I'm warning of an eradication of that of the American memory, that it could
result ultimately in an erosion of the American student. From Powerline blog dot com
and produced by Ricochet dot com. This is the power Line Show with your
host Steve Hayward. Well, Hi everybody, and happy holidays. And it
pleases me today to offer this bonus episode a conversation I had some months ago
now with Will Imboden. Will is the author of a terrific book I reviewed
a year ago in the Washington Freebeacon on Ronald Reagan, called The Peacemaker Ronald
Reagan, the Cold War and the World on the Brink. And as I
said in my review, I didn't know that there was much new to be
said about the subject until I read Will's book, and he dedicated himself to
going through the most recently released material in the archives at the Reagan Library and
found lots of things that was not available to me fifteen twenty years ago when
I was working on my own Reagan books. But beyond that, Will is
an important and interesting person because, in addition to having worked on Capitol Hill
and at the National Security Council under President Bush, he was for a long
time the director of the Clement Center for National Security Studies at the University of
Texas at Austin, and most recently he has become the professor and director of
the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. Now
there are a number of these initiatives at various universities around the country, including
Ohio, Tennessee, North Carolina coming soon, where legislatures essentially have been saying,
you know, we need to do a better job of civic education.
We need to offer an alternative to students from the narrow, conformist and often
mediocre and bland consensus of academic liberalism. I guess you might say, and
so Will is brand new on the job, but he has great ambitions to
build out the program, and so after talking about Reagan, we spent a
few minutes talking about his plans for the Hamilton Center and the higher education scene
generally. Now, needless to say, this conversation took place before the events
of October seven up ended college campuses in the academic world everywhere, but that
makes his enterprise all the more important. And so, without further ado,
here is Will M. Boden. Will I am delighted to sit down to
talk to you about your book The Peacemaker, and also a couple other things
that are on my mind. And let me start off this way. You
know, I didn't think there was anything new for me to know about the
essentials of the Reagan Cold War story. I mean, of course there's new
information and all the rest, and because I finished my work more than fifteen
years ago, and so you know, I thought, well, it'll be
a good book from Will, but I'm not sure to learn anything new.
And I was completely wrong about that. Not only is there really fascinating new
information, but really original and new and important insights into the story. So
I think, you know, most listeners will know the basic story, or
maybe not completely. But I want to pick pick on home in on three
different things that and then one or two stray things. I'll mention all three
at the top, and then we'll take them one at a time. The
first is how much more active Reagan was in formulating the Grand Strategy to use
that phrase. I mean, I always knew that that was there, but
more levels of detail than I had appreciated myself. The second one was I
had totally missed the importance of Japan and Reagan's focus on Asia in general.
I knew a bit about some of the trade frictions and all the rest of
that, but I didn't realize the extent that they really understood the importance of
Asia. Think that's brand new in your book. And the third thing is
late in your book is the importance of Reagan's religious faith in shaping his views.
Some people have mentioned that before, but I think you've integrated that in
a way that is again new and carefully done and quite incisive. So let's
start at the top and let me sort of start the question over again by
saying, sorry, I'm going to listeners. I'm going to go on too
long. Were there any surprises along the way? Were there anything that changed
your thinking about what the storyline is about your understanding of Reagan that way?
Well, no, Steve, and I will I will answer that directly,
but first I got to buy my own preface say it's a real honor to
be here, but also thank you because you are such a great help to
me, especially early on when I was just starting this project of thinking it
through, to suggesting people to interview, giving me some thematic ideas. You're
the one who turned me on to her Meyer, vice chair of the NICK
and some of his really important work. So anyway, so thank you,
And of course I've benefited tremendously from your two volume magisterial Age of Reagan treatment.
