Conservatism Under Threat

I'm delighted to be here and I'm especially delighted to be here with this man I've been reading and watching as long as I've been in Washington which is just a couple of years actually 40 but this is George Will's the book that is sitting on the table in front of us and I hope you all will get a chance to to look at it to get a copy and get George to sign it it is George's 16th book is that right Jan 15th book George will arguably the most prolific public intellectual of our time since Daniel Patrick Moynihan William F Buckley somebody who has looked at thought about conservatism public policy how Americans think how we approach public life for his entire adult life so we're here to talk about conservatism under threat George that was the title they gave this session and as Kitty just said I think Kitty just said you know what's going to happen to conservatism and you said in a low voice will there even be a conservatism in the future are you that worried about no I'm not this book which is the most important publishing of them since Gutenberg invented Hewlett is going to going to guarantee its future [Laughter] why why did you why at this moment are you writing a book called the conservative Sensibility well I would have written a book even if the 2016 election had turned out differently I was on Bill Maher show and Maher said George the name Donald Trump doesn't appear in there and I said also the name of Doris Day doesn't appear in there because it's a book about ideas I want to do is I want to do it I wanted to establish that the intellectual pedigree of conservatism and to refute the most common misperception about conservatism which is and it's understandable given the word conservatism people think it conservatives only want to conserve and they want to conserve the past sort of frees society like a flyin amber in fact American conservatism and in that phrase the adjective American does a lot of work is distinguished from European conservatism which was evolved largely in the defense of established orders and hierarchies American conservatism is precisely the reverse it is to preserve a society open to perpetual dynamic change to do that you have to go back to the past you have to conserve the founders vision which was natural rights limited government and separation of powers to give society an enormous social space in which the forces the creative forces of the spontaneous order of society can flourish Virginia post royalty you may know Washington writer very prolific said the story of the Bible in one sentence is God created man and woman and lost control of events the conservative the conservative sensibility relishes the absence of control it's the openness of the future its hayek spontaneous order of society that conservatism exists to conserve it's a paradox we're trying to conserve perpetual change because and and I want to ask you about that because a lot of people think ok you want to take us back to a time you know we have some idea from reading of what this country was like in the 16 and 17 at the end of the 1700s but people have a sense that it was you know we know who the founding fathers were and they were all fathers what what was it about them that that that has that enduring quality because so many people say why do you want to take us back to the original idea of America I think many many if not most Americans don't understand this being open to perpetual change piece of it yeah I don't want to take the country back to a time before I want to take us back to premises before Woodrow Wilson who really created the vocabulary of just faction with the founders was the first founder to criticize the American found it was the first president to criticize the American Founding which is all of our political argument today I think can be understood as an argument between two Princetonian x' James Madison of the class of 1771 and Woodrow Wilson of the class of 1879 Wilson did not criticize the American Founding peripherally he criticized it Rutten branch he said first of all the natural rights doctrine is in too limiting because it postulates a fixed human nature and a fixed human nature limits the the hope for progressive change that government can engineer because if human beings have no fixed nature but are only creatures that acquire the culture in which they're situated government by manipulating the culture can change human beings second he said the separation of powers was fine once he said when we were 4 million people along the fringe of the continent 80 percent of us living with 20 miles of Atlantic Tidewater then he said that was fine but now we're a great continental nation united by copper wires and steel rails and therefore we need a more nimble government one of his favorite adjectives and nimble government at the beck and call of a strong president with a marginalized Congress so that the government can act as expeditiously as a complex society warrants that this is the basic progressive non sequitur which is that the more complex society becomes the more government must intervene in that society to organize and direct it Hayek and others noting the law of unintended consequences that the devil's most government work says the more complex society gets the more information that is generated by markets which is all markets are information generating mechanisms the less government knows relative to what needs to be known and therefore the more modesty is required by government what Hayek calls epistemic you humility about what we can in fact know and so Menino as we think back though to the founders and and you come back again and again to Madison to