What Is Conservatism?

we are here to discuss the urgent question what is a conservative and we have two of America's leading conservatives Brett Stevens of the New York Times and Chris Buskirk from American greatness when Chris and Brett realized they were on this panel together they suddenly stopped and said hey one of us is pro Trump and the other is anti Trump we think we need a moderator so the Aspen Institute found me I'm Jeff Rosen I'm the head of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia thank you very much wonderful well as those of you who applauded know the Constitution Center is the only institution in America chartered by Congress to bring together liberals and conservatives to debate and educate themselves about the US Constitution it is a meaningful mission and we are well served by having two great conservative thinkers who disagree about our current president but may agree about some fundamental principles so we are going to begin with the obvious question and it is this and we'll start with Brett what was a conservative on January 1st 2016 and what is a conservative today well first of all what a pleasure and privilege to be here and I thank all of you for skipping what I'm sure is it monumentally exciting debate that is surely going to decide the the presidency come next November look let me tell you what a conservative was when I came of age and became a conservative in the 1980s conservatives believed in a small government that tried to live within its means or a smaller government that try to live within its means conservatives believed in international engagement with allies and partners around the world in the service of not only a supreme struggle against a totalitarian or authoritarian at adversary but also for the advancement of what we used to call the free world conservatives believed that moral character was an integral part of political and particularly presidential leadership and that the question of the president's moral character could never be subtracted from the larger question of the of the success of his presidency conservatives believed that on by and large the United States was enriched by immigration and emigration not just from Norwegians with doctoral dissertations but at every level of society because at least in my case my ancestors certainly came from countries and that was that was another conservative widely held conservative view and those were views that I mean there were significant tactical differences between you know supporters of day tante and more hawkish people on the right there were important differences between kind of Nelson Rockefeller type Republicans who kind of accepting of the welfare state consensus post FDR then you know the Goldwater Reagan stripe and those are those were significant differences in in their time but that defined a broad consensus of a conservative movement that nonetheless lived within the broader philosophical sphere of what you might call liberalism and by liberalism I don't mean Kamala Harris liberalism I mean liberalism as in the principles of 1776 the principles of Adam Smith and and the Declaration of Independence that is to say that on a whole set of core questions about what politics should be for they understood that conservatism should be about maximizing individual liberty within the restraints and constraints of law tradition and so on and I think that's what mainstream conservatism was broadly about up until January 1st 2016 along comes Donald Trump and I know Chris is gonna take a different view and something something changed because conservatism suddenly in my view transmogrified into a more european vision of the conservative society which is to say nativist it believed in the concept of the nation it was it was highly conscious of an us as opposed to them a set of set of distinctions it was not actually against big government in some ways it was entirely in favor of ever larger government it had no it had made its peace with the idea of the welfare state but it was also opposed to not just internationalism in when it came to defense policy or foreign policy but in her internationalism when it came to trade it believed that the United States you know at the center of a free trading world wasn't being enriched it was being screwed and finally it was completely indifferent to the idea that the moral character of your leader has any bearing on the quality of governance and I think those are some of the the core differences so that I now look at a Republican Party that I had voted for in every election until 2016 and I can barely recognize well I can recognize but I don't had a fundamental level recognize a commonality of principles because I don't believe Trump's party Trump's Republican Party really subscribes to my sense of a good vision of responsible classical liberalism thank you very much for that Chris you've heard Brett's opening statement that conservatism as transmogrified from Jeffersonian classical liberalism to post the election of Donald Trump European nativism your thoughts what do you think a conservative was on January 1st 2016 and what is a conservative today so I think and I've thought about this a lot over the past few years as you as you could imagine but I think what Brett was describing was more a set of policies that were a Prudential instantiation of ideas and so I've got almost backup and I don't think of conservatism as primarily a political philosophy it's a it's a view of human life and of human nature that then has implications for a political philosophy which then as a second derivative will give rise to particular policies that may be good or bad at any given point in time we'll take immigration as an example since it's always a flashpoint immigration is something that is a Prudential issue sometimes you may as a as a nation may decide it's good for us to have a lot of immigration right now but there's such a thing as too much and maybe we need to slow down and we've had a lot over the past thirty years and time to slow down and digest and then move on it's not a it's not a principle issue which i think is a place where I disagree with Brett it's that I don't see a nativist strand in American conservatism this could you pick out a person probably but in terms of the sixty three and a half million people who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 who identify either as Republicans or as conservatives broadly speaking it just isn't there it's not as though we're there on January 1st of 16 but it wasn't on December 31st of 2015 so I'd come back to this thinking