TARYN MURPHY: My
name is Taryn Murphy. I'm a junior here
at the college. And I'm studying
philosophy and religion. And I'm very honored to
introduce our speaker this evening. Kimberley Strassel writes the
weekly Potomac Watch column for The Wall Street
Journal, where she is also a member
of the editorial board. A graduate of
Princeton University, her previous positions
at the Journal include news
assistant in Brussels, internet reporter in London,
commercial real estate reporter in New York, columnist
for OpinionJournal.com, and senior editorial
page writer. She is a regular contributor
to Sunday morning political programs,
including Face the Nation and Meet the Press. In 2013, she was a Eugene
C. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Journalism
at Hillsdale College. And in 2014, she was a
recipient of the Bradley Prize. She is the author of
The Intimidation Game-- How the Left is Silencing Free
Speech, and most recently, Resistance At All Costs-- How Trump Haters are
Breaking America. Please help me welcome
Kimberley Strassel. [APPLAUSE] KIMBERLEY STRASSEL:
Good evening. It is honestly such
a joy to be here. Every time I get to come
to Hillsdale, it's a joy. I want to thank
Hillsdale and the Center for Constructive Alternatives
for having me here tonight. Just driving in last
night, every time I come, the growth and the amazing
changes at this place-- we drove in last night. And I said to my
husband, I could swear that enormous chapel was
not there when we were just here a couple of years ago. It's astonishing. My one small complaint--
it was funny. Last night-- and
my bad, by the way, too, because I changed my
mind about this in the end. As we were driving
here, all these miles, last night, I had this thought. And it's the thought that all
overbusy, overbooked people have when they're just trying
to get to a place, which is, why does a college that is
so important to free speech, and to intellectual exchange,
and so important to reminding us about the history of the
country and our founding principles have to be located
in the middle of nowhere? [LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE] And then I got here and
eased into Hillsdale, and had a glass of wine. And, of course, the
very obvious point hit me, which is that,
of course, the reason that Hillsdale has remained
so committed to free speech, and exchange, and to the history
and values of our country is because it is
located so far away from every other population
center, all of which have abandoned those values. So another way of saying,
well done, and please don't ever move anywhere
else in the country. I think Hillsdale may, in
fact, be the perfect venue to address a question
of why we are seeing a resurgence
of socialism today. And bear with me
while I explain that. When we talk about the rise of
the popularity of socialism, the polls show that it is
mostly younger Americans who are embracing it. This is a problem primarily,
albeit not exclusively, of youth, which, by the way,
isn't necessarily a surprise. It's kind of like
that old story. There's a child who says to
their parent, when I grow up, I want to be a socialist. And the parent replies, OK, but
the problem with that, honey, is that you know that
you can't do both. [LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE] But the thing is, writing
this off as an issue of youth isn't good enough because,
obviously, socialism isn't an innate issue to youth. It's difficult, for
instance, to imagine a socialist philosophy sweeping
a campus like Hillsdale. This is an institution committed
to providing its students with facts, history, economics,
the truth of the founding of this country, and the
reasons for its success, as well as other examples
of other countries that have not fared as well. And all of this has allowed
even the youth of this campus to obtain a realistic
understanding of the dangers of socialism. It's also not good enough,
though, to just sit back and to assume that the rest
of the country's youth, those outside of Hillsdale,
will inevitably grow up. The problem is just too urgent
right now in the country. There are literally millions
of younger Americans who today either openly declare
themselves socialists or say that they have favorable
views of that philosophy. Those young Americans,
in turn, have the ability to vote, and to
vote, ironically, for much older politicians
who should know better, who should know their history. And those politicians,
in turn, if given power, are promising policies
that would radically undermine the system
of capitalism that has served as the
strength of this nation since its beginning,
which leads us to another old
saying and something that Dr. Arnn alluded to
earlier, the joke about-- any joke about socialism is only
funny when everybody gets it. [LAUGHTER] If we want to know
how to fix it, though, we first have to
understand the root causes. And we've had many capable
academics, and sociologists, and political
observers now document some of the structural
shifts that have arguably contributed to this new
interest in a very, very dangerous philosophy. Globalization has led to greater
levels of wealth inequality and a new politics of envy. That globalization, coupled with
overregulation in the United States and at times poorly
managed trade policy, has displaced entire US
manufacturing sectors and hollowed out significant
swaths of the middle class. Ever-growing government,
alongside schemes like gerrymandering, has
sheltered too many politicians from accountability and left
millions of Americans feeling left behind and
more importantly, alienated from what they see
as an elitist ruling class. And then we've had
huge cultural shifts as well too in this country. Those younger Americans
we were talking about, they aren't growing up. They aren't being
asked to grow up. They are living at
home until their 30s. They're getting married
later, putting off children, putting off buying a
home, all the things that usually lead
developing adults to be more skeptical
of government schemes and government plans
for redistribution. By the way, I should just say,
in my house, one of the mottoes is and I say to
all my children-- they are now 14, 12, and eight. And I say, there
is only one thing I can promise will happen to
you when you turn 18 years old and that is that your room
is going to be repurposed. [LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE] But those kids out there
who do dare to leave home are more and more--
they're funneled into dead-end
degrees, which lead to dead-end jobs in
urban areas where it's impossible to get ahead,
impossible to buy a home, and where they are,
again, surrounded daily by woke liberal politics
and policies that are designed to pit
American against American. Now, these shifts are very
real and very important. But even identifying them is not
good enough because even big, cosmic structural shifts
do not happen in a vacuum. There are things
behind them as well. They are the result of
conscious decisions. Trade doesn't just happen. It's negotiated. Regulation doesn't just happen. It's crafted. Political unaccountability
doesn't just happen. It is deliberate. No one is making kids stay at
home until they're middle-aged. The decision to do
so is a response to job opportunities,
housing policies, poor or misguided
education, and rules that allow their parents to
continue funding their health care until they
are 26 years old. And so we can't just blame
youth for not knowing better. It's like Dr. Arnn said earlier. They're learning. And they are the product
of parenting, of education, of political policy,
