(00:00:00) Today I am very pleased to introduce to you Lynne Cheney a distinguished fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy research in Washington DC. Miss Chaney served during both the Reagan and Bush administration's as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 to 1992. A rather remarkable achievement. She has contributed to many Publications including the Wall Street Journal the New York Times Newsweek, The Washington Post and the Christian Science monitor a highly visible conservative spokesperson. She is host of CNN's weekend Crossfire and has appeared frequently on major Network news commentary programs. She also holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin. In her recently published book telling the truth why our culture and our country have stopped making sense? And what can we do about it? Mrs. Cheney argues that a broad attack on truth and objective standards is undermining America's moral and intellectual Integrity as you may recall Minnesota meeting this year is focusing on the information age now underway and how it will alter the way we work play learn and communicate with one another new technology gives us access to an amazing amount of information but also challenges us to examine the quality of the information. We are receiving mrs. Cheney is here today to talk about just that is truth whether in the boardroom the courtroom or the classroom a relative concept. When mrs. Cheney has finished her a dress she will take questions from the audience Gloria mcclenahan and Ken darling will move among you to manage the question and answer session. So now it's my very great pleasure to give you Lynne Cheney. Thank you very much. It's a great pleasure to be here today with all of you and I'd particularly like to take note of the students who are here from and wanton school here at under the sponsorship of Dane Bosworth bringing young people eighth graders in this case together with the rest of us for this Meeting of Minds in Minnesota. I for business reasons come to Minneapolis rather often. So I feel as though I'm not a complete stranger here, but as a child I used to come here regularly to my parents would bring my younger brother. Me here every January or February we were told that the reason was to visit my uncle Wilbur Who did indeed live here. But since then as I've thought about it, I think that what it really was was an exercise in humility for us because we came from Wyoming where we thought we were very tough and we thought we had put up with some cold weather, but they wanted to show us what really tough people were like and and so we came off in about the time of of the winter carnival. I thought it might be good today since I'm talking on a subject that's very abstract to begin in a personal way. I think sometimes that helps bring these abstractions a little closer to home. This book really did grow out of realizations that I had while I was at the National Endowment for the Humanities. I was very proud to be nominated for that position first by President Reagan and then by President Bush and when I went in for my confirmation hearings the first time I talked about the humanities in ways that I suspect many of you think about them in ways that I suspect most people think about subjects like history and literature. I talked about history as a place where we could find models of Excellence to inspire US models of Excellence that we might model ourselves after and I talked about literature as a place where we could find enduring truths truths that transcended time choose its transcended circumstances and that that brought us all together on kind of a common ground. I remember quoting from a man whose work had commanded a great deal of my time and attention when I was writing my dissertation. I talked about Matthew Arnold in my confirmation hearings and I particularly talked about Arnold's essays in which he talked about the goal of liberal arts study humanistic study as being to explore the best that has been thought and known in the world. Isn't that a nice idea the best that has been thought and known to put yourself in the presence. Of the best that has been thought and known and Arnold actually believed that there were ways to measure that by looking at things outside ourselves by looking at standards outside ourselves by being objective and disinterested. He quoted I remember in one famous essay from Hamlet's dying words to Horatio absent thee from Felicity a while Hamlet asked his friend to stay in his painful world and to defend his honor and to explain his life. I quoted myself. I remember from Shakespeare's Tempest the wonderful lines about men and women human beings. We are such stuff as dreams are made on. These days are wonderful and beautiful ideas that exist outside is and then Arnold believe we could use the standards to measure what we were currently reading what we were currently thinking about to see if it was the best that has been thought and known in the world. Well, this is how I came to the humanities but I quickly discovered it didn't take very long as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities to discover that this is not the direction in which the humanities were headed. This is a very old-fashioned retrograde way of thinking about the humanities. I was told by people in the humanities community and because I don't mean to portray myself as being especially Outspoken or Brave to take on the humanities Community. I never intended to go back into teaching. So it was pretty easy for me to speak frankly about what I thought is very difficult often for professors on campus has to speak very frankly and directly about what they think but it was easy for me easier than for them. And so I would speak out about what I saw happening to the humanities the ideas that were important were completely relativistic. The notion