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We're back with another edition of The
Federalist for Radio Hour. I'm Emily Kashenski,

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culture editor here at The Federalist.
As always, you can email the

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show at radio at the Federalist dot
com, follow us on exit fdr LST.

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Make sure to subscribe wherever you download
your podcasts, and of course to

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the premium version of our website,
The Federalist dot Com as well. I'm

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joined today by Yuvolavn. He is
a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute

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and editor at National Affairs and also
the author of the new book, which

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is at on June eleventh. It's
called American Covenant, How the Constitution Unified

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our Nation and could Again you've all
thank you so much for joining us.

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Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, this book is so interesting,

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and I want to start with the
obvious question you're probably going to get

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a lot, which is why now, Why write this book right now?

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What brought you to this particular project
at this moment in time. Yeah,

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you know, I think in some
ways why now may be the easiest question,

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which is where in a moment when, on the one hand, we

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clearly want to be a more unified
society. We understand a lot of our

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problems in terms of disunity and breakdown, isolation, loneliness, deaths of despair.

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You know, you find people on
the left worrying about the demise of

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democracy and all kinds of things,
and yet we don't think to look for

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cohesion and unity at the very core
of our political life, which is in

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the US Constitution. And what stands
out to me about the Constitution. I'm

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not a lawyer, I'm a political
scientist and a citizen, and what stands

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out to me about the Constitution is
that it was created to unify a divided

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society and it could very much still
do that for us. So I think

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this is a perfect time to become
reacquainted with the American Constitution, which is

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really my purpose in this book.
And you know, we've had Patrick Denian

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on the show. We've had other
people who sort of find themselves in agreement

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with his diagnosis, which apparently might
even include former President Barack Obama, who

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included why liberalism failed on his reading
this at one point in time. Is

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there something right now that or what
would you say? Maybe? What do

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you say? I'm sure you have
these conversations all the time to people on

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the right who believe we're at a
failure point of the Constitution, that the

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Constitution sort of had the poison fruit
of liberalism all along. Absolutely, and

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Patrick Denan is a friend of mine
and someone I take very seriously, but

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I do think we disagree about the
potential of the Constitution in this moment.

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I do not think of the Constitution
as a shallowly liberal document. It is

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liberal in some respects. It points
to some classical political ideas in some respect,

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but it is above all a republican
ductor with a lowercase are a document

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that focuses us on the necessity of
understanding that this society is ours to govern,

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and as a self governing people,
we have to ask ourselves what our

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responsibilities are, what our obligations are, and what the potential of the American

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regime is. And it seems to
me that we are very fortunate to have

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the political tradition that we have,
which looks for a balance between the freedom

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of the individual and the necessity of
virtue and moral formation in a free society.

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And the American Constitution is actually very
very sophisticated about this challenge and this

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tension, and it does look for
a way to simultaneously legitimate public action through

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majority rule and protect minority rights.
And it does that by way of republicanism,

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that is, by forcing us to
deal with each other, to constantly

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engage with one another as self governing
citizens. I think that there are people

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on the right who miss this about
the potential of our political order. The

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Constitution is really focused on forcing us
to take citizenship seriously. And if we

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just dismiss our kind of politics as
saying it has no role for virtue,

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it has no idea of the human
good, it's just about individual rights,

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well then we will lose this tremendous
inheritance that actually is precisely an answer to

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the kind of challenge that we confront
in a moment when we seem to be

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losing sight of the more than liberal
obligations that come with living in a free

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society. So I take a lot
of Patrick Denin's concerns very seriously, but

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I think that he would find that
the American constitutional order has much more to

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offer the society that has the problems
he describes than he tends to give it

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credit for. And again, that
kind of attitude calls for I think a

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reacquaintance with our constitutional order to understand
in its own terms is to see that

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it does speaks nicely. Are kind
of moment and our kind of problems,

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and I want to I'm sure we
will get back to that, but I

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also want to start where you decided
to start this book, because I think

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it's very helpful you have the beginning. The first chapter is the question what

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is the Constitution? Amazing like such
an obvious question, But why did you

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start there? And what should you
know? Yeah? You know. The

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first chapter of the book, as
you say, it is called what is

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the Constitution? The last chapter of
the book is called what is Unity?