and of culture. So instead, I think that
we have to acknowledge that these shifts and
that the subsequent rise in the popularity
of socialism are, in fact, the result of failures
of core groups of officials in civic institutions. And tonight, I'd like to
make the case that there are four in particular that we
need to talk about and put out there for blame. They are the Democratic
Party, the Republican Party, the media, and our
system of education, in particular,
higher education-- Hillsdale, of course, excluded. So let's run through them. Let's look at the
Democratic Party, some of its most
influential members of which have adopted an
outright socialist agenda-- Bernie Sanders,
Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-- I'm always so proud when
I can say that name-- her entire squad. But it's a lot more broad
than just those names. As I point out in the
book I just put out, this is the most
socialist Congress in the history of this country. Following the 2018 congressional
election-- some of you may know Nate Silver's
FiveThirtyEight blog. And it pointed out
that in 2010, there were about 1.5 Progressives
or liberal members of Congress for every blue
dog moderate in the House. Right now, post
the 2018 election, the Progressives currently
outweigh the moderates in the party four to one. And just a quick note I think
we should make about terms. Progressivism, let me say
right now, is socialism. Progressivism is
that new word that just burst into the political
ideology in recent years. But the question is, why
did we need a new word? The Democratic Party's
always had liberals. It's always had moderates. And that has always adequately
described the party and where it stood, and its splits. We have this term today
because there was a recognition just a few years ago on the
left that they needed a term to describe a
philosophy that went far beyond the traditional
liberal views of higher taxes, and bigger government,
and creative judges. And what is that philosophy? I would say, look at the plans
being advocated by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. They would, in core
sectors of the economy, eradicate capitalism and replace
it with government-run tyranny, health care being
the best example. As for other sectors, their
plans would so radically regulate core sectors of
the economy-- finance, transportation, energy,
to name just a few-- as to essentially make them
arms of the government. And they would also so tax all
of these sectors and businesses to such a degree that they
would cease to function on the behalf of shareholders. They would instead exist
as the central means by which the Sanders and
Warrens and AOCs of the world would redistribute
wealth in this country. Is everyone in this room-- I'm sure most of
you are aware of it, of that famous description of
political and economic systems that's based on two cows? Some of you have
probably heard of this. So feudalism--
you have two cows, and your lord takes
some of the milk. Fascism-- you have two cows, the
government takes both of them, and hires you to take care of
them, and sells you the milk. A dictatorship-- you have two
cows, government takes both, and then it shoots you. [LAUGHTER] My favorite was always British
democracy-- you have two cows, and they both go mad. [LAUGHTER] American capitalism-- you
have two cows, you sell one, you buy a bull, and you grow
a herd, and you hire workers, and then you go public, and
then you get on the Forbes 500. [LAUGHTER] Socialism-- you have
three cows, government takes two, and gives them to
other people on the grounds that that makes things fair. This is pretty much the approach
of most of today's Progressives in the Democratic Party. They would take the majority
of other people's wealth, the majority of other people's
earnings, the majority of other people's property
to pay for free health care, for free education, for free
child care, for free drugs. So please don't be
fooled by Bernie Sanders' tortured attempts to
make a distinction between democratic socialism
and pure socialism. Socialism has long
predated even communism. And, in fact, it's always
existed in a variety of forms. If you look at Marx and Engels,
in their "Communist Manifesto," they actually devoted an
entire section to criticizing the forms of socialism
that existed at the time that were not pure
enough for them. What they didn't like is
that there have always been socialists who believed in
some aspects of the market, who believed in some
property rights, who believed that people should be
able to keep a bit of what they make. Those who have attended
here the past few days have heard some
wonderful explanations of the different models of
socialism around the world. And so let's be clear. What Progressives
are advocating today is just another
version of socialism. It'd be a US version, sure,
but it's still socialism. It's a version in which
some markets would actually be allowed to exist, in
which some Americans, and corporations,
and wealthier people would be allowed to keep
some of what they earn. But they would, to be
clear, by and large be working for the
benefit of everyone else. That is socialism. And the only reason the
adherence to this philosophy-- do not use that word openly
beyond Bernie Sanders-- is because they know that
it remains a detestable idea for most Americans. So instead, we get the
word progressivism, or we hear Elizabeth
Warren actually say with a straight face
that she is a capitalist. She can say what she wants. Progressivism is socialism. So the bigger
question is, why have so many in the Democratic
Party moved left so quickly? Younger people in this country
who are adopting socialism at least have the excuse of
being ignorant of history. They are seemingly
unaware that if we in this room had $1 for every
time socialism was successful, we'd have $0. Of course, what's more notable
is that even if socialism did work, we'd all have $0, too. [LAUGHTER] They are also, unfortunately,
seemingly unaware-- and more importantly-- of
the extraordinary cruelty and devastation that purer
forms of socialism have wrought. Socialism has, over
hundreds of years, meant the end of free speech,
free assembly, a free press, free religious belief,
free elections, and a free judiciary. Its more communistic
versions have resulted in imprisonment,
execution, starvation of tens of millions
of human beings. Look at the histories of Russia,
China, Korea, Cuba, Cambodia, Vietnam, Ethiopia, and
more recently, Venezuela. The list is long, and
it's horrifying, and right there in the history books in
black and white for all to see. So what excuse do older, wiser
members of the Democratic Party have for embracing such an
inexorably disastrous course? They know the history. And so I say, in
light of that, I think we have to adopt a more
cynical view of their motives. So I premise here that their
interest is not necessarily just equality and higher
standards of living or the betterment
of a free society because we all know
from the history books that that's not what you get. I would argue that their
motive, at least in part, is the same motive
that has propelled so many of the socialist
drives of the past. It's power, and it's control. Most parties, if
you think about it, when their message fails to
resonate with the public, when they lose, say, a
presidential election, they decide to take a step
back, lick their wounds, do an autopsy, figure
out what they did wrong, and come back the next
cycle and do it better. Unfortunately, this
has not been the habit of the Democratic Party
over the past 10 years. Political setbacks have not
