4. powerlineblog.com. we are stuck with a blog in the title for a variety of reasons even though it has faded away. it does pretty big traffic. it is most publicly visible 20 years ago, when one of marco writers on this right -- the site, scott johnson, said these documents dan rather is using to say george w. bush didn't show up for the texas air national guard look fake to me. he was the first person to start the avalanche rolling and unravel the story and 24 hours. traffic went through the roof and we had big traffic ever since. scott johnson made our site famous, they asked me to join several years later and i write for it almost every day. >> host: you mentioned higher education, criticism of higher education.
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you are a lecturer at atland university, pepperdine university, and berkeley. why do you have such concern about higher education? >> guest: because of that concern. it is a mistake conservatives don't compete. at uc berkeley, i put it whimsically that way. it is a big place. it is intellectual diversity at berkeley, in places like -- i pick on oberland in much of the news. i like university life. to hang around with people with different views. the only conservative in the
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room in the seminar and i attend a lot of workshops. they are glad to have a challenge from the right. i do enjoy that kind of life and i have a disposition for it. i tend to be a people person. i tend to like everybody who has different views from me. >> host: do you see yourself staying at uc berkeley? >> guest: the covid year was a disaster. i didn't teach for a whole year. it is still not quite back to normal. student life is not quite back to what it was before the pandemic. it is slowly recovering. that is discouraging. >> host: you talk about competing for space. a book about stan evans, who are today's conservative thinkers? are the leading conservative thinkers right now?
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>> guest: i mentioned glenn elmers, his book about our mutual teacher, really superb. michael antone, very controversial guy, author of the flight 93 election, hugely interesting person who i hope will write longer, serious, theoretical books. the thing about conservatives is -- tom soul is still alive at age 93. a lot of what you say about conservative books, we don't need new books. a lot of our old books hold up just fine. you can read 1950s the economic lesson of profit. some of thomas soul's older books like knowledge and decisions from the 1980s, holds up extremely well. a lot of philosophical books. you held up my "patriotism is not enough: harry jaffa, walter
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berns, and the arguments that redefined american conservatism". leo strauss's books are on the reading list of conservatives. we have a lot of literature. there's a lot of new thought going. the impresario of national conservatism. the two figures are challenging the liberal tradition itself which is kind of knew. different from the liberalism buckley was criticizing. >> host: i want to focus on one of the names you brought up. one of the older thinkers, harry jaffa, "patriotism is not enough: harry jaffa, walter berns, and the arguments that redefined american conservatism" about him and walter burns. who was harry jaffa? >> guest: a long-term professor of political philosophy. at claremont men's college, graduate school. he is known for two things above all. one, i won't say rescuing lincoln but directing attention to abraham lincoln as a much more serious thinker that a lot
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of historians treated him. that was his famous book in 1959 called crisis of a house divided. more notoriously perhaps, he was the principal author of barry goldwater's second speech in 1964 including the famous line extremism in defense of liberty, moderation in defense of justice is no virtue. that was a scandalous line, very controversial and it was scandal was also among a lot of his political philosopher peers because harry jaffa had been a democrat until 1962. a lot of those people were liberal anti-communists and democratic party members. leo strauss cast his first book for adlai stevenson for example. anyway, he is known for those things and later on, a lot of his feuds with former friends. that is what the book is partly about including walter burns who i knew. he was a colleague. one of a handful of people who knew both men pretty well.
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i always regretted their feud which turned personal. >> host: what did it start over? >> guest: disagreements about several things. harry jaffa wrote about some scholars especially kendall who had died not around to defend themselves. walter took offense. martin diamond was the other person harry jaffa attacked. important political scientist and conservative. lter took offense to that end came to their defense and then it spun out of control with personal insults, going along with serious arguments. >> host: harry jaffa and walter burns both died, what did the conservative movement lose that they? >> guest: it lost a lot. ... went to the conservative movement lose with them? steven: quite a lot. the fact that they died at the same day at the age of 95, that is like jefferson and adams dying on the same day.
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i wound a short article saying, adams and jefferson put their feud behind them in later years and burns and jaffa never did. there is a book in that. i will say to to be of things about it. it is intended to be for those are not marinated a academia. it is meant to be in -- an introduction to this unusual world of thought that they represented. i do not have a literary model for. 40 years ago, there was this terrific book written by barry, who taught philosophy at in my you for some time. it was a memoir from the 1930's come into the 1970's. people like irving kristol was in there. a bunch of other figures now forgotten.
