For hundreds of years in English speaking courtrooms, people have sworn in oath to tell not merely the truth, but the whole truth.

Recognizing that to tell only part of a story can be a form of deception.

In today's media environment, many of us only hear parts of stories curated to reinforce our preexisting beliefs and to generate outrage.

This show was created to offer a place where thoughtful students and commentators on the great issues of our time, could share their views with you and give you a genuine opportunity to decide for yourself the whole truth.

This episode of The Whole Truth is Made Possible by the Doran Family Foundation Ikon Global Consulting.

For our eighth year in production of the Whole Truth, we decided to bring you a special extended edition, many of our episodes of featured multiple guests discussing a single subject from different points of view.

Today, I want to spend a bit more time in one-on-one conversation on a variety of topics with thoughtful voices offering perspectives I think you may not hear elsewhere, and therefore are important for you to hear in deciding for yourself the whole truth on these matters.

I know, and I'm trying to be respectful here, but it's a strategic blunder bordering on stupidity for the United States to implement policy that looks to outsource its energy independence to our global rivals, and then hope that those rivals don't use it against us time and time again.

And by the way, if blood diamonds or clothing made in sweatshops bother you as they should, then you're gonna hate the thought of wind and solar made from the brutalization of minorities and dissidents in China.

Well, and welcome to Nick Deluliis who is the CEO of CNX Corporation.

And somebody that I think that we've been wanting to talk with for a long time.

You have quite a profile online.

You've been described as a dissident, living in truth a policy provocateur immediate environmental group fact checker.

On the question of diagnosis, can you tell our viewers what you believe about rising global temperatures and the extent to which they constitute a threat to the quality of human life in the United States and around the world, both today and looking out over the coming decades?

It's a great question, David.

Good to be with you.

And, and thank you.

Diagnosis is an excellent choice of, of Word in this instance with this issue because to me, that lends itself to math, science, data, rational thinking, and much of that has been let go or jettisoned and replaced with something different when we're assessing what I believe to be the most critical issue of our time.

And what I think is the most critical issue of our time isn't necessarily climate change itself, but some of these poor policies and in that policies that are being forced upon society in the name of Climate Alarmism.

And it brings to mind a a description.

I heard once of a a religious writer where they said he was a popular preacher and his business was his words.

And I think that's applicable today.

What we're seeing indeed are preachers of a religion.

Mm-Hmm.

It's an increasingly intolerant one.

And what they're doing is they're, again, doing away with science, rational thinking data.

And they're replacing that with some creative writing phraseology to create a visual optic in our minds with regard to this issue.

And, you know, the phrase words and, and the the different catchphrases very well by now, as well as I do code Red Existential Threat, climate Emergency the United Nations Secretary General is very creative in this arena, coming up with terms like the highway to climate hell.

Mm-Hmm.

And things like, -It's like reading movie titles.

Yeah, almost a Hollywood script.

Yeah.

Hollywood script.

Boiling planet, broiling planet.

Right.

But what's a rational person to think to, to the issues that, that you laid out?

Yeah.

I would say the self-conscious sort of literary quality of these slogans make you wonder whether people in general dis, disassociate in some way with their, with their pregnant - what would you, what would you see as kind of the content of that faith?

Is it anti-consumerism?

Or, or what, what is the religion there?

There is a religion there.

I agree.

It's certainly anti-consumerism anti-capitalism anti, I think at the end of the day, individual.

And in many ways, and we can talk about this with specific examples anti-human, if you're anti-carbon and anti-access to reliable, affordable energy, in the end, you're going to be anti-human.

You look at the, the facts and what a rational person sees with respect to, to climate change.

Everyone understands, everyone should understand climate change has been with us for millions of years.

Right.

And it will be with us as long as there's a planet earth.

We also know that for many, many years and periods of time before the advent of the industrial revolution, when the human being figured out how to harness that magical power of the, the carbon atom that we have experienced on the planet much more severe swings in climate.

Mm-Hmm.

There's many examples of that.

One of which, 5,000 years ago, the Florida Keys first appeared they were underwater for significant periods of time prior to that because of sea level.

During the time of Christ, you had a situation where the Mediterranean region right, was much higher sea level and and much warmer in temperature than it is today, but you still had the Roman Empire, Right.

That managed to flourish during that time.

What I'm gathering is a carbon future is inevitable, number one.

I, I'm also, yeah, I assume that you agree that lower carbon is desirable.

So, I think higher efficiency is desirable and higher efficiency in terms of our energy infrastructure in our economy necessarily will equate to lower emissions, whether it's lower emissions of carbon dioxide or whether it's lower emissions of sulfur dioxides or particulate, it doesn't matter.

Those two things, - So, we'll get there.

We'll get there.

We are, we, we are getting there through, Getting there.

Things like natural gas and through things like nuclear.

What will not get us there, particularly globally again, is the concept that wind and solar or EVs are these zero emission sources of, of transport or of power generation.

So, you're talking, [crosstalk] is it really comes down to renewables and the, the current emphasis on renewables you believe is misplaced.

Not just misplaced, but we're putting all of, Our eggs into one basket, - Mm-hmm.

And it's based on a small handful of flawed assumptions that, again, looking at the physics and the math of it definitely lead you to a completely different policy regime than what we're currently pursuing today.

But that brings us to, I would say, sort of the broader picture here.

And that is the impact of environment on the structure of our society.

