Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experienced shurpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at fbr LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Orin Cass, chief economist at American Compass.
With election Day one week away, Warren joins us now
to talk about the American wake up call americans views
on the American Dream. Warren, thanks so much for being
here with us on this edition of the Federalist radiop.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Am.
Speaker 2: I a sherpa as well.
Speaker 1: You are a shrpa. Indeed, you are at ATA sherpa,
which I think is a much cooler and less offensive
term than data geek.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: I'll take you, but you crunch the numbers at American Compass,
and really why we wanted to have you on the
show to talk about the different viewpoints on the American Dream.
As we have aspirational campaigns, so to speak. We have
campaigns about unburdening ourselves of the past. We have campaigns
of thinking, certainly about the past several years in this
country and what that all means. Let's begin here though.
In fall twenty twenty four, American Compass partnered with you
gov to survey six thousand Americans about their values and priorities,
views on what has gone well and poorly in America,
and reactions to various messages and proposals that politicians might offer.
The results reflect a nation fundamentally at odds with the
values in rhetoric promoted its own political class. Again, that's
a lot to unpack. But you talk to a lot
of Americans, what's the conflict going on?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it comes down to us, as you
framed it, this idea of the American dream. And you know, look,
I love the American dream. I don't know anyone who doesn't,
you know, want to say nice things about the American dream.
But it seems to me we've gotten to a point
where what that even is, or how important it is,
is not understood in the same way by the people
who give speeches about it as it is by the
people who live it. And we see so much folks
in our politics, frankly, on both sides of the political spectrum.
Historically it was much before the Republicans. Now you see
it in you know, the Kamala Harris opportunity agenda, this
incredible focus on you know, up or mobility and opportunity
and dynamism and anyone can make it. And those are
all good things. But what most people actually care about
more is not the thing that can happen to anybody,
but what's the thing that is going to happen to everybody?
You know? What is where is that promise of dignity
and equality and a job that supports a family, And
these things can be in tensing with each other. And
you know, what we have seen in many contexts in
this survey really confirms is that the boundless opportunity and
dynamism and so forth that attracts the people who do
move to a big city and go work in politics,
it's just not a good fit with the things that
matter most to your typical American family.
Speaker 1: I think in some respects what you just said should
not be surprising. This election season has really hammered that
home that we have in elitist press. In my opinion,
I like to call them the accomplice media or the
provd press, pumping out messages about what Americans feel, or
at least what they should feel, and think your findings
offer a disconnect with that narrative or that message that's
been pumped out there by politicians and a lot of
members of the media.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's exactly right. You know. I actually became
especially interested in this kind of research back at the
end of twenty sixteen, right when Donald Trump first won,
and you would think that people would take away from
that election result, you know, wow, there must be a
lot of problems here that that we didn't understand, and instead,
the elite, you know, whether it's economists or commentators or
political consultants, everyone doubled down on the idea that no, no, actually,
everything in America is great and therefore if you don't
feel that way, you know, you must either be racist
or xenophobic or you know, to not know how great
things are. There was this sort of you know, lecture
like who are you going to believe, you know, me
the expert or your own lion eyes and it's run
now all the way through. We're almost ten years later,
and we've still got people, you know, complaining about vibes
and saying that if Americans say they're not happy with
the economy even though the you know, the GDP data
is good, well then there must be something wrong with
the Americans, when in fact, what people are telling you
is that this is not working for them. The problem
is that the problem is with your data, which doesn't
mean the data is wrong. It means you're not looking
at the right things. And it's the experts who have
to change, not the people.
Speaker 1: And that's a very interesting point. And I think there's
a lot of fatigue out there over the last several
years about the experts in this country, and I wanted
to drill down on that, particularly what you're seeing with
this survey, with this study, talking to thousands of Americans
and getting their viewpoints on this, I think there is
a fatigue, an expert fatigue, not necessarily as it has
been painted as people rejecting science or rejecting a good data.