So anyway, I'd be a bad guest if I didn't give that plug
to your question. Yeah, in a lot of ways, we hadn't pre
orchestrated this, but those three themes that you just highlighted were three of the
biggest surprises or revelations to me. You know, I went into the project
with, you know, ten years ago, now, I guess, with
a generally favorable assessment of Reagan as a foreign policy president, but not knowing
a lot of details. Right, most of my previous work had been on
the early Cold War Truman and Eisenhower, and then of course time as a
practitioner of the nine to eleven era. So this I was in some ways
taking a fresh look at the Reagan era in the nineteen eighties. And yeah,
I was surprised at how much more not just personally involved, but kind
of the personal orchestrator he was of his overall grand strategy. He's not just
getting ideas from other people and saying yes to them and giving a nice speech
about it, right, I mean, and this is where for his historians
were so dependent on using archival documents, you know, the original records of
the Reagan administration, and many of those had only been declassified in the last
ten fifteen years. So I was one of the first scholars, since we're
doing this after Reagan Library, actually able to come here to the library and
read things like the transcript of Reagan's meetings with heads of state or the transcripts
of Reagan's National Security Council meetings. Let me interrupt on that point that,
I mean, that's one thing that really had me not raising my eyebrows and
chock, but like to say, wow, therese accounts of NSC meetings where
Reagan is really i might say, running the meeting and really saying here's what
I think, and utterly original, utterly different, completely unknown to me,
how active and deliberate and sort of driving that process anyway, continue, yeah,
exactly so, and so reading those in tandem with you know, I
read every word of every page of his diaries, you know, obviously the
two volume absolutely fascinating connection. And so the interior Reagan worldview and Cold War
strategies came out a lot more, as well as things like, you know,
reading memos that some of his key staff, whether it's Bill Clark or
Dick Pipes, are writing, and then seeing Reagan's notes to them back too.
You know, he doesn't write extensive notes in all those, but on
enough of them. You see he's tracking this carefully, he's editing it,
he's putting his ideas in. He clearly has much more of a strategic blueprint
in the Cold War, whether it's on insights on Soviet vulnerabilities or the need
for more pressure on the defense and economic and ideological fronts, but also his
early on hopes to negotiate with the Soviets, just to negotiate from a position
of strength after having you know, kind of really really cornered them, and
so all that was new to me. Can I ask a particular question about
one document, and that was the to me famous NSDD seventy five, That
was that you know, what's our grand strategy the Soviet going forward? And
I think that's a really key document. My particular question is it's long been
reported, well, I was heard fifteen twenty years ago. Is that Reagan
edited the final version, and the story is he toned down certain things,
and I think Pipes wanted And so do you have any of the earlier raw
drafts. Do we know specifically now what it was he toned down or is
that still behind a veil? Yeah, so there's and I'm going to be
doing some of this from memory since it's a few years ago that I looked
really closely at that one and I just summarized in the book. But it
is a fascinating story. So again for your listeners, who may make me
oliver with the background, Dick Pipes was an eminent Harvard professor, a great
historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, one of the very few conservatives on
the Harvard faculty, and Reagan hired him as the first Senior Director for Soviet
Affairs on the NSC staff. So Pipes is coming in from academia as this
hawkish academic to advice Reagan started in nineteen eighty one. So the very first
draft of what became NSDD seventy five was a seventy five page single space paper
that Pipes writes for Reagan. Okay, so yeah, now, Reagan,
as you and I know, is much more of a reader than he was
given credit for. But no president's going to read a seventy five page memo,
right, and so Jimmy Carter exatly okay, which is part of the
problem. RS yeah and so and so Pipes sends that to Dick Allen,
the National Security Advisor, to send into to Reagan and analysis, you got
to tone this down. I mean, not that it's too strong, it's
just too long, right, you know, I don't have time to read
it. So Pipes is, you know, very irked at this. So
then Pipes edits it down to I'll put this in air quotes for your listeners,
you know, a short twenty five page memo, which he actually then
does. Reagan does read and you can see Reagan's writings on it, and
it and it's it's it's a much more fleshed out version of what becomes NSDD
seventy five of challenging the Soviet system, pressure in it on on its vulnerabilities.
The one area where there's a little bit of difference is Pipes was much
more skeptical of any negotiations with the Soviets, and Reagan early on wanted to
negotiate with them. He just wanted to do from a position of strength,
and so again doing this from memory, that's where some of Reagan's edits were,
but he had Pipes come up with this really interesting formulation, which you
can see in the final document. Part of the pressure is to pressure the
Soviet system to strengthen its reformist elements and to produce a reformist leader. And
so this was another big insight for me. You know, there's this endless
debate about who deserves more credit, Reagan or Gorbachev. They're both essential,
obviously, but one of the themes of my book is for the first four
years of his presidency, Reagan has a deliberate strategy to pressure the Soviet system
to produce a reformist leader. And so that's why he recognizes Gorbachev when he
comes along. And again that was one of the things that came out of
that interplay between him and him and Pipes. Yeah, I remember two things
that come back to mind now is somewhere in the middle it says, I
don't know, I don't have this quite right, but negotiations on the basis
of strict reciprocity, right. And then at the very end, the very
last paragraph says, this is a strategy for the long term now here on
really paraphrasing, it's going to be controversial. There's going to be a lot
of pushback. We're going to be told we need to go back to the
old daytontis ways, that's not how it's phrased, like I say, But
there's a recognition that this is bold and new and we're going way out there.