was there is no truth outside ourselves. There are no standards outside ourselves anything we think is true any standard we think exists is simply an artificial construct put together by the dominant group to oppress the rest of us. The dominant group in his case being Western Civilization white males a construct to oppress the rest of us. There's no truth no possibility for standards because there's really no reality outside ourselves. Anything we think is true or real is simply a construct. There have been people who've made this argument throughout the history of philosophical thought and there have been some rather remarkable responses to it. One of my favorites was dr. Johnson's when he was given his notion or told about this notion that there's no external truth. No external reality. He simply kicked the stone and he said it exists. It's a very common-sense response to it. And and in fact, it has a certain philosophical standing to respond in this very commonsensical way to the notion. There is no truth. No reality outside ourselves. There's only what we construct I once had a summer intern a very bright young man who told me about a professor of his at Amherst College who would come in to class and said there's no such thing as truth and my very smart not well educated in philosophy, but just commonsensical summer intern raised his hand and said, is that statement true? So you see this is a philosophically vulnerable position, but that does not keep it from thriving and when I would speak out about it the roof will usually fall in on my head. I open my book with a scene that occurred at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. When you read about it in the New York Times covered it so there is a you know, an objective reality out there. You can go check when I read about in The New York Times. I was I was really quite taken aback. It was a gathering of academics, but they were behaving in the most uneconomic fashion. There is a man named Stanley fish who something of a superstar in the academic world and he had obtained a pamphlet that I just written in which I suggested that enduring truths were what the humanities were about models of Excellence were what history was about Stanley fish had a copy of my pamphlet and and he walked back and forth across the stage waving it denouncing me too cheers from the audience but his para raishin the conclusion of his speech was what I found most astonishing. He said, you know mrs. Cheney says in his pamphlet that there are truths that transcend time and Circumstance. Mrs. Cheney says in this pamphlet that it is not the Golub scholarship to focus always on class race and gender then instead. We ought to focus on the truths the transcend these accidents of birth and his pair ation consisted of wavy my pamphlet and saying to Great cheers from the multitudes once you take away race class and gender. What do you have (00:10:27) left? (00:10:29) So you see it's his notion that anything we think anything we believe is the product of who we are now all of you. I know all of us know that we can never get completely beyond our biases. We're not God we can't get completely to the whole and total truth, but we've always thought that we should try At least we've always thought that until recently this idea that there is no truth outside ourselves. No objective reality out there that it's the goal of scholarship to explore is so influential in the humanities Departments of our colleges and universities that it made the workings of the endowment very difficult there would there was a constant stream of grants that did not have as their purpose Grant applications. It did not have as their purpose to discover scholarly truth to get to the reality outside ourselves, but that had Politics as a purpose one Grant. I remember was about Columbus. It was for a television program involved a great deal of money. And the treatment for the program presented Columbus as a genocide, 'l maniac and it had also in a section on the Aztecs in which it was not mentioned that they had ever practiced Human Sacrifice which of course is, you know, they did a massive massive scale. So this kind of attempt perhaps to restore some political balance that the people putting the grant together thought was necessary a greater respect for Native cultures a lesser respect for European cultures. The trouble is that in imposing his political Vision on the Grant application what they did was produce inaccurate history history that goes after different groups with different standards is essentially an accurate history. That was my life at the endowment. Once I left the endowment. I began to see how this kind of thinking has permeated our culture lots of times. I guilty of this myself. I think will we say to ourselves? Well, these things are going on on campuses but you know strange things are always going on on campuses and in the larger society, we don't need to worry about that very much. But in fact in the larger society, we do need to worry about it very much. I suppose the examples that I came across that most shocked me when I began to look for instances of this notion that there is no objective truth. They're only various constructs that we create that are useful in one way or another the instances that struck me most were the ones from psychotherapy. I'm sure that many of you have followed in are aware of the recovered memory phenomenon. Whereby people who come to therapy come to therapist for all sorts of reasons everything ranging from bulimia to eyebrow polling to fear of dentist. People are told often very on and therapy early on that. You know, they really need to sit down and examine their lives to see if their victims of sexual abuse and if they have trouble remembering that they were sometimes hypnosis will be used even drug therapy has been used and so you have a lot of people who