From Bicentennial to Semiquincentennial: Class of ’76 TFAS Alumni Conversation with Mark Levin

Roger welcomes Mark Levin, bestselling author, nationally syndicated radio host and constitutional lawyer, for a special conversation recorded live at the 2026 TFAS Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. Mark and Roger reflect on their shared experience as members of the TFAS Class of 1976 during America’s bicentennial and discuss how that formative summer shaped their commitment to liberty, constitutional principles and public service. 

They examine how the United States has changed over the past 50 years, including the growth of government, the expansion of the administrative state and the increasing national debt. Levin shares his perspective on the proper role of Congress, the separation of powers and the ongoing debate between originalism and the idea of a living Constitution. Additional topics include presidential war powers, the influence of the progressive movement on American institutions, changes in the media landscape and the importance of civic education as the nation approaches its 250th anniversary. The conversation also highlights the role of organizations like TFAS in developing informed and courageous citizens who can help preserve the American experiment. 

The Liberty + Leadership Podcast is hosted by TFAS president Roger Ream and produced by Podville Media. If you have a comment or question for the show, please email us at podcast@TFAS.org. To support TFAS and its mission, please visit TFAS.org/support.

Transcript

Live Conference Introduction And Reunion

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Today, you're listening to a special episode of the Liberty and Leadership Podcast, recorded live at our 2026 TFAS Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. This year's theme, Developing Courageous Citizens, reflects the moment we're in as a nation as we approach our 250th anniversary and the responsibility we have to carry forward our principles from our founding fathers. In this conversation, I'm joined by Mark Levin, best-selling author, nationally syndicated radio host, and constitutional lawyer. Mark and I first met nearly 50 years ago as students in TFAS during America's Bicentennial, which makes this conversation especially meaningful. We discuss the state of our Constitution, the growth of government, and what it will take to preserve the American experiment in liberty for the next generation. Here's my conversation with Mark Levin. Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast, a conversation with TFAS alumni, faculty, and friends who are making an impact today. I'm your host, Roger Rean. Well, good afternoon, everyone. This is going to be fun, I think. I'm really looking forward to it. I emailed Mark a few months ago and I said, Mark, I need a favor. I know you're one of the busiest men on the planet trying to save our country. And we've got 200 some dear friends coming to Washington who care about that same thing. Would you give up a little bit of time and join us for a conversation here today? Then I pulled the real card, which was we met 50 years ago this year, when we were students at what was then called the Charles Edison Memorial Youth Fund, now the Fund for American Studies. And we came to Georgetown and met in a hot and humid June day, and then six weeks together, uh joining not only the bicentennial, but taking classes on comparative political and economic systems. I interned for a congressman from Illinois, Philip M. Crane, great conservative, and Mark interned at the White House. And uh I remember the one big difference that made is on the 4th of July, he got to be on the White House lawn for the fireworks. And I was with the crowds on them all. But it's been a great friendship, and I've had the opportunity to watch Mark become the great one. And what a difference you've made for our country. Thank you. Well, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

This is a really good man. A really good man. And um this is a fantastic organization. I don't go to a lot of places and speak and so forth and so on, but when Roger calls and he doesn't call often to do anything for him, and uh but this is a very important organization. It had a major influence on me. When I interned at the White House, Gerald Ford was present. But I was a Reagan guy. And we were in the research office for the speechwriter. But I have to admit they were very, very kind to us. But to give you an example of what goes on, the head of the research office said, Come with us, we're going somewhere. And they he got in his car, the head speechwriter, I forget the guy's name, we go to this place, and it is the Aaron Space Museum, which opened in in 76. And a gentleman comes out and he gives us a tour and so forth, and then he talks about how they're going to cut the ribbon from a signal from space, from satellite. And he says, But I have this scissors. It's in my backpack just in case. So we get back in the car and we go away, and the head speechwriter says, Do you know who that was? I said, No. It was Mike Collins, you know, Apollo 11, who never did get to walk on the moon. And I said, Well, why the hell didn't you tell us that when we were there? Could have gotten the guy's autograph or something. But that's the sort of thing that you uh that you do at the fund. It's very exciting and you learn a whole lot and you have lifetime friendships.

