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March 9, 2018 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin

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Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic | David Frum | POLITICS | Rubin Report

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		[music]
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Folks, it's official. We are entering the age of enlightenment.
		My friend, a true feminist in the best sense of the word, and a fearless defender of free speech, Christina Hoff Summers, was invited to speak at Lewis and Clark Law School this week.
		Here's what happened when she began her talk.
unidentified		We choose to protest male supremacy, not give it a platform.
		Christina Summers has repeatedly delegitimized the suffering of women worldwide.
		Christina Summers has repeatedly delegitimized the suffering of women worldwide.
		But we believe our siblings and our comrades, women are not liars with victim mentalities.
		RAPE CULTURE IS NOT A MYTH!
		MICROAGGRESSIONS ARE REAL!
		The rape bolster is not a myth.
		Microaggressions are real.
		Microaggressions are real.
		The gender gay trap is real.
		The gender gay trap is real.
		Trans people are real.
		Trans people are real.
		These people are real!
		Trans lives matter!
		Black lives matter!
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Putting aside the creepiness of the clone-like, repetitive chanting from the protesters, their use of free speech actually isn't a use of free speech at all.
		While of course they have the right to protest, your right to exercise your free speech doesn't come at the expense of someone else's right to exercise theirs.
		So, what this means is, yes, you can peacefully protest outside of an event.
		You can silently protest inside of an event.
		You can hold all the signs you want and you can encourage others to join your cause.
		You cannot, however, use your freedoms to trample on the freedoms of others.
		This chanting, which again, took place before Christina had even begun to speak, reminded me of when I was at UCLA with Milo Yiannopoulos about two years ago.
		Protesters screamed, spit through garbage cans, pulled fire alarms and even called in bomb threats before we even took the stage.
		Perhaps most egregiously, though, was the group of students who linked arms to create a human wall to stop us and other viewers from even going inside the venue itself.
		Apparently they aren't against walls, they just don't like Trump's wall.
		Christina's talk continued through the chanting, and the protesters then broke out in song.
unidentified		Which side are you on friends?
		♪ No platform for fascists, no platform at all ♪ ♪ And we will fight for justice until Christina's gone
		♪ ♪ Which side are you on, friends, which side are you on
		♪ ♪ Which side are you on, friends, which side are you on
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		♪ - Quite a catchy tune, wouldn't you say?
		Of course Christina Hoff Summers isn't a fascist at all, she's just an old school liberal who dared challenge modern day leftism.
		Ironically, these people, so keen on fighting the fake fascism in their minds, don't understand that they themselves are the ones who are actually using fascist tactics of silencing and drowning out their opponents until there is no opposition remaining at all.
		But if you're still confused, here's a simple definition of fascism.
		Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and control of industry and commerce which came to prominence in early 20th century Europe.
		Do you think Christina Hoff Summers is for dictatorial power?
		Is she for forcible suppression of opposition?
		To top it off, she even works at the American Enterprise Institute, which is against control of industry and commerce.
		Now just think for a moment if the ideas these students were espousing were the set of ideas in power.
		They actually would be for dictatorial control, as they believe their cause is the most just, and their opponents are simply evil.
		How do you think it would be going for dissent and opposition in their system?
		Perhaps the most insidious piece of the cultural Marxism that we see spreading on college campuses these days is that it is using the freedoms that our democratic capitalist society has against itself.
		Of course, it would never offer these same protections to minority voices in the dystopian future that it would bring.
		While this event thankfully wasn't nearly as violent as when Milo went to UC Berkeley and the school burned down, or when it took $600,000 of security to ensure that Ben Shapiro could speak there without threat, this display at Lewis and Clark is just another reminder of how the backwards thinking of cultural Marxism is coming for all dissenters cloaked in the mask of tolerance and diversity.
		Sadly, this story really only broke on right leaning blogs, and was only shared by the usual suspects who continually defend freedom of expression.
		As of recording this, I haven't seen any left leaning websites that covered it.
		intersectionality.
		Sadly, this story really only broke on right leaning blogs and was only shared by the usual
		suspects who continually defend freedom of expression.
		As of recording this, I haven't seen any left leaning websites that covered it.
		The reason for this is twofold.
		On one hand, when you can win arguments by silencing your opponents, your job is pretty
		But also, and perhaps more importantly, the good actors on the left, which I still believe there are some, who want to call out events like this, rarely do because they know that the same tactics of smearing and silencing will eventually be used against them And then they'll be purged from their former home.
		Just ask former guests of mine like Brett Weinstein, Laura Kipnis, Lindsey Shepard and others who dare speak out against this tyrannical faux diversity movement.
		The silver lining though of course is that the more that people like Brett, Laura and others speak out, the more room they give for people like you to do the exact same in your life.
		Speaking of Berkeley, I spoke there yesterday with Heather McDonald and Steve Simpson, and I'll be speaking at many other colleges in the coming months.
		Come join me wherever I may be and ask me as many hard questions in the Q&A as you'd like.
		I ask only one thing, which is that if you sing, please make it a little snappier than what we just heard.
		A cover of Journey, Fleetwood Mac, or even Frank Sinatra would be preferable.
		Joining me today is the senior editor of The Atlantic, a contributor on MSNBC, and the
		author of the new book, Trumpocracy, the corruption of the American Republic.
		David Frum, welcome to The Rubin Report.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Thank you so much for having me.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I'm glad to have you here.
		I've wanted you on for a couple years, I think, at this point.
		You were a tough guy to track down, but we made it happen.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		I'm findable.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		I'm not in hiding yet.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You're not in hiding yet?
		You could be, maybe by the end of this interview.
		Because I let my guests talk and you never know.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		That's the Twitter formula.
		You're like 140 characters away from career self-immolation.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, we've got about 60 minutes.
		We'll see about immolation immediately.
		All right, so a lot of things I want to talk to you about.
		I thought your personal history is interesting, and usually when I see you on television, you're talking about the day-to-day machinations of politics.
		You are Canadian.
		I did not know that.
		I find that I like Canadians.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Everyone does.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Why are you people so agreeable?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Because we're so passive-aggressive.
		I grew up in Toronto.
		We have a place in Prince Edward County which is about two and a half hours east of Toronto where my wife and I and our children have spent summers now for almost three decades.
		Canada is a That's an interesting phrase.
		of the United States with some things omitted, some things intensified.
		And so I think it offers Americans often a kind of, well, what if examination of what the United States
		might have been under different circumstances.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's an interesting phrase.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		What do you think's omitted and what do you think's intensified in Canada?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		So Canada didn't have the American South.
		It didn't have slavery.
		It didn't have the Civil War.
		Canada had a peaceful separation from Great Britain, so it doesn't have the kind of citizen military traditions.
		Canadians have a very different attitude toward guns.
		My neighbors in Prince Edward County all have, not all, but many have long guns, hunting pieces, shotguns.