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And I think that these are both
harder questions than they seem, and the

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book is really an effort to answer
each of them by way of the other.

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And the question what is the Constitution
is hard because we tend naturally to

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think of it as a legal framework, as just a legal document for lawyers

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and judges to work their way through
and apply. And of course the Constitution

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is a legal framework, but that's
not all that it is. It's also

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a framework for policymaking. It was
created because our previous form of government was

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not good enough. At facilitating government
action, and I think it is worth

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our seeing that the Constitution is intended
to be a more effective government than the

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United States had before. It's also
an institutional framework. It's a set of

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distinct institutions, a legislature with two
houses, an executive branch, a judiciary,

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and various modes of selection and election
that allow us to address the very

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complicated challenge of empowering majorities to rule
without oppressing minorities, and so finding some

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balance between the need for legitimacy and
you might say, the need for justice

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in our kind of politics. That's
a question that is more than legal.

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It is fundamentally about political morality.
And I think the Constitution it has a

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lot to say to that sort of
concern. And so it makes sense to

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begin by asking just what is the
Constitution. It's a document, that is

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one thing it is, but it's
also a system of government, a set

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of institutions populated by all kinds of
public officials and ultimately by citizens. It's

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a framework for American political life,
and that means that we do have to

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allow ourselves to see the more than
obvious facets of it, the more than

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simple elements of it. If we're
really going to understand what it can do

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for us. The Constitution is very
deeply connected to the American character, to

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our self understanding as a people,
to a very unusual degree. Our form

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of government is really attached to who
we are as an American nation. And

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so I think it's worth our while
to take it seriously, to think about

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it in terms of political philosophy,
in terms of political psychology, of sociology,

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and not only of law, as
we so easily tend to do.

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You're right about the importance of republicanism, and I have a quote right here,

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especially as Madison saw the concept of
republicanism. You say, at both

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the conceptual and the practical levels,
the tension between democracy and liberalism is often

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also mediated in the constitutional system by
republicanism. This is another use essential element

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of the political framework of American constitutionalism, but one that has become less familiar

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to us over time. At its
heart, right, is an idea of

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the human being and citizen that emphasizes
our responsibilities to one another and to the

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common good. Now, a lot
of this book deals with a really important

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question, which is, when we
no longer agree on the common good,

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how can we return to that point
of finding consensus. You know, if

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we don't, if we don't have
it, how does the constitution kind of

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give us the tools we need to
get it back. Yeah. The idea

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of unity or cohesion that I think
is at the heart of the American constitutional

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system is counterintuitive. It suggests that
unity is not a matter of thinking a

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lot about things, of agreeing about
everything. Unity is a matter of acting

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together. Common action is the essence
of it. Now, common action does

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require some agreement about fundamentals, and
I think Americans do have some agreement about

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fundamentals. We do, generally speaking, believe in the principles that are laid

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out in the Declaration of Independence.
We believe that human beings are equal.

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We believe that there is such a
thing as rights. Americans across very very

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broad political lines that differ about many
many things, will at least tell you

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that they agree about that. And
that is a beginning. That's a real

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opening. The authors of the sixteen
nineteen project say that those truths stated in

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the Declaration are true, though they
accuse the United States of failing to live

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up to them. That's a serious
beginning. We also share in common history

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as a nation as a people.
We can point to common moments of national

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experience, of triumph and of and
of failure and success. And that's important

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too, But we don't agree about
much more than that. The United States

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is fundamentally because it is a free
society. It's a society in which people

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differ about many, many things.
And I think the Constitution actually begins from

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the premise that a free society is
always going to be like that. James

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Madison and federalist ten says, as
long as the reason of man continues fallible

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and he's at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. We're

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going to disagree. The question is, given that we disagree, how can

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we still act together? And the
Constitution's answer that question is a very Republican

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answer. It says we are going
to act together by working things out,

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by dealing with each other, by
negotiating, competing, bargaining. A lot

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of that happens in our politics,
especially in Congress, but also within the

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various other branches. Between the branches, it happens through the system of federalism.