come up with memories that don't feel to them quite like their other memories but having been so encouraged by their therapist. They develop these memories make the most Dreadful accusations against their parents often with no objective evidence. You read the cases in the paper the father in California who sued the therapist there has been a responsible part of the Therapeutic Community. Let me emphasize that has been scandalized by this but it is it is still very much embedded in the thinking of many therapists and I have here a quote because I thought this just so succinctly defined how it is. This way of thinking has influence a Therapeutic Community. This is a quotation from a therapist and he is talking about accepting a client's truth you already in trouble, you know, when you begin to talk about one person's truth accepting a client's truth. He says we have to accept it whether it existed in objective reality or not isn't that amazing and isn't it? Scandalous? We have to accept it whether it existed in objective reality or not the point being that makes the I feel better. We have to accept it and forget the human tragedy that may be involved in a false accusation of this kind. So I write about my in my book. I write about therapy. I write about a number of other fields in which relativism the idea that there is no truth outside ourselves that we should seek about a number of fields in which this is increasingly prevalent. It's in pop culture. One of my favorite examples of this of course is Oliver Stone's movie JFK, which Oliver Stone presents is the truth know if you ever watch the film you'll see that it's larded with references to this being a true account. And of course, it's not a true account John Kennedy was not the victim of a coup d'état attempt. John Kennedy was not the victim of a plot hatched by Lyndon Johnson and a number of generals in the FBI and the Cuban Mafia and this is simply not true, but it's in the film and what is really stunning is the way in which so many people accept it as truth. I've got instance after instance in my book where young people especially believe that this is true. Another film more recent one Panthers presents the Black Panther Movement and its demise as being caused by a plot on the part of white police forces to destroy the black community. This isn't true. But so many people believe it. We've got to the point, you know, where we don't think it's necessary to go out there and see if it's true just sort of said. Oh, yeah, that sounds fine to me perfectly good construct from my point of view. This is a little off off the topic, but I was reading about the new film The Scarlet Letter on the way out here today, which has nothing to do with Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel though. It Bears the same title. It starts Demi Moore if you read about this now, if you remember the Scarlet Letter was a novel about Sin. And about guilt and about shame well in the new Scarlet Letter, it's about the liberated Hester Prynne who simply was a little bit ahead of her time. It's a quite amazing to to think about this. This idea exists in popular culture. It exists in journalism. I know we had some journalists at my table today and this the fact that in journalism, there is now a regular conversation going on about how objectivity is impossible is of concern to many people not just to me I suppose that conservatives tend to be more exercised about this than liberals do because since there are more liberals in the mainstream, press Corps than conservatives once you do away with objectivity as a goal. Well, you can just imagine how it how it what kind of result it has. But Jim Lehrer on macneil-lehrer you see Jim Lehrer. He's a wonderfully objective reporter has just written a novel that has this as it seemed what happens when the Press Corps decides that objectivity doesn't matter. I suppose on a book tour. I'm not supposed to recommend other books, but I would recommend Jim Lehrer has book to you and one other book I would recommend partly because it so Bears on the subject the theme of your Minnesota meetings. This fall is a book by a man named Mark sluka who's a professor at Cal and California? His book is called War of the world. And the reason I would recommend this book is because he is concerned about exactly what I'm concerned about the fact that we've lost the idea of external truth. We don't believe in external reality in the way. We used to we don't think it's our responsibility on important issues to try to get at the reality that's out there were content just to stay in our own construct. So to speak he writes about this very compellingly and his view he comes at it from computers from the information age. He sees it as a retreat into virtual reality and an escape from reality. So it's another person concerned with the same idea. I deliberately use George Orwell. To begin every chapter of my book because I wanted to make it clear that what I'm worried about isn't something that just conservatives worry about it something that we all ought to be concerned about. And of course George Orwell was hardly a conservative. He was a socialist is a fair description. The frontispiece to my book is from or well any attack on intellectual Liberty and on the concept of objective truth threatens in the long run every Department of thought he's so so perceptive on this topic. The subject that I took up first in my book and I did it because it concerns me most is how we have let the idea that there is no truth how we've let it propagate in our schools how we have begun to teach history without being concerned. For example, whether that history reflects reality whether that history is accurate or not. Let me just read you a few examples from the opening chapter in my book about the school. These are examples that I came across in the process of researching this