been met with hard thought. They've instead been
met with an attitude of, how do we shackle
the other side, and how do we change the system
to make it easier to win? During the Obama years, we
had a new era, for instance, of intimidation, in which
democratic officials trained the federal bureaucracy
on their opponents, inspiring the IRS to target
conservative groups engaged in political activity. We had liberal prosecutors and
attorneys across the states launch criminal investigations
into their political opponents in Wisconsin, and
Montana, and New York. We've seen new speech
codes on campuses. And in the age of Trump,
this tendency has only grown. The attitude of the resistance,
again, the focus of my book-- I'm just making a little
pitch here because we're a capitalistic audience-- [LAUGHTER] --is that this president
and the Republicans are illegal occupiers of an
office, and that therefore, any action is justified
in removing them from that position. And so we've had an
unprecedented FBI counterintelligence
investigation into a sitting presidential campaign. Think about those words. We've had the most
raucous and ambush attack on a Supreme Court nominee
in history, Brett Kavanaugh. We have watched
House Democrats pass as their first
piece of legislation in the majority starting this
year a new voting reform that would pave the way for fraud at
every level at the ballot box. And we are right now
witnessing an unprecedented use of impeachment as a
partisan political tool. These are all extremely
dangerous new uses and abuses of what are meant
to be solemn powers exercised by solemn institutions. And they will potentially
have profound consequences for our democracy going forward. In the last election,
Hillary Clinton actually ran on promoting a
constitutional amendment that would have overturned
Citizens United and given politicians
the ability to define what was
appropriate political speech. Think about that idea. We have AOC-- I'm not going to try
her name a second time-- right now attempting to bully
Facebook into not running ads from one political party. And we have candidates
like Senator Warren calling for the abolition of
the electoral college, for the packing of
the Supreme Court. So let's be clear. Anyone who has even a
passing understanding of the glorious history
of our electoral college, of the beauty of that system
that our founders created, would never contemplate
advocating its destruction. The electoral college was
set up as a reflection of our republic, as a guard
against pure majority rule. And those who are now pushing
a change or an end to it are not doing so because they
believe in a better country. Come on. They're doing so for
pure partisan power. They want to be in control and
then stay in control forever. And these political
actors understand that socialist policies are a
further avenue for obtaining and keeping that power. Progressives can say that
they're interested in fairness, and health care for all,
and better education. Maybe that is what
motivates them to some part. But here's the thing. They also know that those
policies provide them extraordinary new
political power and control over
speech, over assembly, over money, over elections. Giving government
control over health care literally means giving
government control over life and death. Giving government
control over energy gives government control
over what people drive, what jobs they can have,
where they can travel, and what food they can eat. And if you don't
believe me, go look at the text of the Green
New Deal, in which they're honest about the decisions
that they intend to take on behalf of the electorate. They know from history
that these schemes do not lead to more equality
or to a better world. So we have to assume in the
end that a big part of this is instead about obtaining
raw political power, taking it and keeping it. And in the process,
they're taking advantage of those millions
of young Americans who have experienced those
structural shifts I mentioned, young Americans
who are demoralized by a global economy,
struggling at times for jobs, overloaded with student
debt, unable to buy a home. They are pandering to
those young Americans' basest instincts. The world isn't fair. It's stacked against you. The rich are keeping you down. I'll pay for your health care. I'll pay for your education. I'll penalize those
who would charge you for a mortgage, or a credit
card, or a prescription drug. These politicians are
not lifting them up. They're not inspiring
them to do better. They are capitalizing on fears,
and weaknesses, and worries. This is a failure of
leadership by people who know better, who have
an obligation to acknowledge history, to celebrate
US successes, and to use their power with
humility and restraint. So that's the Democrats. But I would point out that
the failure isn't just on the liberal side. This opportunity to prey
exists because too many of us on the conservative side have
not done a good enough job at combating it when
we simply haven't. We have to acknowledge that. [APPLAUSE] Everyone, young and
old, needs principles around which to
organize their lives. Young Americans are every day
hearing the socialist call. As I mentioned, your
life is too tough. The deck is stacked against you. You need us to lift you up. Government can do that. And they are not hearing
a compelling message to the contrary. Conservatives, and in
particular the elected members of the Republican Party,
are failing in that regard. And the biggest failure is
simply one of messaging. And it's a failure born, I
would wager, from conceit. Here's the problem
with conservatives. We innately
understand the beauty of free markets and
free people, so much so that we can't imagine
that nobody else does. And we don't think we
need to take the time to explain it to them. And sometimes, by the
way, conservatives are understandably further
discouraged by the need to tackle what are very complex
subjects and the world in which we live of 30-second
sound bites. That's a hard thing to do. It is, after all, much
easier for Progressives to get those democratic
presidential candidates calling for the abolition of
the electoral college. They have a very simple message. It's not fair. A majority of Americans
voted for Hillary Clinton. She ought to be president. When was the last time you heard
a prominent conservative leader take the time to explain why
the electoral college matters so much, its history
and its principles, to explain the
importance of guarding against pure democratic
majorities, the importance of encouraging
coalition building and nationwide campaigning, the
importance of us as a republic? Would anyone like
to actually hazard a guess of how many young
Americans under the age of 30 even understand how the
electoral college works? Raise your hand if you
think it's like 10%. That's an extraordinary failing. They don't. And, by the way, those
who do might entirely be here on this campus. [LAUGHTER] Let me give you a
working world example of how this failure
works in practice and how this
failure also greases the wheels for socialism. I remember a particularly
brilliant senator by the name of Tom
Coburn from Oklahoma. Some of you might know him. He was an obstetrician by trade. And he was a true what I call
citizen legislator, meaning he came relatively briefly
to Washington to help better his country and to benefit
by sharing his knowledge, in particular, his knowledge
of the health care system. And after he spent a little
bit of time there, guess what? He left and went
back to his home. Senator Coburn spent
years exhorting his Republican colleagues
to make themselves knowledgeable on the
