We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emilijasnski, culture
editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show at
radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts as well. Today I'm excited
to be joined by Chris Boulivan. He's the director of the Social Capital Campaign
and they are out with a really interesting new report. It is called a
Civil Society Celebrating Diversity of Opinion and it comes to all kinds of different observations
based on that. Chris, welcome back to the show. Great, it's
great, great to be back here. Thank you for having me back.
Oh, of course, we'll talk about social capital any day. That's the
kind of the nerds we are here at Federal's Radio Hour. But Chris,
actually, social capital is like this, this fancy social science word for something
super pragmatic that people feel every single day in their lives, from the moment
they wake up to the moment they go to bed, and tell us,
you know, obviously, Social Capital Campaign does all kinds of work on social
capital, but tell us specifically with this report, what you're trying to do.
I understand it's one of several reports that you're rolling out right now.
Yeah, that's right. So social capital is the rich network of relationships that
we experience in our lives. So those are involved in our childhood, so
parents and family and extended family in the village that raises us or supports our
parents, and then those professional and personal relationships that we have across the life
course. And we are doing five reports, which is based on Senator Mike
Lee's Social Capital project at the Joint Economic Committee, where that they devised this
framework which they were kind enough to let us borrow by looking at family stability,
which we published with Brad Wilcox, family affordability which we did with Abbia
McCloskey. We did a series of essays around work and social capital, and
with this one that we've just done, I wrote myself on civil society and
that's meant to be looking at everything that isn't family and it isn't work,
Everything that we do in our lives isn't the state. And our next report
that will be coming out with will be on youth investment and how to make
sure that we are investing as much social capital into young people as possible.
And this isn't just you know, diagnosing the problem. You also have a
lot of solutions, some really really interesting ones that I'm excited to talk about
in the report. But if you could tell us a little bit we were
talking before the taping started here about one of the things I found most interesting,
and it's this is in the subheading of one of the reports on civil
society. The society is a strong social capital can celebrate not only a diversity
of backgrounds, but a diversity of opinions too. That is so important for
people to understand that, as John Adam said, our constitution is one that
was for a moral, religious people, meaning we can tolerate diversity of opinions
on a widespread scale if we adhere to the spirit of the First Amendment,
if we all have a consensus position on the First Amendment, and if we
trust each other, and if we're generally aimed towards some good. Can you
tell us, Chris a little bit about that argument. Yeah, of course.
Well, I think we're all aware of penalization that we live in and
the hostility Americans have just as a daily conversation it seems, or depending on
what features a supermarket you go to to get your groceries out, there's a
there's a wholeso alignment different sorts of identities that seemed to be seemingly a kind
of hostile to one another, and that polarization is something that's resulted from a
decline in society wide trust. There's three hundred and thirty million of us also
living on this continent and the spread of the United States, and there's no
way that we're going to all be able to get to meet each other.
So we are, I guess, as Brian Anson as it calls it,
the imagine community of three hundred and thirty million people, and it's a phenomenal
project. You know, any advanced democracy, but one of this size,
it's a phenomenal project to try and have that many people living together in a
society. And one was sort of you know, diverse backgrounds, but yeah,
as you say, diverse opinion, there's also like societies with strong stocks
social capital trust with one another. With these imagine people that we're never going
to meet, allows a diversity of opinion is a decline in society why trust
That means that actually those groups aren't allowed to those groups find it easier harder
to coexist, right, right, And you know you can actually trace the
dissolution of civil society and the decline of social capital in the United States to
some of where the polarization starts to become more acute. I want to ask
it so about this or maybe do you have where thoughts on that? Chris
Well, yeah, I mean our basic sort of like basic thesis as the
campaign is that it is it is social capital that creates trust. So the
rich networking relationships that you have in your family, and then the rich network
of relationships that you have in your wider community. The byproduct of those is
the society why trust? As people are able to be confident and secure and
feel empowered and their own communities, they just have a greater level of confidence
and trust in others. So you have this sort of, right, this
mysterious byproduct of society, why trust, that is created by social capital.