well what's what is conservatism view of human nature and of human life and conservatives tend to be temperamentally conservative in some ways that's true but it comes out of a view of human nature that says we have limitations and we should be very cautious in what we try and accomplish because when particularly at scale when government's doing something if it goes wrong it can go fantastically wrong and the unintended consequences can really harm people and so how does that then play out into a political philosophy this is where Brett and I started to converge a little bit more I think which is we believe in constitutional government in other words there is we have a set of basic governing law that is the foundation of our of our positive law and it's something that's noble and understandable and accessible to all citizens we believe in self-government again this goes back to the the Jeffersonian ideal but I don't think it was specific only to him and so let me just sort of jump forward to 2016 which I know was your question what changed I don't think a lot changed to be honest with you this so and I've I've had this discussion so many times over the past few years and I've changed my view a little bit there's the intellectuals debating points you know we had you know the sort of the classical sort of three legs of the Republicans tool paleo conservatives neoconservatives libertarians I don't think most voters think about it that way I think they think about well what's in it for me how is this gonna affect my family how is it can affect my kids and so I'm Jay at the beginning of 2016 what a lot of people thought is is there's economic distress in the middle class the middle class has been shrinking household incomes have been more or less flat for almost 50 years they've increased a little bit but not materially and how do we improve that meanwhile to the foreign policy question we've become extremely concerned about getting involved in military conflicts that costs us trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives abroad and yet that same concern doesn't seem to be focused inward on American citizens then there's what has been termed the bad orange man so how does he fit into this which is the big question because he seems like the unlikeliest of vessels which I agree we were talking earlier Brett asked me so you know when he came down the escalator what did you think and I didn't take the candidacy seriously until I had a discussion with my one of my brothers-in-law about about this at a family dinner right after the first Republican debate in context is important here he is first-generation Chinese immigrant a doctor very unpolitical the temper mentally conservative conservative you know he's the sort of he's replace the Republican but not you'd rather watch baseball when he gets home from the hospital rather than watching you know Fox that sort of person he's just a personal very high character so when I said what would you think of the first debate he said I really like Donald Trump and I was absolutely convinced he was pulling my leg and I thought to myself well now why and he says he says well I just like the way he talks about the country and I think sometimes that's what gets mistaken for nativism is just what I think people who support Trump myself included would characterize as a more self-confident patriotism unfortunately the vessel for that self-confident patriotism is flawed and we we recognize that but we we go to war with the army we have not the one that we want excellent well we that debate is well and truly set up we have had two inspiring statements of philosophical principles which don't diverge all that much I heard both of you endorsed a kind of Jeffersonian classical liberalism although Chris was more focused on a conservative sensibility than natural law principles but you disagree about whether trauma fits them so now is the time for the debate and the question for the debate is why do you like Trump and why don't you like Trump but rather than just having a policy debate about describing the many things that you do and don't like about him Brett I'll begin by asking you why do you believe that Trump is betraying the classical liberal or conservative principles that you outlined so eloquently well in in Trump's defense I i'm not quite sure he's betraying them because i don't think he knows them in the first place and you know this is a guy who came into officers promising senators that he was going to defend all fourteen articles of the Constitution of the United States I mean people laugh about this he's the president sworn to defend a constitution that he clearly has never read and treats with disdain since if you're a genuine conservative and believe in a kind of original ISM and you believe that the words of the text you know matter then you're gonna believe in something like birthright citizenship and it was an effort by the trumpian wing of the Republican Party to get rid of something as fundamental to the Constitution of I mean that small C Constitution of modern American liberty as as you know your Fourteenth Amendment protections to birthright citizenship so let me just back up a second I think you I just want to make a point that's fundamental about conservatism which i think is by definition conservatism is the politics of order and caution and tradition and prudence that's that's the temperament but American conservatism is unique because the order that American can American conservatives are trying to protect is fundamentally a liberal order the the centerpiece of the American the American mission in the world right is life liberty and and the pursuit of happiness and the conservative philosophy is the belief that the best way in which you protect those things is by encouraging the habits of mind and the institutions both of governance and also of civil society that create that are likely to engender or create citizens who can responsibly and energetically pursue life liberty and and their own happiness that's what America that's why American conservatism is kind of a unique creation it is it is a belief that what you're really trying to preserve is is this idea of liberalism I don't really see that anywhere in in in trumpian politics I mean there is number one an utter disdain for tradition an utter disdain for the four habits of mind that are you know that you sort of recognize as conservative a kind of habits of lawlessness or sort of pushing the envelope of what is of what is legally permissible assertions and irrigations of executive power that are