Your notion that pro-carbon is pro-human your notion that carbon is the key to a kind of quality of life that pro-carbon is pro-US in pro-freedom pro, pro-carbon sustains the middle class values like this.

I think your, your, your book, your very noteworthy book which by the way, five stars on Amazon, quite something addresses the inter-relationship between environmental and social policy.

How do you see that inter-relationship?

I think it's a, a very strong one.

And, and it goes back to an ideology.

I think at the end of the day I'm a staunch anti-leftist.

I, I don't think that the left has anything good in store for the individual or for individual rights.

And I'm a big believer in individual rights.

So, if you think about different sectors of economy, if you wanted to control the individual and put that control in the hands of a higher authority, it could be a religion, it could be the state, it could be whatever you choose.

You could choose maybe finance you could choose maybe healthcare or tech.

If you could give me one choice, I would choose energy.

Because once again, energy touches all these other sectors of economy.

And if you can control the access to energy and the cost of that energy, then basically you now have control of the individual.

And that's the types of things that we're starting to see.

This is not about in the end, I think from an ideological perspective, much of the environmental movement, it is a religion, and it is not about CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

It is not about weather.

It is about control of the individual.

So, if you start to think about, well, here's what the availability and price of electricity will be, that's one thing, but now we're seeing what will be on the menu and what you're eating in your kitchen.

Right.

- Right.

So, the carbon footprint of hamburgers and of ice cream and a beer, those things are now being called out by none other than the United Nations.

The United Nations.

And now they're starting to ask questions, why should we consume those?

Is it, is it ethical to consume those types of foods?

So, now we're seeing that transfer into diet and the cost of food and food scarcity.

Right.

Yeah.

You can see the concept of what they call 15 minute cities, which is sort of taking fire in Europe, and we'll be here soon enough.

But the concept of a 15 minute city is that you and I will be told to live in certain urban areas that are going to be within so many minutes of public transportation, because that will be the transportation option that we've got.

It's either public transportation or public transportation.

We'll be told it will live in whether they're apartments or whatever type size of dwelling that will be.

And again, it goes back to this issue of control.

In the end, what I think this is, is largely aiming at over the long haul.

And I must give credit to the left because I think the left is very good at playing the long game.

Very patient in that regard.

They want to create a situation where the thinking goes from relying on yourself and relying on yourself as an individual to then having to rely on, again, that higher authority.

It could be a religion.

We've seen, I'm, I'm a Catholic.

We've seen that, - Yap.

Pope Francis in terms of what he is looking at with regard to policy lately or since he's become Pope.

Frankly, it's more socialism than it is Catholicism.

And the environmental sort of thoughts behind that is a big tactical driver for what he's after.

But it could also be the state.

Well, we were talking before the show actually.

Life has become interdependent in many ways.

The idea of individual self-reliance, as we understood it in the 19th century is something that we have sacrificed to live in cities and so forth.

And yet it is very, I think what you're arguing is that it's very important to adhere to these principles as a matter of culture, as a matter of politics, as a matter of consensus.

Think of the automobile, the automobile's a a wonderful example of this.

The automobile was almost a link where even though there was a migration towards cities and towards urban areas, the automobile was still that sort of component, that tool that could be used to sustain, to preserve the freedom, Right.

Of the individual.

Well now, whether it's through electric vehicles and then deciding under, you know, grid emergency days or climate emergency days, because again, the reliability of wind and solar coming into question, right?

There's almost policies designed to erode grid reliability.

You can't charge your electric vehicle today, which means you're not driving today, or again, the dependence on public transportation, Self driving cars.

That's another variation on that, it seems to me which sort of defeats the purpose of a car.

Right?

And by the way, there's a flip side to this beyond, we're talking about this in the context of the developed world and in the West I'm also thinking about this in the context of the developing world.

Right.

There are billions of people on this planet today that do not have access to reliable, affordable energy.

And life for them is very harsh.

It's very brutal.

Right.

What gives us the moral high ground to think that we've got the authority to dictate when and how, and if they're going to have access to reliable, affordable energy, Right?

Well, I think that's why we have the impasse on these climate accords and so forth, all the exceptions being carved for these quote developing countries.

Well, There is a, a major equitable question there.

I can see.

- There is, and, and you also on the flip side on the other end of that spectrum.

So, you've got an individual suffering in a developing world that is relying on the ability for innovation to do its thing and, and for energy security to do its thing.

On the other side of this spectrum, you've got sort of the the high priests of this movement.

And if you just think through what they're doing versus what they're saying, that also creates a bit of an ethical dilemma, because I see a huge level of hypocrisy there.

Mm-Hmm.

We see the United Nations Secretary General, Right.

With his phraseology and his creative wordsmithing, but he still holds conferences and exotic locales with tens of thousands of attendees.

- Right?

That has an egregious CO2 footprint cumulatively.

Right.

We've got the, the self-proclaimed climates are.

Right.

The unelected climates are who, again, going from confab to confab, he's traveling via charter jet.

We've got a Hollywood movie star who fancies himself quite the eco warrior and likes to make movies about climate change.

But what do we see with him?

He's sailing from port to port on a gigantic carbon dioxide spewing yacht.

Why are they saying one thing for the rest of us and doing something different?

Well, the answer is they don't want their quality of life to be eroded any more than we want ours.

And they know that if they were to live by their own sort of, Right.

Tenants, that that would absolutely happen.

You've also written about sort of engagement that is being on the sidelines is unacceptable, I think the quiescent, I've got the, the.

Political quietism.

Political Yeah.