creeping costs and growing problems in the health sector-- what was driving it,
just how many Americans were getting angry over it,
what the response should be. And his colleagues by
and large ignored him on the Republican side. He was told that health care
markets were complicated, the politics were
complicated, Republicans risked alienating voters if
they pushed the wrong policy. Senator Coburn and
several of his colleagues actually developed a
model health care reform based on free market
principles, but none of the Republicans
in his conference could agree to all of
the different elements. So nobody in the
end did anything, right up until the point
that an Illinois senator named Barack Obama
made fixing health care the centerpiece of his
2008 presidential campaign. And he had a lot
of Americans who were eager to hear his ideas
because they were fed up with the status quo. And he won on it,
and he pushed through on the barest of
majorities, Obamacare. Obamacare has since
performed exactly as conservatives
predicted it would-- driving costs up even further,
disrupting care, undermining innovation, and making
health care unattainable for significant numbers
of Americans, so much so that we now have Democrats
saying that the only way to fix these problems, the
problems that they created, is to socialize medicine
and to put government in control of all of it. And Republicans are
doing the same thing they were doing a decade ago. They're decrying those
democratic plans. But even today-- and let me
stress this-- even today, they do not have
a unified reform in response, 15, 20 years
later, not with one voice and not with one vision. And so, by the
way, if you're one of those millions of
young Americans out there, it makes the choice in
this election very simple. You can vote for Republicans
and get the status quo, which nobody is very happy with,
or you can vote for Democrats and get free health care. Which would you
choose, given what's been told to you out
there in this environment? So this too is a
failure of leadership, by a group of elected leaders
who need to do more than just complain about the
other side, who need to have the passion
of their convictions and the mindset that
it is their obligation to teach, and explain,
and boldly tackle even complicated
subjects, and moreover who need to start coming up
with a strategic plan for how to break through the
stranglehold of the two other institutions
that are doing so much damage to our country,
who are also most directly and daily failing
our young Americans-- the media and the
education complex. Our press is currently overdue
for singular criticism. For decades now the media
has been moving to the left. And this, I believe,
is a function of a growing elitism in
the media profession, one that's stomped out
diversity of viewpoint. Long gone are the days when
a farm boy could put himself through a community college,
start as a cub reporter at a local paper, and
one day find himself on a desk at The New York Times. Increasingly the reporters
who shape our daily narrative from these lofty
media purchases all come from the same
left-of-center communities, all went to the same
left-of-center colleges, all have the same
left-of-center views. By the way, I grew up in a
logging community in Oregon. I don't know a single
person who lives and works in journalism today who has even
a remotely similar experience to mine. In fact, they actually wonder
if we still have electricity in the places where I grew up. They're so divorced from
anything outside of New York or Washington. It's something to behold. And meanwhile, the
old guard editors who used to exist to
scrupulously stamp out hints of bias are all
things of the past. And one result is that most
of the mainstream media today actively campaigns against
capitalism and free markets. In 2018, researchers from
the Arizona State University and Texas A&M
University surveyed 462 financial journalists,
OK, financial journalists. These are the people who
have a special understanding of markets, finance,
corporations, trade. These are the
people who therefore ought to have the most
understanding of the virtues of capitalism, in
particular, by comparison to any other system the world,
ever, in all of history. And yet, the
researchers found that of these more than 450
journalists, nearly 60% admitted to being very
liberal or somewhat liberal. Another 37% described
themselves as moderate. And precisely 4.4% said they
leaned right of center, 4.4%. This is why the
mainstream media uniformly writes stories that are
hostile to tax cuts, to deregulation, to
labor market freedom, to health care freedom,
and to political campaign spending, which, by the way,
is a form of free speech. It's why they're also hostile
to corporations and businesses that employ tens of
millions of Americans. If you are a
millennial and you take an even occasional
interest in the news, this is the unrelenting message
that you are sent every day. In addition to this, you are
provided a never-ending stream of stories about
vulnerable communities who are unable to
help themselves without the aid of government. You also read fawning coverage
of socialist proposals offered by democratic
candidates, whether it be Medicare for
All or the Green New Deal, free college, the
forgiveness of student debt. And these stories are also-- and I think this is important-- not just fawning, but bereft
of any critical analysis of the failings of these
systems, failings that have already been demonstrably
proven in other countries that have adopted
similar proposals. We never-- when
was the last time you read a story about a Bernie
Sanders or Elizabeth Warren plan for Medicare for All
that mentioned the waiting lines or death panels that
accompany Britain's National Health Service? We hear nothing about the
collapse of medical innovation in other countries that have
instituted price controls. We hear nothing about the
mess that is currently the energy market in
places like Germany that have embraced
renewable energy programs of the
very type now being pushed by the American left. This amounts-- and I am
saying this as a journalist-- to professional malpractice. But it explains,
yes, it is awful. [APPLAUSE] It is not journalism anymore. This is not journalism. But it explains why so
many young people are unaware of economic realities. Our press corps is failing them. And I would just
point out, those are just the factual questions. They are failing the country in
an even bigger and more scary way than just
economic illiteracy. Most socialist regimes
are accompanied by autocratic or
totalitarian tendencies. And that is because socialism,
as an economic project, is imposed from the top down. The more power you
have at the top, the easier it is to force
people to implement your agenda. And the guard against
this has always been a vigilant and
free press, which exists to be skeptical
of government power, to be on guard against
government abuse. That press, in turn,
leads to a more educated, active citizenry that
rises up against real or even perceived
abuses of power. In the past three
years, our press has completely
abdicated that role. The press has gone
beyond mere bias to actively and overtly joining
one side in a partisan war. And so visceral is its hatred
of this current president that it has abandoned all of its
basic standards and functions. This is a press corps that
for the past three years has praised and justified
an FBI investigation into a presidential campaign. Imagine that. Jim Comey's FBI engaged
in Hoover-like behavior, surveilling members of
a political campaign, keeping secret memos