Big Government And Debt Reality

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Well, it was uh that was an interesting summer because not only was it the bicentennial, but as Mark referenced, it was the great showdown in Kansas City between President Gerald Ford and Governor Ronald Reagan, which President Ford prevailed there that summer. But Mark and I were among those students who were Reaganites, and I actually went to the convention a month after the program ended. But uh, Mark, back then, you know, we were very concerned at the drift in our country. We certainly were uh supporting Reagan because we thought government was too big, it was spending too much, taxing too much, it was running deficits. In fact, I pulled up some information about things, and it had been going under a number of years, have been growing, but it doesn't sound like we've had a lot of success. In the 50 years since we were there, on the one hand, government spending has only gone from 21% of GDP to 23% of GDP, but the national debt has gone from 33% of GDP to 120% of GDP, and the administrative state has grown tremendously. We've seen some efforts, especially by the Supreme Court, to rein that administrative state in some, but where do you think we are now, 50 years later? Are we winning? Are we losing? Are you optimistic or pessimistic?

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Well, first of all, this president did cut 350,000 jobs out of the bureaucracy, and look how difficult that was. And they identified a tremendous amount of fraud and waste, and look how difficult it is to cut that. And when I listen to the Democrat Party today, I just realized this is a party that's like a foreign entity in our country. Whether at war, they can't support the war effort, they can't unite behind it, whether it's illegal aliens, they defend the illegal aliens over the citizen, whether it's securing the border, they want the border wide open. They're not even funding the Coast Guard right now, which is something that ought to be funded as opposed to all this redistribution stuff. So I think we're in a tough spot, very tough spot. I wrote a book called The Democrat Party Hates America, and a lot of retail stores didn't want to sell the book, but it sold nonetheless. And I go through chapter and verse from its very beginning through right now, and it really hasn't changed. It just gets behind different groups of people, different causes, or whatever it is, but it's never embraced Americanism. It's never embraced the declaration. When Obama used to read from the declaration, he would skip the parts that talk about our creator. That comes from Woodrow Wilson, who did exactly the same thing. He trashed the declaration, he trashed the Constitution. This is the so-called progressive movement, which is another book I wrote, really called American Marxism. They were the progeny of Marx. And they took that ideology and they Americanized it. The late 1800s and early 1900s. And Mises even said, we all talk like Marxists now, and we do. And I think it's worse today than it was 50 years ago. I think it's getting worse. I think President Trump is not a philosophical conservative, but he is conservative. He has a lot of common sense. And he has tried to deal with this budget. He's trying to deal with spending. He's trying to cut government and cut waste. And the two things he's up against are this, basically. This massive ruling class power structure that's in Washington, D.C., whether it's through unions or whether it's through the bureaucracy or whatever it's through, and the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party would rather people literally suffer than agree to cut anything. And my point on this would be that when you look at communist regimes, what comes first, the party or the country? The party. The party is the revolutionary entity. The general chairman of the party runs the country. I think the Democrat Party is similar in that respect. The Democrat Party needs to become all powerful. It needs to be really effectively, if it can, one-party rule, like they are in so many of these blue states. They don't want competitive elections. They don't want voter ID. They want all kinds of things that destroy the sanctity of the vote. So for the Democrat Party, it is about the party. And for us, it's about the country. And we will reject the party at times, or we will fight in primaries over nominees in Sover. But once they're set, they line up and off they go. So I think this is a grave danger to us economically, whether it's the budget, it's a great danger to us in every other respect, too.

Congress Powers And Administrative State

SPEAKER_01 8:57

It seems like one real problem, and it was pointed out on a session this morning by our senior scholar Don Devine, is that he is. That Congress has really shirked its role, its constitutional role in a number of ways. One, it's gone way beyond the Article I, Section 8 powers that was given in the Constitution, but now it seems to be impotent. It doesn't pass much legislation. It I don't know what they drew up there, but how do we need to restore Congress as a coequal branch of some kind?

