>> coming up on c-span three, a look at how conservatism can be defined in the modern area. and later, a discussion about the impact sanctions have on russia.

>> next a discussion about conservatism and how it can be defined in a modern era. the discussion was hosted the american conservative magazine and the heritage foundation. it is about an hour and a half. >> that evening. welcome to the heritage foundation. we welcome those who join us on our heritage website on all of these occasion . for those in-house we would ask that check to see that our mobile devices have been silenced or turned off. and of course those watching online and those watching in the future on c-span are welcome to send questions or comments at any time.

simply email us. leading our discussion this evening on what is conservatism is doctor lee edwards. he serves heritage. he is well known in this community and most of us consider him the historian of the conservative movement. he was the founder and chairman of the veterans of victims -- he has met numerous books biographies and histories related to the conservative movement and serves as an adjunct professor at catholic university of america as well as many other important positions. please join me in welcoming doctor lee edwards. >> thank you, john. good afternoon and good evening ladies and gentlemen. it is a beautiful day in

washington and a great day to be alive. particularly we have an opportunity with such distinguished panelists to talk about one of our favorite subjects which is conservatism. here we are. what is conservatism? well, we will see. many have tried and few have succeeded in providing an agreeable answer. bill politely declined. russell kirk wrote a 478 page book, the conservative mind. greg meyer came up with a new theory fusion is a, which i will have a thing to say about later. kayak explained why he was not a conservative. i rant flash the sign of the dollar. that was her explanation of what it is. here we are this evening gnawing at this old bomb trying yet

again to answer what is conservatism. here are a few thoughts. in the forward to the volume american conservatism in the 20th century, the liberal professor describes williams conservatism as the following, individually idealistic in favor of ordered liberty and pronounce italy tolerant. -- pronounce italy tolerant. though tradition oriented and partial to continuity rather than experiment, it has a deep streak of romantic utopianism. mr. buckley believes that conservative thought is addressed to shaping a visionary or paradigmatic society.

he defines the 20th century to be a hideously science centered age with a passion for equality that subverts the ideal society. what does mr. buckley himself say about the philosophy behind the magazine he has founded and which remains, we would all agree, a conservative journal in america. he phrases frank meyer, a senior editor of national review for his development of fusion is him, eight joining -- a joining of the ideas of freedom and virtue. the fundamental of conservativism is the freedom of the person, the primary and of physical society. the state has only three limited functions, national defense, the preservation of domestic order and the

administration of justice between citizens. reflecting the views of the founding fathers, meyer said that freedom and virtue are compatible, indeed their correlation is necessary for the good society. meyer wrote that the declaration of independence, the constitution and the federalist papers demonstrate a simultaneous belief in moral value and the freedom of the individual. i think we could agree or i would argue this is a consensus of contemporary american -- the political icons of american conservatism and articulated by bill buckley it's intellectual spokesperson. fusion is him -- fusionism was not a rhetorical trick but a recognition that conservatism was a house of many nations.

fusionism was a prudent resolution of the seemingly impassable divide. a new fusion nest is the only solution for the conservative movement. and the 57 other varieties of conservatism. in this present crisis, i believe conservatism must come together to form a new fusionism based upon certain ideas, a limited constitutional government, free enterprise, individual freedom and responsibility, a balance between liberty and law, peace through strength and a commitment to virtue, private and public. these are the core ideas bounded

by the constitution on which american conservatism rest and by which it successful leaders like ronald reagan have always sought to govern. they are the tried and true ideas that can get america off the road of conservatism and once again on the road to liberty. and now to our distinguished panel of analysts, rod dryer is the author of the benedict option and crunchy cons. bob mary is an editor who edits the american conservative. his books include president mckinley, architect of the american century and where they stand, the american president in the eyes of voter and historian. brad is a professor of history at hillsdale college, the author of american -- and cofounder of the imaginative

conservative blog. he is also a scholar in residence at the american conservative which i am pleased to say and to share with you all it is celebrating its 15th anniversary this week. and they said it wouldn't last. >> thank you. thank you everybody. i am rod dreher. i am up from the bayou today for this event. before i get started saying what i think is going on with conservatism, i want to reference one of my countrymen who was asked, doctor percy do you despair? he said i like to drink beer and eat crawfish. is that despair? that is the spirit in which i want my remarks to be heard. i'm not optimistic about

conservatism or anything else in our political culture but i am hopeful and hope we can get into the reasons why a little bit later. i am on the losing side of the fusion nest contract which brought together traditionalist culture -- with the libertarians who are more concerned about economics and the over leaning state on the other. we did find 50 years ago we had a lot in common and that is where the modern conservative movement came from. we had more in common than separated us. now in 2018 i wonder as a believing christian and a cultural conservative, i wonder what the conservative movement has conserved. from my point of view, the heart of conservatism is spiritual and indeed religious. i believe it was russell kirk

who said all political problems are at the bottom spiritual problems because they are problems of authority and transcendent meaning. i believe that in part because of our own neglect but because of cultural forces outside our control, religious conservatives have been riled. it is hard for me to see that we have a lot of hope in organized movement conservatism , certainly not in the republican party. i think our main error has been as religious and cultural conservatives is thinking as long as we took care of the politics and the law that the cultural would take care of itself. the culture is basically healthy. we have known for a while now that this is not true. paul wyrick said 20 years ago that we failed at that. the lesson still has yet to be learned by a lot of us on our side. i think that when you look around you see that christian faith is dying in our country.