wholly outside of the design of the Constitution which calls for a separation of powers and shamefully I think Republican senators went along and in giving the president power to you know with with respect to budgetary Authority and and also just a broader belief of a United States that sort of stands alone I in some sense isolated from the rest of the free world that has that has kind of that doesn't see itself as as committed to a set of not just committed but leading a set of principles that should matter to us not just as Americans but like in in a broader sense one of the things that was inspiring about Reagan's leadership I was a little boy but I remember reading his speech in the British West best what Westminster in the British Parliament where he talked about I'll never forget he said the Polish people are magnificently unreconciled to their oppression I mean that to me was the mark of a real conservative because he understood that in some deep sense American liberty and the fate of Liberty was as much connected to what was happening in the Solidarity movement in Warsaw and Gdansk as it was to what was happening to the American worker and in Detroit or Flint and here again I just don't see where where Trump honors or respects any of these principles okay Chris lots to respond there to there from the claim that Trump is heedless of prudence and tradition attacks on international institutions but I'd like you to begin with Brett's constitutional points those are strong ones he's saying on points ranging from endorsing a vision of birthright citizenship that liberal and conservative scholars both said was inconsistent with the original understanding of the Constitution two ruling by executive orders in ways that thwart the kind of constitutional limitations that conservatives endorse Trump and Republicans in Congress are betraying constitutional principles maybe you should start with that and then respond to the rest so yeah so I will so though so the the issue of birthright citizenship is something that is is debated that that's number one so there are people of a different view of the 14th amendment on that which there is I do think it's fair to say that the majority of constitutional scholars take Brett's point of view there is a dissenting view out there and it is perfectly legitimate for the president to pursue that view it becomes a political question not a judicial question I think that's where it is most appropriately decided which is ask the question a different way we believe in self-government self-government relies upon the citizens and the citizens therefore have a right to decide who else becomes a citizen of the country and therefore has a share in that nation and that government and when you think about it in those terms it I think the strongest argument is that this is not something that is most appropriately decided by judges but is decided by the political branches I think that is where it should be decide whether that be through legislation in Congress but or through an amendment it's the only way that you settle the issue in a way that I think that is consistent with our basic principles but also where you get a political settlement that people can live with okay as the head of the nonpartisan Constitution Center because we had a podcast on this question I can say just descriptively the view that there's no birthright citizenship is very much a minority view and people stood up in the Congress that proposed the Fourteenth Amendment said this will absolutely cover birthright citizenship so how could an originalist conservative who generally thinks the judges should be bound by the original understanding of the Constitution believe that it should be settled politically because any remember the Constitution is open to amendment right so citizens retained the retain the right to change the Constitution the if you go back to those debates which I know you probably know well I mean there is this other view which says that this pertains specifically to that place and time right after the Civil War where you had freed slaves who were not previously covered as citizens and should be and everybody agreed with that again I don't I believe that the question of who is a citizen who is not as something that is fundamental to the nature of a self-governing Republic and the citizens have a right to have a say in that as opposed to leaving it to the Supreme Court to decide based upon trying to interpret congressional records from 150 years ago you just heard Chris become a leftist and I'll tell you why because what are the great arguments for on the left visa vie for example the Second Amendment was well it was relevant for its time you know when you could load a musket in about one or two minutes but the Constitution is this is the view of the left the Constitution is a living document and things that might have been true in 1789 or in 1868 or ain't necessarily true today and so we're gonna move away from that interpretation and have a different interpretation which is kind of what what we say it is so this is one of the this is just one of them saying it's an interpretation I say that there needs to be an action either to amend the Constitution okay make it before this is a plank of the Republican Party that said they don't have to recognize birthright citizenship without I we both agree that that there is an amendment process that's that's uncontroverted but that's not what the Republicans were trying to do but there's another point here then I think this is really important you know one of the habits of the Trump had I'll never forget a few days after the election Bill O'Reilly if you you may remember who he was he he was an important journalist at his time flawed character he went and interviewed the president and and bill to his credit said you know mr. president some people say that you are in the habit of saying things that just aren't true like you keep saying that your crowd at the inauguration was bigger than Obama's crowd and you keep saying that there were three million illegal votes that were cast that have they not been cast would have given you you know a popular majority as well as the electoral college majority and Trump's response was well some people say that three million illegal votes were cast and that's what's known in in terms of logic is an argumentum ad populum which is like well you know people say Jim Morrison is like hanging out right over there and with Kurt Cobain as Elvis and Elvis and so the fact that some people say it that there you can find a scholar or two who will