Quietism.

And so forth.

Yeah.

So, what is, what is what is an app - What overcomes what is the opposite of quietism?

How do you counter as you say, a faith, which is taking hold?

The problem with the faith is that a faith proceeds whether facts sustain it or not.

So, it's, it's hard to see how a sort of mindset is contradicted by, say, the reality that sea levels are not advancing at Rohoboth Beach at all.

So, what, what is what, what is the answer to quietism?

So, the, the answers to how we get to policies that are informed that that are sound versus where we're at now, it does go back to this duty, a moral duty to evolve from political quiet to one of advocacy civilly, of course.

And, and to do that with civil discourse.

So, that is a bit of an evolution.

That's going to be very dependent person by person, individual by individual.

But as leaders in business or as leaders in academia, as leaders in communities, there is a responsibility to make sure that we are speaking up in a way where we're getting these policies, right.

These policies have gigantic implications, not just for our nation, but frankly for, for the world.

And then once you do that, once you've taken that step, always wrapping yourself in the math, in the chemistry, in the physics, in the science of things, not the science, but the scientific method, right?

Where you're looking at just objectively and clinically, what are these policies telling us with respect to CO2, what are they telling us with respect to affordability?

What are they telling us with regard to local ecology and environment?

And when you start to do those assessments clinically, I think the answer become very apparent very quickly that the policy paths we're on right now are the absolute ones we should be avoiding at all costs.

And so, the alternative which I think maybe this is a fair summary, is that the free market will actually have beneficial effects on a problem that people more or less agree, is there.

The free, free economy will solve it and preserve freedom in the process.

If you allow, Something like that.

The free market and American innovation and ingenuity to take center stage, it will do what it always has done.

It will find a way to, a better place quicker and more cost effectively than anything that you could come up with via policy.

Well, this is really interesting, Nick.

Thank you very much.

Our goal is to put the power back in the hands of the people.

We have two parties right now who ascribe litmus tests to both their voters and their politicians, and say that that's the way that they need to govern.

That's not how our communities are structured, though.

And so, the forward party here is, we're here to put the power back in the hands of the American voters, and we're gonna let the voters decide what they want.

Tell me about yourself, Lindsay.

How did you come to the reform - to the forward cause.

Yeah.

Yourself, because you've been, you've been active in partisan politics.

Very, Yeah.

Very Very was very much on the inside of GOP politics for better part of two decades.

It's where I started my career and, and found a home in the Republican party.

Worked at a number of the different party committees, the campaign committees.

I was at the Senatorial committee, and I worked at the RNC for four years worked on MIT Romney's presidential campaign and launched a public affairs firm following that campaign.

And one of my anchor clients was Speaker Boehner at the time, so.

- Right.

I had an opportunity to work for, for John Boehner on his political shop.

And you know, starting around 2015 I, I saw a real shift in the behavior of the candidates I was working for.

You know, I had really looked to kind of servant style elected officials as, as candidates I gravitated towards.

So, I'd, I'd worked for Michael Steele and and, and, and Mitt Romney you know, speaker Boehner, people who had accomplished great, a great deal of things in their lives.

Right.

And, and were really principled leaders.

And, and I saw the profile and the rhetoric the profile of the individuals and the rhetoric that, that they espoused really starting to shift.

And Lindsey, that's fascinating 2015, Mm-Hmm.

2015.

And that means, Well, I would say it, it, the, the rhetoric predated that too, David, but I really saw people leaning into it as a campaign tool in 2015.

2015.

Yeah.

Well, th, that, that's interesting because I've, I've encountered other people, other walks of life, eg.

Mm-hmm.

Academia and so forth, who also sort of identify that year for some reason.

Yeah.

Which is a - so alright.

So, you encountered this.

So, I encountered that and was familiar with the work of, of No Labels.

So, an organization that had, had, Right.

Created the Problem Solvers Caucus in, in Congress, which I think is a, is, is, is a great effort, and one that I think can be replicated a across the country and in state houses.

And and so, I, I, I liked the notion of, of bridge building, creating opportunities for collegiality incentivizing you know, better collaboration and bipartisanship.

- Mm-Hmm.

Still didn't feel sticky enough to me.

I met a group in 2017 early called The Serve America Movement.

And they also frustrated by the rhetoric, the la, lack of accountability on the part of our elected officials.

And, and their, their version and vision for change was to disrupt the duopoly, the two-party system to create a new political party in the United States of America.

And, and so, they were doing that state by state.

When did the - when, when did Forward come up?

That was 2019.

So, the Forward party was the vision of Andrew Yang, former Democratic, - Right.

Presidential candidate.

Andrew left the Democratic Party and had come to be very excited about a lot of the structural democracy reforms, like ranked choice voting, non-partisan primaries.

So, one of the things in the reform community that we talk about in a shared spirit is our, our collective why.

So, there are a number of different efforts in the reform movement and, and our collective why is a more functional and representative government a government of that, that that has accountability.

Yeah.

What fun - yeah, what functional means to me is overcoming that dysfunction.

Overcoming the dysfunction - Which is the partisan divide.

Mm-Hmm.

Yeah.

Would that be a fair statement?

I think that's a very fair statement.

Yeah.

And you look at why that partisan divide exists, and why, if we look back to, to years like 2015, we've seen it get worse and worse, and it's the incentive system.

Third parties generally coalesce or appear organized around presidential candidacy.

- Yeah.

Maybe they leave an organizational footprint, maybe they don't.