the numbers don't lie. among millennial's and younger, the faith is collapsing. the quality of the faith is very thin. for me as a conservative that is a primary concern because if we don't get that right, all the rest of our freedoms and virtues probably won't hold. i have written a book called the benedict option which we can talk about that later. it is a strategy for shoring up the fragments against our ruins of building resilient faithful orthodox christian communities in a post-christian society. i am a pessimist about our political future and our immediate cultural future. last fall i was in paris having coffee with a well-known french philosopher and we were agreeing that the prospects for france and indeed for the west don't look good right now.

for him islam is the greatest challenge with what they are facing in france. he also said that we are losing our sense of purpose and meaning in the west. i asked him where he found his hope and he said i don't have any hope and he was serious. he wasn't being glib at all. i said i do have hope and my hope is not optimism, my hope comes from my religious faith and i told him about that. and he said that is good for you americans but here in france we believe that there is nothing beyond this life. when you are dead, you're dead. i left that meeting feeling despondent for france, a country i love very much. and this man, this philosopher who has moved to the right. he was a man of the left but he got mugged by reality and now he is a man of the right. he doesn't see any hope outside of her recovery of transcendent meaning which he things is closed off. i see conservatism for me, the main cause of conservatism to

rebuild and restore and make resilient christian culture in this time of decline. what does that have to do with organized movement conservatism? i recall after the ruling in 2015 i came to capitol hill. i was giving a speech and had a meeting with some christian staffers from both the house and the senate side, all conservatives. i said we have lost this one with social conservatives so what is the republican party going to do for religious liberty? i think that is the number 1 fight right now for social conservatives to protect the churches in the schools and individual religious liberties. what do you mean? nothing. there was no plans for the republican party to do anything about religious liberty because they saw it as a loser. they sought a way to be called to get and they had no way to

defend themselves. that made me realize that we conservatives, we grassroots, religious conservatives are on our own but that is no reason to give up. that is the reason to take the fight to the local level and build platoons at the local level in our churches. i will close right now by talking about a source of real hope that i found just recently. i was in prague, the benedict option has been translated into a number of european languages. i visited the home of camilla. they were anti-communist dissidents and the only christians. they went to prison for standing up to the communist government. his wife had to take care of

their six kids on their own but they did it. they survived. today, even though the czech republic is the most atheist country in all of europe, their children all remain faithful catholics and conservatives. and their children are faithful, too. i asked camilla how they did it and they had no political power at all. one of the things they did was they constantly educated their children about what is true and what is good and what is beautiful and conscious awareness that they were living in a society of lies. camilla's the -- camilla said something beautiful. every day i read to my kids for two or three hours every day. she is telling me this in their apartment that is lined with books. she said it was important that we feed their imagination, give them something to stand on. she said tolkien was the biggest part of their childhood. i said why tolkien? she said we knew that mordor

was real. i think today in our country, we don't live in communist tyranny, thank god. the greatest thing that we as conservatives can do is to do what camilla did in their time of persecution and darkness. go back to the classics, go back to our faith, live life of great spiritual discipline and lives of joy. camilla's family was near the secret police headquarters in prague. people knew that the family were people of integrity and people of goodness in people of light. they would find their way to the apartment to be fed and cared for and restored. that is not only what christians should do but what conservatives can do in this darkness we are now living through.

>> good evening everyone. i'm glad to be here. my wife deidre and i got up early this morning and drove from hillsdale michigan. we got the kids off to school and just found parking behind the laundry. we are hoping our car will still be there when we get out. we had a great time. we are here. thank you for having us. what an honor. as we walked in i couldn't help but think how much this place has meant to the history, conservatism and the public in particular. it is absolutely wonderful to be here and be in this building. i have never been here before. thank you for hosting us and for the american conservative for putting us up. yesterday i had the chance and the duty to finish my american heritage class at hillsdale. the semester was over.

the weather was glorious. you have that strange moment where students are not sure whether they should be studying for outplaying water sports on the lawns of their sororities. it was an interesting thing to watch and observe yesterday. here we are at the end of the semester and i always end the american heritage class by talking about ronald reagan and by thinking about what happened in 1989. i am always reminded. i was born in 1967 in kansas. i grew up and lee has heard the story many times. i grew up in a solid goldwater household. next to the fireplace we had goldwater's books and we had all of the britannica great books. in my mind it was all just part of the same thing. in 1981 during this month, i

got to see ronald reagan speak. it was his first public appearance after his near assassination. he spoke on may 17 at the university of notre dame. i was only -- it altered my life. i was thinking about the soviet union and where america stood. it opened up a lot of things for me. i guess likely, even though we are -- like lee, even though we are different generation, i see myself walking between what is libertarianism and what is consumerism. the only way that the right has been successful in american history is when we have seen those two aspects of the right, at least none ideological left thinking come together.

what are we trying to conserve? if we are conservatives, what we want to conserve? i worry about this a lot, not because of heritage by any means, but quite the opposite. when i turn on the radio and i hear so much of what is being passed as conservatism as either crassness or commercialism. in some way there is this populism that pervades everything and i find it disgusting frankly. it doesn't strike me at all what conservatism was about. if you go back to russell kirk for the great libertarian friedrich hayek. i wanted to bring up three point that i think are important for what we need to conserve, what matters in our conservatism. why this matters for us as americans in western civilization. these three things are number 1, i think in some way -- if

you go back and you look in the 1950s the christian humanists of the time they are thinking about the fundamental dignity of the human person. some people took it too far. i don't think others such as hayek did. they had a good grounded center and what that personalism was. whether we call it individualism or personalism, i realize there are variations, i think in hindsight there is quite a bit in common. i think there is a lot we need to understand when we think about human dignity and it is hard for me not to think about one of the greatest figures of the last century, john paul ii defined the human person as an

unrepeatable center of dignity and liberty. it is one of the best definitions i have ever heard. that is better than anything hayek had but it is an understanding of where the person and individual is and i think that is fundamental. when we go back and look at the western tradition, they are constantly talking about this understanding of dignity, of free will. at what point are we determined? at what point do we make choices? that is fundamental to who we are as conservatives whether it is 1953 or 2018. the second thing that is important to conserve, we have to be able to conserve -- we have to figure out how to balance what is universally true for all peoples in all places at all times.