Yeah. Yeah, And that's where you know, the timing matters too,
because Pipes stays on the NSC staff through December of eighty two, so
he's there for Bill Bill Clark's first year as National Security Advisor, and then
he's he wants to go back to academic. You know, I've gotten my
draft done. And then Jack Mattlock comes in to succeed him. And Mattlock,
who is you know, very capable and important and I think the right
person at the right time, but he's a not quite as hard line as
as Pipes is. And so Mattlock wants to soften and tweak the NSDT seventy
five a little bit, and he does in a few places, but Reagan
says, no, Pipes and I agreed to this, and I want this
is the basic framework. So let's not you know, we're not going to
rewrite it to turn it into a you know, a Ford Area Daytononic strategy,
right right, you know. I of course, one of the things
that's one might say is well, these are classified documents for a long time.
True, as was NSC sixty eight. And you know, when I
have to try and talk about the Cold War very briefly the students or anybody
else, I always say, look at these two documents. They were both
classified NSC sixty eight. It's Paul Nitza, writes Paul Nitza, who's still
around in nineteen eighty two. Yeah, this is amazing, right, And
then nsd D they changed the acronyms. Is also the similar idea, here's
our grand strategy. And I always say what people say, well, what
how do you understand these things? And I always say, this is the
senior reaches of the government talking to itself because they want to get clear in
their heads and keep guidance for all the other people who have to try and
carry these things out. Here's what we're about. And we underestimate the importance
of even in the classified document of the government sitting down our top leaders and
saying what are we all about? What what are we trying to do here?
Instead of just inheriting, you know, vague path dependent policies. That
okay, Well, on the second one, which was I thought, wow,
this is really interesting. I had never perceived this or thought about it.
It was Reagan and his team realizing the importance of Japan as part of
their strategy of confronting the Soviet Union. But of course I thought layered us
in very well, this had a domestic side to it, right, We're
having all the controversy about our trade deficit with Japan and the auto industry and
quotas on their cars and this and this, and so I thought I hadn't
really ever thought it through about how Reagan and I think you said, pretty
very successfully balanced domestic policy pressures while also enlisting Japan as such a key ally
when that both sides of that could have gone badly wrong. Yeah, yeah,
so yeah, again, this is another one of these revelations for me
in the course of the research. I didn't start the book project looking for
that, right, but the evidence was just overwhelming and it just had a
few themes to highlight there for our listeners. It is one. This shows
what a real different it's Reagan made as a leader because he inherited a framework
in American strategy, which is that China is the key to Asia. And
that's what his three predecessors, Nixon, Ford, and Carter, you know,
Democrats and Republicans, had done, and so they were just trying to
shunt Japan to the sidelines. And so Reagan inherits this framework of China is
the key to Asia. And you know, China at the time was somewhat
helpful encountering the Soviet So this is it's not as terribly wrong headed a policy
as we might as he might think today. But Reagan thought this is his
way out of whack. Japan was at the time the only democracy in Asia.
They were, you know, the world's second or third largest economy,
depending how you crunched the numbers. They're an American treaty ally, and he
thought, this is nuts. Why we would be favoring communists China over free
Japan. And this is where we also need to appreciate and you probe this
in your great book on him. He'd been the governor California for two terms.
California is a Pacific state, right. So when Reagan, you know,
during his eight years in Sacramento, when he's when he's you know,
looking across the position that he sees Japan as a really important ally and the
key to the future. He's not only an Atlanticist, so what he but
he inherits this challenge of you know, most American foreign policy makers want to
privilege China, and meanwhile, most Americans don't care for Japan because they're blaming
it for our lost manufacturing jobs. Right. And so Reagan executes this transformation
if he takes the US Japan relationship from primarily this economic rivalry and he turns
it really into a strategic partnership, and that you know, that's not just
happy talk. I'll give it just a couple of tangible examples. He persuades
Japan to triple its defense spending in eight years, triple it right in absolute
dollars, and that puts you know, Japan is just across the sea from
the Soviet Union there, so that puts tremendous pressure on the Soviets and there
far east. So Reagan essentially gets Japan to open up an entire new front
in the Cold War. You know, it's not just across the Iron Curtain.