		But the idea of having a handgun or a military-style weapon is a very alien idea for Canadians.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Do you think some of the Canadian attitude is also that just there's a lot of geographic space and not that many people, actually?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Well, it can be kind of spooky at night.
		I mean, they're great cities.
		Canada is a much more urbanized place in the United States.
		Canadians are more likely to live in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, those places.
		But there's a line from a poem, the wild is always there.
		And even when you live in the center of Toronto... You can be mauled by a lion?
		Well you can head off, you can start driving and pretty soon you're in the wild.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, interesting.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So your mom was on the Canadian Broadcasting Network or company?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Corporation, okay.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Linda Frum, tell me a little bit.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Linda Frum is my sister, who's a member of the Canadian... Oh, I'm crossing up two things already.
		No, no, but she's a very prominent person too.
		Linda Frum is a member of the Canadian Senate, a leader in the Canadian Conservative Party.
		My late mother Barbara Frum was the host of the show... I have it correct here.
unidentified		That's alright.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		I'll just keep my biography key in your head.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I was just testing you on your own biography.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		She was a radio interviewer on a show called As It Happens for a decade, and then was the founder of a show called The Journal, which was one of those face-to-face TV shows at a time when satellite, instant satellite communication was quite new.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		She died in 1992 at the age of 54.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Was your family always political?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I mean, sounds like probably, right?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Well, my family was interested in politics.
		My late father was a businessman, not involved in the political world, and he had a lot of distance from politics.
		But yes, my parents' dinner table was a place, it was a high-pressure environment.
		They thought deeply about things.
		But they were not ideological.
		And one of the places where I really learned to think was around that dinner table, because You know, my mother's very skeptical about everything, including her own children.
		And the way she, when you were saying something she didn't like, well, she would never argue with you, but she would just sit marching these two lines of interrogatory questions.
		And you would eventually realize, I'm caught between these two lines.
		And she would force you to think more deeply about, and not just political things, but about everything.
		Why do you do that?
		Why do you say that?
		Why do you think that's funny?
		And it made you a more conscious person.
		And I try to live up to that in the way I raise my own children.
		You never try, I try never to tell them what to do or what to think, but instead to challenge them to think
		and to think more deeply.
		And not just about the big things, but about everything.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that's what we're fundamentally missing I mean, I think it's what I try to bring to this show.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I try to let my guests talk even when I disagree with them and maybe poke and prod them in ways to learn a little bit more, but that everyone in the media these days is just pounding at each other and hitting each other and trying to destroy each other instead of sort of going along that journey with you and figuring out why you think that way and more importantly, how you think.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		I think it's just human nature.
		I think it's human nature to be tough on others and soft on ourselves.
		And it's a real discipline to say, you know what, maybe I should be soft on others and tough on myself.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So there's an interesting story.
		I want to get this totally right.
		When you were 14, you volunteered for the Ontario New Democratic Party.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So far so good?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		So far so good.
		And for those who don't follow Canadian politics as closely, so the Ontario NDP is the left party in Canada.
		It's a multi-party system.
		And Canada, of course, has a parliamentary system, and there was a provincial election, and I was interested in seeing how politics worked.
		I wasn't I didn't really have political ideas, but I was interested in campaigns, and I volunteered on that campaign.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So on that campaign, you're 14 years old, and on your commute, you're reading the Gulag Archipelago.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Well, it was a bus-subway-streetcar.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Wow!
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It was really committed for a volunteer.
unidentified		Right.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		It was a summer holiday, and so my mother had given me as a birthday present the paperback edition of the Gulag Archipelago, and urged me to read it.
		And so I had a lot of time on that commute and it hit me like a bomb.
		And I think, I mean, my family, you know, our My parents got out of Europe.
		My family got out of Europe before the war, but they left people behind.
		Poland?
		Poland.
		Most of my father's family were annihilated in the Holocaust.
		That was something that was always very conscious in my mind, and then here was this other story that I had not heard so much about, and it shaped me.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		How does that shape a fourteen-year-old?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		What it makes you aware of is that human history is very tragic, that power can be abused, and it makes you begin to think very hard about, well, how do we build a society?
		And so there I was on the Toronto subway system in a society that really worked.
		And it forces you to think, most societies aren't like this.
		In most societies, people are exposed to random terror and to dictatorial power.
		How do you make societies that work and that protect people and respect human Dignity and human freedom.
		So I began, and of course at 14 you have no answers, but you become interested in the question.
		And what you also know is that when people say, I have a great scheme for humanity, it just requires a few prison camps away.
		You learn, you know what?
		It's probably not such a good scheme.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Right, although they usually don't tell you it requires prison camps, they usually tell you it requires a lot of good things, right?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I mean, isn't that the real trick, generally?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		There are warnings early on.
		There are warnings early on in any utopian project like that.
		We're going to have to, you know, break some eggs here to make our omelette.
		And at first you're right.
		At first the eggs are not... At first the eggs are kind of small.
		But you can tell those steps.
		And that one of the things that, you know, I mean, this is, I think, one of the reasons why people look at what's happening on campuses with such alarm.
		Because, you know, obviously the people who are shouting down people on campus, they don't have police forces.
		But they've made it pretty clear how, if they ever did have a police force, how they'd use it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So when I first came across you, I think it was probably maybe 10 years ago, you were on Real Time a lot, and I would just see you on different television shows.
		And it was probably when, for me personally, I was a little more left than maybe I am at the moment.
		Or at least the whole Overton window has just shifted that it's hard to put anyone on the traditional map anymore.
		But you always struck me as a sensible conservative.
		I never watched you and was like, ah, that's the guy I disagree with on the right, in some crazed way.
		What does conservatism, because you are a conservative, right?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		I would use the adjective, I am conservative.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		I've stopped using the noun, a conservative.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Interesting, that's an interesting distinction, and it makes sense to me relative to so many things changing right now.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		What does conservatism generally mean to you?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think it starts with the way our brains are built.
		That there are people who are more conscious of risk, and there are people who are less conscious of risk.
		There are people who hanker for change, there are people who are ready to stick with present evils rather than try new ones.
		And that's just a matter of brain chemistry.
		Then, when people with those different brain chemistries approach the problems of society, they start building systems of ideas.
		So the reason I've stopped using the phrase, a conservative, and stopped talking about the conservative movement, is what I would have called conservatism, when I came out of college in 1982, was a set of answers to the problems of the 1970s and 80s.
		Inflation, crime, the Soviet menace, the disorder in American life, sluggish productivity growth.
		And the conservatives of those days had a series of policy recommendations for those problems, and by and large, they worked.
		And the result was that the problems either were overcome or anyway, so reduced in significance, they stopped being the most important problems that Americans cared about.
		New problems came to the fore.
		And about those new problems, conservatives had the same old answers they'd had back in 1982.
		And it became a kind of fetish.