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The life of American politics is bargaining, negotiation, pushing, pullings,

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and looks like discord. It's a
way of disagreeing, but actually it amounts

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to common action, and the goal
of it and the result of it when

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it works, is negotiated accommodations and
settlements, and on most issues, that

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is really the way to achieve a
unified outcome, an outcome that everybody considers

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legitimate. And so I think this
is a profoundly Republican ideal because it suggests

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that the work of coming to agreement
is up to us. Republicanism is especially

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ultimately about public ownership of the common
fate of the society. You know,

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the first word of the Constitution is
we. It starts with we the people,

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and it is that we, that
first person plural, that is both

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the premise and the purpose of this
system of government, and the idea that

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we can arrive at a we that
describes the United States is really what the

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Constitution makes possible. And I'm also
thinking, just as we're talking about all

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of the about things, my friends
who work in Congress will say or have

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recently worked in Congress and maybe gotten
annoyed with it, which is the case

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for many people. But you know, they say, it's just not what

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it once was. The Institution's works
have been gummed up and all of that.

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You know, you look at the
sprawling executive branch. People now are

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really concerned about the Supreme Court on
the left for different reasons than on the

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right. But are there any flaws
in the institutions or any That's probably the

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wrong way to put it, but
are there any blinking warning signs in the

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institutions right now? Yeah? I
mean, first of all, there's certainly

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flaws, and I would never suggest
that the Constitution is perfect. You know,

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it was produced by a combination of
compromises and it certainly has its imperfections.

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But I think the way you put
the questions very important. I'm a

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former congressional staffer too. I worked
on the House side for years, and

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there are ways in which I agree
Congress isn't what it used to be.

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I think it's important to avoid blind
nostalgia in this regard. Congress never really

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was ideally organized to achieve its goals. It's never been There's never been a

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real golden age. But I think
that when we ask ourselves how Congress is

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failing, we can start to dig
into the character of the American constitutional system.

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There's very broad agreement that something is
wrong with Congress, And I think

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that's easy to see. Institution's very
unpopular. It's not getting a lot of

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legislation done. It seems incapable of
even the very basics, you know,

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choosing a speaker who will hold office
for more than a few weeks, or

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passing the budget. But what's wrong
with Congress? What is it actually failing

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to do. I think there's a
tendency, especially on the left, to

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say what it's failing to do is
to pass big legislation. Things just don't

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get done anymore. I think that
what Congress is failing to do is to

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facilitate cross partisan bargaining and accommodation.
That that is the purpose of the institution.

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And that's actually very different from saying
that it needs to pass big legislation.

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Because we're living in a moment now
where we don't have large majorities.

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That's just a fact of contemporary American
political life. Neither party has won a

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big election in thirty years. We
haven't really had a majority party in America

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since the nineteen nineties, and so
to just say that what we need is

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simple majority rule, as reformers on
the left say over and over, they

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want Congress to be more like a
European parliament. They want direct election for

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the president. Well, that's a
way of saying, we have a majority,

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but it can't do what it wants
to do. But we don't.

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We don't have a majority. What
we want from our system is some help

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in broadening majorities, in building coalitions, and that actually requires bargaining negotiation.

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Coalition building looks like negotiation across lines
of difference, and the reforms that people

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on the left call for, like
getting rid of the filibuster or centralizing the

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budget process more so that Congress is
more efficient, those kinds of reforms would

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make cross partis in bargaining less necessary
for Congress's work. What I argue for

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in this book are reforms that make
cross partis in bargaining more likely. I'm

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a big fan of the filibuster.
I think actually the filibuster in a moment

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with narrow majorities is extremely important for
preventing big mistakes and for facilitating bargaining and

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accommodation. I think we should empower
the committees of the Congress, not the

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leader, not the party leaders.
I think we should look for ways to

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facilitate the kind of cross partisan work
that happens at the kind of weird margins

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of both parties, where there are
people on the left who can agree with

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people on the right and drive some
strange forms of reform that move our politics

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forward. That's what Congress is for. And I think even within the kind

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of little community of Congressional reformers,
you know, I often find myself as

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the token conservative and meetings of people
who care about reforming Congress and everybody else

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is talking about how to eliminate the
filibuster and make the institution go faster.

