famous a house divided speech. and like president our author today our audience here i strongly suspect it and our c-span audience c-span. indeed our entire country is concerned about the state, our union and today we gather and seek to know where we are and whether are attending with the help of what our author and our speaker, timothy goeglein calls a roadmap for a unified future of our country. and that roadmap is his new book, stumbling toward utopia how the 1960s turned into a national nightmare and how we can revive the american dream, which we'll be discussing. and in fact, he will be signing books after the event and there will be box lunches available after we're done speaking as well. and there, i think a few free copies left as well. hillsdale college in d.c. which

is remodeling and expanding our d.c. campus on capitol hill right now. and so most gratefully rely the help of the conservative partnership institute host this event thank you cpi very much hillsdale has a graduate of government here on capitol hill. so we think a lot about the of the union about lincoln and about what to do our country and how better to it. my name is matthew meehan. i'm the associate dean of our van andel graduate school of government here in town. and i believe lincoln quoting the gospel of matthew was correct. a house divided against itself cannot stand. and i believe that this american government and this great country cannot stand much in the state in which the 1960s have left us. a people half enslaved to our passions and half free. if we do not understand how we have come to this present moment of cultural and political war as

our author puts it, then we may become entirely enslaved to our passions. and in a state of and more crippling and permanent war with our own american heritage and our own human nature. or we could, with some hard thinking and, strong hope, and the american dream, we could become once again a free people. the house divided. what is that house? a rhetorical cynic key for. the american family using the part the house to stand for the whole american family. i can think of no one better to help us understand how we've lost and how we can regain the american family spirit. then my friend timothy goeglein, the vice president of external and government relations at focus on the family here in washington, dc. tim is a family man himself, a long time public servant, an author, an art lover and a patriot. and what is more, tim is a man

studious meaning full of loving zeal, is studious in the of the american dream. and i'm very pleased to welcome to the podium now mr. timothy goeglein. jack paar once said with an introduction like that, i should say thank you and good night. thank you, matthew. i very appreciate it. and i very much appreciate all of you spending part of your day with us. of course. welcome, c-span. i've been a fan of c-span since it went on the air and i've been a fan of hillsdale my my entire life and very grateful to focus on the family we are, you know, people who work together, institutions ministries that work together. so it's it's a real honor to be in league with, all of you. and it's a particular tour honor, if i may say, to come

today to to hillsdale and cpi to to talk about my fourth book, which is just out stumbling towards utopia and in my that focus on the family, i travel about a third of the time. i spend lot of time on airplanes living of suitcases, etc., and i a lot when i'm on the road i speak to our two audience is in groups that people would call or say deeply blue and progressive. i speak to audiences that. people here would say are ruby red and conserve votive. and i speak to a number of audiences that are mostly non ideological. and i'm comfortable in all of them. and one of the common threads after a speech, a debate or remarks is something like this how did we get in to the mess that we are in? and if people have children and grandchildren they say, i'm not

only worried about my country, but i am particularly worried about the country. the the civilization that i'm leaving to the next generation. and so about two years ago, after this common, you know, iteration after traveling, i out a small stack of of american airlines napkins and i began to scratch an outline of a book that i hoped would answer the question, how did we get into this mess? not any mess, but this mess, this incredibly polarized, uneven time that we find ourselves in and i love to delve into empirical research data. i love to read. and the more that i research, the more that i read, the the

point was kept coming back to the 1960s. and i began to ask myself, did it really all begin in 1967, 68, earlier with the great society party? and i found that the answer was no, i found the answer and made it the of my book, which that if you want to understand the moral and social revolution of america in the 1960s and the seventies, you really have to go back to the turn of the 20th century and. frankly, it was at the turn of the 20th century, relatively speaking. a handful of, very influential men and women who were uncomfortable with the american way of life they were uncomfortable with the

declaration of independence, the constitution. they were uncomfortable with the natural nuclear family. they were uncomfortable with churches and seminaries. they were uncomfortable with entertainment. they were uncomfortable, overwhelmed tingly with the american experience. and if you trace the line, the 19 teens and twenties down to 1963, four or five, six, seven, eight, what you find is that all of the seeds that were planted proactively at the turn of the 20th century came to germination and fruition. in 67, 68 and 69. and being a man, i'd like to demonstrate in a powerpoint that i've that i brought along and i'd like to go if i very quickly

