← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: Why Aren't Young Christians ‘Default’ Free-Market Supporters Anymore? | Mark Tooley
00:27:59
Young religious people who are not on the left used to support free markets “by default,” but that’s no longer the case, explains Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. He joined Jack Fowler on this edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” to discuss the issue.
Loading summary
Transcript32 lines
- [00:01]
A
Lifelock, how can I help? The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't. One in four tax paying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud.
- [00:08]
B
What do I do? My refund though.
- [00:10]
A
I'm freaking out. Don't worry, I can fix this. Lifelock fixes identity theft, guaranteed and gets your money back with up to $3 million in coverage. I'm so relieved. No problem.
- [00:19]
B
I'll be with you every step of the way.
- [00:21]
A
One in four was a fraud paying American. Not anymore. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply.
- [00:42]
B
Well, hello ladies and hello gentlemen. Welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words. I'm Jack Fowler, man fortunate enough to host this show. As many of you know, Victor is recuperating from his surgeries. And some might have already noticed that Victor is starting to stick his toe back in the water here. He's recorded a show already. I'm going to record a show with him tomorrow. But we're going to get you four shows a week. And one of the things Victor had wanted done, as you know, is that in his absence bring on some smart, worthwhile people. I think worthwhile is a compliment, Mark. Smart, engaged, that have something truly important to share. And Mark Tooley is such a person. Mark is the president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, has been the president there for I think 17 years, 18 years or so, Mark. Thereabouts. Yeah. So I'm so pleased that you're with us. And we're going to talk today somewhat about the Institute, but we're going to focus on the state of free market, not only as the free market, but the understanding of it, the understanding of it by conservatives and by all, and particularly the understanding of it by people who are in Washington and who make policy. So I have five questions. That's how we format the podcast in Victor's absence. And I will ask Mark the first question when we come back from these important messages. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, by the way. Mark, before I ask you the question, other than to say you've been president for 18 years, do you want to tell us a little more about yourself?
- [02:36]
A
I am a lifelong Northern Virginian, never left the area. I've been at the Institute on Religion and democracy since 1994. And I became, if you want to use the term, a church activist back in the late 1980s when I graduated from Georgetown University and was troubled by the left wing tendencies and the political witness of my Protestant denomination and made it by business to Try to reform my denomination, not realizing that was going to become, in effect, my lifelong vocation.
- [03:09]
B
Okay. Yeah.
- [03:10]
A
And that denomination is United Methodist Church.
- [03:14]
B
Okay. Still hanging in there a little. We're all still hanging in a little. I don't know. Depends on what a little means, but. Well, Mark, thanks for joining us. I want to let you know. Well, you know this. I bumped into you recently at a lunch in D.C. before that, the last time I had seen you was a few years back, and you were at the. What's a very large, very important annual gathering at the Acton Institute that it puts on every June up in Grand Rapids. Acton cares deeply about the morality of the marketplace and the morality and the virtues of the free markets. And I think that's fair to say you do, too. Now, we'll talk a little about the institute. IRD was founded in the early 1980s to stand by democracy and religious freedom, both then and still under attack from what I would rightly call Godless communism. But let's first get an understanding from you about IRD's principles. Mark, is democracy or our form, republican government, merely an operating structure, a way to establish laws and regulations, or our principles fundamental to democracy? Can we truly have a republican project? And I don't mean republican partisan. It's a republic unless it embraces free markets. Or let me put this in another way, Mark. You have to get used to these rambling questions. How intrinsic or central to America is our being a place where the marketplace is free and whose economic system is capitalism? How central is that? And when you're done with answering that. Well, maybe you want to start this off first. Would you give us a quick definition of how you would define free markets?
- [05:06]
A
Yes. The protection of private property and the protection of free markets are essential to sustaining democracy, liberty, limited government, rule of law, a state that can preciously exert its control and powers over private property. And the market is no longer a limited state, but one is that is potentially tyrannical. So I think the American tradition speaks to this very clearly and directly across three or however you want to count America's length across four or more centuries. And that we have always esteemed private property as a refuge for liberty and individual rights that must be safeguarded.
- [05:53]
B
And just to be clear, no free market, no America, or we're something, everyone's something. I mean, Cameroon is something. But this is central to who we are as a people.