This drives the Soviets crazy when when Reagan, when Gorbachev meets with Nakasani's
he's braided And why are you so close to Americans? Why do you listen
to that guy? Reagan drive some nuts. Then Japan, of course,
as a technological powerhouse, also provides us some key research helpon SDI and some
of our defense modernization too, so we get real benefits out of the Japan
partnership. Interesting. Yeah, and again I wasn't looking for that, but
it's just it's there abundantly in the newly declassified doctor. Yeah, but I
think you know, all the people writing about strategy in the eighties or Strobe,
Talbot, whoever you want to pick, that none of them seemed to
pick up on this that I recall, or that I had noticed in my
own review of things. All right, now. The third one was everyone
knows that Reagan was a godly man, let's put it that way, and
his faith was important to him. But of course there's always the Reagan's the
reserved you know, the fact that Reagan held a lot of things closely,
and so I think you bring out here and there not I don't I read
your book months ago. Now I don't remember quite exactly how prominently, but
it was clear to you and that his religious faith was essential, oh yeah,
to his thinking through this problem. Yeah. And again another one of
these things that I wasn't really looking for, but the evidence was just overwhelming.
And I do want to give credit here. Paul Kengor at Grove City
College has done a couple of actually a number of great books on Reagan,
but a couple in particular on Reagan's Christian faith. And I had read those
and so that that had told me, Okay, there's there's definitely something here,
but I wasn't connecting it to the broader Cold War story. But the
key sources for me on this again Reagan's diaries, which he when he was
writing those every night faithfully as president, he wasn't planning for them to be
published, right, so that he's not thinking about this as the bestseller.
And so that's where you can really see the private, the private Reagan and
his faith is really clear there. I mean, just you know, one
example I cite in the book, right after the assassination attempt, as he's
lying there on the hospital bed at GW Hospital, about to go under.
You know, he's this close to death, and and he praised that God
will forgive John Hinckley Junior, the dranged, you know, a man who
had just try to kill him. And Reagan says, I realized, I
can't pray that God will heal me if I'm harboring hatred in my heart towards
the man he tried to kill me. And aren't we all God's lost sheep?
Right? So this is not political posturing for the evangelical votes, right,
This is I think, an intensely personal, intensely sincere sentiment. The
other one that really came out fast forwarding is Reagan's some it means with Gorbachev,
especially the last one. He spends a lot of it trying to persuade
Gorbachev to believe in God. Okay, again, this is not your typical
summer tree, right, This is not you know, typical arms control negotiations.
And this is just Reagan's genuine worry for Gorbachev's soul. He thought,
this guy's an atheist, he's missing out on the real source of transcendent internal
meaning in life. And I because I care about him as a person,
even if I detest the system he represents. I want to persuade him and
believe in God. Right, So this is you know, you can't chalk
this up just to political expediency or centenceism. There's other examples like that in
the book, but you know, I remember one one really startlingly personal aspect
that conversation. And I don't remember if Reagan brought it up or if Garbachah
brought it up to put Reagan on defensive, but it comes up that,
you know, Ron Reagan is not a junior, but Reagan's son was an
atheist. Yeah, Reagan himself present, Reagan brings that up. Yeah,
And that's again where it's a very intensely personal, revelatory thing to share with
a Soviet leader. Yeah, with anyone. Yeah, especially you know,
your sadness of your own son being an atheist and right, and Reagan you
know, speaks mournfully about that and says he's, you know, trying to
persuade his son to believe in God and this. You know, I'm not
there in the room, but I'm reading the transcript, and you can see
that Gorbachev has kind of taken aback by this and then kind of touched by
it. He I don't think he's persuaded. I don't see any evidence Gorbite
ever, you know, became a Christian necessarily. But but again that shows
you something about Reagan. But finally, to connect it to the Cold War
strategy. This is also one reason where Reagan hated Soviet communism. It's not
just that it's a command economy. It's not just that it's a totalitarian uh
you know, one party rule. It's that it's atheistic and that it would
not let Jews go to synagogue or Christians go to you know, do Bible
study or go to church. And he just thought that that was so iniquitous
but also a sign of its vulnerability, like what kind of barbaric system won't
even lets people worship God? Right? Right? So let me do one
uh one, not stray voltage exactly, but here and there in your book
several places. I think I wasn't counting, but I did take note to
the fact that you were. I'm not sure critical or regretful is the right
term to use, the fact that you thought Reagan and his team were too
tolerant. First of all, human rights was such an important thing for him,
and yet we had to tolerate or were too tolerant of authoritarian regimes with
dreadful human rights records that could have been Argentina and nty one Asian regimes,
and and I mean the explanation for that would always be the real politique,
right I think? And so what what are your I'm not sure you sort
of declared inclusion or and a narrative. It doesn't quite work to do that.