of his conversations with the president,
leaking them later to gin up a special counsel. Not only has the press
blessed this behavior, it has sat and served
as a willing scribe for the self-serving narratives
of those who were actually fired from their jobs. It's put them on
TV, serving them up as neutral analysts on these
topics, the very people who were at the center of one of
the greatest political scandals in modern times. When I was coming up
through journalism, you were taught to question
anything a government official told you, to look out for spin. These guys are acting
as the narrators of that former institution's
leadership positions. And there is a generation
of younger Americans who have been told for
three years as a result that there is nothing wrong
whatsoever with powerful law enforcement and intelligence
agencies secretly monitoring American political figures. We have a press corps
that these days routinely tells that younger generation
that it's OK for Americans to settle their political
differences via impeachment, for one party to overturn
the results of an election because they don't
like those results. We have a press corps that
tells the younger generation that it's OK to
ambush a Supreme Court nominee with uncorroborated
allegations of sexual assault and gang rape and to put
forward those allegations despite no evidence
and in contravention of all basic principles,
like due process or the standard of innocence
until proven guilty. We have a press
corps-- by the way, a press corps that exists
because of our Constitution and the First Amendment-- that tells our
younger generation that it is right and
indeed good for campuses to have speech codes
and safe spaces. Our press corps says this. And in light of all
this, of the failure to report honestly on the
failings of socialist economics and of the daily
justification they put forward of abuses of power, how can
we ever expect that younger generation to have a dim view
of abuse of power or socialism? Especially too, and this
brings us to our last-- this is really a glum
speech, isn't it? Sorry. [LAUGHTER] I have some optimistic
points at the end. OK. Especially too, given
the education they're receiving, OK, the important
part of the speech. It starts in grade school. And whether your complaint
is poor education, or incomplete education,
or biased education, the problem is the same. By the way, I have
kids at all levels of school-- high school, middle
school, and grade school. By the way, just shoot me. Having kids in three
different schools is awful. And I love the fact
that they all learn about our civil rights era. It's really important. But I think that many of us out
there would be equally grateful if our children were also
provided an equivalent amount of study about the
founding of this country or the horrific histories
of other countries, from the Soviet Union
to China, that followed socialist and communist pasts. And we would be
equally grateful if we had schools that managed
to teach even half of our children to
adequately read and write by the time they
leave high school. Because, by the way, that
is not the case today. And if we're going to talk about
our obligations of our younger generation to understand
the failings of socialism, children who cannot adequately
read or write cannot be expected to take reasoned
decisions about choices of economic systems. When I go out these
days and people ask me what I think is the biggest
issue facing this country, I used to be conflicted on that. I'm not anymore. And so my first answer is
always higher education. And it simply is. Even when I attended college,
which is really a long time ago now, our places
of higher learning were already straying away
from the Western canon, from the great books. They were becoming captive
to grievance politics. So even when I went to college
at Princeton University, in my particular
course of study-- and we were one of the first
years that had to do this-- I was not allowed
to graduate unless I took what was called a
disadvantaged person's course. I'm not really sure if I'm
proud or embarrassed to say that it was the only requirement
I fulfilled at Princeton University as a film course. And my overriding
memory of that class, beyond getting to watch
Shaft, which, by the way, I did think was really
cool and very entertaining, was that we didn't learn
a great deal beyond anger. It was a course that was
designed to stoke discord, to dredge up animosity, to
pit student against student. And I really didn't
see the point. But that was at
least just one course that I took at university,
and I survived it. For most students today,
these ideological agendas are the bread and butter of
their college experience. They are an hourly experience. Our universities are
almost uniformly liberal, if not outright socialist
in their classes and in their teachings. Our professors, who
are hired and then protected under tenure,
lecture our students daily about an American society that
is racist, sexist, ageist, corporatist, and elitist. These kids are told that
the entire world is rigged against them and that the only
remedy for such a situation is more government that will
protect and equalize society. Three years ago, the
Econ Journal Watch did a study of more than
40 leading universities and questioned more
than 7,000 professors. Liberal professors outnumbered
conservative professors by a ratio of 12 to one. And by the way, the left finds
even that ratio intolerable. [LAUGHTER] In the last book I wrote,
The Intimidation Game, I wrote about an organization
which some of you may have heard about
called UnKoch My Campus. So you may know the
Koch Foundation, the two libertarian brothers--
one recently passed away-- over the years
has made an effort to start up programs
of intellectual debate and free market on campuses. Intellectual debate, this is
what colleges exist to do. But no. There is a group of
Americans out there who do not want that debate. So when the foundation
chooses a university to start a program, the UnKoch
My Campus network, which is backed by labor unions,
and environmental groups, and liberal activists,
it organizes individuals to protest and to tar
any professors who might work at such a program. They file state FOIA requests
to get ahold of documents, and they try to embarrass
universities out of allowing these programs
to exist on their campuses. Now, I would point out,
you do not see such efforts to stop, say, billionaire
Tom Steyer from starting a program at Stanford,
as he did recently, that was entirely devoted to
the study of climate change. That kind of billionaire
underwriting is apparently OK. But when it comes to
billionaires supporting ideological diversity,
we have an entire group that is dedicated to making
sure students are not exposed to any thoughts
beyond those put forward by their socialist professors. I think the even bigger
problem, though-- and again, this gets
back to what Dr. Arnn was saying-- kids are learning. We'll expect them to engage in
behavior that we do not always approve of, especially given
all of these influences around them all the time. So one of the biggest
concerns is the abdication of leadership among university
presidents, faculty, and staff. This is the real
problem, universities that coddle infantile, myopic,
or destructive behavior. In the immediate wake of the
election of President Trump-- and I am not making this up-- the University of
Kansas urged students to make use of therapy dogs. The University of Michigan
comforted its distraught students by handing out
coloring books and Play-Doh. [LAUGHTER] No joke. And I really hope Hillsdale does