- [06:07]
A
No free markets, no liberty, no free markets, no prosperity, no economic growth.
- [06:13]
B
Yeah. Well, Mark, my second question for you, and I'm asking This I'm a Roman Catholic and I believe there's been a prolonged effort by frankly ideological theologians and scholars at universities, higher ed scholars, I think tanks too, of faith, faith based institutions. There have been efforts to denigrate commerce, wealth, the marketplace, consumption, investment, profit and all else that comprises what we would consider capitalism. Again, in Roman Catholic circles, there's even a school of leftist thought known as liberation theology. It's pretty radical. I think it wears a Roman collar. But there may be liberation theology in Protestant denominations. True. I'm going to assume that you can correct me if that's not the case. Certainly, Mark, in our classrooms from K through college, K through 12 especially, and at Christian religious institutions, there is the promotion, a negative promotion, negative view of capitalism. So what is going on with institutional Christianity and the churches and their approach to capitalism and free markets? And that's one question. And related, are the advocates of free markets who are involved, possibly involved in these institutions? Are they unwelcome in the religious public square? And do the advocates for free markets just shut up, keep their head low?
- [08:03]
A
My organization was founded during the Cold War, specifically 1981, because liberation theology was prevalent not just in parts of the Catholic Church, but over the Curia and especially over the missions agencies of the mainline Protestant world, such that typically a mainline denomination would not have traditional missionaries in a place like Nicaragua. They would have missionaries doing propaganda work for the Sandinista Marxist regime in the 1980s. And this is what motivated the founding of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. It's also what motivated my own personal activism as a young Methodist growing up in my typical semi conservative mainline church in Northern Virginia, that most church people did not think that supporting a Marxist regime or supporting a Marxist guerrilla movement as in El Salvador in the 1980s, et cetera, et cetera, qualified as Christian missions. And specifically, the founders of my organization and our founding document, Christianity and Democracy, say that the church is not a political instrument, but when it does speak politically, it should have a decided preference for liberty, for democracy, for human rights, for religious freedom based on Christian teachings about human dignity. And it should be decidedly opposed to dictatorship, tyranny and oppression of persons based on conscience or their religious beliefs. That was the 1980s, thank God. Liberation theology receded with the defeat or the demise of the Soviet Union and its various proxy states, amplified by the fact that the denominations and the religious bureaucracies that were enmeshed in it have almost disappeared because the mainline Protestant world has demographically imploded. And so, good news, bad news. The religious left, as an organized entity barely exists today because it strength, it ran out of money, it ran out of a constituency, and people voted with their feet. And so most of the important conversations in Christianity in America, I would say, are on the right. But the danger is it could re emerge, as I'm sure it will. And also we have a new generation who have forgotten all of these lessons. And many young people are not on the left. But now they deem free markets and capitalism as hostile to faith because they are materialistic, they are supposedly secular, they are utilitarian, and they supposedly detract from the family and a sense of community. So we have to start all over with first principles in terms of explaining the morality and the spirituality of the free market.
- [10:59]
B
Well, Mark, we're going to get a little more into that in a later question and some of the efforts that you are hoping to undertake. Could you just tell us quickly who founded the institute?
- [11:13]
A
Well, the names that might be recognizable to at least people your age and mine would be Michael Novak, the Catholic thinker Richard Newhouse, the great Christian thinker who was then Lutheran, later became a Catholic priest and helped to found First Things magazine. George Weigel, still very much alive, the Catholic thinker. And Carl Henry, who was one of the great evangelical theologians of the 20th century and founding editor of Christianity Today magazine, were among the founders.
- [11:44]
B
Before we take a break and we get onto our next question. So I'm putting you on the spot here, and I know you're a very ecumenical man, but you're very, very honest man. You don't have to treat my church as a pinata. But do you see what you see out of Roman Catholicism? Do you see a pronounced lack of understanding of free markets as opposed to when, say, Michael Novak was still a great influence with Pope John Paul II and church pronouncements? Is there a is there disappointment there?
- [12:25]
A
Will you would have more insights than I do as a Catholic. But it's hard to find the great Catholic free market thinkers on the level of Michael Novak, certainly not ones who have a direct influence on the Pope like he had on Pope John Paul ii. There are some wonderful Catholic thinkers in this arena, many of whom will speak at the Acton Institute's annual university Samuel Gregg, Stephanie Slade and others whom I esteem. And I would say actually the deficiency is more on the Protestant side than the Catholic side.