So I'll put it this way a little bluntly. What's your point here?
Is there something way you think they could ever should have done it differently?
Or were they just simply too single mindly focused on the Soviet Union and
thinking perhaps too one dimensionally that we solve that problem, then the rest of
this starts to change. I don't know. Yeah, no, this is
a very good question, and I'll share some further thoughts on that since I
sprinkles. You're right, I sprinkled some of those things out of the book,
but I just didn't have time or space to fully develop it. And
let me just first say that my standard with writing the book was I tried
to ask myself what were the feasible available options at the time, right,
So I'm not trying to do I hope it doesn't come across as armchair quarterbacking.
You know, I write as a former policy maker myself. Right,
sure we can point out in hindsight, would you wish you would done some
but what were the available options at the time. And so I start actually
with some real empathy for the challenge Reagan and inherited, which is that you
know, most recently in nineteen seventy nine the Iranian Revolution and then the Sandinista
Revolution Nicaragua, we had seen how there are worse things than a thuggish right
wing autocrat, which is a radical revolutionary regime, whether it's you know,
radical Islamic revolutionaries in Iran or communist in the case of Nicaragua. And so
Reagan and Jeane Kirkpatrick I think had very good grounds to criticize the Carter administration
for this double standard, like you'd give the Soviets a pass on their barbaric
oppression, but you're beating up on our friends and who are not great,
but at least they're anti communist. And there is a worse alternative, and
we've seen that in the cases of Iran in Nicaragua. So I start with
some real sympathy there, like they inherit a difficult hand, and when you
look at the feasible options, it seems like it's either right wing dictatorship or
communist dictatorship, and they're both bad, but communist is worse. I'm fully
on board with that. Where I am a little more critical, however,
and this is where I think I can point to the Reagan record to vindicate
this is there was developing a third way option of transitioning to democracy, that
it didn't have to be a choice between right wing or or communist dictatorship.
And Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams they recognize this pretty early on, and by
nineteen eighty two, especially with the Westminster Address, but also the Salador in
elections, Reagan himself is starting to move more and think, actually, maybe
there is a way that we can nudge these right wing military dictatorships, not
such communism. We don't want that, that's the worst, you know,
possible outcome, but nudge them towards democracy. And some of it's pragmatism.
The Falkland's invasion is a big deal. When the Argentine you know, military
hunter, you know, he realized when they invade the Falklands, he realized,
Okay, these right wing dictatorships. They may be anti communists, but
they're also prone to doing stupid things like invade your friend's allies, you know,
eyelids, right, It's okay, And of course they then fall,
and so he starts seeing actually in some of these governments there is a hunger
among a lot of the people, you know, the student demonstrators of South
Korea, for democracy. And so the challenge he faces is how can you
know, he and his administration nudge them towards democracy without letting them, you
know, go the revolutionary path into communism. And that's where they do have
some amazingly successful policies. Right So Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador,
South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, especially by the second term, they
all do undergo peaceful democratic transitions. And so so I'm where I'm more critical
of Reagan is not recognizing that earlier on he gets hit by eighty two eighty
three, but that was after supporting some pretty thuggish stuff in eighty one.
But I hope readers will hear from me that I have some sympathy for the
hard choices they faced. I just think that there was that option to be
a little more morally and strategically consistent early on. But these are hard choices.