Convention Of States As A Fix

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Well, a couple of points here. Number one, unfortunately, when you go back to the earliest part of our history, Congress wasn't supposed to be an entity that just got involved in anything it wanted to get involved in. That's not the way it was supposed to work. The Constitution would never have been ratified by the states if that's the way it's supposed to work. So Congress is doing things that was never contemplated at the Constitutional Convention or the Ratification Conventions, where the Constitution would not exist as it does today. You can thank people like Chief Justice John Marshall for that, Alexander Hamilton for that sort of thing, which is why the left loves Alexander Hamilton and they do plays on Alexander Hamilton. They don't do plays on James Madison, you know, that sort of thing. And in addition to that, what Marshall did also with Hamilton's support was he expanded the authority of the judiciary. And so Marbury versus Madison, you'll hear even at the Federalist Society, people cheering that decision. I think it was a contemptible decision by a man who was enormously political, who was the Secretary of State under John Adams, and who used that case to expand the authority of the federal courts. Again, if the federal courts at that time were viewed to have the authority that Marshall effectively gave them, there's no way that our Constitution would have been adopted. So you had two things going on at the same time: the massive expansion of judicial power, federal judicial power over the states and over the federal government, and a massive expansion of Congress's authority over the states and over the people. And so when we say Congress should assert its authority, I guess we're talking about that in the sense of separation of powers between the different branches. Otherwise, it has far exceeded its authority. And the fact is, this vast leviathan that we have isn't even in the Constitution. And when you read people like Montesquieu and so forth, he would say that that's tyranny. The whole point of a representative government and consent of the people, that was the key. That was the key to our revolution. The whole point of the bureaucracy is to avoid that. And so does the Congress have the power to delegate what is effectively now, all the lawmaking that's taking place in the administrative state. It's all lawmaking. They have fines, you can go to prison, they have all kinds of things going on. Montesquieu would say, no, no, no, no. That's not what I had in mind. That's not representative government. And Montesquieu was the most important philosopher during the constitutional period, power checking power. So to answer your question, we don't have the construct that the Constitution sets up. We have something different. And then we go through these spurts, like the beginning of the 1900s with Theodore Roosevelt and then later Woodrow Wilson, and another spurt during the New Deal, and another spurt during the Great Society and so forth, and even under Nixon, where all the branches seem to agree that the federal government should get bigger and stronger, and who should do what becomes somewhat ambiguous. So to answer your question, this is one of the reasons I've been one of the leaders of the Convention of States movement. People say, oh my God, you have a constitutional convention? No, that's not what the Constitution says. It says two ways of amending the Constitution. Congress. Well, Congress is not going to control Congress. And Congress is not going to control the federal government. The federal government's the problem. And people knew that. So who proposed this? It was George Mason. And he said, and it was two days before the end of the Constitutional Convention. He basically raises his hand and says, hey, fellas, yeah, well, what if something goes terribly wrong? And we're relying on the same federal government to start the constitutional amendment process, they're not going to do it. And so almost in passing, they have the second process, which is the states, the state legislatures, period, can propose amendments, and then they have a convention of states to discuss those amendments. So I love it when people say, we'll have an out-of-control constitutional convention. I said, we already do. It's called the Supreme Court. We have an out-of-control constitutional convention. But it would be hard to actually have it out of control. You need 34 state legislatures to do it and 38 to ratify an amendment. So I don't see a lot of things getting out of control there. Yes, it's very strange what we have. Now we have four branches of government. The fourth branch is passing all the laws and instituting all the fines and the penalties. We have a Supreme Court that basically decides on whatever it wants to decide on. We have a Congress, if it wants, can pass laws on anything it wants to pass laws on. So I support Convention of States.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

I'd like to see us repeal the 17th Amendment of direct election of senators and replace it with states election. That's two of us.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

In fact, I wrote a book called The Liberty Amendments. Don't buy any of them. I'm not pushing it. I don't need it. I'm just saying, and that's one of the things I propose in there. That screwed up the whole system, the direct election of senators.