cicero said it doesn't matter if we are in ancient athens or modern republican rome when he was writing it. it doesn't matter if we are here in washington dc or if we are in he'll still michigan -- in hillsville michigan. if we are the second to last human to ever exist or the third human to ever exist. there is something true about the human person that corresponds to justice. it corresponds to knowing our place in the order of existence. meaning for example being born in 1967, why not 1867, 2067, questions i may not be able to answer but understanding who we are. my wife and i had a great time driving for eight hours. we had six kids. rarely do we get to talk. i can guarantee the moment we get into the car, my wife really likes to talk. she really likes me to listen.

there is a place there. there's a fundamental aspect of justice in knowing our position, knowing where we are, knowing how we respond to each other after 20 years of marriage and six kids. driving around dc, we didn't get to nippy -- snippy, but we are not urban people. i would can say to deidre, no this line, to mean right or left? this lane. i had no to respond how to respond to that. after 20 years there is that element of justice, something that is universal. in a new situation we had to figure out the particulars. we got it worked out. we are parked behind the laundry across the street and we are hoping the car will be there when we get out. we see that in all times and all places. there is a universal order to things but there's a particular manifestation. hillsdale michigan is not

washington dc. we have to recognize that there are fundamental differences in understanding the place within those things. the final thing we need to conserve and i take this directly from doctor kirk. we have an absolute duty as conservatives, this would have been taken for granted hundred years ago. conservatives and i mean this broadly, those who believes in freedom and order. we were the artist and the creators 100 years ago. the idea that the left has been able to capture the idea of creativity, the idea of innovation, this was something only in the 20th century and postmodern world. russell kirk understood that we as conservatives have to conserve our traditions. for us standing here in washington dc that means the

western tradition. there is nothing bigoted about the western tradition. it is not about white people, it is not about dead people. one of the greatest persons who ever lived in western civilizations was a north african, saint augustine. he is the central figure between ancient and modern world between africa and europe. he was certainly not caucasian in any way that we think. he was one of the greatest figures. he may be dead, being a catholic i assume he is dancing in heaven at this moment. he is gone from this world but one of my great exemplars, not out of central europe and not blonde haired or blue-eyed. we have to incur ourselves in a tradition. that tradition, going back to socrates, understanding the notion of what is humane, what

are the humanities? these great ideas of being a humanist in the proper sense, not of being a humanist in the secular version but understanding the place of humanity as lower than god but higher than the creatures. we have to understand this. this is an element of free will. it is an element of education. it is an element of the imagination. what to conclude with here and i will turn it over to bob, to go back to russell kirk and others who understood this beautifully, the ultimate thing we can do and we think about what we can conserve, we have to conserve what is loving and what is good. the common good, the common thing. this is our duty as americans but it is also our duty as citizens of the west. we have to preserve these

things and stand up and say this is worth preserving and this is not. we have to be prudent, just, temperate, we have to have fortitude, faith, hope, and love. this is critical. whatever society we are in if we are not willing to give of ourselves to our neighbor, we are not willing to sacrifice something, whether it is teaching, the love of the father, whatever it may be, we are nothing at all. that imagination, community, dignity means nothing unless we are willing to share those virtues and ultimately if we are willing to share and conserve love that is the highest thing we can conserve. >> i am delighted to be here and have all of you here. i am delighted to be a peer with these three people -- to be up here with these three

people. lee, i think you and i have known each other in this town for maybe 35 years or so. mutual respect and regard. it is a great pleasure. i am going to see if i can bring this discussion down to everyday politics. i am an old political reporter masquerading as an author and intellectual. i would like to begin by taking note of what i consider to be one of the truly remarkable 16 year. in american political history from 1964 to 1980 from the goldwater debacle to the reagan triumph. from a time when conservatism seemed finish -- finished to the time when it prevailed as the prevailing political force in the land.

i think we need to study this as we ponder where we are today because i think conservatism today is in crisis. as much as it was, one could say back in 1965 after that debacle. today it is ill-defined, it is at war with itself. it is scattered and it is not clear what is represented by it . if you attempt to discern what it is based on what people who call themselves conservatives in the government are actually doing. the first order of business by way of exploring this question is to ask what happened to reaganism. why did reagan -- reaganism not last as a political force in the same way that the legacies of a jefferson or a jackson or lincoln or roosevelt did? i think there are two things to

take note of in terms of the political aspects here. one is that the republican party basically abandoned reaganism. i am going to say here, especially the bushes, they kicked reaganism to the curb. the second point i would make is that the world has changed utterly. the cold war, the end of the cold war has created what we call the post cold war. it has no name for itself, it only has a name in relation to its previous era. what does that tell you? it tells you that we are in a crisis of the old order. we were in a crisis of the old order.

the old order of the world had died in 1914 and between 1914 and 1945 nothing had replaced it. we are in sort of a similar situation. in political terms conservatism has not come to grips with that fundamental reality. of having to adjust to a change in the world. when i say that the gop abandoned reaganism, what am i saying that it actually abandoned? to understand that i think it is necessary to give it a little bit of attention to what i consider to be a crucial political development in modern political history in america. that is the conversion of ronald reagan to supply-side

economics. that is key to understanding the history of conservatism since 1976. when reagan ran for president in 1976, it was being written about in the editorial page of the wall street journal and jack kemp was talking about it. it wasn't a significant point of view politically. it was brought to reagan's attention during that campaign. and he didn't bite. he wasn't interested. he did by the time he ran in 1980. we all know essentially what that is. cut taxes, marginal rate. it had to ramifications for reagan that bear notice. one is that it worked. it generated significant economic growth.