to one of the most distinguished circuit court judges in the united states, harvey wilkinson, he wrote a fabulous memoir of his growing up. and i particularly loved the the parts of his memoir on the 1960s. and he said to over come the sixties, we must first understand them, one must go back in time in to move forward. i thought that was a kind of a beautiful thesis sentence for the research that i was beginning to undertake. i talk about a small coterie of people at, the beginning of stumbling utopia and. i and i could talk at greater i've written a greater length, as you will, about some of this handful of progressives that i think did enormous damage to constitutional our way of life, and also to the kind of what i

think of as the unwritten constitutional way life, family, parenting, human life, religious liberty rights, basic magnanimity and civility in the public square education both higher education and the classroom an elementary middle school and and high schools and just for today at hillsdale picked out a kind of for example paul's beginning with john dewey if you really want to understand the radicalism of what happened to education. culminating in the 1960s and 70 piece, generally speaking, look no further than john are very with the judaic christian tradition, very, very uncomfortable with objective standards of reading arithmetic

as, the principal, you know, with the formation of character, the primary role of of public or government schools and frankly, in private schools as well. he was also think it's important to say, putting totally unimportant with expressions of faith and religion which he felt really was outside overwhelmingly outside the role of american education. next is margaret sanger the founder of planned a woman who early in the american experience was particularly uncomfortable with large sectors of the american people. she was a eugenicist on steroids she was very denominational. she with with with those in our american community broadly

outside of what you i would say were denominational lay white anglo-saxon and american you know kind of what became progressive protestantism. she had a very big role in shifting american protestantism, too, to a very progressive way of of an expression of a worldview. next is roger baldwin, the founder of the american civil liberties union communist, a man who again deeply uncomfortable with the american legal system, deeply uncomfortable ball with the constitution. and and frankly a person who was over to shift and change the american legal system as it was understood practiced this whole basic of just and the constitution as.

the centerpiece of it is much outside the worldview of of roger baldwin and of course, in my view, here we are, washington, d.c. but i think now we have not an adequately plumbed the depths of. destructive ten year of president wilson who came out of higher education and, who very early on in his graduates studies, even before he was the of an important university and an academic, a scholar he expressed extreme with the with the declaration with the three branches of of government and. and and so i think if we want to to ourselves by the time sixties arrived who the main idea generators who are giving us the

the the radical ism of the 1960s. if you want to look at education you can begin a conversation in the writing and world view of dewey the sexual revolution. margaret sanger the law legal frontal assault on our constitutional way of life and i and very important american legal system roger baldwin and frankly on politics by way i'm eager to say in the republican party, in the democratic party, many of the ideas of wilson are really the 1960s are adopted and practiced at different levels of both both american parties. woodrow wilson by the way this is you know concurrent before his present see he says that the rhetorical introduce and i love this the rhetorical introduction

to the declaration independence is the least part of it if you want to understand the real declaration of independence do not repeat the preface that to me in one sense is the leitmotif of over and over and over for the kind of wilsonian progressivism that will result in a large way in the 1960s. and by the way, i really believe and i devote enormous amount of time stumbling toward utopia to the now large forgotten port huron statement. the statement of sds. if someone to say, if you had to pick one document that really is the summation, the the the synthesis of the 1960s and the way that american higher

education would then be and overtaken and reformulated and used as truncheon against culture and the american way of life. i would point to the port huron statement and and my friend al mohler, who written at length about the part here on statement i think beautiful summarizes it and i'll just conclude where he does they the sds supercharged marxism with an even more utopian vision and i think that this is important to say and something that i wanted to say in stumbling toward utopia what is american progressivism in my view and my conclusion as you will see in the book my view is that it's rooted in a utopian version of the perfect stability of man.