War Powers And The Constitution

SPEAKER_01 14:33

But Mark wrote a book, Liberty versus Tyranny. Yeah. And that one I recommend you buy and give it to anyone under the age of 30. It's a great book for young people to read. But I am curious to follow up on just asking about the idea of declaring war. Congress has the authority to declare war. Our presidents for 50 years have gotten involved in conflicts without going to Congress first for a declaration of war. Where do you think that stands today in terms of when we should have a declaration of war versus what the president should be allowed to do without a declaration?

SPEAKER_00 15:06

You know, I my wife will tell you, my beautiful wife Julie, who's here. I uh I've really dug deeply into this lately. And I went into Madison's notes and I looked at the Committee on Detail, which drafted the first version of the Constitution. And what's interesting about this is they debated this. This was a serious issue. The first draft of the Constitution had Congress shall make war. And so Pickney and Butler, some of the others said, Well, whoa, wait a minute. A committee of God knows how many, they can't be the commander-in-chief, they can't know what's going on and so forth. But on the other hand, we don't want a king, we just dealt with that. And so they came up with declare war, but they rejected make war. And all but one state delegation voted to remove make and replace it with declare. Now that's Article I. Now, under Article II, the presidential power in terms of foreign policy and national security is plenary. He's the commander-in-chief. Why? Because they also understood, even back then, before there were missiles and tanks and all the rest, somebody's got to be in charge of this thing and call the shots. So there's an ambiguity that was purposely put there because they couldn't resolve it themselves. That is why the last 50 years have done what the last 50 years have done. I can tell you what's not in the Constitution. What's not in the Constitution is that a president has to get authority from Congress in advance of taking military action. That is not in the Constitution. You can imagine what a disaster that would be. You could never have preemptive strikes on a country. And we're talking now, facts do affect the situation. You're talking about hypersonic missiles, you're talking about things that can blow the country off the face of the earth. So it's nice to have a long debate about it, maybe later, but you can't have a lot of debate about it if you think it's going to happen or something of that sort. No country does that. No parliament does that, no country could do that, and our framers were not stupid. As to declarations of war, well, what is a declaration of war? Let me ask you this. If Congress says we declare war on Botswana, and the president says, Well, what the hell are you declaring war on Botswana? We don't care. We're declaring war on Botswana. Does the President have to then send the Marines in the air? No. So the idea that a declaration of war is a condition precedent to war is simply not true. So how do you resolve this? There's two ways. The power of the purse, and only in a certain way, because if Congress today passed a bill that says, no, Mr. President, you can't do that, he'd veto it. And they don't have the but their budget cycles. And so what Congress can do is say, uh, we're not giving any more money to that. Now you know how I know that works? Because that's exactly what they did in 1975 to Gerald Ford. He wanted$1.4 billion for the South Vietnamese. They said, no, you get$700 million, wind it down, and he announced the war's over. Congress has the power of the purse. If they weren't so busy redistributing wealth, maybe they would actually focus on what their power is. The other power would be impeachment. I don't recommend that. He wouldn't be removed, but that's a power that Congress has. But Congress does not have the power to make war. The 1973 War Powers Act is utterly unconstitutional as far as I'm concerned. You want to amend the Constitution, fine, but you can't use a statute. In my position, it's the same as every Department of Justice under every Democrat and Republican president since 1973.