Jefferson why why do you believe they they had the idea then what gave them the sense that it was important to be open in the future what what gave them that belief where did that come from but they didn't all embrace that equally Jefferson one of the reasons Jefferson left at the Louisiana Purchase was so that he could have an ample land for rural Yeomans Republic people stable society on a land rooted there no cities keep your factories in Europe and all that so that people would more or less be like Thomas Jefferson a rival founder Hamilton's starvin recent musical said no he wanted an urban churning entrepreneurial industrial investing restless society full of people rather like Alexander Hamilton so there were there was a rival vision of what kind of people we should be when they argued about things like the National Bank and the rest they were actually arguing about what kind of people we would be they I once wrote a book read by dozens called called statecraft as Soulcraft it was I gave the Godkin lectures at Harvard in 1981 and the subtitle of the book was what government does not what government ought to do but what government can't help but do government by the economic regime it sets up and the law legal system it has necessarily shapes the character of people and Jefferson and Hamilton understood this perfectly they have two different sense theologies of two different kinds of virtue my contention is that capitalism doesn't just make us better off which it manifestly does it makes us better by enforcing certain virtues he's a wonderful scene in the Tocqueville is democracy in America where he's going down the Ohio River with slave-holding Kentucky up to his left and industrial free soils Ohio to his right and he says on the Left all was torpid and languid no crackling energy Ohio on his right was all crackling energy sense of dynamism and hope and future that's the in a small rich small was the kind of sole craft that I think is involved in our arguments about economies that which I I have a chapter in here called political economy which is what we called the study of economics when Adam Smith invented the subject in the wealth of nations published in the resonant year of 1776 what what what should the role of government be I mean you you argue throughout and you've argued this for a long time minimal role government should have a small profile as possible and yet I mean everybody knows there are some things that have happened since the founders that have made a huge difference conservatives are not against Emilia's of government conservatives do think we need to have a constant argument about the proper scope and acts competence of government 1964 I cast my first presidential vote for Barry Goldwater 27 million of us couldn't be wrong he carried 44 he lost 44 states but I've always said he actually won it just took 16 years to count the votes but Goldwater - and this book is dedicated to the memory of Goldwater in 1964 77% of the American people said they trusted the federal government to do the right thing all the time or almost all the time today the figure is 17 percent 60 point collapse in the prestige of government as government's activism has risen now I would think my progressive friends would be intensely interested in this because everything they want to do depends on strong government and strong government at the end of the day depends upon confidence in government with that gone it I mean poor Elizabeth Warren with other with her I have a plan for that all of her plans require energetic government she's about to learn I'm afraid the old Jewish saying that if you want to make God laugh tell him your plans [Laughter] but look but it calls to mind a number of things that i won't i won't i won't bring up well let me give you an example to your question the conservatives have no problem with social security if we bother to fund it but that's another question if you watch bother to fund it provide proper funding government identifies an eligible cohort the elderly and writes them checks and mails them it's good at that where government is not so good at is what it begin to undertake in the 1960s model cities we don't know how to build model cities there's a sense in which that's as futile and enterprise as nation building which is as futile and enterprise as orchid building cities like nations like orchids or organic things and they are not built by governments Medicare you started with Social Security how is the government done running Medicare well it's been constantly surprised because everything had predicted all of its predictions for costs and eligibility were much too conservative what we did in 1965 was attach the most rapidly growing portion of our population the elderly to our most dynamic science which is medicine as an entitlement probably half the medical treatments now in use diagnostic therapeutic and pharmacological did not exist in 1965 when we pass Medicare indeed a pharmacology had been at all has developed then as it is now we would had Medicare Part D prescription drug entitlement in 65 so was that a so are you saying Medicare was a mistake no I'm stakin I do not think provision for the elderly is a mistake I do think we're in danger of having a gerontocracy that is a government run by and for the elderly the most rapidly growing in percentage terms age Court cohort in this country is Americans eighty-five years old or older that matters because the average health care cost for a 55 year old are five times sorry for an 85 year old or five times higher than the average cost for a 55 year old so longevity is a great social achievement it's also ruinously expensive so they