Yeah.

In modern history, certainly.

Modern history, that's the way it - so you are doing something which is very different.

Yeah.

Which is a ground up.

Yeah.

And actually, if you, if you look at historical references, the last time that this was successful in American history, in the creation of the Republican party, stemming from the wigs, it was a bottom up.

It was a, it was very much an effort of coalition building.

Right.

It was not a singular individual that everybody coalesced around.

No, that's right.

In fact, they had some difficulty nominating, I think Fremont wasn't it in 1856?

Yeah.

In other words, they had conventions.

I think Lincoln was one of seven or eight possibilities in 1860.

So, that was not candidate driven.

Yeah.

No, we are, we are very much building this from the ground up.

The, the sequencing and the relationship between structural democracy reforms and the launch of a competitive movement that introduces new independent candidates and more competition that sequencing is something that has to be done state by state.

And it is a long game.

It's a long build.

I, I, I applaud and understand the desire that many of these efforts have out there to, to create more competition at the top of the ticket and to do so in, in the current climate in 2024.

But the reality that we face is our voting structures actually don't allow for that competition to really be successful.

And, and so, those, we need to explore.

Two-party system baked into our electoral system, Yeah.

Because of winner take all.

Because of winner take all.

- Yeah.

First pass the post.

Yeah.

Winner take all.

Is there a way of overcoming that within the structure of our electoral system?

A hundred percent.

There is.

A hundred percent.

Okay.

Explain.

And none of this is mandated in the Constitution.

Right.

The way we participate and exercise our civic rights as Americans is something that we have an opportunity to innovate, Right.

And reform constantly.

You know, America has a great history of innovation.

When something doesn't work, as Americans, we're creative.

We get out there and we fix it.

We we love competition in America.

We also very much celebrate individualism as Americans.

And and yet that that that spirit of independence is not reflected in our political structures right now.

Now it is reflected in the voters, because you look at now we have unprecedented numbers of Americans now self-identifying as independence, leaving the historical two-party system.

The largest part - party in America, Largest party in America.

So, you're actually at the head of the largest party in America, Exactly.

So that's what we're doing.

We're building a home for the independent voter.

Right.

How does this operation work?

You're a CEO you're running it how do you, how do you, how do you start?

Yeah.

Yeah.

With the idea of kind of forming a political party from the ground up.

Well, I'll tell you the, the two-party system has done a really good job pulling up the ladders behind them, so that nobody else has an opportunity to get in there and compete.

- Right.

And the navigating the legalities of, of campaign finance state by state in some places, municipality by municipality is really, really complicated.

There are a whole host of reasons, David, why no one's done this in 150 years.

But, but as I said, we are, we are playing the long game here.

And and so what it means is engaging state by state to understand how an entity that is a national organization can legally stand up state chapters.

And then how those state chapters can communicate and work to support candidates.

You know, at the end of the day, this is about people.

Our, our effort is about people.

It is for people, it's for Americans.

And the relationship that American voters have with the notion of our democracy is the relationship that they have with their elected officials.

Looking at this more broadly.

Mm-Hmm.

As somebody who's experienced in partisan politics what would be your, your general idea of how we have gotten to the point where we have gotten, I think that the, the largest party in America are people who would like an alternative to current parties.

How do we get here?

What, what role did the parties themselves play in in getting there?

Is it a Yeah, Yeah.

I think that in the history of this extraordinary country, we have seen the evolution of, of great change.

Yeah.

On, on many occasion we, we entered into a civil war.

We, we you know, shepherded through the, the Suffrage Movement and the Civil Rights Movement.

So, there has, there has for over 200 years been a, a pattern of shifts of unrest and, and, and movements to, to advance solutions.

And I think that that is where we are again in our nation's history.

And what's wonderful is that we do have this tradition of, of coming together, of coalescing around solutions.

And continuing to advance this great democratic experiment.

Right.

And I think that's where we, - Civil out civil war, not peacefully progressive era or peacefully.

Yeah.

We're gonna, we're gonna aim for the progressive era.

Yeah.

Right.

Peaceful solution.

But I, I'm saying this whole proliferation reminds me of what the progressive era must have felt like.

Mm-Hmm.

When, when suddenly you had lots of good government causes breaking out.

Yeah.

And responses to sort of new conditions.

What do you - but, but keep going.

Yeah.

I think that we have also, we are, we are in a period of unprecedented speed at which we are seeing new technological innovations.

Right.

Adopted and implemented.

And I, I don't think that our our general governing systems and, and quite frankly, just our kind of cultural norms are equipped to keep up with the pace at which we're adopting these, these transformative technological changes.

And certainly, with the advance of artificial intelligence, we're gonna see that.

Right.

Those changes happen, even, even faster Technological speed and innovation that leaves a lot of people behind, Leaves a lot of people behind.

Impossible for a lot of people to join.

Mm-Hmm.

So, you have classes of people who are sort of on the sidelines, Yeah.

And I would, I would say angry, correct?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I, I don't I don't mean to be cynical but I think for millions and millions of Americans who feel that their, their vote doesn't count and they don't feel represented the reality of the situation is, is in, in fact that they, they are not represented and their vote doesn't count.

Mm-Hmm.

If you're participating as an independent voter in the United States of America, you do not have a vote in, in your primary election.

You know, we are locking out candidates that would create opportunities for greater competition by creating unrealistic barriers for entry that also are not competitive with the current two party system.

Right.