It's been the decline in families, neighbling this attendance at church and what patna
and causing in the decline of societies and clubs that has led to an overall
decline in that mysterious byproduct of society. Why trust? And then so all
if you see a society or why, trust is the jello that holds that
just the sheer variety of groups that can exist in the United States together.
It's the corrosion of that jello that sort of exposes these different groups. And
then different groups and look for other sources of trust to attach to, and
usually that's the could be partisans ship or you know, any number of things.
Go ahead, go ahead, Well yeah, so I mean to prattle,
I mean, as we as we think about the evolution of societies,
you know, and if they start with clans and tribes, and then clans
and tribes sort of either you know, war or compete with each other or
they trade with each other, and then they grow and as those at some
point there's there's an element in which they're not going to be able to see
everybody in their clan. You move beyond cousin marriage, and then you you
you start trading and so you set up contracts and things like that and imagining
people that you're not going to meet. And then usually at some point those
societies advanced to needing something beyond brute force and sort of burning people at the
stake to be able to sort of coerce people together, and that's usually one
religious belief, you know, one church, one Lord, one faith under
one king, or something like that. So that the American experiment, as
with any of these sort of like you know, advanced societies, is amazing
because it's actually able to transcend even then this idea of one coercive belief.
And that's where we have this, you know, concept of a separation of
church and state. And you know, Thomas Jefferson was keen that in establishing
a separation of church and state, it wasn't to create a secular state.
It was to create a diversity of opinion and beliefs. Whether the state wasn't
the priesthood adjudicating what you believe. And so I think we're meant to have
a hugely vibrant civil society with lots of different ideas and lots of different phase.
I mean Jefferson himself and there's back in the day, wanted to create
a society that you know, Mohammedan's I think they called them back then.
We called them assons now honestly, and Hindus and a variety of it.
It wasn't just about Protestants and Catholics. It was even back then about a
multicultural belief system, so that the idea basically and that is that there was
meant to be a celebration of diversity of opinion. No, I'm really glad
we kept pushing on that question because it obviously, I think when people look
back on the dawn of the social media age, just thinking about how it
was pitched to us during for instance, the Arab Spring or the first Obama
campaign, actually the second Obama campaign as well. This was something that was
going to shrink the globe in almost at just an entirely positive ways. That's
how Silicon Valley was thinking of it, That's how lawmakers here in Washington,
DC we're thinking of it. But Chris, obviously we all know now that's
not how it worked out. How has social media exacerbated or poured some salt
on the wounds of social civil society that we're already starting to we're already starting
to hurt us. Yeah. Well, I think this, I mean,
this is a huge point of discussion because I think it's important to recognize as
an array spectrum of social media or anything digital, and then there's an array
of what it does to civil society obviously one of it. With the social
media that like Twitter or Facebook, the group's people together, and really what
we have seen there actually isn't so much. We have seen the elector introduced
to each other in ways that we would never have known before. So actually
people are a lot less imagined and we can suddenly see just how odd a
lot of other people's opinions are, how offensive they are to each other,
to ourselves. So normally, brief social media, we have highly choreographed presentation
on television and then prior to that radio but highly choreographed monolithic presentations of candidates
and sort of like political positions and with a very strong party discipline. But
what we've seen with social media, I guess and is a much greater atomization
even at the candidate, but also an electra there's been introduced to each other,
so you can get quite graphic portrayals of what people believe. You know,
so normally you might see someone's bumper sticker on that car or just you
know, one of those little things stuck in the lawn at the yard at
the front of the house to get some inclination of what your neighbor's political opinions
are. But actually, I think what social media has done at this has
lifted a veil and we see not only what's on the bumper sticker or the
front of the lawn, but we see kind of like the deepest thoughts as
they go back into the house. It's not just an election time that we
see an opinion registered. It is now all the time, and it's such
an intimate portray that's actually I think a little bit overwhelming. So I think
in that sense, social media, as Elon must says, it has a
potential to be a public square, but at the minute, it's just I
think an overwhelming amount of complexity of issues. And then obviously I think it
breaks down constituency boundaries, right, it does, doesn't it. So suddenly
there's groups of people that may have existed in pockets and sort of like connurbations
here and they're suddenly we're having like these huge mass blocks that with you know,
that now understand each other or know that they are there. So I
think in that sense, social media has a potential to play in social capital
creation and as much as it allows for political participation. But I think it's
it's it's it's a technology very much in its infancy, right, So I
think regulation hasn't caught up. I don't think even like you know, society
hasn't caught up with quite how to figure out what to do with it yet.