I think people are rejecting people who have lied to
them in recent years about some very important things their health,
their freedom, their economy, their security. And I want to
ask you this is it's tied into what we were
just talking about. Remember after the twenty sixteen election, where
we had we're just talking about this with the federalist
colleagues today that you had Mia Culpas from the Washington
Post of the New York Times Ams Budsman editorial boards.
But boy, we really did not truly gauge America. Maybe
it wasn't a good idea for Hillary Clinton to call
half of Americans deplorables, that they're from a basket of deplorables.
But it seems the more they learn, maybe even collectively,
the more we all learn, the less we know, the
less we remember. Because now we're at a point in
this presidential campaign of twenty twenty four where we have
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats nominee for president, and
her allies in politics and in the press calling Donald
Trump a fascist and a Nazi. Why why is there
such a disconnect from the American people who many don't
see it that way? Some certainly do, but many don't,
And many are more concerned about what you're talking about here,
their version of the American dream, and not all of
the finger pointing, name calling, in all of the nonsense
that's been surrounding this campaign.
Speaker 2: It's a great it's a great question. And I think,
you know, for me, the the immediate reaction when you
when you hear this kind of you know, the deplorables
or the you know, oh this guy's a Nazi or whatever.
I just want to turn around and say, and you're
and you're losing to him. I mean, what what is it?
What does it say about you if if you're if
you're losing to this guy, you're losing to the Nazi.
Speaker 1: Well put that in perspective at least the way you
paint this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And and you know, shouldn't that at the shouldn't
that invite a little bit of self reflection? And instead
it just invites this kind of progress, you know, this
projection onto everybody else. Well, if people don't agree with me,
then they're not just wrong. They must be sort of
evil somehow. And the thing that most blows my mind
about this is that, you know, it's we're still the
same country we weren't ten or fifteen years ago, Right
Like the electorate that elected Donald Trump is the same
electorate that had just elected Barack Obama twice. And somehow
we have this class of people who think that everybody
else it sort of gets to be judged by whether
they decide the thing the elites want them to decide.
And I think that, first of all, just as a
matter of good politics, and I don't mean good like popular,
but I mean politics the way it should be done.
The first piece is that it has to be responsive.
You have to be meeting people where they are and
understanding what matters to them. And you know, for me,
my greatest objective objection to to how the experts have
conducted themselves isn't so much that that they've sort of
you know, lied or manipulated as that. I think they're
just a lot of them are oblivious. I mean, and
I always like to pick on economists for this, but
but you have economists that they will say worth rightly.
You know, Look, the point of the economy is consumption.
What we're here to do is maximize how much stuff
you have. And anybody who's not happy with how much
stuff they have, as if that's you know, the the end,
the end goal of life. The economist just thinks, well,
clearly there's something wrong. There can't be something wrong with
my model. So it's just I dismiss these people as
somehow wrong. And yet it just last thing I'll say
about this, it's not even how people live their own lives.
Like you go to some of these folks who are saying, well,
we don't understand what's going on in America. You just
ask them to think about what's important in their own lives.
It's not about go walk a mile in someone else's shoes.
Just walk a mile to your own shoes. Ask yourself
what's important to you. It's not how big your TV
is and how much cheap stuff you have. It's whether
you live in a stable community, whether you've been able
to form a family, whether you've found work that's meaningful
and productive and that allows you to support your family.
And that's what these experts all know is important to themselves,
and yet they can't see past them their noses to
the way that those things aren't working well for everybody else.
Speaker 1: That's what I want to drill into with this study,
as we look at the American dream, how Americans see
it versus how the experts think they're supposed to see
it or believe that Americans see it. And I don't
want to let the neocons off the hook on this
as well, this is problematic for them. As we get
into the details of the study, we see only twenty
six percent of Americans, of again the thousands that you interviewed,
you surveyed, see free markets that term as a fundamental value,
and even among those who do, I few believe the
term should imply a las a fair model of capitalism.