do not die when the Office of Management and Budget says we should so before we before we give up or not give up on government but set it aside what else do you give government credit for I mean you mentioned Social Security Medicare I don't know Medicaid is the states are more involved the national highway the federal highway system a Republican president put that forward the Defense Department I mean the the National Defense that is the first duty of government is protectin Asian yes all for that Homeland Security which is a new piece of the federal government or but look what look at how we're actually governed today for all the talk about discord in the United States was most frightening to me is consensus it's as broad as the Republic it extends from Elizabeth Warren to Ted Cruz and it's as deep as a grand canyon and it is this we should have a large well-armed generous entitlement state and not pay for it everyone's agreed on that I'm serious the political class is more united by class interests than it is divided by ideology and and the class interest is to give the American people a dollars worth of government and charge them 80 cents for it the public likes it will fob off the extra 20 cents on the unconsenting because unborn future generation that will get the bill what's changed is this we used to borrow money for the future we fought Wars for the future built roads dams highways and we borrowed and because the future was going to benefit from it it was ethical to have them pay part of the burden today we're borrowing to finance our own consumption of government goods and services which is decadent beyond that I can't say well so let's talk about taking care of those who are having a hard time taking care of themselves what's the responsibility of the government the government is to help those who can't take care of themselves but first of all to help people help themselves to take this one example in medicine health savings accounts you get and you get a substantial tax preference for money when you buy high deductible health insurance and you pay for your everyday expenses out of the tax preferred savings and your health savings account no American expect while some probably do but no most Americans don't expect auto insurance to pay for their windshield wipers or oil changes similarly there are regular everyday predictable small health expenses that people should pay out of their own savings to give them a sense of having skin in the game there things the government can do that help people provide for themselves rather than providing it for them have your views on what what true conservatism is have they changed over the years George since you started right I mean you wrote your first book what in the 1970s now mostly it's in the chapter called the judicial supervision of Demong krisi for many years I believe Bob Bork was a good friend of mine and Bork was a was a judicial restraint man I believed as many conservatives did in response to some of the more freewheeling decisions of the Warren Court that majority rule required judges to be deferential to majoritarian institutions Bob Bork and his friend at Yale Law School Alexander Bickel made much of what they called the counter majoritarian dilemma that judicial review is inherently anomalous in our society and should be used very sparingly and I believe that for many years the majoritarian is believed as Oliver Wendell Holmes said if the American people want to go to hell I will help them it's my job so he would just step out of the way of majoritarian institutions for a long time I believed that and then I began to think more clearly and I began to think backward I wrote my doctoral dissertation at Princeton was titled beyond the reach of majorities it's a phrase from justice Jackson's opinion in the second of the flag salute cases where the Supreme Court reversing itself in just three years said we were wrong to say that it is permissible to require Jehovah's Witnesses children to salute the flag and contravention of their deeply held religious beliefs he said the very purpose of a Bill of Rights is to place certain things beyond the reach of majorities to rescue them from the vicissitudes of politics now when I began I began thinking about this in other words many years ago and I'm only got it right recently but I suppose I began thinking about it growing up in Champaign Urbana Illinois where my father was a professor of philosophy at the University of Illinois local lore has it that it was in the Champaign County Courthouse that Abraham Lincoln a very prosperous circuit riding railroad lawyer it was in the Champaign County Courthouse that he learned that Steven a Douglas the Illinois senator had successfully passed the kansas-nebraska Act which said we will answer the question about the expansion of slavery in the territories by submitting it to a vote popular sovereignty and the territories would be the solution said Douglass vote slavery up voted down it's a matter of moral indifference I believe that the greatest political career in the history of world politics I say this was very deference to my friend Andrew Roberts and his man Churchill but that Lincoln's the greatest career in the history of world politics was ignited by his saying that America is not about a process majority rule America is about a condition Liberty and majorities should rule where the government rules but the government should not always rule by majorities and give people space again to have other values besides majority rule so you're talking about a more activist tradition much more activist judiciary exactly which you know we think originalism the Scalia's got