after reagan got through the recession of his early presidency which was an induced recession. the federal reserve chairman went to reagan and said i am going to squeeze inflation out of this economy, are you going to fight me on it? and reagan said no. that was a remarkable political gambler -- gamble on reagan's part. after he got through that recession, he generated an average gdp growth rate of 3.89%. the other thing i would note is that it served as an underpinning for a particular brand of what i'm going to call popular as him -- populism. it is not a pitchfork brand of populism with a lot of venom and anger. it is more

sophisticated than that. it is directed at the expanse of government and in many ways although reagan didn't use this term, what amounts to crony capitalism. the two foundations were faith and the ability of ordinary people to conduct their own economic affairs without a lot of intrusion from the government. secondly, a disk -- distrust of governmental and economic elite that control economic matters for tax code and currency manipulations to their own benefit. so, this brand of populism had two major political effects, first it made it possible for reagan to draw to his coalition , those reagan democrats and also a lot of young people who

had not been voting or interested in republican party up to that time. secondly, it fortified him against the allegation from democrats that he was just a country club republican who was a pool of the special interest of the rich and the privileged. he had an antidote to those attacks. they attacked him with that barrage and that allegation as they have every republican since. it didn't stick with reagan unlike every republican since. he had that antidote. i think it is because of that particular brand of populism. by way of explanation, let me explain how this works. let me explain why i call that populism. i'm going to use an analogy from the early decades of the republic when the government found itself with a great deal of land in the west and the question was how to dispose of that land.

the federalist and later the whigs wanted to sell that land at high prices because that would bring money into federal coffers that could be used by the governmental elite to create bridges and canal and roads all in the interest of national greatness. that was henry clay's american system. they had a good purpose but the democrats, the populace the jeffersonian's said give it away or sell it at low prices so people will flock out there and they will take that land and develop the land and they will build communities and churches and they will build up america from below as opposed to the elitist, the henry clay view that the elite would build up the country from above. now we have george herbert

walker bush and i tell you i cover those people. i covered the early reagan years in congress, the budget and tax legislation so i got to know all those people and i covered the reagan white house after the eighty four campaign and i got to know all the bush people . the one thing that struck me as they didn't believe in reagan. they didn't understand his success or the core of his success. they thought when they got in power they were going to know how to do it right. so they basically cast aside both the substance of the populism, that is to say tax cuts, no new taxes or tax increases which led to a drag on the economy. but they also abandoned the reagan populist rhetoric that made it possible to withstand the assault from the left and to pull those former democrats

to the circle. when bush threw away reagan's antidote, he threw away his presidency. the problem for reaganism is that when he lost to bill clinton, wasn't just viewed as a rejection of bush but it was viewed by many as a rejection of reagan. then we have bill clinton. what is interesting about bill clinton is not withstanding this assault of reaganism on the republican party, reaganism is still exercising significant pull. bill clinton got elected and he said his aim is to repeal reaganism. two years later as he tried to govern from the left and got his head handed to him, he said the era of big government is over. he crafted a means of getting

himself just in the right position left of center so he could govern as a democrat very successfully. the reason that he did that and the reason he had to do that was because of the ongoing pull of reaganism. then we had george w. if george herbert walker sort of out of disregard did a job on reaganism , george w just basically attacked it. constitutionalism, the grand iceman of the executive -- the grand eyes meant of the executive turned the policy over to the neocons to disastrous effects. the result of that, endless wars, middle east chaos, unnecessary tensions with

russia and widespread on ease -- unease. unlike reagan who knew he had to find a way to craft his policies and his rhetoric in a way that resonated with the american people. now we have people running foreign-policy don't care about that. so in abandoning reagan style populism, the republican party got instead -- and practical political terms american conservatism offers not much of a chance of capturing the come tree -- the country right now.

it wasn't dead, it appeared to be dead. is it not dead now? well, that is the question. i don't really have an answer. i didn't come here to give you an answer. that is my question. thank you. >> we have people who want to jump in. in 1964, 65 i was there. conservatives looked at that crushing defeat of barry goldwater and what did we do? in the face of liberals who said that we were through, that we were dead buried stone cold in the cemetery that is it,

goodbye to goldwater and to conservatism we did two things. we decided that we were going to become politically active and therefore we found it the american conservative. that was the political arm trying to figure out where we go from here. how do we build on the fact that 27 million people did vote for barry goldwater. frank myers said you can build a good political movement with a base of 27 million people. on the intellectual side we started the philadelphia society. and who was there at the beginnings of it in chicago talking about what is conservatism, that was the topic where milton friedman and russell kirk. and coming out of that was the beginning of where are we, what are the ideas,

what is the philosophical foundation for a political movement? because up until then it had been an actual -- and intellectual movement. we were fortunate because along came ronald reagan in 1966. we were able to transfer that energy and excitement that we engendered with barry goldwater to ronald reagan. that was a key thing. i think also one has to say that reagan was many things. one of the reasons he was so sick testable was that he was a man of intense ambition. he really wanted to be president. there has been some recent research which has shown he was trying hard to get the nomination in 68. i didn't realize that in my own

research. he was closer than a lot of people knew at that time. a man of intense ambition and also willing to be pragmatic about things and reaching out to people. if we are talking about leadership for the future we need charismatic leadership but we also need pragmatic leadership as well. just a few thoughts. i agree with you. those 16 years were key between 64 and 1980. >> can i jump in? >> yes, please. >> i became a conservative because of ronald reagan. i entered college in 1985 as a liberal and left as a conservative. all the best arguments and all the best writing was on the right. i became convinced. i wonder though if today if a ronald reagan is even possible

or do we expect too much? not only is the media landscape fragmented, the whole idea of authority is fragmented. in the 80s you read the national review in the american spectator. there were people you look to as authority figures and there were people who told you what conservatism men and what conservatives were to do. to even have that today and is that possible? i think part of the answer to these questions about where we go and what we might do to resurrect conservatism is asking ourselves what do we have to give up from the reagan era or from what we idealize from the reagan area to conserve what matters. i don't have the answer to that, but i think we have to be careful not to be too backward looking and forget that reagan emerged out of a specific time in a specific place in front specific problems and he won.