not have a supply of Play-Doh anywhere on campus. Across the country,
students and even faculty have revolted against visiting
conservative speakers-- staging demonstrations,
engaging in violence. By the way, the response
to such behavior ought to be a little bit like
the story we heard tonight. It ought to be to
remind students that they are at a
university to learn, that they are expected to
behave in a certain way, and that those who
disrupt or protest the noble pursuit of learning
will be asked to leave, to surrender their spot to
a more open-minded scholar. Instead, university
administrations bow to these demands, abandon
intellectual diversity, and turn a blind eye
to atrocious behavior. So again, how can we expect our
students to reject and abhor socialist and
authoritarian impulses when the leaders of their schools
are encouraging them to indulge in those impulses every day? Now, there are universities
that give us cause for hope, places like Hillsdale, or
places like, I'm actually happy to say, my alma
mater, Princeton. This might surprise you. There are two professors at
Princeton, Robbie George, who is a conservative,
and Cornel West, who is a liberal, who many
years ago on that campus teamed up to argue
jointly that universities must be a place for open debate
in a liberal arts education. And they have
routinely come together to press for civil debate
and true speaking on campus. And that alliance
has not only allowed a lot of really great
speakers to come to Princeton University, but it's also
allowed the university to feel competent enough to hire
more conservative professors and to give students on that
campus a beginning, at least, of ideological diversity
in their classrooms. We have to have this. When I went through school,
when many of us in this room went through school, we
had teachers and later professors on different sides
of the ideological spectrum. And it was crucial to us to
hear those opposing viewpoints. These days, our students
are only hearing one side, and it's the song of socialism. Moreover, I should
point out, we parents are actually paying for it. We're paying for them
to be indoctrinated. I know so many
parents these days who are simply terrified
of even sending their child to a center of higher learning. That's just wrong. So this is all by way
of saying, if we care, if we really are worried about
the resurgence of socialism in this country, we have
to look at the root causes. And we have to look
at the bad actors. Our country is always as
good as its information, and its teaching,
and its guardrails. And right now our information
is poor, our teaching is poor, and our guardrails
are bent and broken. We need an informative,
neutral press that is holding government
and political parties to one standard of
political accountability, no matter what side of
the aisle they are on, no double standards. We need an education
system that educates, that explains to our
children the founding principles of this
nation, and that embraces ideological diversity. And we need political parties
that look beyond raw power and that take the time to engage
in considered civic debate. So how do we do this? So this is the happy
part of the speech. I think the good news
is is that we can. We can. I agree with Dr. Arnn
earlier that we can do this. I'm a conservative. It means I am an
optimist by nature. And one thing that gives
me enormous optimism is that this generation
that we are discussing, the one that is currently
somewhat in thrall to socialism, it is
actually a perfect audience for conservative, libertarian,
and capitalist ideas. This is a generation that hates,
in theory, top-down control. They are skeptical of
most forms of power. This is a generation
that was grown up able to get an Uber
whenever they want it and find any information
at the touch of Google. They start businesses in
their parents' basements. They crowdsource
capital investment. They reject traditional
business structures, unlike old fogies like
me, who, by the way, has only held one
job in her lifetime and is now rounding
into her 25th year at The Wall Street Journal. [APPLAUSE] Well-- like I'm saying,
they wouldn't applaud. They switch jobs. They leverage employers. They're unafraid to take risks. These are the kids who are
and who should therefore reject promises
of government jobs and government-imposed
equality or government nirvana. All that they're really
lacking is the information and the experience to
connect those political dots. And the other
source of optimism? We, the people, still have
the power to change things. We really do. And we do so by
embracing, in my mind, one of those fundamental aspects
of capitalism, consumerism. Something I've always
loved about this country is just how demanding we are
as consumers, at least in some regards. I still delight when I go
to a diner and I watch some 80-year-old guy take 20 minutes
to look at his bill and make sure no one charged him
$0.50 extra for the extra bit of bacon on the side, and then
painstakingly work out what the 15% tip is, and make sure
he doesn't give an extra penny. I love it when I go and I see
consumers in the returns line at store, and they're
rejecting the toaster that doesn't get quite hot
enough, or the blanket that wasn't as fuzzy as
was advertised on TV, or the kid's toy that
doesn't perform exactly as the manufacturers
said it would. And I think the trick for all
of us is being just as picky and just as demanding
in our accountability of our institutions
and politicians. We must, as a society,
hold government officials responsible for
abusing their powers, cheapening solemn
tools and institutions. And we must demand that our
elected leaders do a better job of articulating their
policies and their responses to socialism, explaining
not just why it's immoral, but why their own
answers are better. We also have to demand
more of our media. And when it fails to deliver
factuality, or history, or truth, or skepticism,
we have to kill it. Turn it off. Cancel the subscription. Turn off the channel, cut
the cord, whatever word you want to use these days. Don't pay for it. I think we must-- and this is probably the
hardest part-- demand a lot more from our
colleges, and universities, and graduate schools, seriously. Many of you are alumni
at these schools. We must be involved. We have to take part in
those board elections, and those proxy resolutions,
and those votes. We have to refuse to contribute
until universities recommit to intellectual diversity. Call, and write letters,
and make clear the demands. Whenever I make these
sort of suggestions, I'm often told, yeah,
yeah, you're right. But you know what? It's just really hard,
so time consuming. I have a job. I have kids. I have family obligations-- to which I always
like to respond, George Washington
and Thomas Jefferson were pretty busy guys, too. [LAUGHTER] So were all of the Founders. But they understood that
only through hard work would they create this
extraordinary republic of ours. And so I think as
we go ahead, we have to remember those
words of Benjamin Franklin-- "It's a republic if
you can keep it." Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Thank you very much. You are an amazing audience. I just have to say,
by the way, you should be really proud
of Hillsdale for what it expects of its speakers. Whenever I go to give
a speech, I never just pull one out of a bottom
drawer and give the same one. I always feel
responsible to write one for each new group I go to. But when I come to
Hillsdale, I literally sweat. [LAUGHTER] I took three weeks
writing that speech because I'm like,