much of Antonin Scalia's I am NOT an originalist neither was he he Scalia famously called himself a faint-hearted originalist because among other reasons he came up against the 8th amendment which forbids cruel and unusual punishments if as originalist say we should construe the text by the common public meaning of the words at the time that would mean if we were to say things are cruel are not cruel if they were accepted in 1787 and Philadelphia you're cropping branding flogging and pillory all of those were used at the time that the founders put the words cruel and unusual punishments into the Bill of Rights you you dedicate the book to Barry Goldwater one of your separately one of your your major your favorite political figures was Daniel Patrick Moynihan these are two very different people why are they why do you admire both of them well damn Daniel Patrick Moynihan was finest social scientist surely ever to serve in a national legislature I rather mischievously once said that while he was in the Senate he wrote more books and his colleagues read that famously said everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts he was a great respecter of data he was all his life an unreconstructed New Deal Democrat but he understood the role of evidence he said the role of social science social science can't tell us what to do it can tell us the results of what we've done and Pat was part of with Daniel Belknap Glaser and Irving Kristol and the others James Q Wilson his good friend at Harvard they were the founders and the organizers of that enormous ly influential small circulation Journal of public interest that began to talk about skepticism about government's competence in intervening in a complex society but he never stopped being a New Deal Democrat Ronald Reagan you weren't have been an admirer of Ronald Reagan has your view of him changed no I mean how does he fit into the the conservative you know our system theology I constantly hear people saying Ronald Reagan's assault on government Ronald Wilson Reagan I don't know was named after Woodrow Wilson I certainly hope not Ronald Reagan formative years politically were during the New Deal and he never turned on the basic social safety net of the society that is again Social Security something government knew how to do his great criticism of domestic policies were from the Great Society era when government undertook to apply social science with an unmerited confidence you I asked you about Ronald Reagan in order to bring up two words that do not appear in the book and that's Donald Trump why did you leave way you suggested this why did you leave his name out well you met you mentioned Doris Day I know first first of all this I didn't want to write another Washington book I do not have a feeling that Americans think insufficient attention is being paid to him second second it is a book of ideas and he doesn't do ideas I'll let you say read the second time third I would like to have this book read I was gonna say ten years from now when he'll be gone two three years from now and he'll be gone so it's just a distraction it's a distraction because again the very reverse the obverse of everything conservatism stands for is populism populism means the direct translation of majority passion not just ideas the majority passion into governance the ultimate populist moment was Donald Trump I said it you see it's not Voldemort the the the ultimate direct translation of passion into politics is Trump at the Cleveland Convention only I can fix it now conservatism says majorities are going to rule majorities ought to rule but Syd Madison in what a wonderful phrase he says we want mitigated democracy we want public opinion slowed and filtered and refined through representative institutions so that by the time it gets to actually being applied in laws it has been filtered and refined when the founding fathers went to Philadelphia in that sweltering summer of 1787 they did not go to create an efficient government the idea would have horrified them they wanted a safe government most important word in the Declaration of Independence as an adjective herb to secure governments are instituted to secure pre-existing rights we don't get our rights from government government exists for the primary purpose of securing those rights to which end the framers created this complicated government three branches of government two branches of the legislative branch each branch of the legislative branch with different electoral rhythms and different stitch one sees supermajorities judicial review vetoes veto overrides a whole raft of blocking mechanisms in order to slow things down there's a sense in which gridlock is not an American problem it's an American achievement there are an enormous number of people in this world who live under governments they wish could be gridlocked but the idea that the American government is gridlocked is preposterous people said well we had gridlock during the Obama years well somewhat but we passed the biggest financial regulation reform since the 1930s in the dodd-frank we passed the biggest enlargement of the entitlement state since Medicare with Obamacare the Affordable Care Act the government moves it just moves slowly and they designed it that way they wanted it to be difficult so that's where you put Donald Trump but as we know today he is the most Republicans view him far and away as their most is the most popular you have what more Republicans today admiring Donald Trump opened and then admired Ronald Republican parties a more homogeneous today than ever before in its history so what does that say about the Republican Party in conservatism it's