and if you can just socially engineer the universities the media government, the law, legal professions, literature, the arts and humanities, popular entertainment, not only the fine arts that you will eventually get to the kind of transfer of the united states america that the radicals of the sixties and seventies saw it. by the way, when you hear people say, as i said earlier, how did we get to moment? it was? not by a series of kind coincidences. it was deliberate. it was well thought out. and there is an idea, aka texture to the radicalism a moral and social that results ultimately in the era in which we find ourselves, in the

polarization, the polarization that we see today was held up as absolutely. for the success of the triumph of progressivism in the sixties and seventies. and i'll show that in just a moment you know, during presidential campaigns in the nineties, in the early 2000s, there was resurrected the discussion of of a major figure of the 1960s, saul alinsky and and his book rules for radicals. and i remember when this was was first raised thinking it be an obscure writer, obscure scholar, etc. but it turns out that this single text had beyond and outside influence on who would

eventually go into single sector of life, including public policy and politic. it is not an overstatement to say that two of the leading progress of our own era. former first lady and us senator hillary clinton and former us barack obama were deeply, deeply influenced by the scholarship and the action plan of saul alinsky. and the rules for by the way, he he you can't make this up up and for some of you who may not know this but he most of us who write books we have a dedication page. we pick out our our spouse, our children, friends, someone who's been particularly important. and to us, saul alinsky dedicated rules for to lucifer

and he and writes why and spoke later in life why dedicated rules radicals the ultimate and sixties radical document to the devil and he's very clear in in interviews that followed about he chose to do this by the way just for time purposes. i will not go through all the rules for radicals which by the way 1 to 13 are being employed in 2024, by the way, not just in politics, i would say mostly in politics. i would say mostly in culture. and i'm eager for turn for reasons of my book talk to to evoke point 13, which is pick the target freeze personalize it and polarize it for some of who

have perhaps read saul alinsky and i've read enough saul alinsky to last me you know 14 lifetimes but i have through the years spoken written at length about polarization extreme polarization, the period of the american revolution, extreme polarization during the period of the civil extreme polarization in the nullification crisis, etc. watergate, vietnam, but i really, through work of many of the progressives mentioned, but none more so than saul alinsky, that polarization is baked into the dna that that that there's this recurring pattern that people who are the first ones to say there's too much polarization and that we need

more harmony more civility which. by the way, i put as a high principle civility, magnanimity, grace, unapologetic about your public policy, your cultural views. but i a premium on civility. and i learned that of the radicalism and, moral revolution of the sixties seventies was deliberately and recommended to polarize asian. by the way, if we the sixties for nothing else, in my view, in my strongly held our american revolution, never called the american revolution called the cause by people lived in that period of american life. our american revolution actually, by and large, was a conservative revolution. but believe the 1960s and seventies are french revolution.

i think if you had to pick a corollary in the american experience to the french. you would you would. paris and and none more so than these three figures who my view were worthy or depending on your view unworthy inheritors of sanger's views. and that is alfred kinsey and masters and johnson, the -- ification of american culture. the complete transgress massive attack on what been called traditional or judaic christian ethics and moral understanding, by the way, broadly defined. you know, america after the work of kinsey and masters johnson

categorically was never the same again and their direct of their research study, but above advocacy unethically. by the way, in my in my personal view had a direct influence on on immediately on what would come after them. american culture for instance. and i'm using just one example, but alfred inspired hugh hefner to playboy magazine. he encouraged helen gurley to turn cosmopolitan magazine into a sex manual for women he took the pornography industry, which was mostly underground and it mainstream, resulting in millions of broken lives and, marriages and karl truman, a friend and scholar, i think, summarizes it very, very importantly when he says in short, the tradition of seeing

world as driven by sex that. kinsey's reports inaugurate is responsible for the fact that we now see the world as driven by sex. and by the way, we've arrived in 2024 at the lowest fertility rates and the lowest marriage rates in recorded american history. oh, by the way, i went back to hef just briefly by the way, the abusive sense of, the so-called playboy view of life is very important. but in 1953, when the first issue of playboy arrives on the newsstands as kind of a prelude to to what we see in the sixties many people wanted to believe, it's hype about enhancing the sophistication and urbanity of american men. by today it's harder, as mary eberstadt is saying, i'm quoting mary here, it's harder to pretend that the mainstreaming pornography has been anything but a disaster year for romance and a prime factor in today's