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I want to make the institution bargain
negotiate, which in many many instances means

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going slower, not faster. It's
very important to ask ourselves what problem are

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we trying to solve, what actually
is the problem to fix? And on

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that front, there is I think
a real left right difference, and it

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has to do ultimately with whether you
accept and internalize the logic of the Constitution

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or whether you think that what we
need is something more like a European parliamentary

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system, as at least implicitly many
people on the left do. I don't

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think they've thought through the implications of
that, but it's what their arguments point

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toward this is Pastor Matthew Harrison,
President of the Lutheran Church Missouri Senate.

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The LCMS operates the second largest parochial
school system in the United States. What

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can you expect from a Lutheran Church
Missouri Centate school. There's one race,

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the human race, and Jesus died
for the sins of every man, woman,

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and child from every land and every
nation. Life begins a conception.

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All life is precious, from womb
to tomb, and every student, parent

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and teacher is created in the very
image of God. There's right and wrong,

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and we know which is which from
the Ten Commandments. There are only

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two sexes, male and female.
He created them. Marriage is the lifelong

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union of one man and one woman. There's such a thing as objective,

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absolute truth, and it's found in
the person and work of Jesus Christ and

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his word. To find a Lutheran
Church Missouri sentis school near you. Visit

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LCMS dot org slash schools. What
about And this is a great part of

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the book. You talk about the
two party system and you specifically zero in

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on Martin van Buren, somewhat forgotten
character in the centuries long American play at

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this point. But what did Martin
Van Buren have to say about the way

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to party? A two party system
fits into this entire question because actually,

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as you were just talking about,
as people look at what they see,

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as you know, a locked up
Congress, right, people get frustrated with

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that. RFK Junior is ascendant to
the summer. But what did Martin van

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van Buren have to say? I
you know, this is one of those

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things. I just love Martin van
Burr. If you let me go on

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long enough, I will end up
talking about Martin Van Buren and it might

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just be giving you a ball.
It is just me. But that's okay.

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A fan club of one still counts. Martin Van Buren in a lot

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of ways, is really the father
of the American party system. He was.

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We think of him as the as
the Andrew Jackson's vice president who becomes

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president. He's sort of hard to
remember in that kind of middle period where

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he lose track of who's who.
But Martin Van Buren was a profoundly important

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figure because he was really the person
who saw the electoral logic of the American

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political system as it was emerging in
the nineteenth century. The founders even the

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frames of the Constitution had a very
low opinion of political parties. They thought

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that they could be avoided, that
we could have a system where they weren't

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necessary, where politicians would operate essentially
as independent agents, and we could avoid

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the dangers of party. But very
quickly they found out that as a practical

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matter, politics, democratic politics has
to be organized somehow. People have to

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understand what the camps are, what
the differences are, what choices they're making

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at election time. And even more
important than that, the American system,

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for a very particular reason that was
not entirely understood originally, having to do

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with presidential selection, with the electoral
college, the American system really needs to

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be a two party system. If
we have more than two viable candidates for

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president, it is very likely that
the presidential election will go to the House,

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because in order to in the presidency, you have to win an absolute

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majority of the electors in the electoral
College, and so if you have three

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or more candidates, it's very likely
that no one will win an absolute majority,

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and then the House decides. This
happened twice in the early nineteenth century,

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in eighteen hundred and in eighteen twenty
four, and in both cases the

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result was a real legitimacy crisis.
And in the second of those times,

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Martin Van Buren is a member of
the Senate. After the eighteen twenty four

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election. He's sitting in the House
gallery watching the House choose the president.