		That if lower taxes were the right way to respond to low productivity growth in 1982, then if you had completely different problems in 2008, then obviously still lower taxes must work just as well as they did with a completely different set of problems in 1982.
		So, I think what has happened is that the conservative movement, conservative politics, is a fossil.
		It's interesting in that it reveals, it's like unearthing some piece of rock from a different geological era.
		It tells you something about what people had on their minds in 1982.
		But if you say, how am I going to solve the problems of 2018?
		Not so helpful.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so when people say that they're conservatives now, does that have any particular meaning to you?
		Like, I guess there is the set that you're talking about from 82 that's going, you know, we know what the answers are then, but that seems very different from now.
		And then of course, we're obviously gonna spend a lot of time talking about Trump, and that really has flipped us on its head.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is what has made Trump possible.
		This is why the conservative movement has sort of worked itself out of a job.
		So, the actual content of conservatism, what does conservatism have to say about the opioid epidemic?
		What does it have to say about the Great Recession?
		What does it have to say about the collapse in life expectancy among non-college Americans?
		What does it have to say about America's place in the world, in a world in which we're no longer competing
		with an ideological nuclear superpower, the Soviet Union, but with these opportunistic actors like Russia and China?
		As conservatism has become more useless to help those problems,
		what has been left behind is an attitude.
		What conservatism, I think, means to most people, say, I'm a conservative, is it means anti-leftism.
		Find out what the American left is talking about at any given moment.
		And not only think the opposite of it, but actually make your opposition to that group of people.
		The organizing principle of your politics.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You're sort of defining principle, basically.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		You're defining principle.
		Now, what that does is first, it makes, it does a couple of things.
		First, it makes oppositionism.
		It means you're always against, never for.
		And the second thing it means is you never have the initiative.
		Because you don't know what you think about anything until somebody else tells you first.
		And I think that's one of the reasons why conservatives were so vulnerable to Trump, is that You had an intellectual estate that was largely untenanted and falling into disrepair and Donald Trump came and kicked the door down and moved in.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Were there any candidates that you liked out of that crew before Trump came in and wrecked the whole thing?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Look, there have been a lot of, I've almost always supported, well until 2016, I always supported the Republican nominee for president.
		And I thought there have been a lot of people who have had real promise to make a good president.
		Mitt Romney would have made a very, very good president.
		Conservatism's problem and Republicanism's problem has been that you take people who have real promise as leaders and you then connect them to a program that can't win a Democratic election.
		You know, since The end of the Cold War.
		The Republican nominee for president has won a majority of the popular vote exactly once.
		That was in 2004 in the aftermath of 9-11.
		There's no longer a national majority for what Republicans are offering.
		And what has happened, and it's no surprise, because when you're saying, well our big idea is to take the Medicare guarantee away from everybody under 55, to put Medicaid on the path toward extinction, and to use all of that to finance more tax cuts like those that worked in the 1980s, in a completely different set of circumstances.
		You're not talking to or about me.
		So, good people have been committed to an unworkable And what has happened then has been that as Republicans have lost, the parties become more desperate and more vulnerable.
		But what has also happened is that you have had an increasingly self-conscious move in the conservative world.
		And this is part of the Trumpocracy that I talk about in the book to say, well, if we can't win a majority of the people, We're going to cope with that by redefining who the proper people are.
		We're going to define the country.
		We're going to shrink our definition of who are the people and divide the country between the people and those people.
		And if we have a majority of the people, that's all we care about.
		And we're going to try to find ways to prevent those people from participating and even voting.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So it's a couple of things there.
		So it's interesting, you've mentioned taxes a couple of times.
		Generally speaking, when I have conservatives sit across from me, they're for tax cuts no matter what.
		And that's what you're saying, that there was the 82 crew basically that was for it, and then this fossil remained and people were always for it.
		But it's rare to sit across from a conservative, and you're basically saying that there are instances at least where tax cuts are not a problem.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but one of the really damaging things, I mean societies have states, states need revenue.
		So, there are ways, the United States might not need so much tax money if, for example,
		it didn't spend twice as much per person on health care as everybody else in the world.
		When you look at the actual dollars the United States spends on health provision for terrible results, it's very expensive.
		Conservatives, by and large, are not interested in getting their fingers into that problem.
		The government needs revenue and it has to be funded.
		And part of the fossilization happens.
		Conservatives say, you say, we've got a problem.
		Whatever it is.
		Well, if I can solve it with a tax cut, then I'm for doing something.
		If I can only solve it by having a spending increase, then I won't do anything.
		What then happens is cynical operators say, well, what if we take our spending increase, and instead of doing it through an appropriation, we do it through a tax credit?
		How do you feel that?
		Oh, then I'm fine!
		And the result is that whether the problem is housing, or higher education, or caring for disabled children, that conservatives can be sold a solution in the form of a tax credit, which is usually the least efficient way of solving a problem.
		And the result is that you get this kind of malformed state, where the United States has a really big and expensive government, but it's financed in especially inefficient ways, and it addresses problems in especially inefficient ways.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So is the first part there, though, that nobody actually cuts spending?
		You know, I've had Ben Shapiro in here a bunch of times, and that's what he talks about, that we can keep raising taxes forever and ever and ever, but that really we have this just giant monstrosity of a government that's incredibly inefficient.
		I mean, even healthcare aside, just everything, all the mid-level bureaus and regulators and just this massive federal government that was never supposed to get so big.
		That we never actually really look at how much of that we could chop away at, where then, if we did a little of that, we could have the sort of relevant conversations about tax cuts that you're talking about.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's partly true and partly not.
		The United States, what does the United States government spend its money on?
		Defense, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.
		I think that's, those things together, I think that's about 80%.
		So, the rest of the government, you know, is, I mean, I think it's true that dollar for dollar the U.S.
		government is less efficient than that of other countries, mostly because of the inheritance of not having a proper civil service.
		The idea that the President starts off by appointing the top 10,000 jobs in the civil service, so it's highly political, and you get a lot of people who shouldn't basically have no background in government, don't know what they're doing, and things are not done in a very efficient way.
		Also, the power of Congress means there are a lot of people who are always trying to put in some special benefit, and things happen that don't make a... so you have military bases in places where they shouldn't be.
		But if you were, this is why I say conservatism is obsolete.
		If you want to reduce the state share of expense, and really, I mean, not just by repackaging things as tax, that are, you know, that, I mean, one of the ways we, for example, fund the care of disabled children is through a series of tax credits that are not labeled as expenditures but really are.
		You have to do something about Medicare and Medicaid.
		And so the conservative idea has been, okay, well the answer is, we're going to take away Medicare and Medicaid from people.
		And the reason that the Obama period has been such a crisis, and the period afterwards,
		is the defeat over, the defeat of the conservative attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act
		and to pass the Ryan Plan, means that conservatives have to now face a world in which the United
		States has joined the other developed countries.