Originalism Versus Living Constitution

SPEAKER_01 18:46

And the third way, of course, is elections. They have consequences. So earlier we were talking about the fact that we've drifted a long way from our constitution. We aren't living under it anymore. I think you said uh I call it a post-constitutional America.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

Doesn't mean we're authoritarian, it just means we're not exactly that. That's all.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Yeah. Yeah. We still give these to our students the Declaration of Independence. We made them look like passports because they're very important to maybe we can use those for voting. Yes. No, no, no. Just stick a photo in there. So we're living in this post-constitutional America. Your old, I guess, boss, the great Attorney General Ed Meese, was part of the movement along with you and Justice Antonin Scalia to push this concept of originalism against this idea of a living constitution. Could you we haven't used those terms the last two days? So I thought it would be good to bring up the living constitution versus what original's all about, because in our law programs, I think it was a dean at George Mason who said, we're the only law school in the country that has students study the Constitution. The other law schools, they just look at a few cases, and they're mostly cases since Roosevelt was president. So we want them to look at the Federalist papers, those original debates and notes that you referenced before. Talk to me about that idea of originalism and how important it is and how influential it's become.

SPEAKER_00 20:11

First of all, this idea of a living and breathing constitution comes directly from Wilson and the so-called intellectuals of that period, the American Marxists. They're the progeny of that ideology. And he wrote about it, and I've written about him writing about it. And what he says, he first starts with the Declaration. And he says, the Declaration is all well and good. He gave a speech at Independence Hall. He said it's all well and good. The first part is just a bunch of slogans and everything else, you know, natural law, unalienable rights, all this other stuff. That's all cute, that's all interesting. And they thought about that back then. We don't have to think that way. That's what they said. But it's the next part where they list over 20 complaints against the crown. That's what we should focus on. Because they wanted those things. They wanted a new government to address these problems and so forth and so on. This is the ideology of the left. So the whole idea of the Judeo-Christian value system fused with the Enlightenment, they reject, as they must. Because if your ideology really is formed in an Americanized, customized form of Marxism with economic socialism, you have to reject the Declaration in the American founding. That's why I say the Democrat Party, the Marxists, and the Islamists, that their ideologies and beliefs are completely incompatible with the American system, which is why they want to destroy it and impose their own system. They just, it's not about, okay, you Americans live one way and will- No, it's about conquering the American founding, the American belief system. So the courts started to pick up on this ideology, the activists, we call them activists or whatever we want to call them, which is they view the job of a judge or a justice to advance an ideology. The Constitution is old, it's just represented by the white Christians. Slave owners who were at the Constitutional Convention and their friends in the States, the ratification conventions, and uh it's something that can be changed and should be changed. And Wilson wrote, and the others that were with him wrote, he couldn't make up his mind, but he finally settled on the judiciary. He said, the judiciary is where we make the change. Why? Because the people can't touch us. That's fine. So we will make the change from the top. You know, Marx talked about a revolution from the bottom up. The revolution here has been from the top down. There was an Italian communist philosopher, Gremski, who said in the West, they like their country. See what Marx didn't figure out, because his whole ideology is defect. The proletariats are middle class. They go to war and they fight for the country. They're not going to overthrow the country from within. And so what Gremski figured out is okay, we need to take over elements of the government and the culture. It's going to be a slower revolution, but a top-down revolution where we force the people into this revolution rather than the people rising up, which is sort of the kind of thing that we experience here in some ways. So that's how they view the judiciary even today. Originalism came about because Ed Miese had had enough of this. And we had a number of people at the Justice Department, Kenneth Cribb, some of the others, who were well informed about originalism, which had been written by some other people and so forth. And Mises himself, very much the scholar, he studied these things himself. And he gave what is considered in legal circles a very famous speech at the American Bar Association, the first speech he gave, where he politely but directly condemned the legal community and especially the judiciary. And he gave the kind of speech that Thomas Jefferson would have given in somebody like that. And he brought people into the Department of Justice at the Deputy Attorney General, Associate Attorney General, Assistant Attorney General level, who all understood that the mission was to fix this. The selection of judges, when he was counseled of President Reagan, that was also the left calls it a litmus test. So actually applying the Constitution is a litmus test, you see. And he said, yeah, if that's the litmus test, then that's a litmus test. And Reagan, too. And so that's how you got a scaly on the Supreme Court. So originalism is basically, and lawyers debate everything. They debate what originalism means, even if they're originalists. I love going to the Federalist Society, there's like three camps. I go, okay, where's the bagels? I can't deal with this. All right, so me as an originalist, you look at the text. If the text tells you what it is, it is. If the text is somewhat conflicting with another part of the Constitution or somewhat ambiguous, then you look at what they said at the time. What did they mean at the time when they said it? Not what do we mean today, what did they mean at the time? So you'll you'll search through Madison's. There's a whole archive of things you can look at, and that's simply what originalism is. It reminds me people are saying, oh, you're a right winger. No, I'm a constitutionalist. That's what I said. You're a right wing. Excuse me. Since when did being a constitutionalist, a conservative constitution, right wing on the spectrum? No. We're right in the middle of the spectrum. Everybody else is over here and over here. You know, you leftists are leftists for a reason. Guys over here, they're not constitutionalists. Some of them are actually neofascists, but they're not constitutionalists. So any chance I get, language is important. I try and pull it back to the basics. Now, excuse me, we're not right-wingers. Or uh, excuse me, originalism is constitutionalism. Or excuse me, I'm not into nationalism, I'm into Americanism. I think it's important to take our language back, explain what we mean, like you all do here, like you do in the program, because we've let it kind of unravel.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