a good party to leave and I left but the Republican Party ceased being a vessel of conservatism it did not damage conservatism it damaged itself look who is happy today with a presidency unconstrained by an anemic Congress now this is a long time in the making it didn't begin on January 20th at noon on 2017 began a long time ago as Congress began divesting itself of powers that it has no right to divest itself of the first substantive words of the Constitution the first words after the preamble are all legislative power shall be vested in a Congress of the United States vested and it cannot be divested last week in a Supreme Court opinion there was the beginning of a revival of the Supreme Court enforcing the non delegation doctrine that there are certain delegations of power to the federal bureaucracy by Congress that are not permissible who is happy that a president of either party can impose taxes on the American people which is what tariffs are unilaterally because the president has been given this vast discretion by Congress who is happy that the president can take appropriations for purpose a and repurpose them to be spent on B in this case a wall because he has given the power by Congress to declare an emergency and do that we have this enormous unfettered presidency this anemic Congress and no one it seems to me can or should be happy with this disequilibrium in the wonderful constitutional architecture that Madison gave us so what has what's happened to conservatives I mean what happened to all the arguments that George will and other conservatives have made over all these years I mean how did it get shoved aside in your view and taken over that space taken over by Donald Trump and what most publicans say they support well we've known for a long time that the American people in many ways are highly illogically conservative but operationally liberal they talk like Jeffersonians that government is best that governs least but they act like Hamiltonians want to be governed by Hamiltonians so there's an element of this cognitive dissonance in all of our politics but I don't want to let progressives off the hook here you're right conservatives have done much to disgrace themselves but it is progressivism that discredited the separation of powers it is progressivism that celebrated executive leadership that celebrated charismatic executive leaders I give you one small sample here when Franklin Roosevelt who of course came to Washington first to be assistant secretary the Navy under from Woodrow Wilson when Franklin Roosevelt began his first fireside chat to the country over radio which was exciting to the country in its day as the Internet isn't ours he began his remarks with two words that do not appear on the transcript in the library at Hyde Park he began as his speech his address he said my friends now today that seems normal we've had presidents who feel our pain we've had presidents who were in our living room all the time but it was a novel moment for Americans to think presidents ought to be their friends I don't want the president to be my friends I want him to take care that the laws be faithfully executed I want him to be the head of one of the three branches of one of our many governments this idea that we ought to have a charismatic president who is the moral auditor of the country who speaks whenever a rock star dies to express our national grief it's quite seriously it isn't it is not healthy to have a political figure this central to our consciousness Ronald Reagan wasn't a charismatic president he was and he was he here's what happened conservatives for many years because they saw progressivism mostly advanced by presidents Teddy Roosevelt Wilson Franklin Roosevelt Lyndon Johnson conservatives for many years at a healthy suspicion of executive power and they expressed this by advocating congressional supremacy their text was James Burnham one of the founding editors of National Review what a wonderful book called Congress in the American tradition then beginning at noon January twentieth nineteen eighty-one conservatives began to have the heady experience of Ronald Reagan an executive power and they fell in love with it and they begin to lose their what had been a wholesome suspicion of executive power which by the way came from the founders whose original grievance with government of Westminster was a grievance against the arbitrary power known as the Royal Prerogative come back to just quickly just to the judiciary and and to a number of two things now a number of Republicans can serve as saying no Donald Trump isn't perfect there are a lot of things I don't like about it but the economy is going great and he's appointing conservatives to the federal judiciary but one after another after another but Gorsuch that's their argument yes he does this that now they but Gorsuch yeah but what about that argument that that's a reason to support him because he's appointing judges well it's the reason to support a Republican president like any Republican president would have cut corporate taxes Barack Obama was in favor of cutting the corporate any republican president would have had a deregulatory agenda any Republican president would have appointed judges largely called from lists provided by people like the Federalist Society of which I am a card-carrying member that's not what Donald Trump brings that's unorthodox any as I say any Republican president would have given voters that what he brings is the manner the lying the name-calling all of this which I think will do more lasting damage to the country you can't unring these bells then Nixon's surreptitious burglaries did they were surreptitious