But I think I think it has introducing us to so much opinion.
I think, what and it comes with a collapse when society I trust And
we go and talk about how that's come about. But I think it just
means that people are now with a combination of a decline society trust and having
so much opinion in your face, I think people are more likely to retreat
into other sources of trust, grouping together against the other clans that they no
longer trust. And that's sort of some of the issue of what we're experiencing.
But it's but there are there are rays of hope that we'll get onto
talking about I know absolutely, And that's a really important point. I think
one thing with social media, when I hear from people how social media works
really well for them, um, you know that the good spots, that
the bright spots that exist in their use of social media, it's almost always
on the local level. It's about connecting with people in their town, finding
lost pets in the neighborhood and being able to ping everybody right away very quickly
and say hey, be on the lookout for my cat um. And and
that gets to this point that the report makes, which I think again it's
sort of counterintuitive to a lot of people, but but very important that the
sort of the tribe, the clan are the building box of social capital.
And I wanted to seecrets if you could talk a little bit more about that
through the lens of um. What a lot of people talk about is localism
that you you know, it's it's hard for us to be in a debate
about abortion with somebody who is in Brooklyn and somebody who is in Croatia,
or somebody who's in Africa, or somebody who's in Texas for that matter,
who you've never met. You've never had to sit face to face. Two
you don't know their family, you don't have any contacts about them or their
lives. But with the tribes and the clan, that's obviously the tribes and
the clans, that's obviously not the case, right. And then the huge
differences even just between say New Hampshire or New Mexico. I mean, does
you know almost take different experiences. I think, well, what it would
be. I think it's helpful just to recognize that at a national level,
trust is really low. So trust in the Supreme Court, those people who
have any high levels trust in the Supreme Court. As I collapsed down to
twenty five percent of Americans the presidency twenty three, Congress SAT plummets to seven
percent of Americans think they've got any like a highly regard of trust in Congress,
and the media is at thirty four percent amongst Republicans seventeen and Independence twenty
seven. Oddly enough, Democrats have seventy percent of Democrats have high levels of
trust in the media. So we have we have these like low rates of
trust and anything big so big business. There's only fourteen percent of Americans trust
big big business, big tech it's twenty six percent. Even scientists and experts
are like plummeted from thirty nine percent being trusted of Americans having high levels of
trust in the pre pandemic to now twenty nine percent. But it shifts also
across into the nonprofit sector where big churches and religious groups of denominations are seeing
like the biggest drops in attendance, but also nonprofits are a low two fifty
six percent trust. And then philanthropy is in like corporate philanthropy, private foundation's,
home network individuals, that's all down at thirty four percent. So these
things that are big and national trust is really low. But as you're saying,
when you look at the local level, it's a completely different picture our
world, and data say that amongst neighbors as eighty four point one percent of
us have trust in our neighbors. That's a completely different to the society wide
thing in state governments. It's not the low rating we're seeing for federal government's
hitting fifty seven percent, or local government, whichagus city hall, sixty six
percent of Americans trust their local government. And similarly, whilst the half of
Americans think that media at the national level out to mislead, which is quite
scary, that drops down to just a quarter of Americans feel that about their
local media. So yeah, there is there is a lot of trust at
the local level, county and state level, which I think is really encouraging.
I don't know if that's because people can see each other. I don't
know if it's because you can drive past city hall in a way, perhaps
you can't drive past the Capitol building unless you're living in DC. Um,
but there is there is a level of trust there at a local level.