If you wanna file as an independent candidate, in most states, the threshold for your filing is actually higher than that of the two legacy parties.

Hmm.

So, we have created a system that disincentivizes competition that does not fairly represent everybody equally based on the way that they, they register as a voter.

So, could you in some way call Republicans and Democrats complacent?

I don't think that either party is, is complacent.

I think they're quite active.

Yeah.

Actually, in continuing to maintain their, their fierce grip on that two-party system.

And, and if you look across the United States at the number of competitive districts, congressional districts.

Right.

It's, it's evidence of that fact that they have, they have become entrenched, Right.

And, and most districts around the, the country are decidedly red or blue.

Okay.

You've pointed out 1850s, the Republican party organizes without a candidate.

- Mm-Hmm.

This is not George Wallace.

This is not Ross Perot.

This is not Lafal this is they organized without a candidate, but they did organize around an issue.

They did organize around an issue.

Yeah.

There, there, there is an issue now in, in implicit in this structural reform must be, or at least you must be hearing I would say concerns and so on, that would give it a kind of issue, coloration of some kind.

Yeah.

- I mean, I think.

I would you say there's an there's a particular issue that drives this?

I wouldn't say one particular issue.

I would say it's, it's you know, kind of general stagnation in addressing a, a number of issues that are continuing to plague the American people affordable housing, immigration women's reproductive rights, gun violence prevention.

Americans are begging for leaders to address these, these issues.

And, and the solutions to those issues might come from what is traditionally considered to be a more conservative solution.

Or it might be something that's considered to be a more progressive solution to any one of those issues.

But the lack of willingness to explore those together in a way that is, is consensus focused, is something that American voters are, are, are really, really frustrated by.

And so, while you know, there are Americans that are single issue voters, of course I think that the, the momentum that we are seeing at forward is actually really much more due to a, a, a broader frustration on a, a whole series of issues.

Mm-Hmm.

Where do you see forward five, 10 years from now?

In other words, this is a very daunting enterprise.

I know you have a lot of ability, Yeah.

Between Andrew Yang and Christine Whitman.

These are real capable people in yourself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What kinds of goals are you setting for the, for the organization where you - you're, you're on, you're a party now, Yeah.

In two states.

Yeah.

South Carolina and Uttah.

What's next?

Where do you see yourself in five or 10 years?

Well we have, we have kind of three areas of focus where, where we're building, one is our candidate focus, so how are we recruiting and running candidates across the country and, and, and winning so that we have folks who are governing and serve as a proof of concept and an example of what can change you know, really showing, showing evidence of how this can be done.

The other is, is building a home for a movement of people.

So, what does it look like?

We have over 300,000 folks who have come to us from across the country.

We have 385 individuals who have been onboarded as formal leaders in our states where they are forming executive committees.

And, and, and really driving the work of building building a party, you know, kind of an Amway model, right?

Building out local volunteers and basis.

And then the third is actual ballot access.

So, what does it look like to achieve ballot access, State by state?

And so, the goals that we are setting for 24, 26, 28 and beyond are are a combination of those three things in a critical mass of states.

So what does it look like for us to start to run those candidates?

So, we start to see fulcrums in state legislatures across the country, folks who are caucusing together and working together to address these key solutions that are needed all across the country.

How are we building out that home?

How are we creating that infrastructure for a movement of people?

Folks are looking for a home in the political arena right now.

They want to find a place where they can make a change and make a difference.

So, how are we continuing to build and scale that for them?

And then how are we achieving ballot access in a critical mass of states so that then we can go to the Federal Election Commission and and apply for official party status.

And that a partisan divide must be overcome.

This, this is the beginning of what you are, what, what you're doing.

And thank you for telling us about this.

We're gonna be following this very, very carefully, I assure you.

Thank you for having me.

So, well, Lindsay, it's great to have you.

Anybody who's actually looked at the history of progressivism and progressive social movements over, over time understands that the founding means a great deal to us as progressives, primarily the values of liberty, equality, and a commitment to the general welfare that are seen in the Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the US Constitution.

These primary values, these animating values of the country have been the, the basis of almost all progressive social movements throughout time, whether it's abolition, women's suffrage, civil rights environmentalism, the expansion of social welfare provisions, all of these things for progressives, or grounded in the animating spirit of, of, of the founding of the nation.

Well, welcome to John Halpin, who is the co-editor of The Liberal Patriot which at one time was a newsletter and has now become an online magazine which is about the notion of promoting, as I take it, liberalism and patriotism, simultaneously inspired by Franklin Roosevelt's four freedoms.

As someone who has taught presidential speech has run projects on it, the suggestion that an organization today is inspired by Franklin Roosevelt's four freedoms is really, really interesting to me.

John, would you explain that?

Sure.

First thanks for having me on.

- Great.

So, you know, a liberal patriot in the shortest version would be someone who loves freedom in their country.

And we think about liberalism in several ways.

One, just being, trying to be liberal minded, open to alternative ideas civil discourse the adjective version of liberal, we think of liberal also in, in terms of enlightenment liberalism.

So the commitment to the rule of law constitutionalism in the US setting civil rights, civil liberties the whole monopoly of, of liberal ideas.

And then to your point, we, we also are inspired by Franklin Roosevelt's speech he gave in, in 1941.

Right.

And to us, the entire American Creed is the idea that you - we should have freedom of speech and worship and freedom from want and fear.

We could debate about, you know, the specifics of that, how to accomplish that.