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The House chooses John Quincy Adams rather
than the person who won the most votes

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and the most electoral votes, Andrew
Jackson, and Van Buren is thinking to

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himself, this should not be happening
in the House. This should be happening

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inside of a political party. Choosing
candidates is something that the parties to need

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to start to do so that we
end up with just two clear choices for

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president and two broad parties that are
built for negotiation. There'll be ideological differences

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between them, but they'll be somewhat
permeable, broad, complicated national coalitions that

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train the people in them to be
negotiators and therefore to be ultimately effective public

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officials. And Van Buren offers a
framework for how the parties can work,

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conventions, ways of selecting candidates,
party committees. All of these things come

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from him, and ultimately he facilitates
the creation of the broad two party system

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that is a very good fit for
the Madisonian Constitution, and that, like

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the Constitution, is all about negotiating
and bargaining and building coalitions. Our system

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is built to make politicians build coalitions. When it's working is when they do

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that well. When they don't build
coalitions well, as we're seeing now,

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our system doesn't work very well.
And I think Van Buren, more than

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anybody in that period in the early
nineteenth century, understood the lodge of the

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Madisonian system and the way in which
it required functional political parties, and offered

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up real ideas to make it work. He was if you like politicians,

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which I know is a big if. Martin van Bura is really great.

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He ran for everything, He won
everything he ever ran for, all the

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way from county commissioner in New York
to President of the United States, and

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he really helped to work out the
logic of American political life. What could

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be done now if there's not a
sort of structural fix, is it purely

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cultural? Is it just a matter
of helping politicians develop more intentional coalition building

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or those instincts and the muscle reflex. What could be done now to create

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a system where there is more coalition
building basically among the two parties. Yeah,

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I think here the Madisonian insight is
key, and that is that the

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structure of institutions shapes our political culture. The structure of institutions creates incentives.

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Ambitious people respond to incentives, and
ultimately we get the system that we incentivize.

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And so the Madisonian system was built
to incentivize negotiation and bargaining, especially

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in Congress. It was built to
make Congress central, and it was built

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to make Congress a venue for negotiation. That is not happening now. Congress

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is not as central as it should
be because a lot of the political incentives

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in our system point towards the president
in some respects also toward the courts,

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and Congress has willingly given up a
lot of its power and responsibility. Members

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pass very vague legislation, and mostly
they just want to comment on the president's

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behavior. They want to do oversight, and they want to do punditry,

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and they don't want to be members. And a lot of the reason for

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that is that the incentives they face
have really changed dramatically. The centralization of

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power in Congress, which has been
driven especially by progressive reforms of the institution,

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although to some degree also by the
Gingrichair, Republican reforms have really centralized

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power in Congress so that the big
decisions are made by party leaders. The

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work that members do in committees barely
matters, and so it's understandable that they

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look for other ways to matter.
They look for other ways to be prominent,

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and those very often involve political performance, art and preading for the cameras,

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and so that's a lot of what
they do. I think there are

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ways to change that that are structural, to think about how Congress operates by

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thinking about how you empower committees to
really matter. I think there are a

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few things that I would point to. First of all, it's very important

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to give the committees some control of
what happens on the floor of both houses

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of Congress. A lot of state
legislators do this, Congress doesn't. So

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in many states, if a committee
votes a bill out with at least one

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vote from a member of the minority
party, that bill gets a floor vote,

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whether the speaker wants it to or
not. That means that what you

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do committee actually matters. You're firing
with real bullets. I would also,

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for example, eliminate the distinction that
exists now between authorization and appropriation in Congress,

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so the committees that create programs and
the committees that spend money are totally

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separated. I think that they should
be unified again as they were in the

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nineteenth century Congress. And again the
goal there is to fire with the real

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bullets, so that what members are
doing in the committee's matters, and that

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means that they will be invested in
the outcome, and therefore they will be

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invested in the work of negotiated legislation. It's very important that that's how we

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resolve big differences, and that that's
what members of Congress do, so that

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sort of almost technical institutional reform really
can matter. But I do think that

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the first step toward anything like that, whether it's in Congress or in the

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administrative state, where I also think
we need some very real change, is

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to see what the problem actually is. And I think a lot of our

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problem at the moment misdiagnosis. We
incline toward a mode of understanding our system

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that is very inflected with progressive ideas, with Woodrow Wilson's sense of what our

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government should be, and we need
to remind ourselves that Congress is the first

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branch it is meant to be where
the action happens. That its purpose is

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negotiation and accommodation. That federalism is
intended to separate state and federal authorities,

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not to intermix them. That the
president's job is to facilitate some stability in

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our system of government. That the
job of the courts is to keep everyone

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in their place doing their proper job, rather than to take over their jobs.