See that is that is a source for hope. And I think actually where
we come about with some of our solutions. Um, right, well,
let's let's move on to the solutions, and maybe it's a great segue to
just talk about some of the ones on the local level that you think are
could be most effective. Yeah, well, I think was. I think
the reason that there is need for looking at the local and state type solutions
is because we've seen this like pretty intense phenomenon since the seventies of centralization.
So I'll just do a little bit on centralization to explain why the local things
than the lead to Paul. But in the nights from the nineteen seventies onwards,
we have seen obviously this vast growth in wealth inequality where the you know,
the richest are occurring more of the games seen in the US economy,
so that the American I think American Compass have said how the US experience of
inequality is closer to that of Latin America than it is to say, Canada
or Europe. So we've got this like you know, top one percent or
the top point one percent who own a disproportionate amount of wealth, with the
issue being that that accrual of their wealth hasn't come with like a sort of
even spread of the marmalade across the toast. It is the middle classes have
not been able to keep up was prior to that wealth the growth of wealth
had been pretty it had been pretty even across all classes. So we've seen
this huge increase in wealth of quality. At the same time, we've seen
a massive growth in the federal government where I'd have to rummage around for it.
Now you know, the huge amount of spend on an individual has grown.
This has created this vacuum at the very centralization where there is a massing
of interest in what is happening in DC and federal policy. You've then got
this huge growth of new mega wealthy donors and they are pumping money via foundations
or political funding into things that just preoccupied with DC. So we're up until
nineteen six nine, Partnerment talks about like the rates of civil group participation in
the United States was like world beating, what was like world highs. America
was like one of the in the top. There there was a massive decline
in this huge growth towards centralization. The only as nonprofits were in decline,
like from the seventies onwards, the only area of growth was national associations that
were based in DC. So there's like a ditching of member organizations and instead
it's just like rapid focus on like policy change. And this has created this
like arms race on the left and the right of people just pumping more and
more money into of politics and philanthropy focused on the center. So there is
twenty twenty was like the most expensive election on record in American history, and
yet it wasn't like you know, platoons of little people handing up, you
know, sticking twenty dollars into boxes and with a badge going door to door.
It was mega wealthy people who were giving. I think the report sites
research suggests somewhere in the region of two thousand, three hundred high net worth
couples basically bankroll that election. And we see that to you in philanthropy,
we are hitting record levels of charitable giving in America, which is exciting until
you look at it and actually realize that, Josh, we're moving from the
regular folk such as perhaps yourself, myself that is on the decline, and
it's the megawealthy who are like giving the cash. So I think on the
left and on the right, you're seeing this arms race of supercharged financing that
it's just going into the center. And the reason that is problematic is and
causes society why trust collapse is because it means that that's money and attention and
energy that isn't going into state level civic machinery, that those groups and associations
and outreaches and even political party apparatus that allows individuals in their communities to connect
to the democratic process at a sort of local state level, influencing the center
that they are literally bypassed. And even those foundations that are kind of like
pumping money to influence state apparatus are really only doing it with a view to
achieve in federal policy change. So all of that is just gutting the capacity
of social capital at a local level. And as why really someone somewhere should
really start backing off of like giving so much money to this focus on the
center, because I mean, the billions that go into political and philanthropic funding
really should be focused instead at this community level. If we want to rebuild
society. Why trust that can allow for a glorious celebration of diversity of opinion
as well as backgrounds. Then we have to start building on this basis of
eighty one and trust in neighbors before that goes because I think one of those
things that we found in our Family Affordability Report, which I thought was quite
disturbing that Abby McCloskey did, was that we saw that church attendance among Hispanics
is on a massive decline. And so that doesn't moode well because those networks
that people find themselves in a family and faith groups and that sort of thing,
that level of social capital is what keeps low income people from a complete
collapse into poverty. If you've got other resources around you, you are much
more likely to be able to achieve the American dream. If those things go,
then you're much more likely to become stuck in a situation that you can't
get out of. And it becomes that kind of expensive to sort of like
have federal money sort of pumping into sort of help pay out for those sinkholes
and civil society. So we were saying, let's direct money funds energy into
our civil society at a local level, and that's going to take real courage
on behalf of all parties on the left and the right to sort of back
away from the arms race. I don't see it happening, but I think
political funding, I think it's sort of like giving up on right because I
think decades of attempts finance reform political have achieved very little. That maybe we
can do something around philanthropic funding to see if we can do anything there.