		And having something like, or something closer to, a universal health care guarantee.
		The old idea, we'll save money just by not covering people.
		That is not going to be workable in the politics of the 21st century.
		So that means you have to actually pay attention to how Medicare works, and you have to say,
		how, while covering everybody, do we squeeze costs out of the system?
		And that requires a commitment to policy detail that conservatives don't like to do, because they like the sweeping comment, we just need to cut all this waste.
		But when you say, well, where is the waste in Medicare?
		Well, the answer is, well, the United States overpays for all of these services.
		Per unit.
		And doctors make more money in the United States than they do in other places.
		You have these—but you also have this problem of you have a sicker population than what people do in other countries.
		Americans die earlier.
		They're less likely to wear seatbelts.
		They have more gun accidents.
		You have to delve—to deal with this problem, you have to delve into detail in a way that The conservative preference for ideology over factual specificity makes conservatives not very useful at it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Is anyone good at that these days, though?
		Really, like really saying, you know, we had, look, if you looked at the real grassroots movement on both sides, I mean, Bernie was pretty extreme left, and Trump was whatever, it's hard to call extreme right, but we'll get into that, whatever you call that, that, you know, just the wrecking of the system.
		So you had these two competing forces.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Look, we have a lot of political messianism, and that's a really important point, but here, Instead of looking at the two sides, if you were to take
		the thousand people in the United States who know most about Medicare and Medicaid, or the
		hundred who know most about Medicare and Medicaid, I'm guessing 90 of the hundred, 990 of the
		thousand, maybe not, 900 of the thousand would be people of the center left.
		Because conservatives just don't care about that kind of knowledge.
		And so they're always at a disadvantage.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, is it that they don't care, or they just don't think the government should be involved in this?
		Like, that the fundamental belief first?
		Is that it's not the job of the government, really?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		But they know.
		So every once in a while, somebody will put his head above the parapet and say, I don't think the government should be providing health care for everybody.
		Bing!
		You lose an election.
		That is how Donald Trump became the Republican nominee.
		That's right.
		Paul Ryan does not think the government should provide health care to everybody.
		The problem is the Republican primary voter thinks, well, the government shouldn't provide health care to everybody, but they should provide health care to everyone like me.
		So, yes, they should provide health care to all the over-65s, they should provide health care to all the veterans, but once you do that, you're into a very big program.
		And once you're saying the government should provide health care to all the over-65s, that's where most of the spending takes place anyway.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So just to be clear, you have an ideological difference with maybe the Paul Ryan approach, but you think it's a legitimate way of looking at the government, right?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I don't understand.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		It's a way to think, for sure.
		You could argue that point.
		It's not a way that a political party that wants to compete for power in the United States can think.
		Because the voters won't accept it.
		So what ends up happening is that the Republicans have a bunch of commitment.
		They have a bunch of theoretical commitments and a bunch of operational commitments.
		And those, they don't line up.
		And in fact, the Republican Party does maintain Medicare.
		It does maintain Medicaid.
		And it tries to find little economies, usually in not very efficient ways.
		The result is, because it doesn't care about how those problems work, and it's not psychically committed to them, there is no one there saying, how is it that Germany and France and Switzerland and the Netherlands, Canada, cover more people, have longer life expectancies, and spend less?
		The difference between what the United States spends The difference between spending in the American economy and healthcare and that of the other developed countries is about three or four points of GDP, which is bigger than the defense budget.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So what does that say, then, just about, we don't even have to make this about conservatives per se, what does that say about our system?
		If a guy came up, let's say, a Republican nominee came up and really was talking about that, the ins and outs, I mean, no matter what, let's just look at 2016.
		I mean, he would have been clubbed over the head by Trump.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Don't remember, Trump campaigned, sorry, Trump said, Trump said, I'm going to protect Medicare.
		I'm going to protect Medicaid.
		Trump campaigned as the guy who was the first Republican who really made his peace.
		With the American social insurance system.
		When conservatives said Trump wasn't a conservative, they were right.
		And that's why he beat them inside their own party.
		Trump begins by beating the Republican world.
		He begins by defeating Fox News and bending all of them to his will.
		Now he had no idea what he was talking about.
		He had no plan for executing any of this.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that's really true?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Because I hear this with a lot of people, that he had either no idea what he was doing, or that there was no plan or anything.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		He has no idea.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		He reveals that every day.
unidentified		He doesn't know, he doesn't understand any... But what does that say about all of us?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		If that's true, like, if that's true, what does that say about... If one of the interviewers had said during the interview, Mr. Trump, you say you're going to preserve Medicare and Medicaid.
		What does Medicare do, and what does Medicaid do, and what's the difference?
		I will bet you...
		The amount of money the Republican Party are going to corruptly put in his pockets at Mar-a-Lago, that he couldn't have answered that question.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so that I completely agree with.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I did a video before the election saying if you want to stump Trump, ask him what the three branches of government are and what they're supposed to do.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		He was asked what the three elements of the nuclear triad are, and he didn't know that.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So that kind of stuff I do agree, but this thing about sort of there was no plan or something.
		There was no plan.
		In some way, even if I can intellectually get there with you, there's something about that idea that then he duped by, it's scary, I guess I would say.
		It's pretty scary to think that someone who had no plan duped the rest of us.
		Like that inherently seems like a plan at some level.
		Because we're sort of talking about plans at different levels here.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Look, Donald Trump is one of the great scam artists of all time.
		He scammed the people at Trump University.
		And the scam was possible because of the disillusionment of so many people with responsible politics.
		But what he intuited...
		I mean, Donald Trump has certain talents and geniuses.
		I mean, he is a genius at finding the weakness in things.
		And he understood the weakness in the institutional Republican Party, which is that they were offering a message that their own voters hated.
		And I have a lot of detail on that in the book, about how when you actually showed Republican voters, Republican primary voters, what Paul Ryan wanted to do, they just recoiled from it.
		He's going to take away my Medicare?
		He's going to take away my mother's nursing home?
		That's the plan?
		That's the famous Ryan plan?
		So Donald Trump understood that, and what he then understood as well was that in the absence of a program, that this anti-leftism that had become what conservatism was, this was a series of resentments and rages that were waiting for somebody who could articulate it, who Raged and resented as powerfully as they did.
		I mean, Republicans, the previous Republican nominees would sometimes tap these feelings, try to channel them, but they didn't share them.
		Donald Trump shares them.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so before we go fully into Trump and then we're gonna spend the rest of the interview on Trump, I just wanna talk a little bit about the modern Democrats and the left in general and all of that.
		So what do you make of the feeling that he was going for?
		I think that's a pretty legit feeling on what's happened with the left related to free speech and the endless hysteria and everyone's a bigot and a racist and identity politics.
		All of that, that feeling, I think is legit.