And so you have a disconnect. Some on the right
certainly talking about what the traditional American dream is. But
it's different here, is it not, especially as it relates
to these kinds of policy and political catchphrases that.
Speaker 2: We talk about. Yeah, this was one of my favorite
parts of the survey, and it actually came out of
focus group work that we did. It's a great example
of how you kind of need to qualitatively hear from
people one on one, and then you can kind of
go check that against much larger samples in a survey.
Because in the focus groups we would do, you would hear,
especially in you know, if you focus on Republican voters conservatives,
a lot of talk about free markets. Free you know,
obviously we're supposed to be for free markets. No one's
against free markets. But when you actually drilled down and said, okay,
what does that mean? Or when you just listen to
the other things people said about free markets, it became
very clear that that that idea of free market, what
we're all in favor of, doesn't mean this laissez faire
just get the government out of the way, just let
the market do its thing. Whatever is good for corporations
is going to be good for everybody. That's not what
people had in their heads. That's that's how what free
markets meant to them. And so in the survey, we
just tested a few different options. You know, when thinking
about trade, for instance, does free market mean free trade
that anybody should just be able to buy and sell
for anyone else they want around the world, or does
free markets actually mean that we're sort of have a
market that protects American values and make sure that we're
not having to do business with and be entwined with
countries that don't share our values, that don't do business
the right way. And overwhelmingly, everybody, including Republicans, thinks free
markets means the latter free market. The free market is
the one that's actually protected from China, not the one
that's somehow integrated with China.
Speaker 1: Very interesting to me because what you've just defined, it
would seem is how Donald Trump approaches the US economy,
how he approaches dealing economically with the rest of the world,
versus a lot of the neocons, some of the candidates,
of course, who his opponents in the Republican bid for
the or the bid for the Republican nomination. There seems
to be a disconnect on how the public really feels
about this and the elite, so to speak, are reading this.
And also I think how Donald Trump has correctly read
the American people on free markets and those kinds of
economic values.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's that's exactly right. And that's why,
you know, whether you're talking about the American dream, whether
you're talking about free markets, it's important to separate the
rhetoric and the values from the actual sort of substinctive implications, right,
because you know, free markets is of value, can be
can be really important. We love the idea of free
I love the idea of free markets, the idea that
we are going to have a private marketplace where individuals
pursue their own interests as opposed to a place where
government is telling everybody what to do. You know, I
think that that's that's the right way to run an economy.
That's also just really important for protecting people's liberty. But
at the at the same time, that doesn't mean free
trade with China. It doesn't mean, you know, no regulation
of employers or no protections for workers. And you know,
my favorite example of this is everybody knows Ronald Reagan's
famous line, you know, the nine scariest words in the
English language, I'm here from the government. I'm here to help.
Do you know where he delivered that line. It was
at a it was it was at a press conference
announcing unprecedented support to agriculture from the federal government.
Speaker 1: I would not I did not remember that. That is
that's a very very good point. He was talking at
the time of about important what he believed in in
accordance with his agenda, important government intervention and regulation, and
trying to make sure that people understood there is a
place for the government, but it has it cannot be
ultimately central or overtaking liberties.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, exactly, that's very well put. And I mean,
Rayan to me is such a fascinating figure in all
of this, because you know, I think Rayam was a
fantastic president and also just a fantastic conservative, and he
was a very I mean, he was the great communicator.
He spoke aspirationally in ways that aligned with American values,
very connected at a very deep level. At the same time,
he brought a real conservative pravatism to the actual need
to govern. And so whether it was supporting anger culture
at a time when there was a real crisis and
a need for agricultural support, or you know, protecting the
domestic auto industry from Japanese imports and forcing the Japanese
companies to come set up factories here instead, or you know,
even on taxes. I mean, he did this big tax cut.