say this does not is not dispositive it tells you actually absolutely nothing and it goes to the deeper deeper problem with Trump which is the assault on truth like there is this this fundamental problem that you have a president who by some counts I think they're exaggerated but the Washington Post last count is something like ten thousand eight hundred and God knows how many I was just this morning right miss right well well this is really problematic because even more deeply than the question of being a conservative when it comes to you know the Constitution or or foreign policy I remember one of the great debates when I was coming of age at the University of Chicago and and you're you know you're another Strauss and character was you know conservatives believed that there was such a thing as the truth and and it wasn't relative it wasn't culturally determined it wasn't a function of who happened to be in power the idea that there was no such thing as truth was actually a very Soviet idea the Soviet idea of truth as truth is what serves the party the trumpian idea of truth is truth is whatever happens to be convenient to whatever it is I'm saying or whatever it is I need at some particular moment in time it might not be true tomorrow or my next and my next interview and I think this is kind of like an ontological assault if I can get sort of heavy-duty on on the way in which a liberal society can flourish because if you don't have those landmarks of saying well some things are true and not simply well some people say X and other people say Y then you're in real trouble as a society let's disaggregate we've heard we can applaud and then remind ourselves ontological assault and assault on the nature of knowledge tell us what a Straus ian is why you both are versions of Straus Ian's and why it's possible to be a Strauss Ian and to support Donald Trump's Straus Ian isn't we have what only 40 minutes or something yeah Leo Strauss was a political philosopher a German emigres an immigrant we loved he came to the United States you may know better what year he came to United States before the war but it's probably the greatest my view political philosopher of the 20th century had a number of students but basically he rediscovered for for a group of students rediscovered classic texts and political philosophy in a way of understanding them that had been discarded for the past 200 ish years there are different schools of Strauss Ian ISM there's an East Coast school in a West Coast school and you will be shocked to know Brett finds himself in the East Coast school and I find myself in the West Coast school which basically comes from who Strauss's principal students were and then who you are educated by is that a fair enough short version all west coast drowsy and support Trump I I don't think I can think of one that doesn't write and what what didn't what in West Coast drowsy and hasn't leaved ones to support Trump well East Coast resident repudiate him so I certainly bred speak for the east coast drowsy ins but but there is but but the on the what on the the west coast version of this is that while Trump has an any number of character flaws that his are probably a not significantly different though than other national politicians more in-your-face and number two is that he's basically right on uh some important issues like how do how do we deal with immigration citizenship rebuilding the middle class how do we address national security visa of the farm policy do we do we continue to try nation-building Wars or do we return to a sort of a pre-world War one idea of what American national security is which is to say we operate best by in promoting freedom by promoting our own freedom and security and in John Quincy Adams famous words tasks act as a beacon that was a historical Republican point of view changed in the 20th century especially after the Second World War but the the West Coast rousing view is that Trump for all for whatever his other shortcomings may be got those issues right and that they are the main issues of our day and then when you come in when you go into the voting booth it's a binary choice you pick one or the other Brett this is we heard some of us heard Governor Chris Christie on Monday night he gave a version of this defense at - the West Australian part not a perfect human being flawed not my first choice for president but on policies I care about and they weren't all the same policies because he disagreed about immigration basically correct and therefore will support him what do you think number one the other aspect about West Coast rauzein ISM that Kristen mentioned is they're always stoned because we're in Colorado and look to two points the fundamental what's I mean this has become a very esoteric conversation when you thought we would be duking it out over you know NATO or something Leo Strauss basically said that thinkers like Aristotle and Plato and other ancient political philosophers who had important things to say about politics that were being ignored by the philosophers that emerge after Machiavelli basically and one of the things that those ancient philosophers were very attentive to was the question of virtue in politics and the belief that you could not have a good politics without some degree of virtue that freedom alone or kind of mechanisms alone like the checks and balances of the Constitution were not sufficient there had to be a human element and that human element had to be inflected with a concept of morality and duty and that there was a difference between virtuous leaders and Sophists and demagogues and then by that by that token alone Trump represents a triumph of demagoguery and-and-and would should embarrass serious strauss ian's we'll come back to that so let me put it this way I think for societies to be successful they need to answer four questions correctly number one what is their attitude towards immigrants do they see them as on net assets or liabilities number two what is their attitude towards independent thinking and dissent do they believe that the gadfly is the benefit of society or is he a heretic or whatever okay number three what is their attitude towards failure do they believe in owning failure or do they believe in blaming someone else for failure and number four is do they believe that one should define one's interests according to one's values or one's values according to one's interests and America at its best has always answered those questions right we believe that immigration was an asset not a liability which is why then more than one-third of