oh, man, this is such a sophisticated audience. And all these fancy people
are going to be there, and they're going to call
me out if I get it wrong, and they'll never
invite me back. So this was a hard one. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] TARYN MURPHY: Thank
you, Ms. Strassel. Ms. Strassel has agreed to
sign copies of her book, Resistance At All Costs-- How Trump Haters Are
Breaking America. And that will be directly
following the lecture in the Searle lobby. And right now we have
time for some Q&A. So if you have a question,
please make your way to the microphone. AUDIENCE: Hello. Can I call you Kim? KIMBERLEY STRASSEL:
Yes, you may. Only my mother
calls me Kimberley. AUDIENCE: Thank you. You did a great job. Here's my question. Let's all assume, and hope, and
pray that Trump wins in 2020. I have been worrying
about 2024-- Kim for president? [LAUGHTER] KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: Thank you. No. It was funny. I got-- it was great. I got to sit with John Miller's
journalism students today. If you don't know John Miller,
he runs an amazing journalism project here. Everything here is amazing. He runs the amazing
journalism project. And someone asked me
how I made my choice of going into journalism. And I said, I was really
actually quite interested in the beginning in politics
and maybe working in Washington or even running for office. After covering politics for
one year, I said, never, never. It's a horrible life. Yeah, maybe something that
doesn't really require running. AUDIENCE: Hi. Thank you for your
talk, first of all. And it focused pretty
strictly on government. And I was wondering
your thoughts on measures that are
compatible with free market and free association,
like worker's cooperatives or consumer cooperatives. KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: Yeah. So I mean, I think
they can if they're centered around the
idea of free markets. I think some of the problems-- I've seen some of
these in bigger cities, like New York City, et cetera. And they have a more
communistic feel, everyone donates their time. So I think that if you-- we're seeing this, for instance,
in health care markets, in some of these
proposals, for instance, to have small employers
band together and sort of pool basic costs, but in a
way that lowers their overheads and allows them to keep
more of their profits, and give more to their workers. These are great ideas. And I think there's an
enormous opportunity for younger Americans
who are part of this whole new
connected economy. Right now we're seeing versions
of it in Uber, et cetera. But there are ways to do
that in amazing new ways that could lower overall costs,
help consumers, but do so in a free market way. I find Uber really fascinating
because, of course, it's knocked up
against-- it was started by good-hearted liberals. And it ended up getting knocked
up against all these unions that are like, you can't
drive a bunch of drivers that aren't unionized. And Silicon Valley
has had to deal with that
philosophical question. But networked societies,
there's enormous opportunity for free market younger
Americans to embrace this world that a lot of us older
people didn't really grow up in and figure
out ways to use it to do amazing things with capitalism. AUDIENCE: Hi, Ms. Strassel. Thank you so much for your talk. I agreed with you on a
lot of things tonight. But-- KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: But? AUDIENCE: One thing I'd like
to hear your thoughts on is, when you talk about
the Democratic Party, you assigned more
malevolent motives to them. KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: Blame? Yes. AUDIENCE: Yeah. Well, I was wondering, if
we start assigning motives to them of saying they're
actually in it for power and control rather than
taking them at face value, aren't we losing
any common ground we can have as soon as we start
assigning motives to people that they won't admit to? And I'm sure there are
some bad Democrats. I totally agree. But if we just start-- if we lump them all
together as power hungry, don't we lose a lot? KIMBERLEY STRASSEL:
So look, by the way, I wouldn't lump
them all together. I didn't put AOC in
that category of people that I think is
necessarily power hungry. I think she's just
tragically misinformed. And I think she's
28 and hasn't really had a lot of world experience. And I think she honestly
and scarily believes that we could just get
rid of all the airplanes, and all the cow farts,
and it would all be good. I just don't think-- but my complaint-- and I tried
to point it out in here-- is Bernie Sanders knows better. And when he's asked a question
out there about Venezuela and says, don't you have
a problem with what's happening in Venezuela,
and the people that are being shot in the
street, and the people who are starving, he goes, it's
not a socialist country. Come on. He knows better. And so that's the kind
of dishonesty in politics that I don't like. And I don't see how you can be-- I'm sorry. I'm speaking very freely here. But I don't see how you
can be a politician that say you believe in the
betterment of human beings with that experience
unfolding before your eyes and say that that is something-- the policies you want to
implement here in this country, knowing that that
could be what happened. So I think that's disingenuous. And I think they need
to be called out on it. Maybe he's misinformed too. I just find it harder to
believe that you can be that age and be that misinformed. [APPLAUSE] But it's a good question,
and you're right. I think we need to have
some basic places where we get together. I do. AUDIENCE: Yeah. I've been wondering-- KIMBERLEY STRASSEL:
Oh, on this side. AUDIENCE: Oh. I've been wondering
over the years-- it seems as if we are-- the West is committing suicide. So we had this AOC lady
with a New Green Deal. Somebody pointed out
how impractical it is, as you mentioned yourself. She said, who cares? It is the moral thing to do. What morality was
she referring to? What is the kind of morality
that the good guys, we, do not know how to take away from them? And in my opinion, it's
the morality of altruism. Man has no right to
live for his own sake. That is the underlying morality
that's destroying us now. Am I wrong? KIMBERLEY STRASSEL:
No, you're not. And that was sort
of what I was trying to respond to this one is-- to this other question is-- I mean, the education has
so failed our students that not only do they
not know the history and what has
happened in the past, but they've also
taught them to believe that I can say my
morality is right, everyone else's
morality is wrong, and I will impose my viewpoint-- that somehow it is moral to
impose my viewpoint on you, no matter what else. I think that's astonishing. I think she hasn't-- again, I
think she just is a person that hasn't had a lot of-- doesn't have a lot of
knowledge and doesn't have a lot of experience,
but unfortunately has a great deal of arrogance,
and unfortunately, worse, has a great deal of power. And that is very
disturbing to me. It's why I talk
about accountability. I thought one of the
most amazing things that was said this year
because it was so honest, and I don't even think
Nancy Pelosi realized she was being so honest, is
she was asked to say something about the squad. This was back before she
made nicey with them. And she was a little
bit mad at AOC. And she said, well,
AOC can say anything she wants because,
honestly, in her district, you could run a glass of
water with the letter D after the end, and
it would get elected. [LAUGHTER] And her point that
