Orrin Kast is a conservative icon in the conservative movement. He is the author of The New Conservatives, a book that lays out his vision for the future of the country, and he is a regular contributor to conservative publications such as The Weekly Standard and National Review. In this episode, Orrin talks about his new book, The New Conservative, and what it means to be a conservative.
00:00:13.480If you are somebody who wants to do business in America, you need to start planning for that.
00:00:18.120If we want our economy to work well, the way to make a lot of money in America is by making things in America.
00:00:23.640That's the most interesting thing I've heard in a long time.
00:00:25.500So you're saying that our economic model was not primarily an economic model, it was an instrument of foreign policy.
00:00:31.180It was like the centerpiece of the global order, post-war global order.
00:00:35.000It wasn't designed to help the United States as much as it was to preserve stability around the world.
00:00:40.280If there's any group to whom we should be focusing resources on, it is families raising kids who are the ones who have been, I think, most squeezed by these economic changes.
00:00:59.340Orrin Kast, thank you very much for coming.
00:01:23.000So you've got a book called The New Conservatives, which tries to answer, I think, and we'll speak for you, the question, you know, what is conservatism?
00:01:35.760And probably not a better, it's not really an abstract debate anymore.
00:01:40.780It's like all of a sudden you find yourself, I find myself like on the same side as people with whom I don't think I have anything in common.
00:01:49.080And so what's your definition of conservative?
00:01:54.460That's that is the hardest question in conservatism, I think.
00:01:58.100And, you know, for me, it comes down to a focus on what actually matters and sort of, you know, all of our policy debates are about the means.
00:02:18.240And I think for conservatives, there's a a very deep recognition and belief that that the good life is about more than just the individual liberty and autonomy and consumption of stuff.
00:02:31.920Obviously, we care about those things, too, but that it is much more balanced against a recognition that, you know, the well-being of families and the conditions in which we're raising the next generation and the strength of our communities, ultimately the strength of our nation, the ability to carry forward traditions, that that all of those things are equally probably more important to people's actual well-being.
00:02:57.260And that as we think about what government is for, what public policy is for, those are the things we actually have to have in focus.
00:03:05.100So paint the picture of what the end result of a well-organized society is.
00:03:11.220Well, I think first and foremost, it is the family that at the end of the day, everything is oriented toward this question of how do we raise a next generation that is able to do what we have done, hopefully more than we have done to enjoy what we have enjoyed.
00:03:26.260Hopefully more than we have enjoyed, and that that is a sort of fundamental obligation that we all have.
00:03:33.220It's not a choice, a consumption choice, right?
00:03:35.780Some people go to Greece, some people raise the next generation.
00:03:38.960I mean, as a descriptive matter, it is true, but as a normative matter, as a question of should, that is what should happen and that is what needs to happen.
00:03:49.340And so the question is, well, okay, what are the conditions in which that can and will happen?
00:03:54.900We need to have the conditions where young people can see a future for themselves, forming families, being self-sufficient, supporting kids, being able to provide them a good environment.
00:04:06.240They need to be in communities that have not just, you know, strong institutions and good schools, but also just a basic sense of a common culture and a culture that is going to be a healthy one for kids to grow up.
00:04:22.480We obviously, therefore, need an economy that provides those kinds of jobs.
00:04:27.400There need to be good jobs available to anybody who wants to work and is willing to work hard, regardless of what their particular aptitudes and interests are, regardless of where they live, right?
00:04:40.860The idea that, well, we'll get more growth if everybody moves to a big city is highly corrosive to the idea that we will actually have a world of people raising strong families.
00:04:53.860And then as you sort of keep zooming out, ultimately, you get out to the level of the nation and you recognize that, you know, at the end of the day, you do have to have a country.
00:05:05.080A country is not just a market or, you know, an Olympics team.
00:05:11.100It is actually something with an identity within which people owe obligations to each other.
00:05:16.440And not everybody is raising kids, but if you're not, you have some obligation to the folks who are.
00:05:23.100You have some obligation to those kids.
00:05:24.820And as those kids grow up, they will, in turn, have obligations back to you.
00:05:29.460And if you can't maintain that structure, and I think a lot of what you see in the modern West is struggles to maintain that structure, things start to fall apart.
00:06:07.500And I think it's important at that level because I think that, you know, what I'm describing isn't sort of the ideal that I hope somebody goes and does.
00:06:17.160I think it is, as I said, sort of that obligation that everybody should feel that they have.
00:06:24.560And also that I would underscore that people can fulfill in lots of ways.
00:06:28.180You don't have to live in the middle of nowhere.
00:06:29.760You can do these things in a city, too.
00:06:32.220You can do these things with all sorts of jobs.
00:06:34.220You can do these things in a family where both parents are working, in a family where only one parent is working.
00:06:39.140But I think a lot of what we need to aspire to, and, you know, the fancy term for it is pluralism, is the idea that having all of those different options is a good unto itself.
00:06:51.940The fact that people can see that option set and find one that works for them is part of what leads to human flourishing, part of what makes it all work.
00:07:01.120And one of the things that our markets have pushed against, the market just looks for the most efficient solution.
00:07:09.680And that might be fine if you're just trying to sort of maximize your GDP growth.
00:07:14.960But if the most efficient solution is to push everybody into any particular lane, especially the kinds of lanes we've been pushing people into, you don't actually get the outcomes you care about, which is the ability for people to live good lives.
00:07:29.600It's interesting you use the word obligation, our obligation to others, to our children, to our neighbors, really sort of old-fashioned Protestant talk that I haven't heard in a long time from Protestants or anyone else.