American Nobel Prize winners were born abroad why more than 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants we believe that independent thinking that dissent that a free press is essential to a successful society and that efforts to quell it are ultimately ruinous we that if we've made economic mistakes The Fault does not lie in sneaky Mexican trade practices but with our with our own economy and we believe at our best in a values-based leadership that understands that when we are for instance muscularly advancing concepts like human rights and places like Saudi Arabia as well as Iran we are doing ultimately doing ourselves a great service because we are showing that American leadership is not simply a matter of power but a matter of example and that it's capable of inspiring followers and I think Trump answers all of these questions wrong so that's a powerful indictment let's move past our esoteric stressing ISM and answer the claim that by embracing nativism opposition to dissent abandoning internationalism and embracing tariffs the Republican Party has not only sold its soul according to Brett but is betraying fundamental American values so so those four answers I think are just are a historical let me start with immigration so we had a we had a massive wave of immigration legal immigration into this country between 1880 and 1924 in 1924 there was an immigration Control Act passed which held sway until 1964 and that gave that look there's to my way of thinking that immigration wave but in those 40 years between the 1880s in the middle of the 1920s I think did a lot of good things for this country after 1924 or in 1924 there the the basically bipartisan perspective of the country was we've had a lot of immigration we need to now focus on some type of social stability and social cohesion in other words we had an enormous meal we have to digest wasn't a statement of principle that immigration is good or bad it was a statement of prudence that says we've had a lot there has got to be some logical limit immigration and so we're going to slow it down for now what happened which was something that was obviously not plans is that there was a World War 20 years later or less than 20 years later and that going through that crucible of war really brought together the country in a way that I think was unintended and unpredictable but beneficial which said after the war for instance on my mother's side Italian immigrants came in the early 20s in late teens fully you know fought in World War two you know all these sorts of things very fully embraced as part of of a totally American society and that's where I think we are again now since since 1964 though really since but more so since the late 80s we've had another massive immigration wave there is no there is no mainstream view on the right that I'm aware of that says immigration is categorically good or categorically bad it's a Prudential question that says sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad and it's up to Congress to make these decisions decide when you know what's enough what's too much do we slow it down do we speed it up it is it a merit-based system does it take all comers etc and that's a place where I think that Trump and Republicans who support him and support at this point immigration restriction ISM are missiny I don't know if it's intentionally misunderstood or maybe it's unintentionally but I can tell you I live and breathe in that world and it that is the view let me move to something like tariffs the historic position of this country has been the tariffs work this country prior to the income tax financed the federal government based on tariffs Lincoln was Pro tariffs Jefferson was Pro tariffs Washington was Pro tariffs again tariffs are a Prudential question and a question of principle I don't think you judge the success or failure of your country whether based on whether or not the the steel tariff is six percent zero percent or thirty two point five percent with a foreign country that is an efficiency question and so the Trump position which I think has strikes a sort of common sense note which is I believe in reciprocity if triack's wants to have 10% tariffs on steel fine well have 10% going both ways if Canada wants to have 15% on lumber or dairy fine we will reciprocate if they want to have zero we'll do that too and that to me is a common-sense proposition particularly when what we've seen is that the manufacturing base in this country has been destroyed and the old argument which is that yeah but we keep the high value jobs over time what you find out is that the high value jobs the design jobs follow the manufacturing and they follow them to Asia first to China and then to places like Vietnam and and whatever and as a result we've seen what I alluded to before which is we have seen the middle class shrink in size as a percentage of the population as a whole and we've seen real incomes stagnate and that's something that you want to talk about social stability or the ability to preserve self-government and constitutional government if you have a shrinking middle class you just can't do it and that is what I know that's one of that that is the main thing that drives me is you have to have that ballast of a stable prosperous middle class if you want to be able to preserve constitutional self-government so Brett Chris's responses on many of the policy questions you mentioned from tariffs to immigration the Republican Party and even the Democratic Party historically has been on both sides of these questions and it's not a fundamental betrayal of American values I want to ask you about judges you supported the nominations of justices Gorsuch and Cavanaugh and George Will who was here the other day in his great new book the conservative sensibility basically says only judges can resurrect the Madisonian Jeffersonian classical liberal Constitution that you endorse George will says that the post New Deal regulatory state was a fundamental betrayal of the originalist Constitution and he enthusiastically calls on an original Supreme Court and on justices like Gretchen Kavanaugh to resurrect the original Constitution is it rational to support Trump because of judges look I'm delighted I'm some of you may be horrified to learn I'm really pretty conservative and I've actually been very pleased with with the pick of of judges because I believe in kind of a constitutional originalism which I only wish you know the president shared more fully in the in the execution of of his duties I also and my weight you know people describe me as a