But in our sense, the, the idea of what it means to, to be American means you have these fundamental freedoms in a negative sense, meaning the government can't restrict your rights to religion and speech, but you also have the economic opportunity and the safety from external threat or, Right.

You know, more immediate threats to be able to carry it out.

So, that's our idea of what, what liberal patriotism actually means.

Well, how, how old is this idea that that is founding a magazine inspired by a state of the Union address, January of 1941 on the eve of the war?

I believe and address that inspired the Atlantic Charter.

Yep.

And one that really set forth American War aims in World War II?

Well, I, part of our, our overall position with the liberal Patriot is to try and reposition in some ways the, the contemporary Democratic Party.

It's not our only mission, it's just part of it.

That's the tradition we come out of.

And our sense of the best part of the democratic tradition is what FDR laid out in that speech, which set up the Atlantic Charter and later the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

To us, these universal values are the most important in that ultimately, what the Democratic Party should stand for.

It's gotten a little off course on some of these recently, we're having a lot of debates about the direction of both parties.

But for us, it makes sense to think back to the political project and the universalism of, of Roosevelt.

And in a more practical sense, if you study elections, which we do a lot of political analysis, the F-D, F-D-R coalition fell apart a while ago, but the idea of trying to have a working class base for the Democratic Party is, is very important in our mind because right now it's a contested group of voters, and they're sort of choosing between two parties there.

They don't really like for different reasons.

And so, if you think about, you know, the high point of democratic politics, it really was the, the aftermath of, of, of FDR Franklin Roosevelt Universalism patriotism.

Mm-Hmm.

What's the connection, patriotism, universal values?

Well, the universal values of liberalism are as we've said with the four, the four freedoms.

It's particularly individual rights, civil rights, and civil liberties.

You have a constitutional system in the United States adherence to the rule of law.

And while not every country in the world has to adhere to these values, these are American values.

And we do tend to think of them as universal.

And that's why a lot of them, some of them come from religion becomes secularized, turn into the universal Declaration of Human Rights.

But there's a core understanding from phil, philosophical liberalism forward that individuals have, have you know, rights to their own sovereignty, to their own freedom of conscience, their own thought.

And the patriotism side of that is that's what America's about.

And we fought a lot of hard battles over this and wars, Right.

Internally over who's included and who's excluded.

And so, the universal patriotism is these are America's core values, and they define who we are as a nation.

Right, and also, we see our values as universal, and so, therefore, we are universalistic, even as we are a nation.

Yeah.

What is the importance Now, one of the things that I think it's fair to associate with presidents like Roosevelt, Reagan these era defining presidencies and so forth are patriotic revivals.

Mm-Hmm.

So, the New Deal comes as part of a patriotic revival.

Is there - what is the role of nation in all of this?

Even with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it's not binding.

You have to have nations, sovereign nations that uphold these rights and, and maintain their own economies, and have their own sets of of laws and regulations.

Not every country's gonna be the same.

They then make decisions about how to interact.

When we talk about economic nationalism, we're not talking about blood and soil nationalism, the, the bad kind.

We're talking about an inclusive version, which is to say, our country should focus on its workers, on its people on its own businesses, on its strengths should worry about its adversaries who are trying to undermine our way of being and stand up for those.

We have a partisan divide.

We have a lot of dissension in America, Apparent declining trust in institutions.

There are a lot of things that we can, we can identify as threats in one way or another to the cohesion, effectiveness, and unity of the American people.

What, what would what would your magazine would tend to emphasize as to our prospects?

Wither America?

We're in a very difficult time now.

Mm-Hmm.

Yeah.

We, we don't take a, a strongly pessimistic view.

We're critical of some of the direction of, of politics in particular.

And we try and get people to see beyond politics.

So if you, if you only evaluate America based on its politics or what goes on in Congress or the battles in the media, you would think that we're on the verge of completely imploding.

Right.

The American nation is quite strong outside of politics, and a lot of the work we do is to show that most Americans are good hearted people.

They, they get along with their neighbors.

They're not trying to make people bend to the knee to their way of thinking.

But if you look at our politics, you think the country's gone crazy.

Yeah.

And it has in some ways.

And so, part of what we're trying to get people to do is to take some of the politics out of their daily lives.

Huh.

There's no reason to politicize every relationship you have.

People have different views.

There's no reason to make them acquiesce to your, your point of views, we're pluralistic nation, and if we're, we're gonna get along, people have to accept people's differences.

Separation of well, that's right.

It would be politics, being the art of the compromise, the art of the possible and so forth.

And very interesting.

Of course.

FDR himself is an interesting blend of churchmen and politician in a way.

I mean, many of his principles sort.

How would you assess one by one the four freedoms in America today?

In other words freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom to speak, freedom to worship.

So, they're all, they're all contested right now.

I think they're all guaranteed.

They are.

They're all, they're all contested.

What's the rank order of the, of the con of the, of the contest?

I think, you know, freedom from fear is probably, yeah.

The external threat to the United States seems fairly well contained.

Right.

Although, you know, if there's a regional spillover in the Middle East, you never know.

I think the fear issue is more domestic.

People are worried about rising crime, Right.

In local places.

So, there's, and that's a part of it.

It is.

So, that one is contested, Probably part of it in FDR too.

Fear of foreclosure fear of stock market calamity, which you have nothing to do with.

Right.

That would be the, the, the, you know, the freedom from want.

And while America's about as prosperous it's ever been in, in its history, there are plenty of people in the United States today who are having serious difficulties economically in terms of the amount of income they have for their family.