- [12:59]
B
Okay. Well, I have a few more questions for Mark Tooley, and I'm going to ask questions three and four when we come back from these important messages. We are back with Victor Davis Hanson in His own words. We're recording on Monday 9th February, this episod. Not sure what day it's gonna be up, but it'll be up the following week. Victor is, as I mentioned, he's starting to do one or two of these shows a week now. And what Victor wants, Victor gets his show. So it's not the Jack Fowler Show. Aren't you lucky? So, Mark, again, thanks for joining us today. Here's a third question. I think you've touched on some of this. But Mark, we have often on this podcast discussed a growing ignorance in America. A lack of knowledge of fundamental which I think, and I think Victor believes too, is a function of a K through 12 education system that is more attuned to SEL, the acronym which stands for Social Emotional Learning, than it is to the old three Rs, reading, writing, arithmetic that was popular in past generations. Does this ignorance extend into our understanding by young Americans? And maybe even not so young Americans could be people in their 30s, 40s, 50s. Does this ignorance extended to actual knowledge about what free markets are and even what capitalism is? And then by extension, is there a misunderstanding by what socialism is and what communism is? So assess, if you will, the lay of the land regarding knowledge and understanding of these vital aspects of society, government and life, and including, if you have any desire to do so, into a spiritual life?
- [14:55]
A
Well, the brief answer to your question is yes. Obviously, there's been a growing superficial popularity for socialism among the young in that they have forgotten communism, they have forgotten the Cold War, they have forgotten the poverty, suffering and misery generated by Marxism, Leninism, and they have a romantic fantasy view of what socialism is, for whatever reason, lack of education or just a willful ignorance. But let me focus more specifically on young religious people who are not on the left and they're going to religious colleges, many of them, and many of them are here in D.C. working on the Hill. We have them as interns. They come to our events. And whereas 20 years ago they would have been by default free market, they are no longer by default free market. And even if they're committed conservatives, they're suspicious of the free market. And one example is several years ago I led a book study for some of our interns at my organization. So self selecting. Presumably they already agreed with the premises of my organization. And we read the Spirit of Democratic Capitalism by Michael Novak, a wonderful book that shaped my thinking when I was in College in the 1980s, explaining the spirituality and morality of capitalism, and they were not persuaded. At the end, they reluctantly granted they were maybe 60% in agreement with it. One student was actually visibly upset by some of its assertions. So again, even with conservative Christian young people, Catholic or Protestant, you have to explain what free markets are and what the moral basis is for them.
- [16:41]
B
Well, this has gotten a little bit into what will be the next question mark. But I did want to make mention about this that we can drafted this question. So I'm going to read it. Folks. We can no longer assume people who describe themselves as conservative will defend and advocate for the free marketplace. Bill Buckley did that when he founded our movement in 1955. The first issue of National Review stated the competitive price system is indispensable to liberty and and material progress, period. He had a lot more to say about that sort of magazine over the years, but this was a central tenet. Who could be a conservative and disagree with that Now, Mark, you're in the Capitol and as you said in your own case, your interns, but especially the people that you can be a young conservative, your instincts are I'm conservative, but you're ignorant of free markets. You may be into fair markets, whatever that might mean. Mark, what do you and the Institute intend to do about this? Do you have some concrete plans to ameliorate this in some way, shape or form, especially since you are in the Capitol, there's clearly a need. Can we use the word re educate, even though it's a very Soviet word? But can we re educate young men and women who are instinctively conservative but ignorant about their understanding about free markets and capitalism?
- [18:24]
A
Well, already for several years now, we've hosted a monthly, we call it a new Wiggery dinner. W H I G G E R Y for young people in D.C. we meet in our office every month, 20 or 30, to facilitate intimate conversation about classical liberty. And tonight we're hosting a new wiggery dinner with Dan Rothschild, formerly head of the Mercatus center, now at the Reagan Foundation. So we've already been working at it from that approach, but we're also starting a new program on Christianity and capitalism or Christianity and free markets. Someone on our staff will be publishing, hosting events, leading a fellowship, creating a community of religious believers in D.C. who are focused on making the case for the spirituality morality of free markets. The challenge being the wonderful acting institute that you and I, whose events you and I have attended over the years, deliberately stays out of Washington D.C. and does important work elsewhere. So there's no organized institutional Christian voice in the nation's capital making these arguments. So we aim to try to fill that vacuum. And another challenge is there are many outstanding Christian thinkers who are free market and writing about it, but because they don't work for religious organizations, they cannot use religious or theological language. So they're leaving that field open to others who do feel free to use that language to make their critique of the free market.