never Trump conservative I'm not I'm a sometimes Trump guy just doesn't when he does things I agree with I praise him to the consternation of New York Times readers from time to time and his judicial picks have been right and the other thing which I think is a very important aspect of understanding the Trump phenomenon and why not Trump but a figure like him in certain respects would have been salutary for politics is that we do we have accreted an administrative state that is in many respects totally out of control well one of the things that I'm conscious of you know I'm a guy who writes for a living and I live in Manhattan you know I'm as coastal as as it comes but sometimes I feel like you can break down the American economy into two distinct sides there's a words based economy and there's a stuff based economy I belong to the words based economy so do you actually so do you for the most part every lawyer does every every academic every civil servant what do we do we shuffle around words like I make my money by choosing between semicolons and periods you know that's that's that's it and I have the benefit of living in a totally unregulated economy thanks to something called the First Amendment to the Constitution now when I was talking to friends across the country drink in 2016 who would sort of sheepishly admit to me that in spite of it all they were gonna vote for Trump they typically belonged to the stuff based economy and I would sometimes listen to them and say well I in fact a friend of mine who runs a midsize company in San Diego I said you don't do favor write a memo and explain to me what it is to run a company with about 1500 employees that's in the business of delivering certain kinds of goods across a wide swath of the west coast and he said okay I'm gonna do it he got his Human Resources team to work on this document which was enormous and frightening the extent to which the Department of Labor OSHA you know one thing or another one well-intended regulation after another that was driving up his cost in ways that he simply could afford because unlike the city banks of the world he can't simply just say okay we're gonna hire 15,000 compliance officers tomorrow and solve our problem for us as margins weren't that wide and so in this sense trying to roll back the the administrative state which is in a sense a legacy of FDR is is salutary that being said conservatism also recognizes that politics is not you know ropes Pirie and you don't wave a magic wand we have lived in a post Roosevelt dispensation for 75 years it's now become part of our sort of set of expectations about the individuals relationship with government and I hope that Gorsuch and Kavanagh understand what I think Kennedy got which was that you have to respect the America as as you find it right and you know I'll just say one thing about Cavanaugh and and Gorsuch I remember when when when Kennedy became a justice and the New York Times wrote a fulminating Editora that Justice Kennedy was certain to overturn roe v-- wade right of course he saved roe v wade in Casey then Souter came along he was certain to do it so you have a history of conservative judges who whether through education or or a sense of prudence have been I think much more restrained in their jurisprudence and I suspect that'll be true of these two as well that's a crucial point I George well came to the Constitution Center the other day and I pressed him on this and said conservatives at least since the Warren era have endorsed judicial restraint they have criticized Democrats for appointing judges who had achieved through the judicial process what they can't achieve through the political process is it not a betrayal of that judicial restraint to now call for a new dish engagement and to ask the Supreme Court to strike down the regulatory state there was this fascinating opinion just last week the Grundy case where Justice Kagan said justice garages view if endorsed by that majority of the court would mean the end of government striking down the post New Deal regulatory state would be so radical and so disruptive it would not be conservative at all and would be the height of judicial activism what is the response bring on the activism you know government exists to to execute a vision of the good and end of justice and if you believe in constitutionalism as opposed to as opposed as opposed to a blind belief in precedent then the ranch it goes both ways not only not just one way and if you want to return to the text of the Constitution then return to the text not two not two oppressed and that you believe fundamentally betrayed the text and that if that's called activism then I think that is totally fine and I'd have no problem embracing it in that regard one last round and then questions from the audience is Trump an existential threat to a principled Republican party once he's gone can the Republican Party restore its principles I mean the term existential is a little shop war and I think we should preserve existential for things like hydrogen bombs you know ask it again is it an existential threat to the American democracy which some are claiming no of course it's not and and you know listen I detest the guy okay but let's keep a sense of proportion here you all are and pleasant old aspen and as far as I can see the Stasi has not disorder schtoppel has not descended right there are things that you know when I look at what's happening at the border shame me as an American I think our horrors and those have to be you have to speak out about it but the moment you start reaching for like end of America type analogies or it's fascism you're you're you're really losing losing the argument but here's what I think Trump is potentially an existential threat to which is a threat to the the well articulated conservatism that had emerged in the post-war period which I think was fundamentally irresponsible and version of conservatism and as I was listening to Chris earlier I was I was thinking of a scene from an Al Pacino movie with Johnny Depp and Al Pacino is like a sight I can't remember the name of the movie but he's like a second tier mobster and there's a scene in which and Johnny Depp is an FBI informant who's like info befriended Pacino any rate there's a scene in which Pacino son has a drug overdose and Pacino and indepth are in the waiting room the sons you know being treated and in the hospital and Pacino in that voice of his he goes my son was born in this hospital 28 years no progress and I was listening to your defensive tariffs and I was thinking okay we're just