And you have some excuse me, you have some really specific ideas for five
or one threes that could become five one three pace, can you? Obviously
we came up with some very exciting ideas. So I think so one thing
I think we were thinking about that would tackle this kind of centralization and polarization
was recognizing the value of some of the smaller nonprofits. That so, there's
one point three million chargeable nonprofits in the United States and I can on ten
percent of those are foundations. Of the rest nine to two percent of the
rest of these foundations nonprofits working on a budget of less than a million dollars
a year, and even then most of them on a lot smaller, and
about a third of those nonprofits that aren't foundations are human services type public benefit
organizations. So whilst they're making up about a third of those active nonprofits that
aren't foundations, they only get nineteen percent of charitable donations in the country or
as higher education, which is though five percent of nonprofits gets like a huge
chunk of eleven percent in twenty twenty two of chargeable donations from what I could
figure out, So and that seems like a mismatch. There was less how
do we get money to these like poverty fighting groups that are actually doing something
in the local community, that are enmeshed in their community, that are drawing
from rich networkers of relationships. And we thought, well, why not create
a five O, one C, three P a new IRS category that specifically
identifies those registered non profits that are actively working to tackle poverty in the local
community, so that whether that's food banks, night shelters, homeless shelters,
shelters for vulnerable women, and or disaster relief efforts. That way it would
be easier for donors who want to give to that sort of group to be
able to do so. And then also I think one way we thought that
could perhaps entice the billionaire donor to sort of perhaps inch away from just being
rapidly focused on the Capitol building would be to think, well, could we
just do an incremental increase on the tax break for a five O one C
three P and create some sort of state poverty and Relief community chest. So
I think whereby any don't know whether an individual or a mega foundation can give
to this spark, this say poverty or of community chest, which has basically
just got a list of all the five one three five one C three ps
that are they're registered in their state alone people you know dial in or that's
just part of their tax return or whatever, and it's just the money that
is given to the spark and then like a tax the state tax rebate,
it has just distributed to all of those five or one C three pieces that
are just registered in their state. And I think we'd be just in their
state rather than kind of like national organizations because that way what we want to
be able to do is irrigate um though those community groups and also see new
community groups that come about. But for those large foundations that are like desperate
to find ways of chucking five percent that you know, their manatory five percent
out the door every year, this spark is like a really helpful opportunity for
them because they don't need to have any grant program managers or any forms or
anything. They could just literally give their five percent to the spark and then
it's very low, very low intensity too on the government because they're literally a
category. So it doesn't need a huge staff either. It's just it's probably
the existing staff who're doing tax rebaids and they can just then send these direct
funds to these nonprofit groups. And we think that could be an exciting way
to take take some of the heat out of this like centralized relation arms race.
Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, so if you work in the
nonprofit space, you're extremely aware of this problem. But I suppose if people
most people haven't seen a lot of this up close. And so Chris,
if you could talk a little bit about like has this changed? Is this
new? Like did the arms race start because of a certain policy? Where
where did things start to sort of spiral out of control? Yeah, well,
it's definitely this is definitely like a cause and consequence, and this is
why it has to be reversed because it's a beast that sort of like feeds
itself as a vicious cycle of the more you focus on the federal government and
the world, and the more wealth in equality you have that the more that
this sort of supercharges, the more then you are seeing the collapse of civil
society, and the more I mean, what we didn't want to see is
these local levels of trust declining, you know, through crime and through family
breakdown, you know, through the complete disruption of the public school system.
