>> i think probably someone like william jennings bryan would think he's in the lost century probablyif you start looking at the profile of who is obviously a fundamental hero at the spokes trial, if you start digging into his background i think he is one of the most fascinating characters which make us, drives us to use our self-imagination to figure out how he could be all of these things. he was a passivist, a fundamentalist, evangelical. he was a progressive, which for that day would be the word liberal that we would use now. he was anti-imperialist, and how in his mind he could put all of those things together. my take on it is that he was probably in terms of eschatology po post-millennial. so you reform the world and things get better and better and then christ comes back after the millennium. so you engage in all of those things -- war doesn't work with the millennium so you have to be anti-war. alcohol doesn't work with the millennium, so you want to get that as a reform, and you do all of these things. so i think just looking at his life is a lesson in how complex evangelica

it would benefit the silver miners and, of course, william jennings bryan made his great speech about the cross of gold and all that sort of thing. >> host: populism. >> guest: yeah, that was populism. and populists have many heroes. there are different kinds of populists, but many eras have wanted easy money. is so the journal has had to fight that over the years to try to encourage government. money is -- there's no such thing as wealth. the gold standard was about as near as you get. but the journal supported the federal exchange act. again, with the idea that this would stabilize money. at that point local banks could issue money against gold. they supposedly had in their vaults. well, they created a national currency. the journal supported that. but then in the 1920s began to have second thoughts -- [laughter] >> host: i wonder why? >> guest: but at any rate, the journal -- and one of our editors which we might get to said i've probably written 50 editorials about inflation. he wrote editorials over and over again about how your money depreciates if the central bank or the govern

as we heard with william jennings bryan who had very different conservative views politically even though he was conservative theologically. where was i going with this? [ chuckling ] so i guess that is one question of history that moves from the 19th century into the 20th century, is how did it become the way that a conservative theology would become tied to what at the time was known as a conservative politics. >> kellen, you get the last word for us this evening. we -- would you please join me in thanking our panelists. [ applause ] i want to thank each one of you for being here tonight. i encourage you to come back october the 13th at 7:00 right here on stratton hall for the next panel on the focus of the present. the panelists we will have, linda abrams, a professor here. charles dunn who i believe is here tonight who is a retired professor from clemson university, also regent university and grove city college and finally danielle vincent, a professor at furman. thank you for being here tonight. >>> tonight, a symposium on the battles of gettysburg and teatam and the siege of vicksbu

william jennings bryan had this great line, the people of nebraska is for free silver. therefore i am for free silver. that is not what it is about. in my view, conservatism, for me it all boils down to at the end of the day, just two things at the metaphysical level, the importance of ideas, and the importance of character. and that is it. right? and you can talk about which ideas and arguments about ideas that is part of it. is argument. one of the things i love about conservatives is that we actually are less dogmatic than people realize because we love to argue about our dogma. i have been doing panel with liberals for literally 25 years. and d.c. is full of 20 something, i think the word is dorks. who wear their ties with frederick, i am a level 9 hi highiian. i could not run for office explaining why my platform is based on fredrick hayeks book. everyone gets up on stage and says i am ronald reagan. no i am ronald reagan. and let me, just full disclosure, i like ronald reagan. what has two thumbs and thinks ronald reagan is awesome, this guy. he was put on this ea