We don't talk about it as much when when the
tax cut ended up blowing too big a hole in
the budget, he then proceeded to raise taxes five times.
And so I think it's that pairing of a rhetoric
and a way of thinking about government and liberty and
our aspirations that connects with the American people, then paired
with the kind of government that's actually going to effectuate
those those things we actually care about, which yes they
include free markets, Yes they include opportunity and dynamism, but
they also include an awful lot of other things that
I think conservatives have to focus on as well.
Speaker 3: Indeed, the supermarket doesn't lie. The watched aut on Wall
Street podcast with Chris Markowski every day Chris helps unpack
the connection between politics and the economy and how it
affects your wallet. Latest report show more people are changing
where they're buying their groceries, heading to box stores like
Walmart goes to show that food and energy prices have
yet to go down. Whether it's happening in DC or
down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 1: Be informed.
Speaker 3: Check out the watch Dot on Wall Street podcast with
Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Our guest today is Orn Cass, chief economist at American Compass.
With Election Day one week away, Orn's joining us to
talk about the American wake up Call American views on
the American Dream, a survey by American Compass partnering with
you gov surveying surveying six thousand Americans about their values
and priorities and how those values and priorities don't always
connect with the politicians, the policymakers, and the so called
experts when it comes to all of this the American
dream is indeed on the line in this election, But
there's no homogeneous American dream. I think we all know
that people have different views of what their individual American
dream is. Some people truly believe it to be moving
from a lower station to a higher station in life.
People believe it's building their own business and having the
freedom to do so, buying a house. But as you
know in this study right now, in these very very
insecure times, that the sense of security and stability is
core to a lot of Americans and how they feel
about the American dream.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's I think. You know, I'm just struck
by even listening to how you describe that, which is
exactly right. It reminds me a little bit of what's
called Maslow's hierarchy, which is Maslow's a I don't know,
was he technically a sociology and an anthropologist something like this,
and he sort of laid out how, you know, for people,
there's like the base level of things you need food, shelter,
and so forth, and then above that is a layer
of more social things like you know, relationships and community
and so forth, and above that is then the things
like self actualization, and you know, finding meaning in the world,
and those are all important, but you can't really focus
on those higher ones until you have the lower ones
taken care of. And I think something that we're seeing
in America today is a real erosion of that foundation.
I think it's great to have opportunity and mobility, and
people want that to be available to them, but more
important to them what has to come first is the
security and the stability. And the security and stability is
also important to making the mobility and opportunity achievable. And
so I think we sort of forgot about that foundation
and just focused so much on these more kind of
aspirational goals that the structure sort of started crumbling a
little bit. And so it's not a matter of only
liking one and not the other. It's a little bit
a matter of sequencing that we have to get that
security and stability right first before we can turn our
attention in a sense to making sure we're we've got
the mobility and opportunity as well.
Speaker 1: Or and you touched upon this before, I want to
expound if you don't mind, but with what you have
heard from the two major presidential candidates, where is the
intersection of their agenda items on the economy, on life
in general in America, and how they connect or do
not connect with the view of the American dream from Americans.
Speaker 2: Well, I think Trump is doing a better job on
this and always has. You know, in a lot of ways,
politics is more about problems than solutions. I mean, people
want to know you have a plan, but at the
end of the day, no one wants to read through
your white papers. What people really want to know in
a lot of cases is okay, who's actually talking about
the problems that matter to me? Who's going to be
focused on the things I want them to be focused on,
And going all the way back to twenty sixteen, I
think that was something that made Trump really unique in
this big field of Republican care candidates who were all
kind of challenging each other for who could do the
best Reagan Morning in America impression. Trump stood up there
and and talked about the things that were really wrong
and getting back to these ideas of you know, protecting
place and work and jobs with dignity, and people being
able to support families, and and conversely a lot of
the ways that that a lot of those things had
really been falling apart for a lot of people. And
I think even you know, going on a decade later,
you're you're still seeing that same thing. You're still seeing
Trump talking about a set of policies that's going to
and and address a particular set of problems that's going
to try to sort of stabilize a lot of things
that feel frankly very out of control in the country.