he triumphed. now we have different problems. i don't think anyone here is suggesting this but i think it is fair to ask some conservatives, is the problem we face now really we need more tax cuts and we need more foreign wars? i don't see what conservatism has to say much beyond that. i believe the tradition does, popular conservatism, i'm not seeing a lot more than that or saying no to what the liberals want to put out there. i'm happy for that but we need to have more than that. something bob said reminded me about a speech i heard by senator ben sass last fall. he spoke to evangelical philanthropist and i was present. he spoke for 45 minutes and didn't mention politics once. i thought that was unusual for

senator. what he said to the philanthropist was we are going into a time of intense turmoil, the likes of which we haven't seen for a long time in this country. he said what you need to do is devote your time and your treasure to helping build resilient local communities. social science tells us that there are four things people need to be stable and happy and to thrive. they need to have a religion or philosophy that explains suffering and death to them. they need to have a family. they need to have a core group of good friends they can count on and they need to have meaningful work. the senator said we are entering a time when all four of those things will be challenged intensely and if we are going to make it as a society through that, we have got to help people to stay resilient in the face of all these pressures. he didn't mention politics once. politics are important but i

would say that focusing on the local culture and facing these problems identified is the most important thing that conservatives can do. >> i love what has been said. there are so many things that can be said about reagan in particular. i will just try to make two points. if we go back to 1953 when kirk published the conservative mind , there were just as many divisions more than now. we had liberalism of hyatt, the anarchism of albert knox. we had mccray bradberry. humanism of babbitt and more. one of the things that kirk was able to do was take that decentralized aspect of things and give it a coherent voice at

least for a while. that does allow for goldwater to rise and for reagan. my second point and i will freely admit, much like rod, reagan was shot when i was in seventh grade. i remember our vice principal coming on and telling us he was dead and he was not but that was the worry after the assassination attempt. i remember sitting in notre dame in 1989 when the wall fell and he will always be that president for me. it strikes me that reagan gave us 20 years. he gave us 20 years abroad and he gave us 20 years at home. the economics of sass, the seven fat years. we lived off of that until

2008. one of the reasons he created the 600 ship navy and the military he did was not that we would become an empire but so that we can end an empire and then retrench. he made a calculation and that was we will do everything possible to defeat the soviet union and hopefully people in the future after that victory people will do the right thing. as bob said, they kicked raven -- reagan to the curb. that sort of salvation we had in the west lasted 20 years and we blew it. we have troops in 150 out of the 200 countries. we have military bases everywhere. we don't have any coherent foreign policy. we just go and react. those are all things reagan would have just aboard in every way. -- abhorred in every way. i think he would -- we kicked him

to the curb.>> one distinction i viewed between 1953 and today, not to take anything away from your point, but in 1953 we knew what the issues were. the world had been re-created through the cataclysm of world war ii. roosevelt created a new world with america at its center. that was clear to everybody. we had a cold war and that was a problem and a menace and certainly had psychological implications. we knew what the arrow was. we knew how it was defined -- we knew what the era was. we knew how it was defined and today we don't. that makes a larger challenge for conservatives and for liberals and for anyone in the arena. that is one of the reasons why in my view our politics has

become so venomous and so poisoned. that is going to continue until some kind of a new era emerges to replace the old one and to replace the transition be between the old and the new that we are living through today without realizing. >> we will go to the audience for our q&a. let me just make one point if i may. talking brad, about wars getting involved in them and the reagan era. if you go back and study that decade you will see how very careful reagan was in his use of force. if there was a problem, he would use force but it was more than adequate to solve it as quickly as possible with minimal loss of life. particularly he said i'm not going to send men to fight in

nicaragua or in afghanistan. what he did was to support anti- communist forces in both of those countries. he was someone who truly believed in peaceful strength. a phrase used by dwight eisenhower and reagan borrowed. i remember meeting with the kgb colonel who was trying to pump me for information about the inside story on ronald reagan because i had written a book about him. i kept telling him, he doesn't want more. what he wants is an opportunity to sit down and talk with you guys. of course you keep dying on him. you can get a leader who doesn't die, and reagan will sit down and talk with him. he was saying he is not talking about dropping a bomb on moscow. he is talking about sitting down at the bargaining table. that is precisely what happened.

