NRI Ideas Summit 2023: Meritocracy

[Applause] thank you well good morning everybody I'm Douglas Murray and um I'm going to speak first for this session vivek's going to follow me and then we're going to have a discussion and hopefully open out some of the questions that come up um we're going to be talking this morning about meritocracy uh it seems a pretty good time to talk about that in America um let me preface by the way saying how what a pleasure it is for me to be here with National Review of the national view Institute and what a pleasure it is to be with vivec um to whom I wish all luck I'll take it thank you um some years ago at an event in London my friend the British historian Andrew Roberts who some of you may know was asked by a visiting dignitary um if you were to be made prime minister Andrew Roberts what would you do and Andrew was kind enough to say My First Act would be to make Douglas the minister in charge of education and public enlightenment and I said and War [Laughter] and ever since it's been my request to everyone I know running for office so again Vivek I would like that portfolio I'll think about it to be put to one side it adds a certain level of menace to the issue of Education which I think it lacks um anyhow um the issue of meritocracy in um in America and the wider West at the moment is a fascinating issue because we're totally torn on it let me attempt to sort of mend part of that tear in the following phrase you'll know the the idea of straw Manning uh if you don't know the idea of straw Manning you should see my recent debate with Malcolm Gladwell in Canada where he gave a superb masterclass in what it is to straw man an opponent's argument I want to do the opposite of that on the issue of meritoxin Steel Man the argument what is what is the argument that we could actually agree on as the issue in meritocracy in a society like ours in America and I would say that it's something like this that nobody should be held back from attaining whatever it is that they can attain bite into their virtues and achievements simply because of some characteristic over which they have no say something like that may not be perfect it's something like that we're aiming for that the idea of a meritocracy is nothing should hold you back if you have the capabilities to fulfill your goals so um if you have the capacity to be on the board of a company you shouldn't not be on the board because you're gay or because you're a woman or because you're from ethnic minority the interesting thing about this is I think we have almost total unanimity in a society like America about that question if you look at the polls almost nobody doesn't agree with the aim as I've just set it out that nothing should hold you back if you have the capability simply because of something which you have no say over the problem about this is and the one of the reasons why America in particular is so confused about the issue of meritocracy in the 21st century is because left and right have arrived at very different ideas of how to address this question now there's a critique of the rights attitude but let me roughly lay out what I see as the rights attitude the rights attitude on this question is something like this it's a gradualist approach and this has an enormous amount to be said for it we've heard from educationalists and others and we will do later today the gradualist approach is that if we set up if not the optimal conditions at least as optimal conditions as we can set up then this society in which people can achieve and flourish whatever their own characteristics whatever they've started from will will occur um to my mind it Remains the best answer however there is a critique of it and the critique largely comes from the left says it's complacent and among other things it takes too long so in recent years the left again particularly America has been busying itself away with its own attempt to address this question sometimes in good faith very often not and its answer of course is equity its answer is we will not reach that point of meritocratic goal unless we actually live in a country in which by the way only High status professions can be demonstrated to show Equity so for instance we will base our ideas on a whole set of Industries and accomplishments on Hollywood brilliant take the least representative part of society in which people only Advance because they're attractive very rarely because of their intelligence [Laughter] take that bit of society roll it out complain that this female actress only got 20 million poor thing where the male actor got 25 million and claimed that no one will be free unless this multi-millionaires gets the same salary as the Top Gun actor or whatever another example is boards I mentioned them earlier people in America now on the meritocratic issue are obsessed with boards most people in America of course do not spend their lives sitting on company boards um there was a recent uh uh as the vet can I'm sure address there was recent uh legislation a few years ago in California which insisted that companies if they were going to be publicly registered in California had to have certain representation on the boards from certain minorities and there were certain ethnic minorities they insisted must be on them including Pacific Islanders oh and also trans people um and I got a friend of mine I'm not a math guy I'm a no-nothing Humanities type and um but I got a math friend of mine to Crunch the numbers on this and we worked out that if the number of companies in California remained what they are now which doesn't seem likely um but were that to happen if you are a Pacific Islander who lives in California or a trans person who lives in California you should clear your diary for the 2020s you you are going to be dashing from board meeting to board meeting you're going to be doing the petroleum companies in the morning you're going to have to be doing every University in the afternoon it's just it's going to be no fun but the point is that we have