break ups in social consumer. i think mary ever scott is right on point here. and by the way, hugh hefner himself says that we believe that this is the royal we believe we are filling publishing need only slightly less important than the one just taking care of by the kinsey report. and of course, we are a long way even now from from that particular era. by the way, i devote of stumbling toward utopia of the demonstrable a impact on america education and. i'm tying this in part to but to many other people were directly impacted by duke by by dewey the 1960s and seventies. and just one of many examples is where we've resulted in the new math and i use sally from

peanuts where she says renaming two subsets joining sets, number of sentences, placeholders and she says in frustration, all i want to know is how is two and two? and i think most people understand in the era we're in, we're education has become so scrambled and too often in the opposite direction of of of object tivity, not just in reading, writing, arithmetic, science, math biology, etc. it all comes together in the matrix of what the sixties has has foisted on our nation and. i wanted to spend a little time in the book about the impact not just on the fine arts, which, by the way, the impact of the sixties. then and now is enormous but also on popular. yeah you watch popular in.

1950s and even the early sixties and you draw a bright line up to 68, 69. now we're into the early seventies. it's if you are in in different galaxies, you know, the idea that at one moment you could have academy award picture of the year, you know, in the category you know, of of casablanca, etc., etc. and, only by the 1960s when any code has been completely from filmmaking and entertainment that we could actually to conferring the academy award on an x rated movie is is almost beyond control and in tell of vision. norman lear used popular

television to foist and to further a deeply political agenda and this is also concur and with many of who are the originators of the radical revolution of which i speak which is to inject politics into every factor and sector of life. and no one did it especially on the most cutting edge moral with more success than. norman lear, by the way, it's important in the age of aquarius to actually go back, because i do in stumbling toward utopia, to look at what was actually happening in woodstock, what was happening in 1969. by the way, the impact of of, of

drugs and narcotics relations between the sexes. the whole idea of of the kind of music and culture that was held up as as the future in american life really is comes to culmination in that that we rightfully remember as woodstock. i would say in one sense the apotheosis this of the moral and social radicalism that stumbling toward utopia analyze. this, by the way, very. this impact in the explosion of the federal government and in the moral quotient aside kind to our national debt and deficit is, i think too easily overlooked where we have arrived?

i'm going to show this in just a moment. at a $34 trillion debt and growing because cause of the unconscious attitudinal manner in which government and the administrative is now employed. and this, of course, directly from great society, the so-called great society. i would encourage all of us to go back and the universe of michigan statement from president lyndon johnson and what was going to happen, you know, after the murder of president john kennedy the control of progressives in the senate and the house was categorical and in a very short period of time less than two years. the great society was drafted, voted on and employed for the time injecting the federal

government into the american family a way that it had never been injected before, directly into marriage, directly into the classrooms at every level of american education. and by the way, after spending $22 million, thus far in the so-called war on poverty, there has been little no progress. in fact, poverty has gotten worse. and go through in the book to show the promises, the rhetoric of the great society and the reality. by 2024, by the way, in 1962, according the congressional research services, three years before the great society, mandatory spending mandatory was only 30% of the federal budget. it is currently nearly 60% and continues to rise. interest on the national debt will consume all federal tax revenues. by 2045, leaving nothing left

over for discretionary. but programs such as defense and medical research, the great society did cultural and fiscal damage. by the way, the on our inner cities. i write in the book about the moynihan report. right now this is only 1965 and he would of course, become one of our great democrat, us senators from new york. but pat moynihan found that in 1968, 25% of all black americans were born outside of marriage. that number is about 73%, by the way, in 1965, pat moynihan called 25% a crisis right. that's about 53% of all hispanic americans and a little over 33% of native born whites. the majority children in america

born to women ages 30 years of age and under are now born out of. i thought this was important to show the percentage of children living in two parent never homes just from 1960 to 2015. right. 1960, 73%. 90, 80, 61%. 2015, 46%. and you can see the trend lines, by the way, i deal in book as well with faith seminaries and church. and one of the deliberate goals of the radicalism of the 1960s was to overturn take the universities above all on the protestant mainline and to