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All these things which I think are
obvious when you look at the Constitution,

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at the debates around it, at
the arguments for it, at the

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structure of the system it created,
but that are not at all obvious to

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us now, because we've become so
infused with a kind of progressive critique of

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the Constitution, we need to be
reminded of all of that. And in

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writing a book like this, that's
my first and foremost hope is that it

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might help people remember why our system
has the form that it does, and

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what it would mean to allow it
to work in the way that it's intended

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to. I think if we let
it do that, it would begin to

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ease some of our divisions and disunity. A question that fascinates me is how

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technology has shifted culture in a ways
that in a way that you know,

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small are Republicans like James Madison maybe
could not have possibly anticipated. I mean,

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obviously there were some very pressient writers
who were thinking through these things,

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you know, since the dawn of
the printing press. But do you have

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any insights into maybe the way just
the shrinking of the globe even in the

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last ten years, with the dawn
of social media, what new challenges and

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you know, is there any do
take seriously any of the arguments from people

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who say it's this constant, tuitional
Republican system is impossible in the new world.

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Yeah, I do worry about this
question, and I think it is

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important because the logic of our system
relies on a certain pace of public action,

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and that pace is definitely disrupted by
technology. There's a way that and

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you can see this explicitly in Federalist
ten that Madison assumes that the sheer size

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of our country will mean that politics
has to move slowly, that it's very

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hard for factions to build up that
are national because it's hard for people to

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connect with each other. That's obviously
just not true anymore. And politics now

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moves very very quickly. It's very
easy for factions to connect across great distances,

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and so we have a kind of
misperception of the size and power of

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various sorts of factions in our politics. People who are very very connected,

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who are constantly on Twitter, perceive
themselves to be a far greater political force

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than they really are. Politicians think
of them that way too, and it's

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very hard to know who actually has
real numbers. It's very hard to know

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who has real political power. And
a lot of our politics now happens in

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the form of a kind of political
performance art, through Internet videos and so

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on, and surely that is a
huge problem for the Madisonian system. I

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think that it's important for us,
in thinking about what might be done about

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that, to again recur to the
logic of the Madisonian system, and so

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ask ourselves how these kinds of forces
could be directed toward the cause of facilitating

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bargaining, accommodation negotiation, especially in
Congress. And so again I think we

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have to think about the incentives we
create. I think, for example,

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that bringing cameras into congressional committees was
a terrible mistake. I don't know that

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we can undo it. But I
think we can build around found it,

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and the committees can build forms of
work, new genres of committee action that

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are not hearings that are televised.
And it's just impossible to negotiate in public,

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so that if we want Congress to
negotiate, we have to build some

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venues in Congress that are not public. And that's extremely important to understand.

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I think we've lost sight of it, and a lot of harm has been

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done as a result. And you
know, more generally, I think we

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have to understand that our political culture
is now mediated by technologies that are a

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very bad fit for what we want
that culture to do, and that requires

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us to think creatively about how to
facilitate political action and engagement that is not

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on or through the Internet. I
don't have simple answers there, but I

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certainly think the problem is very real, and that it's a set of questions

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that we have to let the logic
of the Madisonian system go ite us through.