And then you have on the Democratic side, uh, you know,
in in Biden now Harris, a focus on a set
of problems that I just don't think get to that
same place. I mean, there's to some extent, you know,
just the focus on kind of preserving democracy and so forth,
which has just become this very partisan talking point. But
then on the core kind of you know, economic issues,
for the most part, what what Democrats have have been
offering is, well, here's the set of programs that's just
going to take care of you. Instead it almost takes
for granted, right we were not you know, we're going
to have massive amounts of immigration, We're going to have
student debt piling up, We're going to have you know,
a focus on climate change and actually shutting down a
lot of American energy and industry. But it's okay because
here there's this huge set of programs that's still going
to take care of you so that you you you
can keep on consuming all the stuff that you consume now.
And I think people are looking at going on thirty
or forty years of doing this, just pursuing policies that
erode a lot of our foundations, but saying, don't worry,
we'll come back around with new government programs to make
up for it. And there's for a lot of people
saying that that actually doesn't meet our needs at all.
We are much more interested in shoring up those foundations.
Speaker 1: Well, it is caveat m tour, isn't it. There's buyers
remorse in that buyer's beware. Because this is an interesting election,
not unprecedented for those who love history. We know of
a president by the name of Grover Cleveland who was
elected to two non consecutive terms, the only president in
the United States history to accomplished that feat. Donald Trump
may indeed be the second. And what is so interesting
about this, as it was in the latter portions of
the eighteen hundreds, is that Americans got to see what
it would be like without Donald Trump and a lot
of Americans, as we've seen through the polling, I would
imagine you have uncovered that as well, not real happy
about what was delivered, the promises that were made in
twenty twenty, in early twenty twenty one, and the America
that we now face in twenty twenty four. How much
of that buyer's remorse is playing into this election and
what you've determined through your survey.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the place that we really see that
coming through is in making sense of kind of what
are the set of ishe choose that has been in
focus over the past three or four years, and to
whom does that appeal or not? You know, it's interesting
we actually, in a prior survey, had tried to make
sense of, in particular why Joe Biden was so unpopular.
Even though a lot of the kind of basic economic
data looked fine, I mean not when inflation was high,
but sort of as inflation had come back down, it
was clear that generally speaking, sort of you know, moderate
swing voters, working class voters were not at all satisfied
with how Biden Harris were leading. And what we found
was ofpecially interesting is if you looked at the set
of fights that they had chosen to pick, the places
where you were really getting a strong contrast with Republicans.
It was on a series of issues like immigration, like
climate change, like student debt, like a lot of the
sort of you know, race related debates, where the the
fights that were being picked and the positions that that
Biden Harris were picking were just deeply, deeply unpopular. They
were they were not they were not what people wanted
to be focused on. And I think that's something you
see coming through now. It's you know, it's especially interesting.
We and will release some more survey data later this
week on this. We we tried zooming in particularly on
one group of swing voters, which are these you know, young, younger,
non white men who you you see this panic from
the from the Harris campaign that that that they're not
winning these these voters by massive margins like Democrats historically
have of. You know, you see Barack Obama out there
kind of lecturing these men that you know, he thinks
maybe they're not supporting Harris because she's a woman, and
that's not acceptable.
Speaker 1: But Dora, do you do you really see a desperation there?
I mean, I think Tim Walls playing Xbox with of
Alexandria Cassio Cortez. I think that's just something he does
on a regular basis from the state House in Minnesota.
Don't you think.
Speaker 2: Maybe he's I mean, he certainly seemed very good at it.
He seemed like a real natural. But between oh.
Speaker 1: Sure, playing Madden Football with a nothing nothing score, it.