weirdly decided that these things like like as I say high status professions board membership are the things that that unless we get 50 or more female representational boards nobody in America is free unless we get precisely the number of African-Americans on the board or preferably higher nobody is free et cetera et cetera what are some of the things you lose in this just one of the things you lose of course is any focus on non-high status professions absolutely nobody on the American left so far as I know is bothered by the fact that most of the people who laid tarmac on the roads and the highways of America are men almost nobody is demanding more trans Road layers almost nobody is demanding more female workers on pylons to to fix when the electricity cables all go and and risk their lives doing that almost nobody argues that it's only the high status professions and this tells us something I think very revealing about what we actually are prioritizing in modern America now what should we be doing um it seems to me and I I've been writing about this recently it seems to me that we are a great risk in America in particular at the moment of falling into what in the Middle Ages was known as acidi acid was a condition that um writers including Chaucer and Dante and others wrote about it was about a sort of listlessness and in the Middle Ages acid was recognized to be very dangerous for an individual and utterly fatal for a society that is the question of what we should be doing was effectively unaddressed now I was I'm not checking my text messages I promise um I was very interested in a poll Wall Street Journal carried out earlier this week which some of you I'm sure will have seen which speaks to this issue of acidity um just in the last 25 years last quarter of a century living memory for all of us the number of Americans who said that patriotism was quote very important to them fell from 70 percent seven zero percent to 38 percent number of people who said that religion was very important to them fell from 62 percent to just 27. um the number of Americans who believe that tolerance is an important virtue fell from 80 percent four years ago to just 58 today four years four years to lose that number of Americans who believe in the idea of Tolerance I would submit that when we address issues like meritocracy we on the right have to bear in mind the following single thing and I'll finish with that before handing everything we have to recognize that the left has offered a totalistic explanation for human behavior a totalistic explanation that as I say you will not be free until all of these odd things we've selected show representation you must fight and you must struggle and you must strive and you must insult and you must degrade and you must cut people off in your lives and much more that's something to do that's something to do it is an extremely ugly thing to do but it's something to do and we on the right it seems to me need to spend much more of our time not simply picking apart what the left is saying that we should do but providing answers of Our Own saying this is what it would look like to have a successful life in the 21st century this is what the aim should be you shouldn't be playing the games left has invited you to play totally unwinnable games you should be doing the following things that seems to me and maybe we can get on to this to be an aspiration worth struggling for in this century thank you [Applause] thank you Douglas fir laying a foundation that I'll just pick up on actually I'll talk about something a little bit different than I was planning to because I think that there's something deep to Douglas's observation in a discussion about meritocracy to talk about the relationship between Merit or the loss of Merit and this new acidine listlessness in American society I'll tell you actually when I launched this presidential campaign one of the things that I said was it was time to put the Merit back into America and I'm a big believer that language often teaches us something about the truth of what language actually describes and so I was convinced that there was going to be actually a linguistic tie between even the word merit and America it just seems so part of the fabric of what it meant to be American that the coincidence seemed too convenient that these two things were even similar to sounding so I did a little homework in in the weeks thereafter I first got to a disappointing conclusion actually in the first instance they didn't have the same linguistic origin America was named after in part there's actually competing explanations but Amerigo Vespucci the famous explorer one of the first people to come to the Western Hemisphere and America vesputia was named in turn after his grandfather and that name derived actually from his old his grandfather his name was derived from a Gothic word called amalrik so it seemed like I was out of luck there but then I got to the heart of what does emulrich mean actually amalrik is is two words Rick means Master Okay it means the master but then the master of what Amal actually stands for work so if you think about the root in the Genesis of the American name itself it is he who is the master of work itself and to me the idea of work hard work effort as a means to achieving success is actually inextricably linked to that idea of Merit ins itself and so I think that there was a way in which even the language teaches us the way in which Merit is itself part of the American fabric I think that I'll rise to hopefully address the challenge that Douglas laid out for our movement at the end of his remarks which is that we have spent enough time in our movement myself included even Douglas too if I'm to call both of us out on pointing out the endless hypocrisies of the other side in identifying the way in which the weight of the left's own hypocrisies crumble under the weight of its nonsense but I think that now is the moment where we rise to the occasion to provide an affirmative alternative vision of our own