		Do you see that as a legit feeling?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Look, in our group theory, feelings are legitimate.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		The question is... Not even feeling, I see it as a legit reality.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		The thing that he was talking about there is a legit reality.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Behind all of those things you describe is a new fact in the politics of the United States in the past 15-20 years, which is that we are moving into a period of intensifying ethnic competition for power, for money, and for the right to define what it means to be an American.
		The country's made this big gamble on changing itself.
		And across the developed world, countries like the United States have made similar gambles.
		The proportion of the foreign-born in Sweden is now as high as in the United States.
		The proportion of foreign-born in Germany is nearly as high as in the United States.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Countries that are having massive problems with that.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Immigration is a source of massive social tension, and a lot of the immigration happened without anybody ever consciously intending it, and without much of a debate over it, and with a refusal to tally costs and benefits in an accurate way.
		So these countries have been changed, and what you have is then a series of new demands and new resentments.
		And that's one of the reasons that the conservatism I grew up with is so out of date.
		Back in 1985, the argument between liberals and conservatives was basically an argument about the
		economy.
		And this is true not just in every developed country.
		You had a party of the people who worked for wages and the party of the people who own capital assets and work for salaries.
		The left were the people whose jobs were supported by taxes.
		The right were the people whose jobs were supported by profits.
		If you were in management, you were on the right.
		If you were in a union, you were on the left.
		Not to sound Marxist about this, but essentially your relationship to the means of production was the organizing principle of politics.
		What also happened in 1985 was that people remembered that this kind of politics could spiral out of control.
		They'd seen it happen in the 1930s, and you could get fascist movements, you could get communist movements, and so there were attempts to temper The competition between the wage people and the salary people, between the owners and the workers.
		And so you had the left accepted a market economy and the right accepted a social insurance state, but that's what the argument was about.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And that's what we've run on now for quite some time.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		But that has ceased.
		With the collapse of socialism, that argument ended.
		The modern left is not really a socialist movement anymore.
		People will sometimes use the word.
		I mean, back in 1950, there were people who really thought that if the government owned the banks, the banks would make better lending decisions than they did, than they would if they were private.
		No one thinks that now.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I don't even think- Really, you don't think that there's plenty of people on the left that think that?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		That it's just, we'll just sort of incrementally get there.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		There are 330 million people in the United States.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		There's somebody who thinks every- No, no, I don't mean no one, but I mean that if Bernie was president, that eventually the creeping movement of this, yeah, Elizabeth Warren, that creeping movement- I think Elizabeth Warren does not want the government to own the banks, no.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		I believe that Elizabeth Warren does not think government should own the steel companies.
		She doesn't believe that government should own the commanding heights of industry.
		I'm sure she does not believe any of this.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know about owning it, but what about just controlling it to the point where it can affect its ownership?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I know specific owners.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		I don't think she thinks they should manage it.
		She believes in a social market economy.
		I mean, if you were to say to her, what is the best run country on earth?
		Bernie always used to say Denmark was the best run country.
		Denmark is a free market society.
		It's got a bigger social insurance system than the United States.
		And he said that because, the reason he said that was, it was never a serious answer, because he didn't, he'd stopped caring.
		That's not what politics is about.
		What politics is about is, In 1985, if I knew how you made your living, I could probably guess how you voted.
		Today, If I know where your grandparents come from, I know how you vote.
		So if your grandparents did not belong to the local ethnic majority, whether in the United States or Germany or Britain, you are in the party of what used to be the left.
		If your grandparents do belong, do or did belong to the local ethnic majority, you are in what is the party of the right, used to be.
		And that's true however you make your living, however much or little money you have.
		And that was not true in former days.
		So you have this politics of ethnic competition.
		And that's one of the reasons why politics are so much more virulent, because in the end, with money, you can always split the difference.
		Somewhere we say, will you take 20%?
		No?
		Will you take 23%?
		Oh, 28%?
		Okay, we have a deal.
		But when you're competing, what does it mean to be an American?
		Who gets to define American-ness?
		We haven't found a way to split the difference on that.
		And until we do, we're going to have very virulent politics.
		When the Sarah Palin's and others talk about what it means to be a real American, and some
		things are real American, other things are not, they're looking for a way to claim ethnic
		legitimation.
		We may not have the numbers anymore, but we still define the country.
		And that is one of the things that's going on.
		That's what these political correctness battles are all about.
		I mean, it's always true that there are things people don't say.
		There are always things that people don't say, even if they're free to say them.
		There are things they don't say.
		How does that happen?
		There are things that you don't say.
		And who gets to decide?
		And that's what we're struggling over.
		What we are calling political correctness is people saying, there used to be a set of rules of taboos.
		We have a new set of taboos.
		We want the old taboos to be untaboo, and we want to impose the new taboo.
		And the people on the receiving end of that say, we like our old taboos, and we don't want these new taboos.
		And that's where Donald Trump is coming from.
		That's a real dispute.
		It's important, but it's new, and it's dangerous, and we don't know how to manage it.
		And we have this deeply opportunistic The actor who's taking advantage of it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so before we fully dive into that, does this show you that our brand of multiculturalism, which has worked better than virtually any European state, our melting pot, does this tell you that the experiment is starting to fail?
		Is this the litmus test for that?
		That's what it sounds like.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		First, the American melting pot never worked as well as Americans told themselves it did.
		In the United States, The Civil War has had a lot of civic conflict in its history.
		And not just the Civil War.
		In the later 19th century, it had the most violent labor relations anywhere on earth.
		And those were often about ethnicity.
		That the strikers would be from one group, and the police who shot them would be from a different group.
		And the strikes would be broken by strike breakers, who are from a third group, yet again.
		But multiculturalism is difficult to do, and it's especially difficult to do when you have moved out of the age of mass production.
		It was one thing when you needed a lot of bodies to run a modern economy.
		You don't need so many bodies today.
		And we also live in a world in which, whereas before, There are a lot of pretty average size rewards.
		Today we live in a world in which there are gigantic rewards and not such great rewards.
		And what the average person gets is not as attractive, relatively speaking, as it was two generations ago.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		All right, let's do it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Let's dive into this Trump guy, because I sense that everything we've talked about for the first half here, a lot of your answers now are sort of directly related to this guy, who saw the weakness.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		But not to the personality of this guy, but to the whole system.
		Look, here, let me, I'll take one last attempt to do it on a wider lens, and then we'll... Yeah.
		You know, imagine somebody standing on a timeline, and the center of the timeline is 1990.
		And they go forward 25 years, 2015, and maybe they go to sleep and they wake up.
		Who are the most important politicians in the country when they go to sleep?
		Bush and Clinton.
		Who are the most important politicians in the country in 2015?
		Bush and Clinton.
		What are they talking about?
		Iraq and healthcare.
		You go back 25 years from 1990, you're in 1965, and it's a different world.
		There's an AFL-CIO.