impact the message in the churches and what i do in stumbling toward utopia is i show the slow and then accelerating death of mainline protestant ism. the united states and. i show a number of members nationally in in the mid sixties and then variously as the data was available where they were at. but you can you can you can conclude easily that the hollowing out of protestantism in lee has been has been the recipient in a colossally manner for american religion faith again as a result of the goals of the sixties. two things and then i'll stop. first the impact on basic civility in our country. i wanted to to illustrate i do

in the book you know using the examples some famous americans how the brutalism of the 1960s and the radical revolution of the sixties how this has changed basic friendships family relationships just the way that we relate in the public square and and i and i used just one of many examples is in the loss of civility as a result of the sixties. and i use an example of a lifelong friendship between two of the most famous men ever in hollywood history henry fonda and jimmy stewart. they were lifelong friends. one jimmy stewart presbyterian family man, he had a 44 year long marriage. the other fonda an agnostic, endured several divorces. they would bicker and fight over politics, over cultural matters, etc., but by the end of their

lives, they would have told you that their friendship could never have been ultimately impacted by the biggest social that we have seen, you know, in our in our country. and i think that this loss of civil ity is one of the things that i think we really forfeited too often, as a result of of of that period in american life. finally, i am an optimist. in fact, i'm an inveterate optimist. and i believe as a conservative and as a person of faith, that the tide is turning. i looked at a 2023 gallup poll that found a rise in the number of americans who are rejecting sixties style liberalism and embracing social conservatives. in fact, more americans almost in ten say they are conservative or very conservative on social issues than they did in 2023 and

2021. and the percentage, their social views are very liberal or liberal has actually declined to under 30% from 34% over the same time period. right. gallup states that the increase in a conservative view of social issues over the past two years has among nearly all political and demographic subgroups. and i show just briefly in stumbling toward utopia that this idea that is a natural upward and forever trajectory of progressivism is actually not the case. and i think that we are already seeing, by the way, first, in culture, last in politics. and i actually think that we are seeing a number of ways in america present, lee, where they are signs of, restoration, signs of renewal and the number homeschoolers has boomed in america to almost.

4 million homeschoolers, private and christian and jewish education is increase seeing the number americans who have who never been before involved in in issues of running for the school board paying attention to the curriculum in schools. this has increased i think this is very important in the whole debate about trans i think that we are seeing large large percentages of america and left and right who are of boys and girls sports and men in women's sports. and i think that this was dramatic ized in important ways in the recent up in the recent olympic games. so think that this question of both cultural and social ideology of the rising generation of young americans is is actually quite hopeful for those us who have a a

traditional worldview. finally and then stop and happily answer duck a few questions. but my friend david keene says that one can sense and he is a person who lived through 1960s and seventies, has written very eloquently about this part of american life. david says one can sense a coming back lash against the brands, governments and institutions responsible. the 1960s and i. i agree him there is a distinct possibility that america's traditional values, he says, may be far more resistant to the change on which progressives are banking than they believe progressives may, he says, remain comfortably isolated in their country clubs, elite neighborhoods, upscale vacation spots to they retreat to hold political and marketing meetings. but in the america the future may be brighter for the conservative values than they think. and i think that.

that's right. i think that have seen a reordering of the political but i think we've actually seen a greater reordering of of of cultural. you know questions that i think historically have not always aligned with the political or the sort of ideological view that many americans have historically had. so i think that we having a rethink, not only if i may say, on american conservatism and what is american conservatism, but i think a rethink, too, on is progressivism in america. and i think that stumbling toward utopia in part is designed to to help add to this conversation but it it is designed to understand where did the moral and social of the sixties and seventies come from? what is the direct demonstrable

goal measurable impact on 2024? and what are we going to do about that? and i believe very that and renewal and regeneration is and likely in american experience and i great days are ahead for our remarkable republic. i do believe and i also believe that social change cultural change is incremental. and we have a lot of work to do. so with that, matthew, i'll conclude and say thank all very much. i will be back.