because as that Wall Street Journal survey last week demonstrated we are in the middle of this national identity crisis where if you ask most people our age really any age in this country what does it mean to be American what does it mean to be meritocratic you get a blank stare in response and I think that's evidence of the fact that we've lost the sources of identity that used to fill our hunger for purpose and meaning as a generation and I think that's what creates this black hole of a void that allows wokism or gender ideology or for that matter climatism or covetism new secular Cults that arise one at a time to fill that void to pray on that void where I think we can actually fill that void with the answer to the question of what it even Means To Be An American in the year 2023 and if we can do that then we dilute these alternative ideologies to irrelevance and my view is the heart of what it means to be American is that you believe in Merit I'm going to make a a strong claim here I think that Merit is the unifying idea that actually gives us our American identity and it shows up in many different spheres of Our Lives it does mean it's woven into the fabric of the American dream the idea that no matter who you are or where your parents came from or what your skin color is that you can achieve anything in this country with your own hard work your own commitment and your own Dedication that is the heart of the American dream and while we as conservatives me as a presidential candidate will say that we will get rid of affirmative action in America and rate race-based affirmative action that's something that by the way we can end in this country with the stroke of a pen from the White House that's something that can be done why do we want to do it it's because race-based affirmative action is itself an assault on the character of our national Soul it is anti-meritocratic at its core now that much is obvious but the case I'd like to make is that that idea of Merit shows up in other spheres of our lives in ways that might not be obvious either take our commitment to free speech in this country a big part of what's enshrined in our not just the protections against the government intrusion on individual liberty but in the culture of free speech that our founding fathers set into motion was actually a commitment to the meritocracy of ideas itself what does that mean what is Merit in the realm of ideas it means the best ideas win but the best ideas only when when no ideas are censored right you think about what was the best idea in how to deal with the unknown coveted pandemic it was unknown none of us knew exactly what that was going to look like in the first few months of that pandemic well now we know in retrospect that some of the best ideas would have included leaving our schools open even if we were taking steps to protect Elder Americans but that idea couldn't win the best ideas cannot win when some ideas are censored so that too is I think something that our Founders knew and that's not a different topic relating to free speech and constitutional Liberty I would make the case that Merit is a Common Thread that runs through that very idea what is meritocracy and government mean to think about a different sphere of what the Constitution enshrines part of what we enshrined in 1776 in this country was that the people who we elect to run the government ought to be the people who actually run the government that's what's enshrined in a three-part constitutional division of labor and so what does merit mean their Merit means that you earn whoever is best at earning the trust as Amalgamated and counted in the form of votes is most meritocratically suited to actually run the country I speak to you on a day where whatever you think of the man we have a prosecutor that's trying to intervene in that system and saying the people of this country should not be given that choice an administrative state in this town that actually views the elected officials that sit at the White House down the street as an inconvenience because it is the unelected class that today actually holds the keys to power yes that goes to the idea of self-governance over aristocracy but I think this idea of Merit itself is woven into the American fabric even in ways that you wouldn't think about it not just in the American dream but in our culture of free speech not just in our culture of Free Speech but even in the way we set up our system of constitutional self-governance in this country I'll tell you as a first generation American as the kid of immigrants who came to this country this is personal to me my dad came to this country in the late 1970s not with a lot of money in his pocket very little actually to Southwest Ohio where you know I was I grew up as a skinny kid with nerdy glasses and a funny last name and I'll tell you everybody runs into their version of hardship but part of what my parents taught me was that hardship is not the same thing as victimhood hardship is part of what teaches you who you really are yeah did I stand out I went to a actually majority black or close to majority black not all that well to do Public School from first through eighth grade you know got bullied around a little bit as a nerdy academic kid that was focused on science and math as my parents you know I think gratefully now pushed me to be my dad had a saying for me he said If You're Gonna Stand Out you might as well be outstanding and for me achievement was my ticket to get ahead in this country to then become the kid of immigrants who came to this country with almost no money to go on to found multi-billion dollar companies and then to hopefully pass on those same values to my children that's deeply personal to me but it's not just personal to me as a first generation American I think no American actually hears the word merit for the first time if they're raised in the American way they already know it in the way that they were raised and brought up and I think that's a big part of the shared national identity