		There are riots in the cities.
		There are liberal Republicans and segregationist Democrats.
		So we have had this frozen politics for a long time, and it was ready to be changed, and the existing Republican Party couldn't cope with it, and Donald Trump did.
		He smashed the system open.
		So he's created some opportunities for a new kind of political arrangement, because the old one had become so stale.
		But what he's also done, and this is the theme of the book, Is he's raising questions not just about the way we do politics, but about the whole political system, because he is a deeply authoritarian personality, his project is authoritarian, and the way he governs is not compatible with the rule of law society.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It was gonna happen one way or another, right?
		Do you think that's fair to say?
		Or is he so unique, or that personality trait, or that, you know, the type of person that would be willing to do it?
		He's so unique.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		We have Trump-like figures all over the Western world.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		We have a global crisis.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I mean, unique to our American system.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Even though Bernie was actually talking about rattling the system the same way, and I think that's why there was some crossover with their audiences.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		We have people, I mean, there's Geert Wilders, there's Marine Le Pen, there's the Alternative for Germany.
		We're recording just a few days before people see this program.
		There's an election in Italy in which the traditional parties were swept aside and a kind of joke party, the Five Star Movement, which was founded by a comedian and which is, you know, kind of an authoritarian populist party of the left, is now in league with a kind of neo-fascist party.
		And we are seeing the breakdown of the traditional parties of the center, driven by slow growth and ethnic competition.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's what I'm saying.
		Was it going to happen no matter what?
		Even if Trump had lost this election or Trump never rose?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		No, nothing is going to happen no matter what.
		People make choices.
		You know, at the darkest moments in American history, 1932, 1860, political parties and political movements converged on programs that were constitutional, that were liberal in the broadest sense of the term.
		And they found leaders who wanted to uphold the American Tradition, and change it enough that it could continue, but without violating its essence.
		This time, it's as if Huey Long had become president in 1932, not Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so let's just do like a couple minutes of Russia so that we can get to that, because we can't talk about Trump without talking about Russia.
		You tweet a lot about Russia, obviously, you write about Russia a lot, you talk about it a lot.
		Do you absolutely believe that he himself orchestrated or coordinated some of this stuff with the Russian government?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		There remain many secrets in the Russia story, but there's no mystery.
		The exact modalities of how the exchange happened remain uncertain.
		But here is what I think I do know, and I think what you know.
		We know that Russia wanted Donald Trump to be president, and even more badly wanted Hillary Clinton not to be president.
		We know that they intervened in a massive way, in an industrial scale, and we're learning more and more all the time how big it was, to hurt Hillary Clinton first in the Democratic primaries, to help Donald Trump first in the Republican primaries, and then in the general election to help Trump at Clinton's expense.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Can you give me, just for people that are playing total catch-up here, so what are the examples of that?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Well let me, here's the most dramatic example.
		The WikiLeaks tropes are dumped in ways exactly timed to help Donald Trump.
		The Trump people were expecting the last WikiLeaks dump of the election sometime in the first week of October.
		They knew it was coming.
		They'd expected it on about October 4th or 5th.
		It didn't come that day.
		Instead, it was dumped on October 7th within an hour of the Access Hollywood tape being broken by David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post.
		The Russians or whoever controls WikiLeaks, which I believe is pretty, I believe,
		and Mike Pompeo, the head of the CIA, believes that WikiLeaks is a cutout for the Russians,
		if not directly controlled by them.
		They timed their last WikiLeaks dump to help Donald Trump should he have a crisis
		in the election, and it did.
		In the book, I sort of give the minute-by-minute tick-tock where you see it's,
		you know, the Russians were there to help.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		But is the real question whether the campaign itself was coordinating that, or, look,
		we do all sorts of things with foreign governments and elections and all kinds of stuff,
		So whether the campaign actually was coordinating it with the foreign government, which obviously would be illegal.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		We know that Donald Trump.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		As opposed to them just doing it and it having to work out for Trump.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		To hack an American's email is a crime.
		It's a big crime.
		If you know that a crime has been committed against Americans by a foreign government, you would be annoyed about that, especially if you aspire to be President of the United States.
		So we don't know to what degree yet, we don't know to what degree, if any, people on his campaign were in regular back-and-forth communication with the Russians, but he stood on a stage and in June of 2016 and welcomed the Russians
		breaking American law to steal his opponent's email to his advantage.
		His son took a meeting with people who were offering him Russian hacked information on Hillary Clinton.
		At the meeting, the Russians didn't deliver.
		But you know--
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		When we say the Russians, we have to clarify between the government and just other actors, right?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Because everyone says the Russians as if it's one monolithic thing.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		True.
		The lawyer who was at the meeting was somebody with intense Kremlin connections and who advertised that she had Kremlin connections, that she said in the famous email to Don Jr., the Russian government wants to elect your father.
		I have information from the Russian government it could help your campaign.
		And he said, great, I love it, especially in the summer.
		I am telling you that if An emissary from the Russian government had approached George W. Bush in the election of 2000 and said, I have information on Al Gore that will help you.
		There wouldn't have been a meeting.
		There would have been a phone call to the FBI.
		And there might even have been a phone call to the Gore campaign.
		You guys should know about this.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		All right, so you believe that without question there was coordination?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		No, so I believe the Russians helped, and I believe that Donald Trump... It's not a belief, it's on video, you can look it up.
		Donald Trump welcomed the help, was ready to accept the help.
		and profited from the help.
		And I believe it made a difference in the election.
		I believe also that there were Russian attempts, as far as we know, they're not successful,
		to interfere with the actual mechanics of voting in a number of states.
		Here's what I don't know.
		I don't know whether information flowed back from the United States to Russia after Don Jr.' 's meeting.
		I don't know that.
		I don't know whether the Russian operation to influence the American election benefited from any kind of information provided by American counterparts.
		Those are things we don't know.
		What I do know is that Donald Trump did not act patriotically, and he did not act with respect to the American political system, and I will never get past that.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Do you think the Democrats have any of the same dirt on their hands?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		No.
		Nothing?
		Look, it's not beanbag.
		They did many things.
		I mean, when Hillary Clinton found that South American beauty queen who was offended by Donald Trump, Do I, is it possible the Clinton campaign paid her money for her story?
		That's possible.
		But there's a difference between, I really think there's a bright line difference between the usual operations of American politics, which can be pretty rough, and Accepting help from the clandestine service of a foreign government.
		Let me give you another example to make a difference.
		So in 2004, it was no secret that Gerhard Schroeder of Germany and Jacques Chirac, the President of France, would dearly love to see John Kerry beat George W. Bush.
		They made that very clear.
		They gave interviews.
		They were just counting the minutes until Bush was gone.
		And it was also clear in 2012 that Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel preferred Romney to Obama.
		Your allies have opinions.
