Nationalize or Not?: Matthew Continetti and Chris DeMuth Debate the Future of Conservatism

Uncommon Knowledge

Hoover Institution

Politics, History, News:politics, Science, News

4.8 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2022

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Matthew Continetti is the author of the new book The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism, an extensively researched and reported history of the conservative movement in America. Chris DeMuth is a former president of the American Enterprise Institute and currently a fellow at the Hudson Institute. In this conversation, DeMuth states that national conservatives (or “NatCons”) “are conservatives who have been mugged by reality. We have come away with a sense of how to recover from the horrors taking America down.” Continetti counters —in a typically conservative argument— that there is no need for NatCons to break away from the traditional movement, since they’re all in the same boat and agree on most of the important issues of the day. The elephant in the room in this debate is former president Donald Trump. What he says and does in the next year or two will be crucial toward determining the future direction of the conservative movement. Continetti and DeMuth agree on that.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Two of the nation's most influential conservatives and congenial gentlemen recently got into a scrap
0:07.6	One published an essay announcing that he had decided he'd become a national
0:12.3	Conservative the other wrote a letter to the editor questioning his friend's judgment and
0:17.5	Explaining that he intended to remain a conservative without national or any other adjective just a plain
0:24.7	conservative
0:25.8	Today, they're here to duke it out
0:28.8	Christopher D'Amuse and Matt Contanetti on Uncommon Knowledge Now
0:43.4	Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson. We're filming today at the offices of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington
0:52.0	Now a fellow at the Hudson Institute Christopher D'Amuse is a graduate of Harvard University
0:56.6	and the University of Chicago Law School. He served in the administrations of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and from
1:03.4	1986 to 2008 Mr. D'Amuse served as president of the American Enterprise Institute
1:09.8	He is widely regarded and I so regard him as one of the most influential conservatives of the last five decades
1:18.2	Now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute Matthew Contanetti is a graduate of Columbia University
1:24.1	He served on the staff of the weekly standard founded and edited the Washington Free Beacon and now serves as a contributor to national review
1:31.9	Mr. Contanetti is the author of several books the most recent published this very spring the right the hundred year war for
1:40.4	American conservatism
1:42.4	Matt is widely regarded and I so regard him as one of the most influential conservatives of
1:49.0	the last decade and a half
1:52.0	Chris Matt welcome
1:55.2	All right, here's the dispute let's set it up two quotations
1:59.6	Christopher D'Amuse in the Wall Street Journal late last year in an article headlined
2:04.7	why America needs needs national conservatism
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Hoover Institution, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Hoover Institution and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.