So well, America itself is, is doing quite well in on the world stage.

- Right.

There are a lot of people here who aren't.

And in terms of freedom of speech and worship, I mean, I think most people could freely worship and speak their mind, but it's, it's obviously a big fight, and particularly on speech these days with the advent of social media and a lot of people trying to censor each other's speech.

Yeah.

If people would calm down a little bit and just allow people to say what they want, you know, within some boundaries, we'd probably be better off.

Yeah.

So, I think they're all protected.

They're all contested.

Contested.

And it's better when they're contested outside of the two-party system in my mind.

Because the two-party system encourages people to exacerbate the tensions in all four of the four, four freedoms Liberalism as I understand it.

In fact, I was actually a, a college kid who was writing a thesis and was in and around the White House at a moment when internal polls in the White House demonstrated that for the first time in polling history, the word conservative had become more popular than the word liberal.

This is years ago.

Now liberal is progressive.

What's the future of liberalism?

Uh, what is the future of the Democratic Party?

What is the key to the Democratic Party, would you say?

Well, obviously the two parties are locked, uh, deadlocked and, and both enable and unable in some ways, to, to craft a real majority.

The Republican party is not doing much better.

Right.

Um, and part of this is there are these cross pressured voters, people who would be, what, what would they, uh, the, uh, political scientists would call operationally liberal support, social security, Medicare, basic interventions and protections for workers.

But they're, they're socially conservative to moderate.

So their values are, you know, tied to religion, family variety of things like that.

This huge pool of voters, which tends to be disproportionately working class of all races, um, who want the government to be active in defending people and families, but also have fairly conservative, moderate social values.

- Right.

And, and the current structure of the two parties doesn't really represent them, so they try, uh, to do one part or the other.

Right.

But you, there's a huge pool of voters who are cross pressure.

They have to make a decision every four years, and they don't really like it.

And so you end up with very, uh, hotly contested, uh, races that boil down to a handful of states.

Now, it, it, it seems, uh, pretty clear that neither party can build a FDR style majority anytime soon.

No.

Now, it may just be the nature of modern media and politics and, and all of that, but part of it is what the two parties are offering or not all that appealing to this large pool of voters.

- That's remarkable.

There ever been five straight elections, like the ones we've had so similar, uh, one to the other.

Right.

Um, in fact, that goes back to '96, maybe even '92.

They've all been very similar.

Uh, by the way, I can't, can't resist, uh, asking this, uh, this idea of freedom from want, but, uh, income disparity.

Yeah.

Uh, in this country.

An interesting factoid about the, uh, FDR presidency is that it is probably from Herbert Hoover inauguration to fourth, uh, Franklin Roosevelt inauguration is probably the period of most rapid economic growth in America ever.

Uh, I think, uh, real wealth triples in that period, despite the trough of the depression with confiscatory tax rates at 90, 90%.

The word opposed on everyone, but yeah.

Yeah.

Um, do you see, uh, is, is liberalism in any way the future of the Democratic Party?

How does this, how does this income disparity that we're reading so much about, uh, implicate the futures?

Well, it cer, it certainly has relationships to how the government's funded and what the revenue stream is for the government.

And it, it's not as if the Democratic party, which traditionally would, would support higher taxes than the Republican party, uh, are advocating ma, mass increases in taxes.

You certainly don't see that.

I mean, they've, they've basically increased the level that, that they're not gonna win tax on, uh, raise taxes on.

Um, it's put pressure, fiscal pressure on the government to do, uh, everything that people want.

Um, neither party really wants to cut benefits to people.

Right.

They talk a lot about it, but no one wants to raise taxes.

So we have, uh, pretty high levels of deficit spending, which, you know, after a pandemic or things like that you expect to do, but at some point, you probably have to get a handle on it.

Right.

Um, the longer term issue of income inequality, um, is not something that can immediately be solved by government.

I mean, I think you can do things to help workers be in a stronger position to get better pay, but ultimately you need the economy humming along at a very, very high rate.

Right.

And you need strong unions for people to go in.

Right.

And advocate for, um, their proper and fair piece of the pie.

Um, and some of these things are in decline.

I mean, obviously there's been the long, long term decline in, in private sector unionization.

And, uh, you've also had a massive increase in wealth at the top, um, that, you know, it's not particularly anybody's fault.

It's sort of the distributions of the system.

Right.

Where people with a lot of money can make a lot more money, and the fields that are doing very well are not taxed very, very highly.

And they're, they're making out like bandits in some way.

So, and it's causing a lot of problems.

People at, in the middle or the bottom and working people are quite upset that they can't, you know, save some money at the end of the month for all the bills they have while people are making exceptionally high salaries.

And this was, this was, I think, most apparent when the financial crash happened, and somehow the government had to come in and bail out all of these bankers who... Well, the alternative was zero.

Everything's zero zero.

But it made everyone mad, right?

Yeah.

It made everybody mad.

It made everybody mad.

Yeah.

That, and it, that the people who were involved in causing the problem got bailed out at such a high level.

Right.

And, um, so I think that...

So you don't foresee a soak, the soak the rich tax, uh, which I believe, uh, Roosevelt, uh, implemented about 1937.

That's the one that put the... Yeah, well, The, uh, marginal rates at 90%.

The amazing thing was the prosperity of the country in that period.

Um, and I would say the great morale that America had in that period, um, the morale, the intangible effects of withstanding the depression and winning World War II just, uh, cascaded well into the future, sustain well into the future.