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there -- it was a wonderful memoir and i was trying to emulate that style. john: the book patriotism is not enough came out in 2018. define patriotism. steven: the title refers to the fact that this is one thing that they agreed about. it is not attached to where you live because it is where you live. walter burns' last book was called making patriots. it does not happen spontaneously. it has to be taught. this gets back to the question of how we teach american history these days. jaffa used to say, we need to have informed patriotism. you cannot love the country unless you understand it and understand its principles. i like to say that the critics
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of nationalism by definition of its patriotism they do not like. nationalism has this baggage from the mid 20th century. germany comes to mind, italy and so forth. a lot of historic feuds like yugoslavia -- i do think that there is a case for your attachment to your nation and i think patriotism is more connected with the political principles of a regime. that might be a little harder to understand but the distinction is hard to work out. john:: how is that playing out? steven: first, you think about brexit, which shocked everybody and then the election of donald trump, which shocked everybody. i think what is going on is a
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rebellion against the centralization of things like the european. it began as this cooperative scheme that would make everybody more prosperous, but it has grown into something that has become somewhat of a smothering organization. it is one thing to have a common currency, maybe. we will see if that survives in the long term. it is another thing to try to impose cultural uniformity. a little hungry right now -- people they bad things about the ok. i do not know a lot about the merits of those situations, but they are mad about them saying this is a matter of positive law, threatening them with sanctioned and all kinds of angst because they are not on board with what most other countries are doing with
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same-sex marriage and other aspects of identity politics and i thought, why can't they let -- why can't they leave them alone? people can leave or go as they want. john: what would ronald reagan think of donald trump? steven: that is a tough question. reagan, like roosevelt, reagan like roosevelt i think most successful politicians, they had a way of making theirhe attacks on the other party especially rose up and reagan with a twinkle in their eye. and with some wit about them. and they also talk about their friends in the other party. therety was always a sort of latent generosity to their disagreements with their opposition. and trump seemed to have less of that. trump can be very faint but not in the same way reagan is funny.
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trump is more barbet is an sort of performance art and you have do it's easy to miss it i think. so i think reagan might say in may be effective rattling your ownur troops but i'm not sure anything we saw this an election i'm not sure if it moves over the independence you need. i don't think it leaves the other party lost an election to consent, i think we saw that, the democratic party really didn't accept trump's election. i don't mean, they just not there something metaphysical wrong about this happening. which wasn't true with reagan. they didn't like reagan. they hated being defeated byey both accepted his presidency, he wrote in 2017 that you take donald trump all the cart. >> guest: that's right. i'm not original in saying this. i would have on you. that would've loved to develop a demonstration without trouble. he kept doing lots of things i approved of. that's why say all the cart. when he was doing things i i ,
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official appointment or the regular for initiatives, some foreign policy things, i thought that was unexpected and a very please with that. i did not expect to be as consistently conservative as he was. there some exceptions there. i think hisis try to sort out te trade problem with china was a mess. i agree with the impulse but i think that's very difficult problem and some of the steps may been counterproductive. we'll see about that in the long term. he did change. i will say one more thing about china. the public opinion polls herene and overseas that public regard for china has plummeted in the last seven, eight years. i think trump is large reason for that and the biden administration is continuing trump's disposition about china. they're not going back to business as usualti after usual. you at the bush administration or obama or even clinton. [inaudible conversations] used want to see donald trump run again? >> guest: i don't think so. i don't know. i mean, but you know, i didn't
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want to see him run the first time. what do i know? i've been wrong about so many think so we'll see. if you want to get you think he gets republican nomination? >> guest: as are speaking right now, i think that the democrats are successfully goading him into making making some mistakes. he's lashing out about the guy rate of mar-a-lago. i understand that. i don't know. always work for the past. you can't seem to like a glove on the guy. it's a stunning how resilient he is. and ites could be all say this n his favor, could be that he's still for all of this obvious flaws and his age i think it's an issue, for all of his obvious flaws he might be the best vehicle for channeling a lot of the populist energies in the country right now. >> host: "in depth" on booktv steven hayward is a guest in these two hours about 45 minutes in, taking take your phone calls as well.
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dave has been waiting in omaha, nebraska. good morning. >> caller: good morning. steve, you are a prolific writer. in addition to your academic duties you write for powerline and you also have your podcast. could you describe your writing process? >> guest: yap. by the way, date, i think i know what day you are, but okay. so you mention like how did i become a conservative? how did i become a writer? in the fourth grade, was assigned to write a short story something overnight and they came back the next it with 28 pages singlespaced. i clearly have a problem. but i actually tried to live by the advice of ray bradbury, the famous science-fiction author who said and what ought to write 1000 words a day. doesn't message don't have to be a manuscript or it could be a diary or letters whatever.
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i have lived by that for a very long time. when i am writing a book, i make it a point that sitting down. stan evans one of the things he said the hardest thing about writing is putting your a butt n a chair and start typing. boy, that is true. people think of i dislike this romantic. it's hard work like anything else and lots of times when you don't want to do it in these days all of these, i'll check twitter, check email again. my general discipline is i i e to write in the morning when i am freshest. sit down and i will set up to write 1000 words and i'm won't quit until i got 1000 words done. on a cadet good delegate more done. if the book. otherwise i'm working on post online, work on article, short or long something in between. or making notes for lectures and seminars. usually in the morning. in the afternoons i usually run out of gas after lunch at my age and i will try to read and do researchnd

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