I think someone this morning referenced Scalia saying, you know, he had a stamp or wished he had a stamp that you could he could use that said terrible idea, but constitutional. And people have the impression that when originalists issue an opinion that says something is constitutional or not constitutional, they're giving personal opinions about what they would say.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

Well, the media like they're always talking about the right-wing court or the conservative court. And they do that, they just look at the numbers, who voted which way. Many of them don't bother reading the decisions, or they'll read a decision or a dissent by somebody they like, and that's it. But obviously, that's not it. That's not how it's supposed to work.

Media Change And New Threats

SPEAKER_01 26:33

Are you encouraged that there's some positive change taking place in the media in our country? I mean, we're seeing, I mean, you're you're in the media. Washington Post, we know their changes underway. They're putting we had Dominic Pino from there, who's their economics writer now, they heard from National Review. Corinne Hajar, who's our former Rago fellows, joined the editorial board. So there's encouraging things there. And of course, your voice is as strong as ever. That's been a real problem for decades. And now I think it's looking like there's some light at the end of the tunnel. What do you think? Where are we with the news media?

SPEAKER_00 27:09

I think we see both. I like the examples you point to, they're very important. But then I see, and I won't use this audience to get into something that I'm dealing with, but then I see podcasters, which is a whole new platform of communication, particularly with young people, which in many ways is toxic and poisonous. I see that too. And I also see foreign governments and influencers, so-called, having an enormous impact on these platforms. You mentioned the free press and Barry Weiss, she's doing a fantastic job. CBS now and 60 Minutes, not moving them to the right, just trying to make them more objective. Uh, you're right about the Washington Post, Mark Thiessen writes there, he's really good, and people like that. But we do have a serious problem, and it's thanks to new technology, and we thought more competition the better. But there are things going on that are very destructive to communication, and I think destructive to the country. And so I feel like in part it's my responsibility, not because I'm Don Quixote, just because I'm me, to take these elements on and to fight these elements and to push Americanism, to push the sort of things you folks do here, and that we believe in, that red-blooded, patriotic Americans believe in, and the founding up to this point, and for what our armed forces have fought for for so long, I think that message has to get out now more than ever. And just to circle back to this organization, this is such an important organization, and there are others that are not stepping up to the plate. In fact, they're being devoured by these elements that young people have access to what I call Americanism. The truth about our founding, the truth about why our constitution is so brilliant, the truth about the capitalist system, why that's such a brilliant system. And I think uh right now we're on defense. You're on offense, you're on offense, I'm on offense. But as a general matter, we're on defense. So we have to double our efforts. Whatever we do in our individual roles, however we can increase our activity, increase our activity. And there's a lot of people who have awakened to the fact that we have a problem. And the enemy, whichever enemy you want to pick, they are deep into our culture now, they're deep into our classrooms now, they're spending billions of dollars, and they're getting into our psyche, and that's the problem. So to answer your question, if I look at some individual platforms, yes. But if I look at a big horizon where people with millions of followers are saying the most ridiculous outrageous things, I think we have a problem.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