Speaker 2: Happen, well, you know, when you're out, when you're out hunting,
as much as as government bult is, maybe there's not
time for Madden, certainly, But the I mean, you know,
these are sort of two sides of the same coin.
On one hand, the sort of absurd lecturing, it goes
back to what we were talking about earlier, where if
you're not on their side, it's like, like, what's wrong
with you? It can't possibly be that there is something
wrong with their side. And then the flip side, being
the ham handed attempts to actually appeal to these voters,
speaks to just how bad the Democratic Party and especially
the kind of Harris Waltz wing of the Democratic Party
has at doing this. And the survey data I think
actually really helpfully backs this up and gives some some
substance to what's going on here, because what you find
is that you know, you young non white men in particular,
they're totally uninterested in these arguments about you know, privilege.
For instance, they actually look more like the white working
class in how they view that sort of argument. They
are not persuaded that climate changes is a key problem.
In fact, they are much more like the white working
class in thinking we should be looseningk environmental regulations to
promote into street and you know, they are young non
white men. Very interesting, the idea of saying we shouldn't
be doing federal student dead at all, we should we
should tell universities to do this themselves if they want,
and so on, all these different types of issues on
everifying immigration enforcement, on kind of the basic things that
make you proud to be an American. What you see
are these groups of voters that Democrats have just taken
for granted. Of course, we're just you know, they're minorities.
They are going to vote Democrat by huge margins. But
what they're offering is not does not speak to the
problems and values of those voters, and those voters are
looking elsewhere. And I think that explains a lot of
the kind of ongoing it's called realignment in terms of
who is in which party, and it explains why the
election is as close as it is.
Speaker 1: Indeed, I mean, we are seeing some traditional liberal Democrat
core constituencies changing, moving, and moving in some cases by
very significant amounts, enough certainly to determine the outcome of
an election. The Hispanic vote, the Black vote, all of
those areas that Joe Biden and Barack Obama could count
on without really lifting a finger at all. That's not
those constituencies are not to be assured in this election,
as we've seen this your your polling. Of course, we
talk about this portion of it, but as you as
you alluded to, you're far from done on this front. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think one of the one of the really interesting
things about doing this kind of survey work and asking
these kinds of questions is you know, you actually learn
a lot, right, Like so much polling out there, either
just horse race polling, Okay, who's winning, let's you know,
we put it out there and get some clicks, but
it's just guessing at what's going to happen in an election,
or it's kind of issue polling where you basically, for
most part, people try to word question certain ways to
get certain answers so they can say, you know, my
policy is more popular, their policy is less popular. We
really see this more as as research as actually you know,
trying to think about the different kinds of trade offs
and values that are intention in America and just present
them to people and see what they actually say. And
all of these really interesting things keep popping up. Whether
it's as we've been talking about, what does the American
dream actually mean? What do free markets actually mean? How
do these different groups of voters think about the kinds
of issues that everybody's fighting over. You know, another really
interesting one is just around liberty generally, because you know,
as with free markets, liberty is one of these topic.
Nobody's against liberty, right, but what liberty means and in
what situations you see people saying, yes, liberty is the
priority or yeah, you know, on the other hand, yes
liberty is good. But I realized there's a trade off
here when it comes to you know, strong families, or
when it comes to being told actually, no, you can't
buy that from China. Those are the kinds of places
where I think understanding what the American people care about
is is so important, and where at the end of
the day. They are inherently right, right, You can't. There's
no expert who can tell us what we should think
about a trade off like that. It comes down to
what trade offs the American people want to make, and
ideally we would have leaders and politicians who care about
that and understand it and who want to be responsive
to it.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to me these words. Of course, we talk
about free markets and free people and liberty. And you know,
there's an old Bob Dylan line that comes to me,
of course when I think about these things, and that's
really about the interpretation of them, how we interpret them.