they were exposed they were punished and we moved on it's going to be extremely difficult to restore the tone of American life that prevails from Washington through Barack Obama you're saying Trump is and lasts how much longer than the Trump we don't know because one of the things again my my obsession with the elephantine presidency we have he has shown how fast a president using all the modern mass media including the social media can change the tone of our public life maybe I'm not confidence of this I'm not used to looking on the bright side of things but maybe you took away my last question but don't just save it but maybe someone with a different manner someone who says calm down who repeats the next to last paragraph of Lincoln's first inaugural we not are not enemies we must not be enemies who appeals as Lincoln did in that inaugural of the better angels of our nature maybe someone like that can affect as abrupt a change as mr. Trump is wrought see I do not think the American people are angry the Fox viewers are angry the MSNBC viewers are angry the cable audience together is a small slice of this country I think normal walking around Americans are sad and embarrassed and exhausted and they're sad because they're embarrassed and I think they will I think I think Democrats make a huge mistake if they think the country is wants transformation I think the country wants restoration so so and you wrote about this I think a week or so ago you wrote about what one of one of your thoughts about what Democrats need to do in this election that you mentioned be more modest what were you talking about well I noticed in the paper this morning Elizabeth Warren who I've our warm spot in my heart for her cuz she brings gravity and weight to politics with her ideas there's a thing in the New York Times this morning comparing the candidates on health care and she says no more half-measures oh my goodness well this is a woman who had her first right after she announces her candidacy she goes on a town hall with CNN and says yes single-payer is fine and now 177 million Americans get their health care from their employers and rather liked it another 40 or so million Americans have other private health insurance and rather like it they're not going to listen again when you say if you like your health care plan you can keep it because they don't trust that anymore it seems to me dangerous to tell the American again this is a complicated society she says in this morning's paper we shouldn't have half measures we're talking about 18% of the American economy we're talking about rural hospitals we're talking about this astonishingly complex system applying to an elderly population three or four probably 40 percent of all Medicare patients have chronic ailments that would have any one of which would have killed them before modern pharmacology this complicated worrisome frightened dangerous world we're living in with health care and all the rest and they're gonna she says no half measures are gonna remake it no you're not but not all the Democrats are from Medicare for all not all the devil Joe Biden isn't Joe Biden isn't but the other six leading ones are so what I mean would what a what our what our water okay first of all Democrats what should Democrats do if they have a hope of defeating President Trump well they should begin by talking about what people talk about around the kitchen table and I guarantee you it's not abolishing the electoral college which isn't gonna happen I mean just not that's it's close to a certainty as you can say in a democracy i I really don't think reparations for slavery that's an interesting argument to have but that's not what people are talking about they're talking about health care cost they're talking about prescription drug costs by the time we have this election next time they're going to be talking about the business cycle perhaps they're going to be noticing that I guess I think I've said when the next recession starts with a budget deficit a trillion dollars that's going to be really interesting there are wholesome worries people have about their infrastructure I mean they said we promised this trillion dollar infrastructure all these bright shiny things what happened talk about things that people care about just quickly you mentioned reparations it just as a side question do you think there's some solution when it comes to reparations I don't think that reparation any form of reparation I dunno I think reparations of various sorts have been made over the years through affirmative action and before that and other social programs that were not target explicitly at people because of race but but covered people because of race I think if you really want to ratchet up the discord in America which is a perverse aim but if you wanted to ratchet up the discourse discord begin allocating guilt over eight generations since the end of slavery it's a it's a hopeless task you've got all kinds of I mean a majority of Americans today are descended from people who were not here when the Thirteenth Amendment but is the idea is there any worth in the idea of it if it could Blair is worth in the idea of ameliorative measures to help those who don't have enough and those who have trouble taking advantage of the opportunities of society has regardless of race color or creed there is nothing that seems to me to be said for taking a slice of the American population and saying that we shall now have a kind of special reparations for you because of injuries done to you it who's going to administer it how do you calibrate it elizabeth warren i picking on her but jeepers she she said this morning there should