Thank you for taking them on. Well, it's I uh brought with me a newspaper I bought in the summer of 1976. America Celebrates 200th. Someone said to me, Well, that's great. The Washington Post didn't say America mourns its 200th. They said celebrates. And it's funny, the sub-story here, times it seems like times never changed. Israelis liberate hostages 50 years ago. And that was when Commandos took over three planes and flew to Uganda. But what is interesting in here is there's a story in here that is this was 50 years ago saying despite the intense political conflict in our country, Americans are coming together to celebrate our bicentennial. So again, times don't change. We've had conflict throughout our history, and uh we've pulled together when needed, whether it's when we've been in a major war. And so the real question is, how now in 2026 do we take advantage of this opportunity of America's 250th to do more than just, you know, come together as a country, but to have a reset to restore the narrative that you've tried so much to focus people on of the real story of our founding and overcome the fact that these progressives you're talking about have been infusing our classrooms with things like Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States and the 1619 project of the New York Times to distort our history, to disparage our founders. We're trying to do it at TFAS, of course. You do it through your books and your radio and media. And I think there's hopeful signs that this year, based on the work of not only TFAS, but the Bill of Rights Institute, the Jack Miller Center represented here, and other organizations, we can turn a corner and restore a love of country, a patriotism that we really need to continue to keep our republic.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

I agree a hundred percent. And also, you provide a foundation of knowledge and information that those of us who aren't students but our parents and grandparents can use too. Nothing more effective than teaching your kids and your grandkids about America. Nothing more effective than that. My patriotism, I didn't get it in the classroom, I got it from my parents. Now, sometimes it doesn't work, but most of the time it does. We are an army of hundreds of millions of people who love our country. It used to be enough to go to work, to make money, to pay your taxes, take care of your family, be a good citizen. It's not enough anymore. You've got to be an advocate for your own kids and your own grandkids with them, with their schools, because the private sector, whether it's a nonprofit organization like yours or or company or whatever it is, that's what's going to save the republic. That is we free people doing what we want to do, the way we choose to do it. That is what's going to advance the cause of Americanism. Not me or somebody else, you in your own situations and so forth are going to do that because the American people love their country. Because this country is about we the people. It's one of the few countries on the face of the earth that talks about we the people, that we're the sovereign, that God gives us that power because we're his children. Not the people on Capitol Hill or anywhere else. They're not the sovereign. We're the sovereign. They act like the sovereign, which is part of the problem. Look, there's always a black sheep in the family, and I know you're all thinking, yeah, but what about Frank and Sally? I got it. I got it. I got it. But what about all the rest of them? You can have an enormous influence. And you do, I'm sure, because you're here, you're doing more than most. I think that's very important, and certainly supporting groups like this, I think that's very important too. And even telling your wave your kids off of certain things, say, no, I don't know about that guy, I don't know about this, in a persuasive way, not in a demanding way. And I think that would help too.

How TFAS Shaped Levin

SPEAKER_01 34:03

I would like to, since our time is running short, ask you to reflect a little bit on your experience in 1976 at the program. I do remember, this just popped into my head today, that at our closing ceremony, we heard from then Representative Jack Kemp, Randy Teague's boss at the time. And we shared the John Engolycheff Outstanding Student Award, was given to Mark and to me. So I'm not bragging, but I'm just saying, just saying.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

Should have been given to him. Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 34:37

And we were we were there on uh the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, Mark from Temple and and me from Vanderbilt. But how did the program have an impact on you? I mean, you were already one of those solid guys, like I think I was at the time, who, you know, were seeing things straight and committed, principled young people dedicated to conservative values. But how'd it help you in your career?

