john: and "the conservative mind" pretty much begins with edmund burke and his thoughts. talk about the importance of edmund burke, and talk about some of the other people in the book, the other litany of conservative saints, if you will. bradley: that is a great way of putting it, because "the onservative mind" is very much a hagiography, looking at roughly 29 people, looking at their lives and what they contribute. they do not all agree, and that is important for kirk, that in the book, these 29 characters, some we know well, people like edmund burke, known well to at least academics at the time, people like alexis de tocqueville. a lot of these people we do not emember very well. in america, he is laudatory of irving babbitt and paul elmer ore. that i think are great guys but nobody picks up on them. john: there are others we know well. bradley: absolutely. he end the book with t.s. eliot. he and eliot become very good friends and shape each other's hought profoundly. i don't think we could have had conservatism in america without eliot, who really sanctioned kirk. cer

edmund burke, alexis de tocqueville. a lot of these people we do not remember very well. harvard historian of french, a princeton historian of the classics. john: but there are names we know very well. absolutely. ts elliot. he instability affiliate. they become very good friends starting in 19 -- 19. i do not think we could have had conservatism here or abroad giving hisot sanction to kirk. but to go back, certainly burke is important. bookends fors as the conservative mind, starting with work and john adams. johnd burke in england, adams, and he ends with t.s. eliot and he has 26 figures in between those periods of 29 overall. burke is important. i have the great village of teaching the founding of the in hillsdale.lic i teach that every two years. i always make sure that as the students are reading john dickinson we also do a good deal of burke. part of that is i like kirk and i like burke as well. more than once in his life he was treasonous for defending american rights. it was not just a political movement. believe the americans had inherited the very long tradition

he is what i would call an edmund burke, george will-kind of conservative. and you can see that in some of the plays. for example, in some cases where he is very afraid of the mob. like in coriolanus, or parts of julius caesar. and in places where there were speeches about the importance of maintaining the existing hierarchy. so, he was very careful. but he also was in the midst of it. i mean, london was the political center. he was writing and his company was performing before the crown. and many in his audience were going to the plays to try to get some sense of how to appreciate current events. so, a lot of it is there. the ideology is difficult to understand, but the lessons about leadership i think are clear. thanks to all of you for coming. [applause] >> thank you so much. don't forget to take your pink sheets, come back and join us. thank you all very much. announcer: you are watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. >> c-span cities tour is in lansing where we are hitting the michigan museum. they launched a brand-new exhib

edmund burke says, and i don't often quote him, but a line that is apt, the only thing worse the existing tyranny is failure to overturn that tyranny. we have had decades of experience tinkering and experience in state power that hasn't yielded disastrous outcomes and works did yields, the slow-moving disaster of 5% versus 3.2% gdp growth. --lian: i wanted to ask you when i am talking to my friends on the far left, their big critique is they feel the capitalist system in the united states is rigged against them. it is not really a free market, it is big as this is exercising political power, hiring expensive lobbyists and lawyers, using licensing regimes to block people out of business. what would you do to reform that? is that possible within the current system or is it too far gone? democratic-socialism we don't have stephen: that stephen: we don't have free market capitalism in america. we probably have more than most and it is the reason everyone in the world wants to come here, even people from the nordic countries, but the fact is -- you make a good point. what tends to happen is wh

edmund burke says and i don't often quote him , but saliva that i think is quite apt. "the only thing worse than existing tyrannies that failed to overturn that tierney" that something that socialists should keep in mind. we have had decades of experience with the state power that hasn't yielded be disastrous outcomes the slow misting movie disaster of 5% gdp growth . >> i wanted to ask you, talk to my friends on the far left. their big critique is that they feel that the capitalist system the united states is rigged against them. that is not really a free- market. it's exercising their political power, hiring expensive lobbyist and lawyers. using licensing regimes to block people out of business. what would you do to reform that? is it even possible within the current system? or is it too far gone? >> we don't have free market capitalist in america. we have more than most countries and that's why people from all of the world want to come here. even from people from the nordic countries. the fact is you make a good point. what tends to happen is with corporations they

they had a contemporary example in edmund burke's impeachment of hastings who was the governor general of british in india. hamilton writes about them. he said basically they are political offenses. what he means by the are they are abuses of power that is directed at the body of politics. not ordinary crimes. they are much more in the nature of the military intelligence or law than federal civil penal law. ideas like conduct unbecoming, abusive power, dereliction of duty, the sort of thing. so we do have an understanding, people who say high crimes and misdemeanors, what does the mean. we do have an understanding of what it means in a constitutional sense. also down here on planet earth, in 1970 when gerald ford was the minority leader of the house of representatives and they were trying to impeach william of douglas who was a justice of the supreme court. he was asked about what an impeachable offense was. what ford said was an impeachable offense is whatever the house of representatives decides it is at a given moment in history. in a war, cynical sheer politics as, that is true. th

they had a contemporary example in edmund burke's impeachment of hastings was the governor general, british and her general in india. and hamilton writes about them. he says basically they are medical offenses and what he means by that are they are abuses of power that are directed at the body politic, not ordinary crimes. and they're much more in the nature of -- i thought they were in the nature of military law more than federal, civil, penal law. ideas like conduct unbecoming,abuse of power . dereliction of duty, that sort of thing so we do have an understanding that people who say high crimes and misdemeanors,what does that mean ? we have an understanding of what it means in a constitutional sense. now also down here onplanet earth , it was about 1970 when gerald ford was the minority leader of the house of representatives and they were trying to impeach william o douglas who was a justice of the supreme court . he was asked about what and impeachable offense is and what ford says is and impeachable offense is whatever the house of representatives decides it is at a given moment in hist

i mean, edmund berk had the greatest defense, he was a british parliamentarian during the revolutionary war. to me conservatism is simply ordered liberty. burkeiberalism. we were known as the liberals right up until fdr, then we became the conservatives, just an artifact of history. if my party who i thought was conservative turned out we were just the ugly cursed child, stepchildren of the republican party, and now we're somehow on the outside, we're neither welcome in the party, i think conservatives, because i don't think people who follow trump's policies could call themselves conservatives. so what is your -- what do you think needs to has been so the people understand what conservatism is and that it is actually liberty. that's all it is. it's freedom. we want everybody to have it? >> i think it's more than liberty. this is where i -- i learned a lesson from trump's election about the nation, the nature of the e electric trat. i'm in washington. we can be very ideological. we can read and think it's conservatism. that's not how most people think about it. what i want to bridge from the trump base to the sort of movement in ideological b

even edmund burke said that change is inevitable the the question is whether it's prudent change and they whats i as traditional conservative looking for to right kind of leadership and the right kind of debate and discussion so i welcome all that's going on this various strands, the various strains of conservativism. that's good. customming out of that, going to be a bigger, better, and i think more relevant conservative movement in the years ahead. >> want to read you a quote: barry would just go absolutely crazy if he were watching this today. he would be yelling at the television help would think it's embarrassing this situation we have with donald trump. it's not the republican party or the country that we knew 25 or 30 years ago. that was susan goldwater on march 21, 2016. >> right. right. well, i think there's something to be said for that. but at the same time, goldwater was a practical politician. he was not just a man of principle, which he was, the conscience of a conservative, but he was also a practical person and would have said, wait a minute. 63 million people voted f