that we've lost so when you hear a survey and I'll close with this before we go to our conversation in the Wall Street Journal that says we've lost our sense of patriotism what does that actually mean it means that we've been tricked and I think we have been it's a form of being duped we've been duped we've been tricked into celebrating not just Equity but the philosophy embedded in equity diversity capital D diversity to celebrate all of the ways in which we are different in ways that caused us to forget all of the ways in which we are really the same bound together by a common set of principles that set this nation into motion 250 years ago that's what's enshrined in the bottom of every one of the coins that embody in physical form the system of what capitalism represents at the bottom of every one of those coins says e pluribus unum from many one and I think one of the things that makes it difficult for even when I'm talking to young people explaining what those common set of ideals are is on one hand there's so many of them free speech self-governance over aristocracy the rule of law we can go down the each of the amendments in the Bill of Rights the first ten amendments and explain what that means to them but I've found that actually one of the easier ways to explain it is sometimes you can just give them the one common thread that runs through the whole thing and that is this idea of Merit and restoring meritocracy in every sphere of Our Lives from the economy to education to who runs the government to even which ideas win and I am confident that if we're able to put that Merit back into America that's not just about allowing and creating a culture that allows people to thrive and achieve their greatest dreams through the system of capitalism or any other but it is also I think our best chance of Reviving a missing national identity when we long for one so thank you for your time this morning and I'm looking forward to the conversation and Diving deeper with Douglas thank you appreciate it [Applause] well thank you Vivek um Let me let me kick us off um before we get on to this where the positive bits of it let's deal for still for a moment on some of the negatives um I loved your idea that Merit is a unifying idea in America it seems to me at any rate anyone who doesn't guess for my acts and knows I'm not from these Shores um it seems to me at any rate that that this is still prevalent in America to a greater degree than it is in Europe for instance the idea that achievement is not a zero-sum game and uh if if this guy makes some money it's not to my detriment it's to everyone's Advantage um so I love the idea that Emeritus is a unifying idea in this country um we have a very concrete case coming up which is of course the Harvard admissions case I was at Harvard the other week and um it was gathering that it seems like the Supreme Court will probably issue its uh its verdict on on this before the summer recess um if as a lot of people think Harvard is found to have been doing something illegal um then almost every institution of higher education in America will have been found to have been over the same line what do you think happens if if a verdict does indeed go that way so if I were on the board of a university and uh I'm not currently on the board of a university I think it would be financially irresponsible if you weren't setting aside some reserve for litigation right now and I think that's going to be a good thing in disciplining as a function these universities that have engaged in systematic discrimination of a kind that history will judge very poorly it is an ugly form of discrimination not that different in Harvard it's my alma mater so I'll I'll be gloves off in in my criticism what they did to Jews 50 years ago that they'll apologize for today that is what they're doing actively today they intended the effect is on Asian Americans history will not judge that kindly and I think that that's going to come with real legal teeth and consequences and they're you know accountability I think is a precondition for justice and so I think that accountability is going to come in the form of a wave of lawsuits that these universities should set aside or reserve for I think that'll actually even be good because it's going to put more financial pressure on an educational industrial complex that itself should be called out including with the Department of Education here lurking behind the scenes artificially subsidizing for your college education institutions that have become this corrupt so I I hope actually I'm rooting for a form of creative destruction here that this unleashes a wave of and you want to do the math on this these liabilities can be quite uncapped that actually financially punish universities for engaging in the kinds of behaviors they have that Financial accountability then triggers revealing the way in which the entire system was based actually on a large force of the value in the inflated value and subsidized value artificially subsidized value for your college education that really delivers a much needed Reckoning to higher education itself that's what I'm rooting for and I can tell you I'm not just going to be passively rooting for it in whatever capacity I'm in you know two years from now I think that there's ways we can use this finally to deliver the wake-up call to fixing a broken higher education system in this country yes it does seem that I mean it's been an enormous Boon to the HR departments all of this of course it is um Stanford which had such a fine reputation until recent weeks um Stanford um it turned out there is there is roughly one one uh HR person on staff and faculty for every student it would be cheaper to get everyone a butler [Laughter] and much more useful [Applause] and it would make me want to go to Stanford [Laughter] um but I mean I mean one of the great scandals that has to be addressed in this country is how you have people coming out of University in Evermore dead paying for these vast bureaucracies of