so i'll just have a couple quick questions about john. sure. i think we've talked about one of the questions i had is, why do you choose the phrase stumbling, which implies sort of the blind giant sort of why is it that we stumbled this as opposed to marched in culture? i love that question. fact, a reviewer of the book said maybe i was being too gentle by using the word stumbling, that maybe i should have said it was a stampede. you know. and so i understand that distinction. but i say it for this for two reasons. the first is that there were large of americans in real in the 1960s who definitively did not choose this trajectory. and and yet they have been deep impacted by all of these changes. now but in real time, they were

deeply impacted by these changes as well. and so i say stumbling. i think large numbers americans probably the majority of americans, if i may say, in real time, did not understand the cultural and moral that had been prepared for our country. and what i do in stumbling toward utopia. secondly is i actually each chapter with the words and i and i demonstrate in the book why the of radical change begins almost tangibly. and you realize that the further you get into what i've been discussing is is very deep. so i believe it was less stampede and more of a stumble and i think that you overwhelmingly americans left and right or none of the above came to a moment where they said, i didn't vote for i didn't

want this where this come from. and and so i think that stumbling toward utopia is an attempt to not just in the rearview mirror, but to understand in real time are what happened. you mentioned alinsky's rules radicals dedicated to satan. yes. the father of lies. i think there is that aspect. you do a good job in. the book of people advocating very clearly lied. everyone lied to the american people and get this going. and then it on them later when they can't do anything about it. but in one sense, that's only half story and you cover the other, which is more of just new ideas that are hard to understand, that are definitely radical or divergent from the american constitutional order. and one of them is dewey. and i just want take one of you. you have this phrase, you said he's trying to replace the american way of life with collective morality. yes. what is his utopian and what is

collective morality? i think it is very to understand. and dewey is, i think, a great example of this. i'm really glad that you asked matt, because. is is comfortable with moral relativism. he's comfortable that we can't really apply this subjective sense of right or wrong good or evil that that's too easy and that and that this idea of moral relativism should be something in classroom and in american education that we should become more comfortable with. and i argue in stumbling toward utopia that when you begin culturally to become comfortable with moral relativism, you soon zoom to a trajectory of nihilism. and then before you know it,

it's really all upside down. and i and i really believe that john dewey and education and some of the other people that i write about that i didn't discuss today, they were very with this idea of relativism, which i suppose would make it much more likely for to say, yeah, lying is fine, because that's a moral absolute of some kind. i think it's impossible to. finish saul alinsky's book. i could use many other examples which i do in stumbling toward utopia, but just for purposes of my book talk, i think that you can actually go into the writing scholarship letters and public remarks of many of the people that i discussed today. and you would conclude that they are uncomfortable with an objective sense. that's true. you know where they would where they would automat actually conclude. that is true. now, it wasn't the 1960s, but

when solzhenitsyn when alexander soltani and comes to harvard, you know, in tide of all of this and gives this rather remarkable speech at harvard at people in america were trying to determine, you know, what precisely saying. but there's a reason that it turns out to be probably the most 20th century speech at harvard, because essentially what saying is that the is the moral, social or spiritual crisis. i mean is at the center of american. and i argue, stumbling toward utopia that for all of the other concerns we have, in all the fact of sectors of american life, that ultimately idea of lying, that ultimately we can conclude that that that a social crisis, the first order, a

spiritual crisis of the first order is most important issue facing today. this is my my last question and please we have mike's do we need to hand them out? sean or i'll go to that mike. oh, very good. the you end on a note of hope. but i notice you say it's very important that you cultivate the virtue of perseverance. why is that? the especial virtue of this sort of regeneration revival? because progressives, the natural inheritors of the period that i'm writing about, they are most comfortable with beginning at the top for the things that they seek transform in a country, culture and civilization like. the united states. they want to begin in washington, d.c. they want to begin in wall street.