resurrecting hoover's view of the economy and the smoot-hawley to like poor Lincoln's like no we're we're we are bringing back I think it is a different case because we have actually acquired a profound knowledge of economics thanks to data thanks to social science these things matter you have and I'm listening to a conservative I went to the University of Chicago like we learn stuff about the benefits of free trading societies as opposed to autarkic --all societies we learned that when China raises tariffs it's hurting its own consumers while we are being enriched by by that immigration is another story I'm delighted grandma Buskirk came in 1919 and not 1925 because otherwise I'd be alone on this stage and very lonely right you may reconsider that way it later so so every healthy democracy needs a morally sound conservative movement because conservatism isn't just a philosophy it's almost a psychological tendency in any society you look at there will always be a more conservative party and it is important that the conservative party in the United States be a party that at its best at least represents a vision of openness and opportunity and engagement as opposed to the normal conservative instinct of nativism and protectionism and frequently bigotry and that's what I worry Trump is an existential threat so the last word on this point and then audience questions beretta said trump is not a threat to existential threat to American democracy not an existential threat the Republican Party but is an existential threat to a principled well articulated conservatism response ya know I've uiview Trump as actually an opportunity to return to some first principles I think that when I think about and I was actually just having this conversation two days ago with somebody who said you know what is why Trump Trump's disappointing me that somebody who's a trump supporter and a smart person businessperson not unlike the person in San Diego you describes described and I said yes but Donald Trump knew how to get elected but he doesn't understand how to operate the levers of power right had had Hillary Clinton won and she had an agenda the people she was gonna bring in knew exactly how to execute immediately Barack Obama same thing Donald Trump went in with a very thin team mostly who were inexperienced or didn't really understand how to execute the agenda to the extent that it was more than a statement of sort of slogans or principles and I and so my answer was don't expect the solutions that you were the the end solutions that you were hoping for this is an opportunity to change the conversation back to things that were important before Reagan when I warmed-over reaganism I think is irrelevant today the idea that the Republican Party can simply run on tax cuts and trade with China a it's an electoral loser but the things that we think we learned about economics turned out not to be true which is why again I'm gonna keep coming back to this I'm gonna beat the drum the middle class is smaller and poorer and that is and if we if that is the result of what we've learned about economics we need to learn something else because that is the heart and soul of the country and we need to figure out how to rebuilt that element otherwise all the other political things we talked about just don't come into play again they're just become irrelevant ten minutes for audience questions yes yes hi oops can you hear me thank you first of all Brett you're a great vocabulary teacher my question is I keep hearing whether it was chris Christie or Chris what you were saying many Trump supporters saying yes but and I'm curious what you feel about a movement to bring in another viable Republican to run against Trump who might be better than yes but is that to me or to Brett to both of you I mean it's a you know if they're just where is there room for the Republican Party to bring in somebody that spans what you both feel and serves and yep I'll just answer it this way I'll say it's not where it's when it's 20 and it's 2024 there's zero appetite among Republican voters to replace the president in 2020 and in any event what we found out in 2016 is we he ran against 16 other very impressive candidates and beat all of them and so who is the who you know who's the white knight even if you wanted one I don't as I say I don't think there's an appetite for one but if there were that appetite who would be that person because they would have they ran three years ago and so it's a when question this goes to at the point I'm talking about an opportunity I got drawn back into politics after 20 years in business because I thought that we were in a unique political moment and I've talked to candidates who I know are running in 2020 who are doing the same thing so I'm come out with military somehow to come out of business because I think that this is a unique political moment that there is that they can talk about issues in a way that would have been verboten for Republicans to talk about again tariffs and could you imagine five years ago Republicans saying we can't run on tax cuts like I did a few minutes ago yeah I mean you'd be drummed out of the party and yet that is not that is not a totally heterodox opinion even though I like lower taxes it since it's insufficient and so it's at I'm really I see this as a time to rebuild the party in the candidates and to get beyond just trying to run Oh on the 1980 platform over and over again I have to start this question with an opinionated assert a ssin I do believe that the Democrats are more condensed in their thinking and more conservative and the Republicans are more spread out in their thinking and the middle line is what I believe to be conservative is mostly Democrat and so the the election the last year was it the Democrats mostly forced the hand because the conservative Democrats ultimately voted for Trump and so I want to have your opinion of where Democrat conservatives fall in future elections great question and Brett you could broaden it a bit to gaming out the Democratic field what's gonna happen and as a conservative are there any of them that you could support yeah but unfortunately the Democratic Party seems to be how bad marginalizing shaming or insulting the moderate heart of the party and I think this is one of the reasons why Trump is likely to win real action I mean III thought it was you know stunning to see the I thought totally preposterous attack on Joe Biden because he mentioned in passing that you know he was able to get along as a young senator with a couple of Southern Democrats who had a history as as