		It is, but in none of those elections did we have hostile foreign states, China, Russia, Iran, actors like that, working not through talking to journalists, but through clandestine intelligence services, to help one candidate and hurt another, and have it all be visible, and have the candidate who was helped, accept the help.
		I mean, imagine if Iran had tried to intervene in 2012 against or for Obama or Romney.
		And one of those candidates had said, Iran, if you're listening, thank you for the help.
		Inconceivable, but that's what Trump did.
		He did it on video, it's not a mystery.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Right, so I wanna really talk about the presidency and sort of the decisions in that,
		but to sort of get us to some sort of ending with this, if this all unfurls the way I think you suspect
		it will unfurl, I mean, you definitely would be for impeachment and removing him and all that, right?
		This is where it's going to start.
		The part that I'm struggling with this is if we take all of the people that talk about all this, it seems to me what we're talking about is, okay, well, you impeach Trump, and then really, then we have to do something which is unprecedented, which is most likely Pence knew something, and now you have to take the whole administration out.
		Now we suddenly have Paul Ryan as the president, or we have a redo of the election, and then we're really at war with Russia, right?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		This is how Trump has already changed us.
		The Russia part of this is just one of the things that have not happened.
		No president since Lyndon Johnson has operated a business while president.
		No president, in my memory, has directed his party's funds into his own personal pocket.
		Eighty percent of the money that the Republican Party has spent on events in the last year was paid at a Donald Trump branded resort.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So this is like when they're holding meetings at Mar-a-Lago?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		A friend of mine sent me this clip.
		George Shultz, who was Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, had been an important executive, maybe CEO at Bechtel, the giant engineering firm.
		And at his confirmation hearing, he was asked, Mr. Shultz, after you become Secretary of State, what will your relationship be with Bechtel?
		And he said, well, there's only one possible answer.
		Nothing.
		That's right.
		That was the standard.
		So what you have is an attack on every ethical norm of the U.S.
		government, both financial and national security.
		And half the country is being borne along.
		The discussions we are having are discussions that, if in 2013, As recently as that.
		I said, someday we'll be having these discussions.
		People think we'll be so far gone even to contemplate.
		So that is unprocessable.
		Are we heading toward an impeachment crisis?
		Here's what the crisis we're heading toward.
		And here's what I really One of my deepest worries.
		I think there's a good chance we're going to arrive at this place.
		Mueller is going to report, assuming he's not fired, and he's going to discover a lot of things that are violations of the law, done by mid-level and even upper-level people.
		And he may discover some financial malpractices.
		There are a lot of laws about things like declaring you're a foreign agent, that there are technical rules about campaign finance, and he will discover, or may, infractions of those.
		But the core thing in the Russian matter that people like me are concerned about is probably not illegal.
		It's probably not illegal for an American politician to work with a hostile foreign.
		I mean, no, there isn't such a law, and it's hard to imagine what such a law would look like.
		And so where we may be A year and a half from now is confronting this that Donald Trump worked in some way.
		We may be I'm not predicting this I'm just hypothesizing worked in some way with a hostile foreign intelligence service But he himself broke no law in doing that and now the country's going to have to process How to deal with that and it's going to be part of what is going on in this new era which is ripping apart the butt the the cords that bind us because One of the things that makes a country Is the assumption how your connections to your fellow Americans, however much you may disagree with them, and however you may have a different color skin or have a different accent from you, that bond is more powerful than the bonds outside the border.
		And as American politics becomes ethnicized, I think a lot of people are saying, my connections with this global movement of reactionary populist forces are more powerful than my bonds to fellow Americans of different skin and different accent.
		And because of that, unless you can show me that Donald Trump literally broke a federal criminal statute, I don't mind what he did.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So how do we get out of this?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		How do we get out of either that inevitability or Do we just end up literally fighting on the streets?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		The way we get out of it is we have to renew American nationhood.
		And so, we have to do—if we get out of this, we're going to do something—some are going to sound pretty liberal, and some are going to sound pretty conservative.
		I believe we need a lot less immigration, because that's—you have to—we have to make a nation again.
		We've taken on a lot of new people.
		And I'm a naturalized citizen myself.
		I grew up in Canada.
		My family's from Eastern Europe.
		Making nations is hard and time-consuming.
		So that's the conservative part of the party.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Right, so that sounds pretty Trumpian, actually.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You'll have the whole left and virtually every Democrat against you on that.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Okay, you need a thicker social insurance network.
		You need a real health care system.
		Because what we have to deal with, we have to deal with the crisis in life expectancy.
		We have to care for each other more.
		The idea that we went through in the whole second Obama term People who didn't graduate from college living less long than their parents, which literally did not happen in the Great Depression.
		And not only did nobody do anything, but nobody even noticed.
		This was found out by a pair of economists who happened to look at some data.
		No one was paying a lot of attention to this.
		The opioid epidemic erupted with no one in Washington paying much attention to it.
		We're going to need to build a stronger sense of national identity.
		But it's going to be a different kind of national identity.
		It's not going to be Sarah Palin's America.
		But we're going to have to find some way of agreeing what it means to be an American and what it means not to be an American.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Is the inherent problem there that we're caught now between Trump and sort of the Democrats that love identity politics?
		Neither one of those is giving us the answer to that.
		I mean, where is the voice that's, where is the political voice that's saying exactly what you just said?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Look, we've been here before.
		You know, that melting pot story that you were told, It wasn't true at the time.
		It was a myth we created later.
		When the United States entered World War I, the biggest minority in the country was, or one of the biggest, were German-speaking Americans.
		And there was real doubt about whether the United States would be able to fight Germany in the First World War, because the German-Americans might be disloyal.
		And the country went on a ramp, having to ban German-language newspapers, it suppressed German-language schools.
		It wasn't a melting pot.
		It was a harsh and rancorous process.
		And the United States had, in the immediate aftermath of World War I, pogroms in American
		cities that were very, you know, by white Americans against blacks, that were deadlier
		than the anti-Semitic pogroms that took place under the czar.
		Those were facts of our history.
		And out of that, we built, in the years after World War II and for half a century afterwards,
		a strong sense of national identity.
		We have to do that state-building and nation-building process again.
		And it's going to look partly liberal, partly conservative, but it's going to be a new politics for a new century.
		And if anyone is standing around saying, I don't know, I think I prefer the problems of 1982 so I can have the solutions of 1982, I'm going to say, you're just not helping.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		What would you say to the people that would say, and this is a little bit more where I fall on all this, that the government is just not the answer to any of these things?
		That I hear you on all of these problems, without question, no doubt.
		But that to me at this point, that everything you're talking about is showing me the government no longer functions, the federal government.
		specifically, no longer functions in a way that it can cope or deal with any of these things.
		We get then bad actors that wanna wreck the whole thing, or we get these mid-level management people
		that never really do anything, and that you could look at virtually
		every member of Congress, that all the answers that you're asking for,
		I would argue, have almost nothing to do with the government
		and that there's other ways now, especially because of the internet and everything else,
		there's other ways that we can connect and build things.