Uh, that's, um, um, do you think that the, well, you're not in the business of advising the Republican Party, but with the Republican Party, Democratic Party, a little more, a little less, uh, uh, evolutionary is a Republican Party doing anything, right.

Uh, these days, from your point of view, There's a movement, a small movement inside of the Republican Party to try and appeal to these operationally more left, uh, working class voters who are socially conservative and, and more nationalistic on immigration and things like that.

Um, you see it at, at places like American Affairs and, and American Compass, the work that Orin Kas and others are doing, but they're, you know, they're going against a, a, a traditional Republican party that is, is populist in spirit, at least in the Trumpist way.

Right.

But still, you know, Trump's biggest policy accomplishment was a massive tax cut for, for the wealthy.

So.

How about, uh, how about trade?

On trade?

Yeah.

No, I, I, I don't know.

I don't know the facts there.

Well, I mean, Trump's proposing a t... You campaigned on, uh, restrictive trade or high, uh, tariff barriers and protecting American manufacturing.

Now, did that work?

It didn't work to people's benefit, uh, in, in, in some places.

And now there's a, there's a proposal on the table for 10%, um, tariff on all imported goods, which, um, probably won't help a lot of, um, a lot of people.

So the, the Republican Party is sort of locked.

They don't know how to deal with Trump, which makes it, uh, hard for them to figure out how to appeal to a wider base of, of voters because Trump, uh, for whatever his political strengths, he doesn't bring a lot of people in.

He's got his people.

- Right.

He's got his, but he's got a ceiling on it.

Right.

And, and so Republicans have to figure this out themselves.

And, you know, you can't just run on culture war stuff all the time.

Neither can Democrats.

Right.

And expect to cobble together a majority.

I'm a sort of believer in the cyclical nation nature of American politics.

I think a lot of people have written about it.

Uh, Schlesinger had a theory of it, uh, [indistinct], uh, has a, has a theory of it and so forth.

This would be, uh, according to say, the [indistinct], uh, notion of, uh, uh, political time and so forth, a great opportunity, uh, for Democrats.

If you were, well, what, what would you like to see most, uh, happen with Democrats?

In, in the party?

Yeah.

Yeah.

In the short term, long term.

My colleague, uh, Louis [indistinct] has a great book out, uh, with John Judas called.

Right.

Where of all the Democrats gone.

And... After the emerging Democratic majority.

That right.

Which I read many years ago.

That's right.

So, and you know, the liberal Patriot has a lot of the same themes here.

Their basic argument is that the Democratic party is historic party of the common man and woman.

It's had a class inversion, um, in recent days where the trade union based, um, uh, working class vote has dissipated.

It had happened along racial lines to begin with.

They're now losing, um, working class voters who are black and Hispanic and Asian as well.

And their argument.

And I think our overall argument is that there's a classic versions in the party where a lot of highly educated, um, professional, uh, types run the Democratic party.

And so the party, as it's presented to the public, reflects the values and principles and language and approach of a lot of, a lot of people you see in, in, in higher education.

- Right.

Joe Biden was the opposite of that.

So Joe Biden runs against Scranton Joe in 2020 and dispatches all of the, the opponents that way.

Um, but as the head of the party, he still gets caught up in it.

And so the debates you see, um, on many fronts on immigration, on, on equality, um, gender issues, things of that nature, uh, tend to reflect the party's educated elites.

The problem is that that has turned off an enormous number of voters.

- Right.

And if you don't want them to go into the arms of Donald Trump for a variety of reasons, you might wanna rethink how you run the party.

And it's pretty straightforward, and you would think the party would be sensible and strong enough to carry this out.

Right.

But part of the issue here as, um, you would well know is that the parties are actually fairly weak.

And so they're controlled by what Louis and John call a shadow party.

Um, it's not, it's not a conspiracy.

It's that there's an enormous sum of money going into the development of ideas and politics outside of the parties themselves.

And on both, in both party cases, those shadow parties tend to be fairly ideologically extreme and say some odd things, and a lot of normal voters look at them and, and wonder, who are you talking about?

What are you talking about?

I don't understand it.

I don't really want to have anything to do with you.

And that's why you end up with the highest level of self-identified independence you've ever seen.

Yeah.

Right.

Um, so the party has to take seriously the need to attract a big tent.

Right.

Uh, attract more working class voters of all races.

And that means being operationally liberal and socially moderate to conservative, uh, or at least pluralistic, or at least not pushing things that drive people nuts, Juxtaposition of liberalism.

And patriotism, to me is very interesting and very apt.

Uh, as a student of Franklin Roosevelt, um, uh, my compliments, uh, for reaching back into history for a very constructive example, I think this is a, is a great area for the country.

Um, and I think that, uh, uh, there is a connection, uh, between liberalism and patriotism, which is something that is not, uh, uh, I would say generally spoken of, uh, in the course of our two party arguments and, um, in academia and so forth.

But I believe that this is a very valid connection.

And so my congratulations to you and my best wishes for your magazine.

And thank you very much, uh, for coming here and sharing this very interesting appraisal of where Democratic Party stands today and what lies ahead for it.

So there you have it, three unconventional but thoughtful voices offering views, which deserve to be heard and considered in making judgments about the whole truth on the matters, which they address.

I'm David Eisenhower.

Thank you so much for watching The Whole Truth.

This episode of The Whole Truth is made possible by the Dorin Family Foundation.

Ikon Global Consulting.