Because once those things we begin to break down, then you have got it's
going to be a lot harder to clause this stuff back. In terms of
the origin of this and the solution, well, I think I think as
soon as people started to sort of as soon as I was then this decline,
the growth of federal government from the nineteen seventies in particular onwards, coupled
with the wealth and equality, I think that's where we started to see the
problem. In terms of the thing that also that we started to see is
a change in philanthropy, a sort of mckinsification, if you will, of
the philanthropic sector, this sort of technocratic thing. I think as as people
started looking at federal government and that sort of thing, I think a similar
technocratic approach was then sort of applied to grant making, and I think that
I did have one quate that didn't quite make it into the paper somehow got
cut out, but there was you know, someone's commented on how Rockefeller would
not recognize philanthropy as it has done today. That there is that the grant
maker and then the recipient are almost in a higher contractor relationship now where the
foundation is seeking to create policy policy goals and to achieve some policy goals,
and so he sets out very stringent grand criteria for a nonprofit to sort of
meet those that ends up potentially being elite values being forced onto communities rather than
it should really be the other way around, because society has become ungovernable.
If you don't have society, why trust. So that's why we got this
this focus on small local nonprofits. And when I was in the UK,
I worked for a nonprofit think tank called the Center for Social Justice and We
which was a conservative thing tank despite the name, and we had a network
of about three hundred and eighty at the time. I think it's more now
small poverty fighting nonprofits now their story, like any here, is just very
similar. I'm trying to be quick on this, but Basically, someone some
some half caring individual in the community sees a problem a couple of homeless people
more than they realize it that were there before, or you know, migrants
are like washed up on the beach, and they think, well, hang
on this as a problem. More they see um, you know, increase
in the rise of drug addiction, and so they just start working in the
communities. There's one I always bang on about in Carlisle, this woman who
she's around the Sunday School and she noticed that the children that started turning up
to the Sunday school were kind of like increasingly rough and then to stopped coming,
and she just busy bodied her way into the neighborhood, just like knocking
on the doors, and then she sort of roped in some friends or some
neighbors or other people from the church to kind of like be involved in helping
provide parenting classes, after school homework clubs, just to be able to provide
a positive influence on families that were disintegrating. She then found she had a
nonprofit on her hands. And it's those sorts of nonprofits all across the United
States too. There would be some individual who sees a problem starts to deal
with it. We're ropes and some volunteers finds it good. A nonprofit on
their hands starts building a network of small businesses and churches and just sort of
like local people who see that's already want to get behind that. Oh I
know, someone say, who's work there? That's already good work. So
this thing some money into it. And these nonprofits are high in local networks
and high in trust, and they are high in efficacy too. They're highly
relational that they're not they're not focused on campaigning. They're not pumping billions into
sort of trying to persuade a senator to sort of put in the bill.
They are helping to literally change lies. And they will be completely perplexing to
the foundation that is looking to like discharge a million dollars and some innovative new
program because it is made and the plane super boring work that is absolutely transformative
to the own individuals who who are concerned. How does having a cup of
coffee and some converted strip mall that has been turned into some sort of like
you know, family hub plays change someone's life. It's impossible to put into
a spreadsheet. And these groups, if they're running, are like you know,
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. They're just they're just too
small for these like grant the big grant making organizations to bother with. If
they're if they're seeking to get someone drugs completely and they're not just harm reduction,
they're just in can know you're you're valuable enough to come completely off drugs,
let's help you with some with that, and let's let's build the things
around your life that you need to be able to stay completely clear of drugs.
That might be too controversial for some sophisticated, you know, elite adjacent
type nonprofit foundation. So that's why we're thinking if they could just have a
five category, it takes all the controversy out of that. It's just that's
that's what they're doing. And so the foundation, you know, you can
just give to the spark and it's just distributed to the five one three B.
And that way is affirming local solutions derived by local people that are drawing
from local situations, and that sort of thing builds social capital and neighborhood tense
situations around. It means that the federal government isn't necessarily there to bail everything
out and on that too. I mean, the federal government is going to
change over night. It's like a massive thing. So we've suggested an independent
mission that Congress would lead to help explore further voucherization of federal programs. So
there's this huge push for a very successful push for having vouchers related to public
school funding. So you have individualized, personalized budgets that follow the student and
the and the student can go to a private school, they can be homeschooled.