Well, that's why I said, I couldn't decide whether to characterize your
treatment of that as critical or regretful. Yeah, which is probably a little
more regretful. Okay. Yeah, And and again, like I said,
making the allowance of my standard is what seemed to be the available options at
the time. And you know they even in eighty one, I think they
didn't have some options to start, not withdrawing all support but rather using the
support is leverage. It's actually harder to promote democracy and human rights with your
allies than with your adversaries, right, because there's a lot more at state.
You don't want to lose the ally entirely, whereas you know you're not
friends with you know, the East Germans or the Soviets. You could beat
them up all you want, and it writes it's not going to cost much.
Yeah, I mean in detail about Argentine. I can't remember it's in
your book, but I know it's a lot of other treatments about the whole
Central America. SOCA is. We were using Argentina in nineteen eighty one as
our sort of base for training the contra. Yes, and so that all
ended with the Foles, Yeah, yeah, a big problem for okay.
Yeah. And then the other one about the Asia story again is listening to
here earlier to speak about an agenda for research, is you know about South
Korea? I mean, you know, and Reagan comes to office. One
of his acts is what writing or even calling whoever is the general is running
South Korea saying don't execute Kim day John Yeah, yeah, it was General
Chun Yeah. And Reagan's has don't execute Kim je jung. Right. But
then you know, you think about, well, you know, the I
don't remember the exact timeline history of South Korea, but they're always having these
military governments while we have thirty thousand troops sitting there. Yeah, what an
amazing practical problem we faced. Oh yeah, I know. And the very
real threat of another invasion from the North too, I mean, yeah,
that's you know, the fact that it didn't happen doesn't mean it wasn't a
real, real possibility. Ye. And of course it's in a rough neighborhood
because North Korea, you know, look at a map is bordering the Soviet
Union at the time too. I mean, so it was. It was
a real challenge. But what Reagan and Schultz, even Vice President Bush I'll
give him some credit for realized was the military dictorship in South Korea was becoming
pretty brittle. That was more and more of these student protests and just the
general loss of popular support. And of course the South Korean economic miracle had
created this growing middle class who wanted a little more you know, say in
their political lives as they in their economic lives. And so the Reagan team
realized that this may not be sustainable and had we may be facing another you
know, eron type revolution here, and so we need to nudge them.
We needed to tell Chun, look, you know, you need to peacefully
step aside and allow allow transition to democracy, because we're not confident in your
continued ability to be the strong man anti communist. Wilier's been so and then
oh sorry, and then Reagan had no hesitation and what was nineteen eighty six
of well sending Paul Laxolt. But the point is to send the message to
Marcos that it was time to go. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And
again that's another one where he saw he's losing popular support and you realize,
Okay, if we continue to just unconditionally embrace Marcos, he may get ousted
anyway. And there was a communist insurgency in the field Pines at the time.
There's a real worry that and you know Vietnam and Goon communists is ten
years earlier, right that this is a real fear. And so both on
moral and strategic grounds, he realizes, okay, we need to pull that
support for Marcos, and you know allowed and of course they already had the
elections to elect Corea Kino with people power, which you know Marcos was trying
to defy. By the way, going back to twenty your early questions,
this is where Nakasni and Japan were quietly helpful, where Nakasni sent a message
to Marcos, quietly saying, look, I know we Japan have supported you
before, but it's time for democracy, and we don't want to be the
only democracy in the region anymore. You know, don't don't try to play
us Japan off against the United States. We're not going to support you as
much either. And so so this is where the interlocking pieces of Reagan's support
for allies and his freedom strategy kind of come together, right right, So
let me make this last word about the book before going on to a second
completely different subject. Listeners, you all need to get the peacemaker and read
it. I'll just stop there. I do want to talk about a completely
different subject. That's one that's very high on my mind these days. You
are just now heading off to Florida to run the Is it called the Hamilton
Center? Yes, so it's the University of Florida. Yeah, we'll take
it from the top and the sort of you know, give me your elevator
pitch or however you like to describe this enterprise to the wider world. Sure,
well, thank you. I'm very excited for this, although I need
to, you know, give the big caveat here to your listeners that the
day we're recording this, I've now been in the job in Florida for four
days, I think. Okay, so I'm working in a temporary office there.
I'm still literally figuring out how to unlock my door and turn on the
lights. Okay, so I'm any potential donors out there, Sorry, this
is not a fully forged pitch yet. Okay, But that said, the
reason I agreed to make this move, and I'm excited to do this.