And we have seen in this country particularly well really
over its history, but in particular over the last half
century plus, the left doing an excellent job of commandeering
the language, of controlling the language, of defining the language.
And their version of liberty is not, as a conservative American,
not my version of liberty. And I think that was
certainly present and known to me and to I believe
anyone with eyes in the COVID era what liberty is,
what government's function truly is, and what it isn't. And
I think that leads me to my final question with
what you have been asking Americans about a central core idea,
the American dream. How does that How might that play
out post election when a portion of the American people
we'll have to deal with the fact that their candidate
is not going to be president of the United States.
This turns into a darker chapter. Will we see with
all of the rhetoric about, for instance, Donald Trump being
a fascist from the left? Should Donald Trump win this
election a week from today, do you see based on
your research, that version or idea of the left's American
dream becoming rioting because they feel like their version of
the American dream is in peril, rioting and violence.
Speaker 2: I should say, well, I certainly hope not. It's it's
hard to predict. I think certainly you know what reaction
you're going to get, especially because it's it is a
very small number of agitators that can be responsible for
most of it. I mean, you know, among the questions
we asked on the survey also were ones about this
political climate. You know, do you feel this is really
an existential moment? You know, do you think these issues
are ones that you know, we should be turning off,
turning the temperature up, or turning the temperature down, and
it's not like we're in a country where, you know,
vast majorities of people want to take to the streets,
but it only takes a very very small number of
people who either for irrational reasons or very self interested reasons.
I think this is a good idea to cause a
lot of cause a lot of problems. Obviously, the thing
that I would take away from it, and it actually
connects to a point you made earlier, which I think
is really important, about the fact that people do have
such different concepts of the American dream, and you know,
do have very different values. I mean, for our purposes
in the survey, we're always focusing on, okay, well what
does the majority think about you know this or that?
But it's not there are no questions we asked where
you even got eighty percent on one side and only
twenty on the other, right, let alone one hundred on
one side and nobody on the other. People in a
country like ours are always going to have different priorities
and values, and you hope that there's a shared set
of values that unite us as a country. But part
of that liberty that we care about, part of the
secret sauce that it made America is so successful is
embracing what we call pluralism, is embracing the idea that
people with different values should be able to live side
by side. And so, you know, one thing I hope
that this kind of research helps with is making sure
that people recognize whatever their own values and priorities are,
and however dearly and centrally they hold them, that's not
going to be the same as everybody else's and they're
going to be other people who feel just as strongly
the other way. And so wherever possible, it seems to me,
we have to be looking for, you know, ways to
ways to govern the country, ways to do our politics
that respect that. And instead of assuming that one person
has the answer that's going to work for everybody, aim
aim to build a system where people can pursue their aspirations,
whatever those might be.
Speaker 1: Indeed, I hope you are correct. I hope that the
values of pluralism remain steadfast and I remain at the
core of American values in this country. I just am
very concerned that the bumper sticker coexist is exactly that,
nothing more than a bumper sticker. These days, in a
very very divided country. It is a fascinating study. It
involves a lot of Americans and their views, not just
what politicians and policymakers and elites are deciding, what their
views are. The study from American Compass along with you Gov,
there's a survey of six thousand Americas on what their
priorities are, what really truly is important to the average
American in this election, in this environment and beyond. I
think it's fascinating and I think you'll very much enjoy
the read. You can find it all where or in
let's note that before we close.
Speaker 2: You can find it all at Americancompass dot org. And
you can find me tweeting about it incessantly or an
underscore casts. And finally, we have a really great substack
that dives into exactly this stuff. It's called Understanding America
and it's at Understanding America dot co.
Speaker 1: Perfect fascinating conversation. Very much appreciate your time.
Speaker 2: Oh this was terrific. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: You've been thanks to my guest today or in cast,
chief economist at American Compass, you've been listening to another
edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior
correspondent at the federalist. We'll be back soon with more.
Until then, stay lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray.
Speaker 2: Yeah.