It could be a religious school, or it could be the public school,
but basically or it could be extracurricular activities and that the funding follows them.
So we're thinking, well, there is some already in sexual persection housing,
but can we expand that And the point there being we would want to
see an increase in the diversity of suppliers of delivery of federal health, health,
and human service as welfare programs, including faith based groups. In the
hope too that that would also generate a diversity of sort of solutions that are
local and that that are perhaps new. We think that the diversifying that is
a way to not takes everyone like could turkey off of the federal government.
But it is a harm reduction approach, you know, it's it's reducing the
need for federal government to bail up everything, because I think we do have
to have satial capital rebuilt, and starting here at the local level would seem
to be a good way to do it. No, I think, I
mean it's it's really smart, and again something that just people It's not on
a policy radar of anyone seeming. I mean, you just don't hear it
talked about. One thing that's interesting is trying to define political first C three's
right now is really difficult because I would argue there are a lot of people
who are doing political work with their C three designations out of compliance with the
IRS. But obviously, to your point, there's a massive, sprawling country,
so it's just incredibly difficult to to track all, you know, every
little tweetum and project that every nonprofit does. But on that note, um,
you know, would you foresee any issues with narrowing the category down,
and just because we have such low trust and such low social capital even coming
to a definition of what constitutes political or not, I could see that just
sort of being weaponized as we try to narrow it down. But I don't
know. Yeah, I mean, so the P is for poverty, so
yeah, yeah, poverties. But yeah, I think it would be it
would be quite difficult to take the politics out of it. Now. Well,
I mean, political participation is considered to be a social capital creating activity,
which is great. Um, whether m storming state capitals or you know,
the US Capitol is political participation social capital building paps not so much.
And whether having billionaires pumping lads of money as social counter building, maybe not
so much. I mean, the twenty twenty election did see an increase in
small donor participation, but I would argue that that that's a symptom of polarization
rather than a reclamation of sort of like you know, political participation. It's
it's it's tribalism. Um, So I think, yeah, I think in
terms of like five er three P and designating poverty, I think the idea
is to try and take some of the political politics out of it. Out
of you know, so it's an attempt to have people's two are literally doing
poverty relief, literally helping homeless people get into work, get into housing,
that that sort of thing. But yeah, I mean obviously anyone could say,
well, actually, if we gave five billion to Harvard's Center on Poverty
Relief, that that's really important too. And so yeah, I'm sure that
the five one three P think could be expanded or you know, manipulated,
and similarly that donors could gain it, so it kind of works out for
them. Um, you know, I think there's always a dynamic response within
the market whenever you do this sort of thing. But I think the spirit
of it is an attempt to perhaps try and identify and encourage the flow of
cash to local groups who are who are doing, you know, stuff to
assist with poverty and and I mean, would that's seeing them a huge proliferation
of sort of like quasi socialist groups, you know, people setting up from
their living rooms, their front rooms, you know, a five or one
C, three B. But perhaps not really possibly, but I'm not sure,
you know, as assist building local networks and building social trust, I
don't I don't imagine that's going to be any more corrosive than the centralization that
is already happening. The corrosive nature of society. Why trust collapsing as a
result of too much centralization of power and money to the to the elite,
and powerful. Right. Yeah, No, I think that's well worth undertaking
very much. I think you're saying this isn't much discussed because I didn't think
it is either, And that's why the Federalist radio or is they good because
you bring on these interesting ideas. No, No, it's yeah. I
was actually just thinking about this the other day. When you look at the
large s and in some cases the pomp and circumstance that you know, a
lot of C threes are run like as you know, like giant corporations,
and that does enable them to do a lot of really good work, but
it also builds them into political machines. And so yeah, like the what
was it the Center for Tech and whatever that Zuckerberg did with election work and
he just dumped a bunch of money into democratic districts but was able to skate
by and not calling it political. You know, sort of sorting the wheat
from the chaff and what is popping and what is politics could be difficult.