Courage And Episode Closing

SPEAKER_00 35:03

It's 50 years ago, and I always think about that experience, sir. It's an amazing thing. The combination of classwork and the internship and the camaraderie. Look, 50 years. And there's others, but still, it's inspiring. That's the best word I can use. You know, I grew up outside of Philadelphia, middle class family, some years lower middle class, depending on how my parents did with their little store. And uh I always wanted to come to Washington. And just like the gentleman who was here before, really good guy and articulate, I get this thing in the mail, out of the blue, and it's not a solicitation, it's hey, you can come to Washington and you can do all these things. And I remember giving it to my mother, and I said, What about this? She said, You ought to do this. I said, Okay. And then there was the scholarship he talked about. And Mary Castler. As a matter of fact, my mother spoke to Mary Castler, and Mary said, Don't worry about that. We'll take care of that. And they did. And it's one of the most memorable things I've ever done, believe it or not. Well, you would believe it, you run the thing. But it's one of the most memorable things I've ever done. And I remember almost every step of the way. I even remember the professors, I remember the coursework. Because you go to school and you learn about economics in a very generic way, in a general way. But here you were really learning about markets, market activity, what happens when you don't have markets and socialism. Really dig in. Same with foreign policy. It's just so fascinating. So you leave the program wishing you didn't leave it, wishing it went on all year long. And you take that whole process with you. I did. I did, and went on to do other things I won't get into, but I left this program and I decided I needed to get the hell out of college as fast as I could. Because I hated it. Because I was conservative and they were all liberal. Temple University in North Philadelphia, I said, I gotta get out of here. And they really gave me the reason to do it. So there was a course, I forget what it was, to get to law school and everything. If you got straight A's, you could jump. So I went from a good student to a great student to get out of college, you know, to get out. And then I went to law school, same thing. I went to the dean and I said, All right, how do I get out of here in two years? It's a three-year case. He said, You're not allowed to. So what do you mean I'm not allowed to? It's three years because they wanted the tuition and so forth. And so I've always been moving as fast as I can, as hard as I can. And people will even say to me, So, why are you? I said, because life is very limited. And there's certain things I want to do. And I want you to believe me when I tell you, this inspired the hell out of me, this program. And I've done a lot of things and been to a lot of different groups and so forth and so on. But this is a unique life experience because you live with the other kids, you eat with the other kids, you have classes with the other kids, you go off, you do your internship, you come back and you discuss it. The camaraderie was outstanding, and the quality of kids that they pick. It's just a very interesting mix, and people are really interested in learning. So I can't say enough good things about this front here. It's just terrific. Well, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 38:24

I'm glad you used that word about inspiration. I got it down to if someone says, What does TFAS do? I say, we recruit students, we educate and inspire them, and we send them out to change the world. And you can educate kids, you can bring them in the classroom in front of great people like Professor Ann Bradley and Professor Sam Goldman and others you've heard from this week. You have to inspire them too, to be courageous leaders. That's why we have this as our theme, courageous citizens, because it does take courage. And Mark and I were talking about that backstage about nowadays you can get canceled easily and get all this pressure, peer pressure, and other types of pressure if you don't have courage. So that's so important. So, Mark, thank you very much for being with us today. I have something for you. I have a side gig as a member of the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee of the U.S. Postal Service.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

Well, hold on now. I go to the post office all the time. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

Well, do you have a first day of issue of the stamp I'm very proud of of William F. Buckley? No, wow. So there you go. Thank you. Lindsay Craig and her then colleagues at National Review Institute submitted a proposal of the Postal Service. I heard about it, and as a member of the commission, I said this is a great idea. And they were issued last September. Try to buy them. You can get them online and use them. But also, we recently had a first day of issue. Sadly, it wasn't you because you have to be dead three years to be on it. It's of a different great one, Muhammad Ali. Ah. So he was the greatest. You are the greatest. Oh no. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast. If you have a comment or question, please drop us an email at podcast at tfas.org. And be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app and leave a five star review. Liberty and Leadership is produced at Podville Media. I'm your host, Roger Reim, and until next time, show courage in things large and small.