00:07:44.200It's not a worldview that, like, Ken Griffin, you know, talks about or probably believes in.
00:07:50.220Where does that – well, why don't we talk about that anymore?
00:07:53.020Where does that obligation come from, and how do you restore people's sense of it?
00:07:56.980Well, I think it's common to a lot of religions, right?
00:08:29.520You know, I think you don't see it as much today for two reasons.
00:08:33.920One is that it is constraining, right?
00:08:36.480The entire premise of obligations and duties as opposed to merely rights and privileges is that there are things that you should be doing even if they are not the thing that is the most fun at that moment in time, even if they are not the thing that you personally want to be doing at that moment in time.
00:08:54.700Sometimes just because it is the right thing to do and it is, you know, something that is important to the well-being of those around you.
00:09:03.780A lot of times I think what you find in these moral traditions is that also in the long run, it is good for you, too, that there is a recognition that humans are frail, flawed people.
00:09:17.300And simply pursuing what the economist would say is optimizing your well-being at every moment in time leads people to choose all sorts of things that are not actually good for them at all.
00:09:28.920And, you know, that's what I find fascinating about speaking about these kinds of concepts of obligation and duty in the good life is some people get very skeptical of this.
00:09:39.580They're like, oh, yeah, but, you know, no one's going to choose that when they could just have all this other stuff instead.
00:09:45.340But you step back and you look at all of the available data and you say, no, no, they will actually be happier if they choose all this stuff.
00:09:52.900You know, people who are married are happier.
00:10:21.780And in a sense, and this goes back to where you started with, you know, what is conservatism?
00:10:27.000It's a recognition that for people to lead good lives and make good decisions, they need to be operating within this structure.
00:10:35.200They rely on institutions, their own families, ideally an education system, ideally the broader culture to shape and form them and help them make these kinds of decisions that will benefit them, they themselves in the long run.
00:10:52.000We're not just asking for fixed bayonet charges, you know, into machine guns.
00:10:58.020We're talking about things that will be good for them, will be good for those around them, will be good for their own kids.
00:11:04.480But that we know are not things that they're just automatically going to choose by themselves.
00:11:11.900And so just, you know, this is the other thing that you just like, well, why aren't we doing this?
00:11:17.280Part of it is people just don't like being constrained.
00:11:19.080Part of it is we have adopted this sort of what I call market fundamentalism where economists and their way of thinking have somehow persuaded a lot of people that, no, no, no, just everybody choosing what they think is good for them at every moment with no constraints is actually the way to optimize welfare for themselves, for the nation, for the economy.
00:12:26.060And I think part of the answer is the sort of more skeptical or cynical one that, you know, this generation has not been especially thoughtful and obligation oriented.
00:12:40.420Man, you ought to join the State Department.
00:12:42.500That level of diplomacy is awe-inspiring.
00:12:47.160Many of my friends are boomers, let me say.
00:12:50.960But I also think part of what we saw happen is that we went through – the boomers lived a life where everything did just seem to work.
00:13:01.420That, you know, if you look – and sorry, I always come back to the economic side of these arguments because I see them sort of infecting our culture.
00:13:10.540You know, you had these folks like Milton Friedman as a classic example of someone who was sort of making this very public case that literally his best work is called Free to Choose, right?
00:13:22.240And what Americans were experiencing in American society was that this just worked.
00:13:28.220That because we weren't paying attention to and were instead taking for granted all of that institutional capital we had built up in the American culture, because we were taking for granted that we were the dominant industrial power, you know, far and away ahead of anybody else.
00:13:46.180Because it felt like, oh, you don't have to worry about these things.
00:13:50.140You can just leave people free to choose.
00:13:52.280They will just make these kinds of decisions.
00:13:55.280You know, investors will just invest in the best things.
00:14:05.560And this is something I write about a lot, right?
00:14:06.860Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, had this idea of the invisible hand, which if you go back and look at what he was actually talking about, what he was describing, like literally in the paragraph where he writes about the invisible hand, he has all these requirements.
00:14:21.020Like if people prefer investing domestically to investing in foreign countries, if people focus on doing the things that will lead to the greatest outcome, you know, the greatest output and most jobs, then the economy will work.
00:14:36.800And in this generation, just all that got erased.
00:14:54.740And this is why I call it market fundamentalism because it sounds like a derogatory term.
00:15:01.240Obviously, I'm using it somewhat derisively, but it's a descriptive term.
00:15:05.360It is a fundamentalism just like a religious fundamentalism that misinterprets the original texts and ideas to create this very absolutist, easy-to-live-by framework.
00:15:19.320Even though it's probably not actually true and probably isn't actually very good for people.
00:15:25.860And that is the course that the U.S. set itself on and American culture set itself on in a period where things were working well, right?
00:15:37.620And then, especially as the Cold War ended, as we sort of moved into this new world, I would say just it went off the rails.
00:15:46.300And we started making choices in our foreign policy and our economic policy that assumed a whole bunch of things that certainly weren't true anymore, even if they ever had been true.
00:15:57.280And I think in both our culture and our economy, we're now sort of grappling with the consequences of it.
00:16:04.280People are watching you, without your knowledge, every time you go online.
00:16:08.920Sorry to be creepy about it, but it's absolutely true.
00:16:11.480Data brokers record all of your activity, everything you do when you turn on your phone, your computer, your laptop.
00:16:18.740That includes your search logs, everything.
00:16:21.240And they sell that information to advertisers, scammers, even government agencies.