		Right now, Elon Musk is the guy that's getting us into space.
		Warren Buffett's working on an alternate healthcare plan.
		There's just other ways to do this and that those machines they can't work anymore.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		A lot of the great social transformations, American history is different from that of other countries
		in this way, that often times the way the country is addressed,
		the most effective cultural change in my lifetime was Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
		That changed Americans' attitudes.
		They changed laws, too.
		I mean, the state has a rule.
		I think, for things like the gun debate, I mean, I think that is going to be ultimately addressed, if it is addressed, not by state action, but by private action.
		Which is, whatever the laws are, just, if you have kids and you care about them, don't have a gun in the house.
		Just as Mothers Against Drunk Driving changed the idea that it was funny, drunk driving was funny, to the idea that it was not funny, so we have to change the idea that if you're a responsible parent, you're armed, to a new, better understanding that if you're armed, you're not a responsible parent.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		A lot of conservatives won't be happy hearing you say that.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		A lot won't be, but it just happens to be.
		What's the saying?
		The facts don't care about your feelings?
		It's just a fact.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I think Ben would argue with that fact, but we can do that sometime.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		He has sensitive feelings.
		But of course the government has to do this.
		And it's true that dollar for dollar and pound for pound, the American government has always been less effective than other governments.
		But sometimes it's more effective and sometimes it's less effective.
		There are things that the government is going to have to do.
		And the government doesn't have to administer the healthcare system.
		I would hope it wouldn't.
		There's a role for the profit motive and for competition.
		But the idea that we are going to accept a country in which large numbers of Americans are uncovered and are outside the health care system and that people literally die because they can't afford dental care and their teeth fester and the festering gets into their body and it kills them, that has to change.
		The role of the state is part of, if we're going to have a new ethic of nationhood, With a higher border and more mutual care.
		Yeah, of course government's going to be a part of that.
		And by the way, not only the federal government, because a lot of the, I mean, the country's big.
		I mean, running California is challenging enough.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So since you don't say you're a conservative specifically anymore, I mean, if people are listening and going, I get this, it's a little bit of both, because there's a lot of big government here.
		I know you're saying you would prefer the government not have to do health insurance, all that.
		You're sort of all over the place right now, which I think a lot of people are.
		I think that's the situation we're in right now.
		What do you call that now?
		And I only ask about labels because although they're becoming increasingly meaningless, I think it helps people go, all right, this is my starting point.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't have a label for it, because I think this is one of those moments in American history where you have to do something new.
		You know, for 25 years after the Civil War, Americans kept arguing both about the Civil War and about its financial consequences.
		And then they began to notice that, in the aftermath, that they had these big cities grow up that were intensely corruptly governed.
		And new movements came along that said, We have, you know, it's not like the legacy of the Civil War is resolved.
		It's still not fully resolved.
		But in the meantime, we have to figure out how do we get streetcars in New York?
		How do we get the water clean?
		How do we make sure that the aldermen aren't all taking bribes?
		And that new political, and at first they weren't, they just knew what the problems were.
		And as they worked on the problems, they developed labels to describe what they were doing.
		But first, you start, I think one of the ways that, especially on the right, One of the ways that we go wrong is a new problem is presented to us, and instead of looking at the problem and studying it, we reach for a volume of the Talmud, and we say, what did Rabbi Russell Kirk say about this three quarters of a century ago?
		Oh, he never talked about it, therefore we can't do anything about it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I feel good about this.
		I feel like you've presented a couple interesting ideas that I haven't quite talked about here, and you're coming at it from different angles.
		Is there anyone that's doing this politically?
		I mean, who are the people that you right now think are making sense?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		We're doing it right now.
		You and I.
		Look, there are a lot of things that come out of the Trump era that are actually good.
		There are perverse gifts that he's given us.
		One of them is, by lying all the time, he's helped us understand how important it is that people tell the truth.
		You're concerned about what goes on on campus, you know.
		The phrase post-truth began as a compliment, not a criticism.
		It began by people who wanted to overthrow totalitarian truth structures and open the way to many multiple truths.
		And they discovered that when you do that in politics, what you don't get, the opposite of truth isn't truth, the opposite of truth is lying.
		We've seen rising levels of civic engagement.
		And we, I think, are seeing, especially among the young, a sense that the political categories they've inherited Are obsolete.
		And that they have to start looking at problems anew.
		And that they have to begin with the problems, and then develop the solutions.
		And then people will disagree where the new party system will come from.
		As we really contemplate, how do we improve the health outcomes of our fellow citizens?
		How do we deal with drugs?
		How do we deal with the declining life expectancy of those who don't go to college?
		They're going to disagree, and then they'll find like-minded groups.
		And they'll end up inside the Republican and Democratic parties.
		Those institutions will always be there.
		The content will change.
		And along the way, we'll find new names.
unidentified		Yeah.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		But anyone politically?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I appreciate the compliment, and I think there are some people that are trying to make some sense these days, but really, I mean, do you look at anyone politically involved?
david frum ▲ ● ▼		I think it will start at the state level.
		I think the mayor here in Los Angeles is an example, someone who's trying to figure out how things work.
		Andrew Cuomo in New York, I mean, kind of a bully, but cares about why does it cost three times as much, or whatever it is, to build a subway in New York as in London?
		And so I think The regeneration of the American political system has always come from cities and states, and I think that will be even more true in the 21st century.
		I mean, here in California, you need a revival of political competition.
		One of the reasons why I stay a registered Republican is, you know, I look at California and say, this is what happens when you get a one-party state.
		You get factional politics.
		It doesn't mitigate the problems of ethnically driven politics, it makes them worse.
		So we're going to need We're gonna need two-party competition.
		We're gonna need new solutions.
		That's what I try to do in my work, is to try to offer, you know, the possibility of a more useful kind of politics.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's interesting because, I mean, that's exactly what I try to do with the show, and even last week I had Mike Schellenberger on, who's running as a Democrat.
		You know, he's more of an old-school Democrat, and he's into nuclear power.
		And all sorts of new ideas and using technology to solve our problems.
		Running against Gavin Newsom, who's the hero of the left, and he thinks he's too left.
		And then this week I have you on to discuss your frustrations with the conservatives and all that.
		So that's, this is what we have to keep doing at the end of the day.
david frum ▲ ● ▼		That's all we got, right?
		And as long, and we have to defend our ability to do that.
		And defend that both against those who would use violence and against those who would use corruption to try to shut down proper discussions.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's a perfect ending right there.
		Thank you.
		Thanks for your hospitality.
		Yeah, my pleasure.
		I suspect we'll do this again.
		Maybe we'll get Ben in here and we'll do that little facts over feelings thing, so we can get a couple other people in here to mix up some of these ideas.

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