- [20:03]
B
I have one more question, maybe a sixth question mark, about the Institute. And I will get to that when we come back from these final important messages. Hey, ladies and gentlemen, back here with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words, recording on Monday 9th February with Mark Tooley, the long serving president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. Mark IRD is primarily concerned with the structure. Well, that may be unfair to say you'll correct me, but you go to the website, look at the Providence magazine, you are deeply concerned, I should say not primarily, but the structure of government and foreign policy. Your quarterly journal, Providence, that you're also the editor of, it regularly discusses matters such as just war theories and covers current conflicts and ethics related to these conflicts. Every year the Institute also hosts a conference on Christianity and national security, which I think is probably a shocking title to a lot of religious institutions, but it seems pretty attractive, like, wow, what's that all about? So Mark, what is the outcome you'd like to see from all these activities? Your publishing, your convening, your programming, you're advocating all these things in your long tenure overseeing IRD and leading it. What do you want to see come out of all this and what impact has it had on the body politic and social discourse?
- [21:41]
A
We want to see a smart and faithful and effective social and political witness by Christianity in America across churches and denominations committed to democracy, human rights, religious freedom for all, people committed to liberty. And we have seen vast changes over the course of our 46 year history. A lot of good change, the collapse of the Soviet Union, for example. But new challenges have emerged and the new scenery is such that denominations in the Protestant and evangelical world no longer matter. People are, if you're under a certain age, under 60, you're not interested in denominations. You're not interested in institutions, even if you're in a denomination, and you're self collating your religious information online. And maybe you have a pastor, but he's not your chief spiritual influence. You've got somebody online who may be your chief influence. So how you reach religious people in America is completely different from what you would have done 20, much less 35 years ago. So that's what we're trying to achieve, to make the smart, faithful Arguments on behalf of liberty within Christianity's political witness through these new channels of information.
- [22:56]
B
Mark, let me throw one last question at you. Unfairly, I didn't tell you in advance I was going to ask this, but I mentioned before fair trade. And Victor, we've talked about this frequently. I don't want to buttonhole or pigeonhole anybody. Victor, of course, was a farmer. And as a farmer you are buffeted by the vagaries of government and agricultural policy and your crop is harmed because some other country is underwriting that same crop there. He was a raisin farmer. So with the Greek government underwrites raisins and it puts raisin farmers in California out of business. So advocate of free trade. Yes, but what about fair trade? Where does free trade begin? In fair trade. And can you dress? I mean, there's a moral case to be made for that, isn't there? A religious moral case or not a.
- [24:01]
A
Moral and spiritual case for fair trade? Well, I understand that perspective and would especially do if I were a farmer or in an endangered industry. But looking at the macro picture, I would still assert that by and large a society is better off if the state does not attempt to micromanage the economy or micromanage trade and to accept there inevitably are going to be winners and losers. And I think there is some truth to when Milton Friedman said, well, if a foreign government was to subsidize an industry and make cheaper products that benefit the American consumer, maybe let them do that. Maybe that's for the good of America. But that's one argument.
- [24:45]
B
Yeah. Okay. Well, I will defer to your opinion and of course to the great Victor Davis Hansen. So, Mark Tooley, very appreciative that you have come on here. Give us the website for the Institute, please, so people can check it out.
- [25:04]
A
Yes, that's dird.org t h e I r d.o r g d I r.
- [25:11]
B
D.Org and does Providence magazine have its own website or can you find that? I know you can find it under the RRD website. We'll just let it go at that then. Maybe.
- [25:23]
A
Yes, it's providence. Org, but it's linked to ird.
- [25:26]
B
Okay, great. Well, thanks very much, Mark, for joining us. Thanks folks for watching and for listening. And we will be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words brought to you by the good people at the Daily Signal. Thanks very much. Bye bye. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website@victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features. In addition.