bureaucrats and every year year on year being stupider and stupider I mean something has to give at some point does it not it does I think you've put your finger on the right pulse it is not an accident that this correlates with rise in college tuition actually yeah so in woking my first book I cited this at the at Michigan State but may as well have been many other universities too there's been a order of magnitude so 10x explosion in the ratio of administrative staff to students and so the rise of this managerial bureaucracy is part of what creates this anti-meritocratic force in all of our institutions by the way I talked about in government right the the administrative state does to government what the managerial class does to the university what increasingly you see happening in the HR ranks of corporate America too now there's a linkage between these things okay so Lyndon Johnson said into motion the Great Society which is the biggest misnomer uh in in I think American History For What it's done for even the very people that was supposed to protect in many cases black Americans but one of the things he said to motion was the executive order that created affirmative action in America by the way if a U.S president can create it by executive order you could end it by executive order we need to remember that and hold Republicans accountable for that but here's here's actually what happens with the Civil Rights statutes we ended up protecting attributes like race and and gender and sexual orientation now how does that relate to some of the other travails we see in America it goes back to actually the anti-meritocratic culture even creates an assault on Free Speech I can tell you on how that happens both in universities and in Corporate America where now those statutes are read so broadly that if you now say something that's if it's not even just about antimattercratic hiring if you say something that is deemed to be hostile to or experienced as hostile by a member of a protected class that that is creating a hostile work environment that's what these HR deputies are there to police they're even legally required to it and so if they allow that person to speak in a way that creates a hostile work environment for someone who's a member of a protected class then that could be a basis for a Title VII violation or a civil rights violation under the Civil Rights statutes well what does that mean we've created the very conditions then for Viewpoint discrimination while leaving political expression itself unprotected and so these Concepts between the assault on Free Speech which itself is part of a meritocracy of ideas is actually deeply related to The Assault on Merit in hiring itself and the managerial bureaucracy that administers the latter is actually responsible for creating the anti-speech conditions in the former and so these it's not an accident people wonder why do we see these malays rise at the same time you think Free Speech culture assault and cancel cultures over here and anti-meritocratic stuff and affirmative action and Dei bureaucracies are over here no no these are it's not a coincidence these are deeply linked and if we get to that root cause with an affirmative alternative vision of our own then we can stand on strong moral and principled footing to not only gut that system but create a new one to take its place let me um lead us on to what's perhaps one of the most awkward parts of this conversation which is we talk most of the time in discussions about meritocracy about the people who can and the people who can succeed um of course in any society but particularly in a democracy like America you have a flip side of that problem you said I was very struck by hardship is not the same thing as a victimhood I couldn't agree more but we do live in a society in which victimhood is is the main goal um to be a victim and to be on the victim hierarchy to be to have the delicious opportunity to be the most victimized person is is is clearly the aspiration we've all seen it in our lives when people pick up the microphone in a q a and they say speaking as and I think ah everything is going to come afterwards is going to be garbage [Laughter] and then they'll say something about their lived experience as if there's any other kind of experience in my unlived experience but but we do have this problem particularly in America that the the the the the the seeking of victimhood in our own lifetimes and you wrote about this obviously in both of your books but um in our own lifetimes we've moved in America in particular which is so striking from a culture of heroism to a culture of victimhood and and if I can lay out very quickly there's there's one particular problem in this in a democracy which is something which um I quote Nietzsche a little bit of my most recent book in the war on the west and um whenever a student says to me that they're a fan of nature I always say oh yeah which bits you you've got to think it's worth using carefully um but I used rather carefully Nietzsche's work on the genealogy of morals from our last book and there's one particular Insight of his that really struck me as pertinent to our situation and to our discussion today which is this Nietzsche talks about the type of person who he says a person of resentment who among other things and see if anyone can recognize this type in the society we're now in among other things uh tears he says that wounds long since healed and then cries about their hurt um now Nietzsche says there's one particular problem which is that the person of resentment needs somebody to stand over their lives and make a correction but it's not even clear to Nature who that person should be it's not clear to me who it should be um Anita ends up talking about the person maybe being a secular priest is the term he uses quite an interesting term but he says that somebody must stand over the over the life of the person of resentment and say to them at some point you are right you have reason to be resentful there is somebody who