be represented by wrong there should be reparations for gay people because before the obergefell decision-making establishing the right to same-sex marriage gay people could not file joint returns enough I mean again talk about things that don't make you sound strange to normal Americans what what are conservatives to do in this next election it means say if it's Joe Biden a hypothetical if Joe Biden is the nominee running against Donald Trump what do you do if you're if you're a conservative you're George will what do you do the most important thing for conservatives is to remove from the head of the Republican Party someone who's anti conservative so the most important thing for conservatives is to change the presidency ideally now ideally from this conservatives point of view a Democrat would no doubt win and the Republicans would keep the Senate and not much what happened legislatively unless there was serious compromise which is what the system was designed to do in the first place but does that mean does that mean conservatives should vote for the Democrat if that's the way to remove President Trump well there are there are a couple of Democrats out there that would test even my desire to see the president but basically if the choice is between a centrist Democrat and the current president of course you get to voting to clear the ground and start over first to clear the ground the logic of that I don't need to draw a picture okay so who's the centrist Democrats in this in this group Biden globish or Hickenlooper there john delaney they're a lot of them and and there's one of them do you think stand a better chance make a better stronger case than the others well getting John Delaney's and Hickenlooper saw through this nominating process is difficult nominating Biden is difficult because a bite [Laughter] just breathtaking it tell you Biden story 19 in 2008 September he's on the ticket with Obama running for Vice President Lehman Brothers meltdown countries in panic Biden says thinks that george w bush's president is not giving the kind of robust presidential leadership he should be giving and he says well in my october 1929 when the stock market crashed president roosevelt said he said President Roosevelt went on television [Laughter] I don't think that disqualifies in but so you'd still vote for him so it's kind of an adventure so alright we're we're wrapping up who your definition of conservatism your definition of say the ideal who who out there on the political landscape fits the definition pat toomey senator from Pennsylvania Ben Sasse if I think's been here or will be here soon there are a lot of good people out there bill weld for pete's sake is running in the primaries against him bill weld is red Hayek not the Road to Serfdom he's read the big one the constitution of Liberty he's experienced he's intelligent he's very funny it comes from a very old very rich family and he was asked one day governor weld did your family come over on the Mayflower he said no my family came later we sent the help on the Mayflower to get to get the cottage room so so does one of those folks you mentioned or somebody else fit the definition of who should run yes I voted for Ben Sasse in 2016 I wrote in so I'm gonna come back to the question I you you actually raised earlier some of this is it's kind of a dark outlook George leave us with something positive to take away from this session well I say in here that and this book is a summons to pessimism not ma not fatalism not fatalism not despair not acquiescence to vast impersonal forces but pessimism in the sense that there's so much that can go wrong in a free society that you have to be wary at all times of the ways it can go wrong here's the bright side no one ever got rich betting against the United States or against the American people they are more sensible and less passionate and inflamed then some of their representatives would have us believe they are or some of the people in my business would have you believe they are the American institutions have been enormous ly durable people rather cavalierly say we're in a constitutional crisis we've had one constitutional crisis that is one crisis the Madisonian institutions could not handle and that was the Civil War Watergate all the rest the institutions took care of them just fine so the architectures fine if we reestablish the equilibrium but most important reason for prosperity and for happiness is this great new book as a story is told amber may correct me on the story is told that when Margaret Thatcher after she was head elected head of the parliamentary Conservative Party but before she was Prime Minister she was at a meeting of some of her members and some guy was up nattering on about the beauties of centrism and about transcending ideology and all the rest and mrs. Thatcher reached into her capacious and just a famous handbag and pulled out a copy of Hayek's the constitution of Liberty slammed it on the desk and said this is what we believe in a few years a president will take the conservative sensibility slam it on the desk attend this is what we believe [Applause] and and you are signing here and and he is signing books afterwards thank you all

Channel: The Aspen Institute

Views: 29,618

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Keywords: Aspen Ideas Festival, George Will, Judy Woodruff, Donald Trump, history, politics, American government, Ronald Reagan, GOP, Republican Party, Trump administration, United States presidency, Aspen Institute, political commentary, Washington, Congress

Id: Q0cORtSyQ-4

Length: 50min 43sec (3043 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 24 2019