But at the same time, like you said, it's hard to imagine anything
being more corrosive than where we are right now, which is you're just a
large scale grift in so many different ways. Yeah, and I think that's
right, and it is I mean in the world that I am in obviously,
you know, in secret funding. I have been a little bit surprised,
and also, you know, a relatively new arrival in the United States.
I have been surprised by how political a lot of the foundations are or
can be, and not saying they all are only stretched, but I think,
yeah, it's definitely a semi permeable membrane between the philanthropic and the political
um. And so I think there is I mean, despite the sort of
dooming gloom around the decline of civil society and social capital creating you know,
institutions like you know, like family or churches or environmental groups to sort of
like nonprofits or you know, community clear ups whatever, um, there is
still high levels of hope amongst the American people. And I you know,
there are people, you know people it as possible to see the situation turned
around, you know. I think, like people think that trust can be
restored in federal government, in our national institutions, in one another. It's
just not entirely clear how to get there. So, I mean, we've
hope that the modest policy proposals we've put forward would sort of like help in
that regard because I love America. It's a great country, you know,
I mean, it's and it has the potential to be really you know,
to continue to be really awesome. It's why I've moved here. You know.
It's there's you know, there's so much opportunity, there's so many people.
Where else can you come to to to experience such a huge diversity of
backgrounds, you know, and such a diversity of beliefs and such glorious institutions
that do exist in each state. And so I think, I think,
yeah, I don't know that we necessarily need to be completely dooming gloom about
it. And people want America to be a country where they can succeed.
And for most people that does mean you know, being able to establish a
family, to know, again, an education, to be able to find
work, and to have meaningful involvement in their local community, and then to
be part of you know, a wider country that kind of that's that they're
really proud to be a part of. So I think that's why we are
creating this off the shelf policy platform for an incoming president. We're building you
know, these policy reports around family stability, making sure that family isn't something
a marriage isn't something that's just for the elite and the wealthy, but it's
something that everyone can sort of enjoy because there's a huge divide in that at
the moment. We want to make sure that raising a family is something that
is affordable for everybody to be able to do. And a lot of that
around affordability is about needing the village around you, these networks of people and
faith groups and professionals and other services that are there to help you. And
then to make sure that imply ointment and work is something that works in the
grain of these personal aspirations people have for building family and community. And then
we want to make sure that civil society is something that grows as a battered
and that young people, America's youth have this amazing opportunity to be able to
build social capital for themselves too, which we will be looking at our next
report, and then we're just hoping there's some bright, shiny Republican or Democrat
cand it comes among things, that's a fantastic way to achieve the American dream.
Let's run with it. So that's what we're trying to do here at
the Social Capital campaign. Well, Chris, what can people look forward to
from the forthcoming reports? Yeah, I think in our youth investment one,
where're you going to be taking a look at at the early years of childhood
nought to threes? I think I have been, and how to make sure
that it is actually possible to raise children? And then we're going to be
producing a grid all of these. We've asked the range of scholars and doc
think people and our advisory board who are drawn from across the center right spectrum
to sort of help us create a clear sense of what do we think the
contemporary challenges are and then what are you know, the solutions that the federal
government can do, Which is slightly awkward about, you know, how can
a federal government build social capitalist is very limited in what it can do,
but it can certainly get out of the way, and as with our autunization
program, it can make sure it's diversifying supply. So I think the ideas
we're going to create off the back of these reports a priority of challenges and
solutions and present those in a sort of like pretty simple, almost manifesto wish
type approach so that it is easy for a nominees team to be able to
think that's something that would that's something that would work. But obviously our main
priority is to influence the national conversation and to make sure that people and are
thinking about how do you build social capital and how do you build society y
trust, and how do you make sure them that we're all able to flourish
in a society together. Hm. Well, Chris Boulevant, We really appreciate
your time. We appreciate you breaking down that's excellent report that people can find
at Social capital campaign dot com. Thanks so much, Chris, Yeah,
real pleasure, and thanks so much of listening of course. Oh my gosh,
it's so interesting you've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm emilian Ski culturector here at the Federalist. We'll be back soon with
more. Until then, the Lovers of freedom and Anxious for the pray