has ruined your life there is somebody who has held you back the person is you now that is probably the least Pleasant thing to hear and probably one of the hardest things to ever say how can a politician should a politician say to certain people you know you have screwed up your life and it's been your responsibility and your fault you could turn it around but if you don't want to you'll still be the only person to blame I think here's how I would say it it is still in your power to turn it around but that is your choice to make I think hardship is not a choice victimhood is a choice yes and the best a politician can do certainly a president can do is at least to create the conditions in a country where we don't create the incentives for people to choose victimhood and so what I what I if I'm speaking as a as a national leader here would I point to the person and say it is your fault I would say it the other way I think it is our fault for creating a culture including the economic incentives that backstop it for you to make the choice that you are making today to be a victim rather than to be a Victor okay now we will do our part and fix that on the expectation that you will then do yours and I think that is the that is the kernel thank you for a national Revival in this country I think it makes the difference it would that that single trade will make the difference of whether we are Rome or more likely look at how long we've been alive as a country more likely whether we are Carthage or whether we're just a little young going through our version of adolescence adolescence is a period where even absent those government incentives there's a there's something about adolescence that makes you want to see yourself as a victim of your parents of your conditions of your high school peers right there's something about this is woven into nature too it's not just a governmental citizenry relationship it's something within each of us well we're going through that version of adolescence as a nation right now and I think in the good version of this where we have leaders that are willing to change that incentive structure and To Boldly look their citizenry in the eye and speak that hard truth back to them set the expectation of what we expect of citizens the idea of being a citizen entailing a duty part of that duty is to look within not to blame the other but ask about what I can do myself well if we're able to do that then I think as a nation itself we will too get through our version of adolescence and be stronger on the other side of it as there were many Rises and many Falls of Rome actually that's one of the secrets of history there was no one rise in fall of Rome there were many rises in many Falls I think we may still be ahead of the next rise in the American experiment I I truly believe that I think it depends on the leaders who we have who are willing to speak that hard truth um I'm so glad that you said that about Adolescence in America it comes much better from your mouth and from mine I I was brought up to believe as Jessica mitford once said we weren't taught much about American history in Britain what we were taught was that basically the Americans had done something unspeakable in the 18th century and we preferred not to talk about it [Laughter] very embarrassing for them um but let me let me just two points we really should hit on before we wrap up the first let me bring us onto a sort of metaphysical point before before we bring us on to a more practical one metaphysical point is this you mentioned the issue of of free speech a couple of times it seems to me that the the great problem uh that exists in that regard in America is that we've lost we've lost confidence in the idea that Free Speech leads to truth yes because we've lost the idea of Truth we've lost the idea that this the this this battle of ideas this this this knocking of stone on Flint refines things that you get to the point it seems as though we're actually trying to avoid the point as though I mean look at all the words that the modern Academy has used problematize an extraordinarily ugly word and we have problematized a lot of things fantastic have you answered anything not yet um we have we have created problems that didn't exist 20 years ago under endlessly again to fiddle with them but the idea that that we need speech we need inquiry because we will get to a truth and that truth exists seems to be one of the underlying things that has fallen away I agree with you you're right over the flame with truth actually in the rejection of Truth now I think this puts pressure helpfully on the partisan political framework through which we're taught to see the actual divides in this country because where you began Douglas in your remarks you know when you were speaking was actually on the idea that the left and the right differ on how to achieve a world in which those who are endowed with whatever their talent is are permitted to achieve it and I think that there's a lot of Truth to that but there's also a strain in this country that rejects that as an objective in its own right that doesn't disagree about the means but disagrees about the end itself and so I it's actually though I run for president as a Republican it's the least important part of it is that label I think that it puts pressure on us to revise to update the actual political divide in our country which is not between Republicans and Democrats these labels have come out to mean hollowed out husks of themselves on the left there's the Divide you just talked about on the right there's an increasing strain of victimhood itself right it's a victimhood culture that's spread in many different directions let's let's for a moment dissolve that distinction and see this through a different lens itself of the way I'll describe it simply is are you pro-american or anti-American but what does that mean it means are you Pro truth do you believe in the existence of an objective truth and then we can disagree about the details of how we get there but