So the full title is the Alexander Hamilton for Classical and Civic Education, and
it was an initiative of the University of Florida Board of Regents and then the
state legislature and the governor. There essentially an effort to recover classical liberalism and
more traditional humanities and social sciences education. So it's a center right now,
but we have faculty lines. We're going to be offering classes and hopefully building
out a fairly robust academic program. I'll certainly be looking to hire a number
of new faculty, so we'll be teaching in the great books, We'll be
trying to do some multidisciplinary liberal arts degrees. We'll do hopefully something on history
and state craft, something on politics, philosophy, and economics. And to
like I said, to really recover I shouldn't say recover, but at least
restore the teaching of Western civilization and those values in the broader higher education landscape.
So we want to stand for civility, civil discourse, but sort of
reconnecting the traditional canon of classical liberalism, if you will, to the twenty
first century research university and hopefully bring some viewpoint diversity. Yeah, you know,
open with a joke, is you want to restore the old great books
in Western civilization, like it's a good thing. I mean that, I
mean caricature here, but only a little bit. I mean, we're now
seeing a lot of this happen around the country very rapidly Tennessee, North Carolina,
Ohio. And the last month State was a decade ago now. And
the idea is, I mean, it's a complicated as you know, having
spent all this time at the University of Texas and elsewhere, it's a complicated
story about how the ideological skew happened in universities and even a lot of you
know, and I've been, as I put in an inmate at Berkeley out
for a while. And why am I there, Well, it's because even
a lot of liberals and people pretty far the left say, yeah, something's
got a balance, we don't quite know how to fix it. And there's
a shortage actually of conservative or even sort of slightly center right academics out there.
Has become a negative feedback loop. It's all kinds of and I actually
think also that something that's less perceived is how certain methodological fads, fads maybe
is a pejorative term, but certain methodological emphasies and disciplines that have risen over
the decades. They're not intentionally ideological, but they've sort of reinforced it that
way. Right. It's something in the case in my own field of history
exactly. Oh, history, political science is I think way overweight in the
empiricism. Yeah, the cult of the quantitative exactly. I mean what people,
what people Berkeley say is you can't study what you can't measure, and
I think that's just completely wrong. Yeah. I mean I listen to these
regression models and they're often useful and interesting, and I actually do teach you
something. But that can't that's too limited in there. Okay. And by
the way, most conservatives I know don't want to do that very much.
Who just wants to do regression models? Right, yeah, you know the
lake James Q. Wilson said, I only did one regression analysis in my
life, and one was enough. Okay. So, buts idea is,
rather than you know, beat on departments said, oh, you're just a
bunch of crazy leftists or something like that, this model looks promising, it's
let's have competition. Yeah, yeah, and this is and you know,
look, University of Florida has I don't know the exact number, maybe thirty
four to thirty five thousand undergrads, and like, you know, one of
the largest, you know, state universities in the country. I just see
our job as providing them some choice, right, I mean, we want
to give those undergrads, especially as many options as we can, as well
as you know the other departments can and just and they can, they can
pick and choose and just you know, they're gonna be investing in so much
money and time and their education, and we want to give them that and
a lot of ways. You know. Because you brought up the politics of
this, I kind of hope that we can depoliticize things, right. I
mean, you know, this is not to push any particular ideological agenda.
I do share concerns that a number of other won't speak about UF because I'm
so new there. But I've seen the other universities how politicized the humanity have
become, you know. So I'm not going to be asking any faculty that
we look to hire how they vote, or how any students how they vote.
We're just gonna be saying we stand for a certain set of kind of
the the older values of a classical liberal education, of reading core text carefully,
of taking ideas seriously, of really exposing our students to a broad range
of viewpoint and that will certainly include conservative viewpoints, but that won't be the
only one, and just kind of recovering the more traditional model of what we
all think and hope a university can be. Right, Well, let me
sort of press on you a little bit on the substance of the matter.
By the way, I'm in heated agreement about my idea, is an ideal
faculty, ideal department would be sort of fifty to fifty or maybe thirty three
thirty three with somebody in the middle, right, Yeah, and that's the
political spectrum. Yeah, the political spectrum, right. And the other thing
data point. I know you've heard this as much as I have. You
ask around college administrators and faculty, and they say, one of our big
problems in this country is civic education has just gone down the drain. Students
don't know, you know, separation of powers or you know, the Bill
of Rights and and and they say, so we've got to rebuild civic education.