and one more little thing. the last time i met with this with my kgb buddy in 1985. gorbachev had just been picked as general secretary in the communist party of the soviet union. he looked around and he said about gorbachev, he is different. he is different. even a kgb guy could see he was something -- there was something special about gorbachev and that is how it turned out to be. >> we need to finish up tonight so we can go watch the american.>> let's see what our deadline is. so questions from the audience. yeah, here we are. please. if you would be so kind as to identify yourself and try to

keep your orations down as much as possible. >> i am a professor that is difficult. nigel from the institute of humane studies. american conservatism has been described as being based on three pillars, free-market economics, cultural traditionalism and strong foreign policy. is that a good description of conservatism today and should it be? >> i will be happy to tackle that. i am fine with it. i think where my problem may arise is on strong foreign policy. i don't know what that means but if it means the american foreign-policy since george w. bush post 9/11 i'm against it so i'm against strong foreign policy. i am not against america being

in the world, we have too much power and interest and we have too much of a role to play for stability. going overseas in search of monsters to destroy and to remake societies in our image and all of that is a disaster. it has bend and it is going to continue. i expect we are going to continue to do it. so i'm very worried about it. >> about the culture of religious tradition, i think that was a fair description at one point. i don't know that it still is at all. i am not only talking about the collapse of religious faith especially among the young but also the falling apart of the family. i think one of most important stories of our time is the collapse of the white working craft. the african-american working- class has been suffering for a long time. we see middle-class people of all races, young people suffering from great anxiety, a loss of a sense of purpose and

on and on. you can read lots about this. this is not coming -- this is a manifestation of a week traditional cultural. i gave a talk at a conservative christian college and i was talking to the professors there and i said this must be a good place to teach, you must see great things among the students and they said actually we worry a lot about the kids because they come here with no cultural background, very thin sense of religion or doctrine or anything like that and they come from broken families. one of the professors said i doubt that most of our students will be able to form a stable family. i was shocked. this is a conservative evangelical college. i looked around the table and all the professors nodded. and i said why ever not? and they said because they have never seen it. the decay is pretty deep here.

i am not saying this to get dreamy that we have to get back to the bible and all that. a lot of the 1980s -- i'm talking about a fundamental traditionalism. not only religious but cultural. finally our friend patrick who will be speaking tomorrow night at the american conservative gala said something that shocked me. he wrote a column that got a lot of attention a few years ago talking about his students at notre dame. he said these are the best and the brightest. they come here and work hard. they are ambitious and they have ticked all the boxes off but they are blank. they don't know anything about where they came from or where they are going. they know nothing about the history and cultural of their own country and their own civilization. it scares him frankly.

it is not the fault of the kids, it is the fault of the adults who have failed them. >> questions? okay, we will come down there. thank you.>> i want to speak to the role that immigration plays in our current conservative crisis. in our current system we have a lot of immigration without efforts of assimilation. is it sustainable to ask the question of how to conserve what we have if we are allowing the number of people who come and who are unaware of whatever culture is? >> i will be happy to take a stab at that one. i think there is a metric to watch and look at and that is the percentage of foreign-born in the country at any given moment. that percentage is reaching 14%. the last time it had 14% in our

nation there was a significant backlash in the 1920s as a result of the immigration, mostly from eastern and southern europe from about 1890 forward. what strikes me about the open border people and the people who don't care about this, other than the healthy development in american history is that you can't get them to tell you what they think that number should be or any number that reflects the level of integration because it is not just a question of bringing people in, it is a question of assimilation. 14% in my view, and i think the american people census collectively and they sensed it the last time, that constitutes a challenge of assimilation that they think could be to the

nation at large if it continues. at that point your questions -- question becomes very after. assimilation and closing off the influx to the extent that assimilation can happen much more normally and naturally is in order. >> i will jump in if you don't mind, bob. it is fascinating to me and i think i am probably contrary to a lot of modern conservatives in my own views but historically you look at just how peoples have moved, we know that people's move almost anytime they can when they don't have security. that is a constant in world history. the only time they stop is when they don't have the technology. being stuck at the atlantic

until they can cross. or the pacific and vice versa. we see that constantly. in the american tradition we had a very long period, almost 100 years from john quincy adams being secretary of state all the way until 1921 with the exception of the chinese and the gentlemen's agreement of the japanese we had free borders and free movement of people and capital. we had incredible motion everywhere in the united states. now of course these problems are serious issues. our tradition has always been one of allowing peoples to move pretty freely. we don't see major restrictions until 1921. and then again in 1924 and then we have to wait again until 1964 and 65 to see major restrictions on immigration. our tradition has been one

thing. where we are at in modern america has been something else. for me, i missed when the republicans became the party of closed borders. that happened during my lifetime but i don't remember a moment where transitioned. i remember talking to people in california who were upset about immigration from latin america and texans who were happy about it and then suddenly it became something different among those conservatives who became very restrictive. >> we must talk about it and i don't see this conversation we are having right here now being conducted at a national level. i don't see members of congress doing it or members of the senate doing it. frankly i don't see conservatives doing it. we need to get at this and talk about it. i think what brad is saying about all the sudden he is saying that is interesting, what does that mean?

do we just ignore those 100 years or do we say we are in a different. or do we draw upon that? i don't know what the answer is but i think we need more talk and more discussion, more debate. there is no more vital issue then immigration. >> one point i would make is that whatever those policies were during those hundred years , they did not manifest themselves in terms of a foreign-born percentage anything approaching 14%. >> the massive influx was not possible because of the technology factor. it didn't create that question or problem or challenge that i'm referring to. but let's point this out. in the first republican debate in 2016, immigration came up. donald trump said we wouldn't

be talking about this if it weren't for me. and that is true. all the established politicians wanted to finesse that issues throughout 2016. why? because they can't control it in the middle of the campaign. they can control it in the legislative session and setting. that is what they wanted to do. so let's not talk about it. then trump comes down the escalator and in his crude very awful manner essentially says about mexican immigration that it can be ignored anymore. my view is that because the established parties ceded the issue to this crude guy because they were trying to finesse it, they should have been addressing it in a responsible manner.