do we agree on that basic end or do we not and I think that there there's a good 20 25 of this country that does not but at least we can then see that with Clarity and smoke that out rather than talking about Republicans and Democrats do you then believe in Merit or do you not and you know the optimistic note with which I'll end that is I think that's not a 50 50 divide in this country that's something like a 75 25 maybe 80 20 divide which means that if in the conservative Movement we make the say the next election in 2024 like Reagan in some ways did in 1980 about that underlying actual reality could be a landslide election and probably the most unifying thing we could deliver to a country that's in bad need of it but that's I think the prism we have to take off the goggles of partisan politics to actually see that reality that's the real fissure at the heart of the American politic not some sort of artificial retrofitted partisan distinction the clock is running down but let's finish on an easy question what should we be doing with our lives [Laughter] okay all right I was waiting so so look I think that I'll end it and I'll end it in equally light-hearted tone when I wake up to a country right now especially my generation especially younger I feel like we're like bats we're like blind bats lost in a cave lost in some Abyss we always have been in some ways but we send out a signal how does a bat figure out where it is in that cave it doesn't see it with its own eyes sends out sonar echolocation and it bounces off something that is true okay the fact that I'm a citizen of a Nation the fact that I am a member of this family with two parents who brought me into this world the fact that I believe in this true God the fact that I worked hard and created something true in the world we send out these signals Faith patriotism hard work family and then it bounces back and it says okay I derive my identity from these things this is where I am I'm not lost this is my location and I think today the moment we live in is one where we send out those signals but then nothing comes back faith is gone patriotism is gone hard work has basically disappeared the idea of family has receded and so then we're lost in that abyss and so I think what what do we do for rediscovering that purpose of life I think we have to recreate those Pillars of Truth that when we send out those signals desperately as we do that something actually does come back and teach us who we really are so that we're not lost in the desert and I'll close with this version of it I'm not you know I'm not a Biblical scholar or anything but you know the book of Exodus when the Israelites are lost in the desert it is when they are lost and cannot see where they are in that desert that they then say let me go back and be ruled by that Pharaoh that we escaped and I think that we can complain about big government all we want the question is actually take that look in the mirror and ask ourselves what is it that makes us want to bend that knee it is the fact that we are lost and the task ahead is can we find ourselves in that desert I think we can yes King Charles is still willing and eager he's open for business to accept if you if you do decide to bend the knee uh uh um let me uh finish apart from saying thank you to Rebecca by making one very quick reflection of my own on this it seems to me that that we we've among other things fallen into a listlessness because we've given ourselves a task that is impossible and told us it is the purpose um we've told ourselves that endless diversity inclusion Equity that every Everything ending up the same is the purpose and it's impossible is being invited to play a game that cannot be won in this life and so I submit in that case you don't play the game but um but but it's it's it's a powerful invitation which is being put out there to young people because it gives them purpose and much more let me finish this you made a Biblical reference let me make a quiz a religious one um one of the things I hear very often I've just finished speaking at various universities in the South and one of the things I hear very often is is the the conditions are not optimal at the moment um and uh you can argue that for instance there's no reason why somebody should be a capitalist if they cannot accrue Capital it's extremely hard to get onto the housing ladder and much more many people have large amounts of student debt etc etc etc my point has repeatedly been to say to students and others to Young Americans but the conditions never were optimal um one of my favorite sermons was given by C.S Lewis in October 1939 the University Church in Oxford and C.S Lewis said that he said um he said the conditions we find ourselves in are certainly not optimal and some British understatement for you um he said they're certainly not optimal but he said the search the search for truth and Beauty must persist in any case he says if if human beings have put off the search for these things until the conditions were right the search would never have begun and as he says and maybe I'll close on this as he says in in that sermon he says the ants have found their own arrangements and presumably have their own pleasure from it they've decided to accrue some food and and a colony and he says he says but we human beings are different we he gives the most beautiful list he says we we discuss mathematical theorems in beleaguered cells we discuss the latest poem whilst marching on the walls of Quebec we make jokes on scaffolds and comb our hair at the gates of Thermopylae this is not panash it's our nature I'd love it if more Young Americans realize that but in any case Vivek it's been a great pleasure good luck I'm rooting for you and I'm still going to hold you to that promise thank you thank you to everyone [Applause]

Channel: National Review Institute

Views: 82,737

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Id: YE5Z_LSJ3NU

Length: 48min 43sec (2923 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 09 2023