And I always sort of say, okay, I don't think anybody would
disagree with that. But there is a problem when so many of the in
here it will be a little ideological for just a second. Is when the
dominant teaching is, yeah, but it was all bad. You know,
the country was found in by slaveholders. True. And in other words,
a lot of the civic construction these days is just very negative. It's not
to say criticisms aren't valid and shouldn't be dealt with directly. But then the
other part of that, and you raise it, is when you say,
read the old books in a traditional way, take their ideas seriously. I
think a lot of the problem these days is not so much necessarily a leftist
bias. It's what we political philosophers call historicism. It's assuming that we don't
really have that much to learn from an old book, and you read,
say John Locke, just to pick on him because maybe it's a historical curiosity.
In other words, the old way of doing things was to start with
the premise that maybe they have some insight that's true always and everywhere, and
if it's wrong, let's figure out why it's wrong. And if it's parts
of its right, let's sort of see how it still works. That's a
difference in disposition of how you actually think about the world. And so,
by the way, you don't necessarily have to be a leftist to be a
historicist. I think there are right wing historicism and I argue with them a
lot. Yeah, anyway, sorry, that was a little speech. I
don't know if you want to grab hold of any of that or no.
I'll just yeah again, I'll give an overall a strong affirmation and agreement there
is you know, given that obviously part of our mandate with the Hamilton Center
is going to be uh you know, some some dimension of civics education.
Uh. Yeah, we want to tell the whole American story. Now,
I happen to think that the whole American story is overall a very good story,
right. Some of that whole story is, you know, taking our
countries founders on their own terms, going back to what we were talking about
with Reagan, like what did the world look like to them at the time,
what were the available range of options. There's obviously some you know,
very stortid, very very sordid and troubling aspects of our past, such as
you know, slavery being the cardinal one. But let's look at some of
the early debates over slavery, and let's look at some of the voices against
it as well. And then let's look at the values and principles hardwired into
the American Founding that to create the basis to eventually abolish slavery, right,
right too, And let's let's understand uh uh, let's understand those as well,
rather than just merely sitting here in the twenty first century imposing our retrospective
judgments on you know, those you know, benighted founders and everyone else,
right, yeah, I mean you probably know this. One of the best,
I think best explanations of the Founding debates on slavery, and one of
the best critiques of the way it's gone off the rails recently is by Sean
Malance. Oh yeah, who's otherwise a pretty far left historian and certainly a
Reagan haters maybe the little strong, but not much. And you know,
so if your listeners, he's a very eminent historian at Princeton University, Sean
writes, yeah, yeah, yeah, well he has, but he's done
a lot to really, I think, debunk the distortions of the sixteen nineteen
project in particular, right, yeah, exactly, So that's why it doesn't
have to be strictly a left right thing. Yeah, well, let's end
with this and take it back to Reagan. I think what you're talking about
about this enterprise reminds me of the closing passage of his farewell address where he
says, right, we have to remember our history, and he mentions particular
typical Reagan says, kids need to know what the Doolittle raid was. Now,
that's almost forty years ago. Now, a lot of people still alive
in and know what that meant nowadays. You know, I mean, I'm
not entirely facetious saying you mentioned the students, now the doctor Doolittle? What
are you? You know? What this right? No right? And not
to be starky man. Unless someone makes a video game out of it today,
it's forgotten, that's right. Yeah. Well, congratulations on the book,
Congratulations and great hopes for the Hamilton Center. And thanks very much,
well, thank you. Steve has been a privileged to do this. And
are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what
she represents in the long history of the world. Those of us who are
over thirty five or so years of age grew up in a different America.
We were taught very directly what it means to be an American, and we
absorbed almost in the air a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions.
If you didn't get these things from your family, you got them from
the neighborhood. And I'm the father down the street who fought in Korea,
of the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you can get a sense
of patriotism from school, and if all else failed, you could get a
sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movie celebrated democratic values and implicitly
reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that too through the
mid sixties. But now we're about to enter the nineties and some things have
changed. Younger parents aren't sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right
thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture,
well grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back,
but we haven't reinstitutionalized it. We've got to do a better job of getting
across that America is freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom
of enterprise, and freedom is official and Rare Ricochet join the conversation.