book and the examples all bear on a single point when you hear them what you'll see is attempt after attempt to Make the United States and Western Civilization. Look as though they are very grim and gloomy Enterprises indeed. A teacher of radical math literacy warns against bombarding students and I quote with oppressive pro-capitalist ideology among the Practical applications of mathematics that she says should be avoided is totaling a grocery bill since such an exercise and I quote carries the non-neutral message that paying for food is natural. (00:21:55) Here's (00:21:55) another one. This comes from a textbook used to train future teachers in some ways. This is more deeply pernicious because this is just one teacher writing about how you should teach. This is in a textbook used to train future teachers. The author of this textbook urges future teachers to be very skeptical about the idea that the people we now know as American Indians came to this hemisphere across the Bering land bridge. Indian Miss do not tell this story she writes moreover. She observes. The scientific account has nothing except logic to recommend it. Now let's do you think this is just one person eccentricity. This argument was used by a committee of parents and teachers in California as reason for rejecting a fourth grade history text this last one as I say is more deeply pernicious because it's aimed at Future teachers but also because it is it is relativism brought to science science is always been in a protected area people have not gone after scientific truth is silliness is going on in the humanities, but science is now Under Siege and scientists are beginning to worry about it. The first time I try to tell a scientist about this he couldn't believe what I was telling him, but now they're beginning to worry now, they're holding conferences now, they are writing books because the notion is scientific truth is just one more construct one more damaging white male way of thinking being visited upon the rest of us and if you have any doubt about it being white Red, I would urge you to go back and read a book that you might have read a few years ago by vice president Gore then Senator Gore a book called Earth in the balance. There are two chapters toward the end of Earth in the balance that attack Enlightenment. Thought this is the source of the scientific way of thinking that attack Enlightenment thinking attack the scientific way of thinking and in particular attack Francis Bacon, who was the man who gave us the notion that we should get rid of our prejudices and try to examine the world in an unbiased way. Our scientific notion that we should do that the then senator now Vice President describes his way of thinking as responsible for everything from excessive shopping. To Hitler now the book is out there. It's very very widely distributed. I just asked you to go look at it. If any of you are skeptical that this attack on even scientific truth is not widespread. It is interesting because the vice president has also been the champion of the information superhighway. I wonder where he thinks the way of thinking that developed the information superhighway comes from the very interesting interesting phenomenon. Sometimes I think these Notions these Trends catch people up and they don't give themselves the time they need to to think them through. The last topic I'd like to bring up today and then I'd love to hear from you is a subject that I've been dealing with now for more than a year and it relates to our schools and it relates to what I was talking about the attack on science the National History standards, which were developed with a grant that I funded at the end of the Bush Administration. We had received a Grant application that promised a very balanced presentation of American History one that tried to be as accurate as possible and including people that we often overlooked in the past and people we shouldn't have overlooked women. For example, Native Americans African Americans Asian Americans, but one that also promised to talk about the traditional greats of American History George, Washington, for example Two years after I left the endowment the history standards were delivered and they were a travesty in terms of what they didn't talk about. They do not mention Thomas Edison. They do not mention Albert Einstein. They do not mention Jonas Salk Alexander Graham Bell the Wright brothers. All of our scientific achievements are completely overlooked George Washington is a rather passing figure. He is mentioned three times Joseph McCarthy is mentioned 17 or 19 times. The Gettysburg Address is mentioned once The Ku Klux Klan is mentioned some 20 times what you get in the history standards is more of what I was describing before an attempt to present the history of the United States and of Western Civilization as a very very Grim Affair indeed and while I certainly think we need to recognize our failings and they are many and our children should know about them. I think we should not leave them in mystery about why so many people feel so lucky to have been born in this country and why so many people are so anxious to come here and to share in the democratic government that we have established for ourselves and indeed help spread across the world and to share in the economic Enterprises that we have fostered through our emphasis on individualism. Those are my concerns. I suggest that one way to remedy what we find in our culture of this kind of relativism is simply for each of us to object to it. Every time we see it. I offer some very specific Role Models people on our campus is mainly who do this often at Great personal cost and it does seem to me that we've come to a time where we simply can't say. Well, that's your truth. And this is my Truth where we simply can't say that women have one truth and men have one truth that