>> i used to be of the editorial board of the dallas morning news in the last decade. in the 2000's immigration to texas was an enormous issue. our board took an aggressive stand for immigration reform at the national and state level. i don't have a particular passion about immigration one way or another but i noticed after a while that everyone on our board, whether they were republican or democrat, we had a good mix, we also had white, black, hispanic, everyone thought immigration was a good idea. we didn't see the people in our own city who suffered from integration. i went out to some of the immigration -- some of the neighborhoods that were suffering that were overwhelmed by the tide of immigration, illegal immigration from mexico and it was striking. going out and seeing the neighborhoods and talking to people made me realize that us

on the editorial board, our impact was in the restaurants. we got great ethnic food. it was being able to get good gardeners and people to work for us. we didn't have to send our kids to the school that were suddenly overwhelmed by kids who didn't speak any english and the school had to deal with them. we didn't have to use the public hospital like poor white and black people and latino people who were citizens. these were invisible to us and so therefore immigration issue i came to feel was in many ways a chance for us to virtue signal. we are not like those redneck butlers out there who can't stand mexicans or whatever. i thought about that a lot when trump came out and was so successful that. i don't agree the way trunk -- trump talks about immigrants i

think it is ugly in many ways but at least he was talking about it. we middle-class people in dallas did not see. but if we saw them it was only to put them down for being bigots. secondly i want to say, if you haven't read this new book by the yale law professor called political tribes, one of the things she says is that history shows us that in policies where there is no one dominant minority, things become really unstable and can turn into violence. she doesn't say it will happen to us but she says we have to be careful about it as america transitions from being a majority white nation to being one in which no particular minority dominates. history shows us that this could go really bad for us if we're not

careful at how we manage it. and that is probably the best reason to put a cap on immigration right now until we can stabilize things. >> i think we can see from this just how this issue generates some real strong opinions. i just want to throw in myself one thing. that is an idea, the americanization of emily, i think it was in a book. to me that is a major issue when you start talking about immigration. assimilation but education and the american -- of people coming here. if they are legal they should be willing to accept our culture and our language, our ideas and our ideals. that is also a part of this greater debate which we need to conduct on immigration where

people keep on going. yes, please. gentlemen in the back row here. you okay -- >> he was not really a conservative but in many ways he was a much more intelligent and much more military version of donald trump until the same sort of people. i have given my opinion but i leave it with you. >> i'm sorry i didn't care. >> richard nixon especially compared to trump. >> no, he was not. in many ways he was a brilliant

politician but he was also a tragic figure his own worst enemy. there has been a lot written about him. the most recent book by jack, i am trying a blank here. wonderful book, looking at him from the left that attempts to understand what is driving this guy and ultimately the pressures of the presidency drove him to his tragic political end. in political terms he was something of a phony. he didn't believe in anything. he certainly was no conservative. he managed to get conservatives behind him. that was a rather interesting trick. >> isn't that what trump has done? >> trump has some conservative instincts but he is not a

conservative by any stretch.>> from a conservative point of view, richard nixon was remembered by many conservatives as the man who got alger hiss. because of that conservatives for gave richard nixon again and again and again. being able to do that, getting alger was such a key issue in 48 through 50. because if he had survived, that would have been a mortal blow to the cause of anti- communism. with his conviction, with his going to jail, it showed that it was possible to be an anti- communist and to be part of that coalition which ultimately became confucianism. >> howard thank you for the

question. i don't have a great opinion on nixon one way or another. i did when i was working on russell kirk. i found this great letter in 1962 from a guy from general motors who was raising money for goldwater. he said the problem with raising money for goldwater is when he would take goldwater and nixon around to various groups to get money, nixon would always say yes, whatever it was that the group wanted. and goldwater would lecture them on how they were wrong and they could never raise money for goldwater. i always thought that was a great story to compare those two. >> yes, in the back. >> when reagan ran for president, he did not have much conservative infrastructure.

there was no washington time, no talk radio, no internet, no leadership institute. now i am rather hopeful that there is a huge conservative infrastructure in place in the country with lots of information , you can now research milton friedman and see videos on youtube. with that in mind, do you have greater hope that conservatives can do better? >> i loved earlier when rod was saying we have to think about this decentralization. part of bob saying that we have this populism, i would use the term probably charisma for reagan more than populism. i have not had the experience that rod had at the christian school, certainly where i see my students in hillsdale, i

won't say they will come in fully formed because they are 18 , they are amazing and they doubtful me every year but i am humbled by them every year. i find them impressive and granted i am in a place that is probably a little bit weird and unusual in the best sense. i do think that there is a hunger, i have seen a lot of great scholars. young scholars, lauren hall, abby hall. think of the number of people in their late 20s early 30s right now who are doing fantastic things in political science and economics and so forth. think about someone on fox news who is doing very interesting things. there are a lot of possibilities. this decentralization while it is always a problem also has so many opportunities and there are so many things that as long as we can find someone to find a voice, to give us a voice like reagan did or kirk in a more intellectual way, old water in between, i think that

there is always a possibility of someone coming forth and being able to grab the imagination of a generation my own experience has been students contrary to being immoral or being lost, they want stories of truth. you want stories of heroism and exemplars. they want to hear about those things because they are looking for those answers and they are not as objective as we think they are. >> i will say very briefly that i have a love-hate relationship with the conservative industrial complex. on the one hand absolutely no that institutions are critical to the formation of the next generation. that is one of the reasons i believe so strongly that the republicans have got to fight for religious liberty. we have to protect the ability

of our institutions to educate and inform the next generation. that is what is under threat right now. at the same time, i wonder that having lived in washington and enjoyed working in washington, also having seen how young people come to washington. idealistic about conservatism. they become part of the board. -- board. they lose the idealism that brought them here. they come here to being enamored of just holding onto power. this is one of the reasons the republican party has lost its way. i think a renewal intellectually of conservatism will need to have this infrastructure in place and i'm glad we have it. it will need to nurture these ideas outside the imperial city to bring the renewal and from the outside -- renewal in from