they want to begin in silicon valley. they're very comfortable with kind of a top down transfer station. but as conserva tives, i believe that that model demands terribly is a bad model. and so i believe we have to be particular persevering at most organic and local level. let me say it another way. if we want measurable renewal and regeneration, i believe, going to begin in the family in our churches, in communities, in our schools and at the most organic local level. i think thinking that somehow if we can just washington or just change hollywood or just silicon valley or change wall street, then, you know, as conservatives, we can find restoration thereafter. i believe that that is a fool's errand. yeah. and i would i would only add that to the book lays out quite

nicely. the long march which subtly long difficult march the institutions that in one sense they sort of did something likewise right. they very much started small and then built up to suddenly change. they were very patient in way as well. something to learn from them. may i say very quickly on that point, i'm really glad that you make it and i and i hope that i made this in the book, which is that social and cultural change takes a while, but a very great conservative philosopher said ideas have, consequences. and he meant ideas have consequences. richard weaver and that ideas have consequences. and i think i've written about bad ideas and the consequences that they have had in the united

states of america and. therefore, following those bad, we have stumbled into this false view that men and women can be perfected with social engineering. i believe that that is the direct result of bad ideas having consequences. i also that good ideas have consequences. and burke. burke uses this notion of the moral imagination. well, i think there is the moral imagination and we need a lot of it. but there's also the doubt. the diabolical, imagined nation and the diabolical imagination has very often been employed in of what i'm writing about. so it's going to take imagination it's going to take creativity and i believe we have to concentrate like a laser beam on the rising generation of young americans, because whoever

wants get them is going to get them. and it's it's a ground and believe that we have a remarkable and i do mean it remarkable general ocean of young people. they are impatient for all the right things. they have lived through enormous and brokenness and they want something better. and i believe that there is something better to offer. and the reason i wrote stumbling toward utopia is not just to say, look at the diabolical imagination and its impact on a great country, but think about a moral, imaginative way of of of a way to navigate way forward. and i'm very excited that. and i think we have a lot of work to do and i'm confident that it's going to happen. good. thank you. a couple quick questions. do we have welcome people up to the front or how should we do it? michael from phone right there.

how are they? is that the microphone they should have? oh, we've got right here. okay. very good. thank you. and, you know, really. why do you think did that on this hand, full of extraordinary thinkers and researchers. that their idea gradually marched through the institution. were there not on behalf of the dogma and ideas far more capable personages. able to counter these lucifer literally means light bearer

which is kind of an ironic take on satan. it implies that in life that enlightenment and evil both come from the same root, and maybe sometimes they do. but why was no one there to push back successfully other than okay politicians suppress didn't wants power? you malevolent said we have a madisonian constitution being run by a progressive culture. that's understandable, but also cultural. why? why was calm? was there no counter or? was it incompetently carried out or just plain unsuccessful? yeah, i'm actually really honored by that question. one of the things i was going to do in stumbling utopia, but i

wanted to to keep it of a size that's manageable and of course the the the sixties seventies have been been written about and i wanted to to bring a particular differentiation to the narrative. but one of the things that i think is very important in answering your question is in there was a another counterculture that was growing. and i think that that most dramatically it started around william f buckley jr and nash the founding of national review now this happened in the 1950s because of of several of the of the early shimmering that were happen happening you know as a direct result of the of the new deal world war two etc., etc. and i won't into that today but i believe firmly that by the 1960s there was a a substantial and growing pushback.

and and i think that that bill buckley, the editors of national review and, many of of their allies in real time did something very important both in politics and culture. i would argue that without national review, there may well never, never have been a reagan presidency, but i also think there are many unstated cultural successes that, national review and that nascent growing conservative movement successfully employed. the second thing is that, and i write about this in stumbling toward utopia is that many of the people i mentioned a moment ago were very well funded by by very famous americans. i write about them at length and i'll use just one example. the rockefeller family, the rockefeller family was very strongly supportive of many of the early progressives about

which i write. and very strongly supportive. of the progressive way of life. and i think it's important that it wasn't just the ideas at that. that to me is central and foundational, but it was also a well-funded number of individuals and eventually a movement that found plenty of the way to capitalize and to monetize what they to impose on the country and. and they raised those funds very successful, fully. one more question from. parker shepard from the heritage foundation. hello. i appreciated chart that you showed with national debt. it's very stark. the contrast between 1960 and present day. that change has been driven a lot, in part, government spending, but also through inflation, which is enabled by the federal reserve.