she was trying to make is that some Democrats come
from more competitive districts, and they can't
afford to be insane. [LAUGHTER] But in doing so, she exposed
one of the fundamental problems that I mentioned
in this speech, is that we have too
many politicians that are unaccountable
to the electorate. Do you know that every year
435 seats are up for election in the House of Representatives,
and about 40 of them are competitive? 40. Everything else is
so gerrymandered that not one of those
people has to worry about their re-election. So of course that
encourages people to take extreme positions. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's
only concern was beating the Democrat
in her primary election. There was never any
question a Republican could have any possibility
of ever winning that seat. And so she wasn't challenged
on any of her views. And now she comes, and the
TV cameras are put on her, and she is suddenly
hugely influential. We can't allow our politics
to operate this way. Yes. AUDIENCE: Hi. I loved your lecture,
but I had a question. You were talking about
education and stuff, and intellectual diversity. And this is not
something I agree with. I'm just arguing
from the other side. A lot of people would
say that Hillsdale is not entirely neutral when it comes
to politics, and education, and the worldview we put out
to the students who come here. So what would you say makes
Hillsdale different and not just doing the same thing all
the other schools are doing, just flipped? KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: So
does Hillsdale-- here's the question. I'm actually really curious. Does Hillsdale prevent liberal
speakers from speaking here? AUDIENCE: No. KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: No? AUDIENCE: I mean, we don't
have that many of them come. KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: Yeah. But would it ever prevent it? AUDIENCE: I guess not, no. KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: No. And would you feel,
does it prevent forms of information coming? I think one of the things that's
out there is the whole world, every TV station is
surrounded by liberal politics and liberal-- and
presumably, tons of you see that on your phones. And nobody's taken
away your phones lately and things like that. No. I think, look, ideological
diversity is simply important as a concept. And I have no doubt-- I mean, just the journalism
class I was at today, we talked about things on
left and right sides of-- so that's the question,
is do you feel confident? I mean, I guess one
of the questions is, does anyone
here feel threatened about bringing up a question,
or a topic, or an idea? And I think that that-- what's that? AUDIENCE: The boy in the shirt. KIMBERLEY STRASSEL:
The boy in the shirt-- the boy in the shirt who came
out, and he did his thing. But does anyone actually feel
like they couldn't bring it up? And I think that that is one of
the problems that I hear from students at other universities,
is that they actually feel they cannot even raise a
question in class, that they could write a
paper that was opposite of their professor's views
and fail as a result of it, whereas I fundamentally don't
believe that that happens at this university because
this university does celebrate and believe in diversity
of thought, so. But it's a great question. TARYN MURPHY: Thank you. We have time for
one final question. KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: OK. AUDIENCE: Thank you very much
for coming out again today. I appreciate very much
how you ended your speech. I was thinking about
that specific comment as you were doing
your whole speech. As it relates to
one of the things that I was more
or less expecting you to touch on a little more,
I would even go further down the education realm into
the public school system, not only at the higher education
where I see a lot of issues going or taking place. When I try to
instruct my children, I always tell them
that there's going to be a person who
is an influencer, and there are those who
are easily influenced. As an influencer, it's OK to-- you're going to
influence someone, or someone could be
influenced to do something good or something bad. As one who's easily
influenced, they could be influenced to do
what is good and what is bad. The question is knowing and
understanding what is good and what is bad. KIMBERLEY STRASSEL:
That's a good point. AUDIENCE: And so when I go
and try to talk to my kids about that, I try to make
that clear distinction. And when I address faith with
them, wherever God is removed-- everything about God
tends to be removed, and we try to replace
that with policies. So how would you address and
bring that type of a topic up in some of your writings
or in conversations that you would have in
the journalistic essence? KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: You're
talking about faith? AUDIENCE: Yes, bringing that
up because you didn't really touch on faith as being
some of the issues to help guide students as
to what is right and wrong. And that tends to
be the core issue, right down from the early
development of children to the policymakers
that we have today. KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: Yeah. It is fundamentally a problem. And it starts, I think,
at the grade school and public education
level, where there are so many schools
that have excised any-- we all know this, the public
schools that we no longer allow to have a Christmas
celebration at school or any sort of
reference to anything that involves faith whatsoever. So some of you
may not know this. I actually spend my time-- I split my time between
Washington, DC and my home with my husband in Alaska. And we live in a very
conservative community in Alaska. And I was practically shocked
when I went to my first child's choir concert, and
the kids busted out in a rendition of "God Bless
America" in the public schools. And I was like, wow. I like this place a lot. But yeah. We have a situation,
and we all know this, where too much of society has
forgotten that the separation of church and state doesn't mean
that you cannot have a church. It means the
state's not supposed to impede on a church's work. And we need to re-inject that
into our culture and society. And look, I think there's
a couple of really, really uplifting things
that we're seeing out there. The Trump administration
and its campaigns on behalf of religious
freedom are extraordinary and something to celebrate. [APPLAUSE] And if you didn't see
this just the other day-- it didn't get enough
attention-- but they are crafting a new rule to
get rid of a last-minute Obama prohibition against
faith-based adoptions out there, which has been
a terrible, terrible thing. So I think that that
is-- you're right. That has got to be part of
the discussion as well too. We have gotten so
many things backward in our Constitution
in recent years, people using, maligning,
and misinterpreting, and not understanding what
it was actually there for. That is one of the
worst examples of it, the idea that we need to--
now, the Supreme Court took an itsy, bitsy step
in the right direction with their Brandenburg cross
decision, which is very good. But they need to
go a lot further, and we need to
remind the country. And we're going to have to
look for institutions like that to lead the way, I
think, but also colleges and, again, our leaders, to talk
about this stuff more openly. But you're right. It's a fundamental
aspect of this, and I should've
mentioned it tonight. Thank you. TARYN MURPHY: Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