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You said something I think so important
earlier about how we actually are still

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on the same page on a number
of different issues, and kind of reminds

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me us talking to someone about the
campus protests, and you mentioned the sixteen

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nineteen project authors, and I was
thinking something similar with the campus protests,

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because I talked to one actually Jewish
student protest leader at Columbia, and she

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was talking about justice and in this
really bleak and cynical way. Perhaps I

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thought, well, you know what, we are on the same page that

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justice is something to be sought,
and that has not actually been true for

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different societies throughout the scope of human
history. And if I was hoping maybe

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you could talk to us just a
little bit about the historic importance of the

402
00:31:45,599 --> 00:31:48,240
Constitution so that we in the book
addresses it, but so we don't get

403
00:31:48,240 --> 00:31:52,039
this kind of myopia of thinking.
You know, this is the worst time

404
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:56,759
ever. Absolutely, I think it's
very very important to see that, for

405
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one thing, to see that the
change of differences in American society, intense

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as those differences are, the range
of differences is relatively constrained. We are

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debating how our free society should live. The fact that we are free society

408
00:32:15,519 --> 00:32:20,440
is pretty broadly accepted, not universally, nothing is universally agreed on, but

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00:32:21,559 --> 00:32:25,720
pretty broadly accepted. The fact that
we believe in majority rule and democracies,

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pretty broadly accepted. The fact that
we want our politics to pursue justice is

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00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:36,240
fairly broadly accepted to We disagree about
very important things, but we have a

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00:32:36,319 --> 00:32:39,559
framework for doing that that can still
service well. And it's also important to

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see that we're not more divided than
ever, as we constantly tell ourselves.

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Obviously, Americans were more divided in
the eighteen sixties than they are now that

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00:32:49,599 --> 00:32:52,480
you don't need much of an explanation
for that. But I think even in

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00:32:52,519 --> 00:32:57,240
the nineteen sixties, when we had
much more political violence than we do today,

417
00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:05,119
the ways in which Americans were divided
were extreme to a degree that would

418
00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:10,240
shock contemporary Americans. So we should
not allow ourselves to understate the kinds of

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00:33:10,359 --> 00:33:16,440
challenges that prior generations had to deal
with in the effort to overstate the kinds

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00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:19,920
of challenges we have to deal with. The problems we have are very real,

421
00:33:20,400 --> 00:33:23,440
the differences we have are very real. We certainly have lost some of

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00:33:23,480 --> 00:33:28,640
the common ground that has been available
to Americans in the past. We're arguing

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00:33:28,640 --> 00:33:31,799
about very important things all the way
down to the basic nature of the human

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00:33:31,799 --> 00:33:37,400
person, and that matters a lot. But we do it as a free

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00:33:37,480 --> 00:33:42,799
society. We do it as a
relatively safe, prosperous society. We do

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00:33:42,839 --> 00:33:47,319
it as a society with a long
history of recurring to these fundamental principles in

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00:33:47,400 --> 00:33:52,400
moments of crisis and division. And
I absolutely think that this generation, just

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00:33:52,519 --> 00:33:55,359
like past ones, is going to
be up to it, provided that we

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00:33:55,680 --> 00:34:00,640
understand how valuable our political inheritance is
and how we can use it to address

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00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:06,000
the problems we have. I don't
think that we should let the bizarre kind

431
00:34:06,039 --> 00:34:10,199
of pessimistic nostalgia that we have now
that says everything was easier for prior generations

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00:34:10,199 --> 00:34:14,920
and everything is so hard for us
really guide what we do. In a

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00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:17,360
lot of ways, they had much
bigger problems than we do. Almost every

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00:34:17,360 --> 00:34:22,719
prior generation of Americans had some set
of problems that was utterly daunting and overwhelming.