since the federal reserve was created. i think the dollar has lost about 97% of its purchasing power. so you traced a lot of these social changes back to early 20th century progressive movement. could you talk a little bit about the role that you see like the federal reserve was created at the same time and some of the economic changes the 20th century as also effecting these social changes? thank you. a great question. and do i do write in stumbling toward utopia about the the economic factors that you are speaking of? and i want to be very clear to that. if we're going to grow administrative state and the centrality of washington in economic policy, it's important that we understand the seeds that were planted in the time period you're speaking about very in the 20th century. and by the time we get to the

1960s and seventies. right. you have people like richard nixon, right. saying that that essentially the welfare state is is here and that we all agree on that, don't we? that that is that it's just a common way of life. right. this was this was rather shocking that that a republican president would what would make this statement. and many of the economic policy things that the nixon white house, other republicans adopted came from the time and the decisions institutionally that you're mentioning. and real time. it was contested with wilson and others, but in its relatively short period of time between the teens and the 1960s and seventies, by that time richard nixon could say we're all keynesians now. you know what? what what a dramatic statement. so i think you're absolutely right. and i think we can't understand

the chaotic changes resulting in the explosive of administrative state apart from some of the economic decisions, finance decisions that made early with the same group of people, good. well, i think that's all the time we have. or do we have time for one more? one more? we've got time for one more question. thank you for a great. is this one. thank you. thank you for a great presentation. thank you. i'm sure most of the people this room are familiar with the hitlerian dialectic. and when i was taught it in college a number of years ago. i always taught that it's a pendulum that from from perhaps left to the right eventually. yes and so when you're talking about the future and getting back to conservativism beginning, you're talking in the 1920s. so now we're coming maybe a hundred years since then.

plus are you also suggesting then that the hegelian dialectic would be in play going forward and after this new renaissance of in the united states, we then would see another newly formed progression of progress ism in the united states that once again, we're going to have to come back right with a newly formed conservative going forward as the thesis synthesis and into thesis antithesis and synthesis moves through time and space. how appropriate they were ending with hegel. let me be very brief in this regard. if may. one of the great honors i had during my time working in the white house was spend the better part of a day with a man who had been a specialist assistant to the president, which which i was for george w bush, had been a special assistant to the president for john kennedy,

arthur schlesinger jr. and he and i had very different views on the biggest things passing a bill, although in the latter part of arthur's life we came to agree on many things, especially about the coming cancel culture, erase our culture and impact of what that would be on some of most important cultural institutions. but the reason i mention slight zinger and hagel in the same context is i said to arthur. i'm fast nated by your return often to this pendulum idea. yo, that that's this way and this way. and it seems to me he was quite i don't think it's a form of bad manners sitting in his living room. i'm not convinced i don't i don't really believe it. generally or specifically in in in a pendulum of american politics. i really don't. i that parties and political

remake themselves for the particular era or time in which they find themselves because that as a as a great president once said the purpose of a political party is to win. right. it's not like the rotary where want to join and have lunch, you know, and, and it seems to me that in real time, real issues and real ideas and real people, you have find a way politically in your party life that particular era to find a way win. god bless the memory of arthur schlesinger but would argue as i do in the book that in the in the era that we're currently living in for, those of us who are charitable, we look at the kennedy administration and we see as conservatives a lot to admire policy wise in those. and yet when you watch the nixon kennedy debate.

in 1960. you know it seems there's word again somewhat polar, but it's a different era. it really is a different era. so believe that the time that we're in is very uneven. but i think it's also one of those rare moments in american politics. but in culture first, where we are seeing a realignment a measurable realignment. and i don't want to disappoint a great you know, historian arthur schlesinger, even memory but i tend at least at the margins to disagree for those reasons. in that context. you close the book, our country can once again become the united states of the divided states of america despite whatever differences we may have, we can return to a nation of and opportunity instead of finger pointing, despair. only then can children regain the innocence of childhood faith

truly flourishing, and racial and cultural divides healed that is the type of society that we want. yes, you. thank you. thank you. thank you all very much.