Thank you. Hi, I'm Bill Crystal.

Welcome to Conversations.

Our guest today is Christian Muth.

I'm very happy to welcome here and look forward to learning from Chris about

American politics, American conservatism, American political thought, and everything else as well.

Okay. So you went to Harvard, went to Chicago Law School, had a senior position in

Reagan administration, head of the most prestigious think tank in Washington,

the American Enterprise Institute.

You've written very interestingly on many, many topics.

How did you get into this racket?

I got into politics in the in the 1960s when I was a student at Harvard. I was not

highly political or formed. I was a good liberal in the sense that young men and women

are good liberals. I wanted, I thought that liberalism was the natural position of an intelligent well-meaning person.

I saw problems in the world.

It seemed to me that government ought to be out solving those problems.

And we were in the midst of a genuine political revolution in policies respecting black

Americans, the Civil Rights Revolution.

I grew up in comfortable circumstances, but would, my father always made a point of taking

me around the rural south and showing me the segregated life of the

south. He was a jazz aficionado and we would go listen to jazz on the south side.

So I was very and we would go listen to jazz on the south side.

So I was very committed to the cause of civil rights.

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