the outside. >> yes, please. thank you. >> when we see the challenges of conservatism from rising nationalism. >> i think it is a huge problem and a huge danger. i don't know of any really good examples where nationalism can be healthy. i find it problematic. it is dangerous, it is exclusive. i think it is very and so -- anti-liberal and anti-western traditionally. >> on the other hand what do nations like poland and hungary and czech republic have to defend themselves against the eu and globalism. i don't like nationalism either , but it is all they have a --

all they have at this point. >> they are saying it is in their last throes but it keeps coming back. as long as that nationalism is balanced i think there is a place for it. after all we are an exceptional nation. i believe that myself. it seems to me that that is something that ought to be honored. every nation thinks they are an exceptional nation and every nation is right about that. when i go to france i love that. i wanted to be france and not be absorbed into a generic shopping mall federation. >> it goes right back to my point, the nationstate is important. whether it is france or america. >> one last question. >> george with the center for the national interest.

i have spent my career studying the soviet union and then russia. i wanted to ask you about the relationship between liberty and virtue, something you had brought up in the discussion because that has been a very prominent question for me looking at that part of the world. the soviet union was a good example of a country that had neither liberty nor virtue. very easy for conservatives to unite around anti-soviet schism. russia, a country that had liberty been over to that didn't work out very well. -- liberty but no virtue. we have a specific case where there is a lot of liberty and not very much virtue in -- and that is in silicon value. we -- this doesn't seem to be working out very well in a lot

of ways. i'm wondering if you can comment about how conservatives can approach that specific topic of social media, internet freedom large almost monopoly business practices and virtue. how do we approach that vexing problem? >> i am not sure there is a solution to it. if you look at the trajectory of the west you have to conclude that the west is in decline and it is in decline in a host of ways. one of those ways has to do with the disciplines of life. the pursuit of virtue. part and parcel of our

civilization and now isn't. it got infected the intellectual elite in the 19th century in europe for example. what is interesting about that is that those people look down on ordinary people, on the middle classes the emerging middle classes. without any conception that someday those middle classes were going to absorb all that and it was going to become part of their popular cultural. so silicon value, i agree. it seems to be part of an ongoing trend that rod has been grappling with so brilliantly and so helplessly for a long time. >> you are right.

it is really hard to know where we stand, where to stand because the effectiveness of technology on the way we live, on everything about us is immense and it is going to get even more immense. there is a guy i follow on twitter, he used to work for facebook, he is doing a piece on virtual reality pornography and he had to look at some of it for the story he is doing and he said it is over, something to that effect meaning how do people once they have given themselves over to technology, how do they find the strength to do anything? it is not really a joke. i don't know how we deal with it. i don't believe silicon value -- valley is an favor of liberty so much as -- there is

a really interesting book by a historian that came out last year and he talks with great excitement and technology and silicon valley which is the promised land of tech utopians in the kind of power it is going to give us to reengineer what it means to be a human being. i don't know that there is anyway politics can stop this at all. i think that individually we don't have to surrender to it. this is why whenever i give talks about the benedict option, what is the -- people say what can we do as a family? they say take the smartphones away from your kids and don't get caught up in it yourself. once you go down that road it is hard to get out of it and you will lose any sense of

virtue. you will become so disconnected from the real world that there may be no coming back. i talked to people on college campuses and elsewhere who are seeing what this is doing to young people and their inability to focus or inability to know of anything beyond their immediate desires. i say this to someone who makes his living off the internet and who really loves the good things that technology has bought us. but i believe that we have to work very hard to be the master of it and not let it become our masters. i don't know that the thought even occurs to most people, though. >> it seems to me as we talk about our own experience and i have been fortunate enough to have been an adjunct professor at a catholic university for 31 years. i had to work my fanny

off to get my degree. i say to my students, the first thing is put away the iphones. put them away. put away the pads and all the other things. we are just going to have a discussion and a lecture for an hour and a half. and that is the latest. every now and then i will look down and i will see someone has his head lowered and he is doing this, i know he is cheating a little bit. there are so many wonderful young people, i see the interns , 250 that come through every year. i know the work of isi and the fund for american studies and young americans for freedom and students for liberty, not just conservative organizations. also the leadership institute. hundreds maybe thousands of young people are being educated

that way and are being influenced it that way with the good and the true. i am an optimist. i always have been and i will be. i think if you can capture a little of that this evening along with some good solid and brilliant analysis for our three panels. please join me in thanking them. >> how do you feel about beer? >> let's get some right now. >> a very serious question.

>> c-span's washington journal, line every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up thursday morning for the republican congressman will discuss the u.s. withdrawal from the iran nuclear deal and the upcoming talk with north korea over its nuclear program. and washington state congressman woman will join us to talk about immigration and the investigation of russia's role in the 2016 presidential election. be sure to wash c-span's washington general life thursday morning -- live thursday morning.

join the discussion. >> on thursday alex is our will testify before senate appropriations committee about his 2019 budget request. live coverage begins at 10 am eastern right here on c-span three. >> monday on landmark cases, regions of the university of california, alan was twice rejected admission to the university of california davis medical school. he claimed he was passed over in favor of less qualified minority applicants and took the university of california system to court. the supreme court decision struck down the university specific admissions program and upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action under the 14th amendment. our guest to discuss this case is neil who served as acting administrator in the obama administration and randy

barnett, professor at georgetown law center, a libertarian and an originalist constitutional legal scholar and commentator. life on monday night at 9 pm eastern on c-span. join the conversation. our hashtag is landmark cases and follows at c-span and we have resources on our website, the landmark cases companion book. >> connect with c-span to personalize the information you get from us. go to c-span got ordered -- >> word for word gives you the most interesting daily video highlights in their own words with no commentary. the book tv and newsletter sent we quickly