435
00:34:23,920 --> 00:34:27,840
And the fact that we've got our
own challenges to deal with only means

436
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:30,199
that we are like them and so
should try to learn from them. And

437
00:34:30,639 --> 00:34:37,199
you know, maybe to give one
more Devil's advocate argument to the sort of

438
00:34:37,239 --> 00:34:45,119
dunin side here and ask what would
a country that's incapable of clawing back from

439
00:34:45,280 --> 00:34:50,320
decline look like? You know,
if we still have it, you know,

440
00:34:50,360 --> 00:34:52,719
you've all, is there a time
when you would say, okay,

441
00:34:52,719 --> 00:34:55,880
this is Could America look like it's
past the point of no return? And

442
00:34:55,920 --> 00:35:00,760
if so, what would we expect
it to look like? Yeah? Yeah,

443
00:35:00,800 --> 00:35:04,639
I mean, look, it's going
to be pretty hard to get me

444
00:35:04,719 --> 00:35:07,840
to a place where I give up
on America. So I do think that

445
00:35:08,639 --> 00:35:12,719
it's hard to describe a moment that
looks like that. I think it would

446
00:35:12,719 --> 00:35:16,320
have been much easier to lose hope
in America, say in the eighteen sixties,

447
00:35:16,400 --> 00:35:22,840
when we really were killing each other
over fundamental questions. I think it

448
00:35:22,840 --> 00:35:24,719
would have been easier to lose faith
in America than today, Even the nineteen

449
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:30,840
sixties and seventies, when it seemed
like the rising generation had completely lost its

450
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:34,760
mind and there was no one in
charge. It feels a lot like that

451
00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:37,000
today. Look, it just does. The problems we have are very significant.

452
00:35:37,320 --> 00:35:42,599
I think the decline of some core
American institutions like the family and religion

453
00:35:43,599 --> 00:35:47,920
are very very significant and create enormous
problems for us. But nonetheless, I

454
00:35:47,960 --> 00:35:52,559
think the fundamental truths at the core
of how this country operates are still true.

455
00:35:53,199 --> 00:35:58,320
The basic, undeniable, self evident
truths to the Declaration of Independence are

456
00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:02,159
still true. Way in which those
are applied in the form of our constitutional

457
00:36:02,199 --> 00:36:07,559
system, are still available to us, and that means that it's still possible

458
00:36:07,559 --> 00:36:12,800
for us to recover. I start
the book with a distinction between hope and

459
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:15,840
optimism. I'm not an optimist.
I don't think things are just going to

460
00:36:15,880 --> 00:36:19,519
be fine, and I don't think
anybody should be an optimist, because optimism

461
00:36:19,559 --> 00:36:22,599
is ultimately an invitation to passivity.
It says, don't worry about it,

462
00:36:22,639 --> 00:36:27,079
don't do anything. It's really the
same kind of mistake as pessimism, which

463
00:36:27,119 --> 00:36:31,400
says we're doomed, there's nothing we
can do. Hope says the resources are

464
00:36:31,400 --> 00:36:37,639
there for us to renew our future
if we act, and I do think

465
00:36:37,679 --> 00:36:40,400
the resources are there, but it
is up to us to choose whether we

466
00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:46,639
act or not. And I think
the decision about whether our future is bright

467
00:36:46,719 --> 00:36:51,280
or dark is ours to make.
It's part of why I think it makes

468
00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:55,320
sense to try to get people reacquainted
with the principles that have made it possible

469
00:36:55,360 --> 00:36:59,679
for this country to flourish in the
past, because I think those principles still

470
00:36:59,679 --> 00:37:04,199
make it possible for us to flourish
now, and we need to operate with

471
00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:09,039
the hope the justified hope that we
too can provide that world for our children

472
00:37:09,360 --> 00:37:13,360
so they can inherit it and have
their own problems to deal with. I

473
00:37:13,400 --> 00:37:17,599
think they will. I like leaving
this conversation there. You've all in this

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00:37:17,960 --> 00:37:23,199
justified hope, and so appreciate you
taking the time to talk about this fantastic

475
00:37:23,320 --> 00:37:27,239
new book here on Federalist Radio Hour. Thank you so much, of all,

476
00:37:27,519 --> 00:37:30,559
thanks so much. I appreciate it. You've been listening to another edition

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00:37:30,559 --> 00:37:32,360
of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm
Emily Dashinsky, culture editor here at the

478
00:37:32,400 --> 00:37:36,119
Federalist. We'll be back soon with
more. Until then, be lovers of

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00:37:36,119 --> 00:37:44,960
freedom and anxious for the fray