segregationists and this was you know almost too much for today's Democratic Party I mean the Democrats seem to be remind me there's a famous quip about Adlai Stevenson and when he was running in 52 or 56 some woman came up to him and said you know Governor Stephen said every intelligent American is behind you and he said madam thank you but what I requires a majority and and the Democratic Party is drumming out too much of its conservative base there are plenty of Democrats for instance who may be pro-choice but with limitations but that's becoming a very difficult view to hold in in the Democratic Party today there are a lot of Democrats who you know aren't on board with for example reparations as a particularly good idea you know that also is becoming problematic they don't necessarily like the idea of a democratic party going and destroying what have at least so far for all their problems been champions of American industry especially in Silicon Valley by turning them into into utilities so I think the Democratic Party needs to really think carefully about whether it is simply isolating itself so it could enjoy its own company and think of itself as the Society of the virtuous or it's actually trying to build bridges to those millions of Americans who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and then voted for Donald Trump in 60 if Biden got the nomination would you vote for him yes last question yes sir by the way I can't believe I'm saying that right I mean in other circumstances it this like you know III was very straight-laced I never did drugs okay but honestly every day of the Trump administration seems to me what like an LSD trip must be like because you're like oh my god right welcome welcome welcome to Aspen last lesson insert in the front row last question Chris I heard you say something I don't want to misrepresent it about you know all PAS most politicians are like Trump they just kind of keep it under wraps or something to that effect I'd like to if it's okay here both of you Chris I'd love do you expand on that a little bit and I'd like to hear Brett's to take on it as well so I didn't say quite that but I but your but you're close and and that my basic point is is twofold one is that we is that Trump is is a known adulterer this is something that people come back to a lot he's on his third wife and you know there's all these scandalous stories I'm assuming a number of them are true he as my wife likes to say he doesn't drink he doesn't smoke he did okay so the question then is it's what is this the first president who who has been a dolt an adulterer hardly right I mean we have had president alleged but a but you have to fight you there are credible allegations against JFK of rape to Bill Clinton right so my point is this and this goes back to my earlier point about how conservatives view humanity flawed deeply flawed and so you know I come to this and I look at any candidate and say I understand that they are probably deeply flawed people I and I don't exclude myself from that by the way but I want to make a distinction between public virtue and private vice and there is obviously there that that is a formula where you have to make you know mileage may vary on how that works where there is some amount of private vice that's too much for you but you have to also weigh in the balance public virtue is what this candidate's going to do for the country good enough to say well yeah he's on his third wife I don't believe in adultery I don't do it but he's not the first and if I only if I was only willing to vote for people who never were adulterers I would not have very many people to vote for Threadless let's let me phrase the question is is it okay for conservatives to separate public virtue from private vice so you know there's a great difference between Kennedy who was you know a notorious and aggressive Philander as was LBJ and you know many other people with Trump because their vices were through kind of collusion between the White House and the media were kept off stage Trump is the first president who has modeled shamelessness as a kind of a virtue as he sees it and which is to say like he's not you know you're like Oh mr. president you lied you said X yesterday and this today and he's like yeah you know whatever now I think that's profoundly problematic and it should be especially problematic to conservatives because we understand an essential aspect of leadership is role modeling and so he's role modeling a style of shameless leadership that is gonna come back to haunt us I mean I I started work at The Wall Street Journal back in the days of the Clinton impeachment saga and oh boy did we hear it from Bill Bennett and other current Trump supporters you know remember that book the death of outrage well you know actually that was a point Bill Clinton in some ways pioneered a style of shamelessness which is now coming back to haunt Democrats because Clinton or Trump can only say what Bill did it you know and so I can do it but conservatives be warned ten years from now it's going to be a democratic who was every bit as mendacious every bit as shameless every bit as embarrassing to us as parents and as embarrassing to us as Americans every time he opens his mouth and when we try to say something about it our Democratic friends will say you know we remember your sophistry about public virtue and private virtue and we we've we've adopted your view now it just happens to be our turn to be you know shameless on our side and get our wishes politically and at that point we won't have a leg to stand on and we will have instructed our children in the belief that politics is a filthy game conducted by despicable individuals right it's a blood sport where there is no higher concept of Honor and public service I grew up in Mexico I grew up in in in a outside of the United States let me tell you something it makes a great deal of difference when you can have look at presidential leaders or political leaders and say I actually admire that person and is as opposed as I was to Barack Obama on policy grounds I was never embarrassed as an American that he was my president for the eight years of his tenure ladies and gentlemen for modeling a civil debate about the diversity of views in the conservative movement please join me in thanking our panelists

Channel: The Aspen Institute

Views: 4,476

Rating: 4.7333331 out of 5

Keywords: Aspen Ideas Festival, Jeffrey Rosen, Bret Stephens, Chris Buskirk

Id: vmvFdnmP7s0

Length: 61min 1sec (3661 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 27 2019