African-Americans have one truth and European Americans and other I think we have seen some examples in recent history of how dangerous is way of thinking is the idea that there are separate truth four separate groups and I worry that a nation that is as blessed as we are with so many people from different backgrounds simply can't survive if we aren't willing to begin now today to stand up and tell the truth. Thank you very much. Been a pleasure to (00:28:26) to talk with you. Thank you very much Lynne Cheney for our radio audience. You're listening to Lynne Cheney a distinguished fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the former chairman chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. We're going to do some questions and answers right now. We're going to start with Howard. Dalton is a senior vice president at the st. Paul companies. Thank you. Mrs. Cheney. I really enjoyed your remarks. You mentioned one remedy being that we object-- whenever we hear these things. I wondered if you could recommend ways that we be could we that we could become more proactive. And also would you come on comment on whether there might be more students like your intern from Amherst who will object to this kind of teaching? (00:29:17) I think the place to get proactive is the school. I now have a grandchild and and so perhaps that has made this seemed ever more urgent to me. I don't want Kate to grow up thinking that she's a victim which is how to many textbooks make it appear that women have been and still are in our society. I don't want Kate to grow up and think that somehow this country is more benighted than any other Nation on the face of the Earth. I'm going to look at her textbooks quite carefully as a grandparent just as I've been looking at textbooks quite carefully as disinterested Outsider so to speak so it's I just want to have an accurate understanding I do think the schools are one place where a lot of us can begin that effort. The responsive students on campus is very interesting. Some of them were actually affected by the politics. They find in the school room or in the classroom and I quote one young woman who says I got my politics at San Francisco State. No, she she had been in a number of It's classrooms where the goal is very seldom to search for objective truth and very often to promote an Orthodoxy in a consciousness-raising and I say that one in all of you to know that in the early days of the feminist movement. I was very supportive when the goal was equality for women that of course seemed a thing that all people should support some people some of our students are affected others though. And I think this is the majority they know what's going on. They understand that the classroom is being used as a political pulpit and they their beliefs aren't affected. But what does happen is that they become pretty cynical and that's kind of sad. They will say things to me like You know, I can't object in class the professor will embarrass me. If I do or he or she might grade me down. So what I'll do is just say what he wants to hear say what she wants me to say on my essay exam get my grade and get out of there and I've heard this not just for undergraduates from but from students in law school and particularly students in graduate school in the humanities. So there are good students. The kids are terrific. But what worries me is that they're not getting that kind of clash of ideas and that exchange and that debate that you and I so benefited from and found so exciting when when we were in (00:31:42) school. (00:31:45) Thank you. Mr. Cheney. Our next question is from Tim Penny former congressman from Minnesota. And now a senior fellow at the Humphrey Institute. It's a pleasure to see you. I've respected your many efforts on the behalf of all citizens for a long time. (00:31:59) And I want to thank you and dick for writing another book Kings of the hill. I use that in the classroom now and it's an excellent resource. (00:32:05) Well, I'll just tell you were writing an update we have to do a chapter on (00:32:08) newt. Go ahead. (00:32:13) No, we're Simon & Schuster's bringing out Kings of the Hill a book. We wrote 1983 about leadership in the Congress and we're updating it writing a chapter on speaker Gingrich. (00:32:24) I'm delighted because the the other book is hard to get a hold of and and I think it's great resource again. I wanted to pursue a line of questioning about truth in the political Arena, perhaps the Medicare debate today is a classic example of of the divide that exists in the public Dialogue on issues and recognizing that we've always had difficulty getting a straight talk from politicians. How do you apportion responsibility for truth in the public discourse among politicians the media and the voters? (00:33:06) Well, that's a really tough question. part of the problem part of the problem is that the media wants a good fight. And so they will work to polarize the issues as much as possible and I say this as a host of weekend Crossfire, but if you would watch us on Sunday night, you will see that we actually try to be civil it is it is not quite food fight television, but we do this thinking that on Sunday night people probably don't want combat television to the same degree they do on the weekend, but there is this there is this adversarial aspect of our culture that television particularly likes it makes better television than reasoned debate. There's secondly the fact that it's very complicated and maybe to answer your question. Maybe just if each of us picked one issue one great public issue and became expert enough in it so that we would know the truth so that we could sort it out. That would be a good thing. What's happened in the Medicare debate has happened in a number of other debates about the attempt to devolve responsibility to the state's the attempt to make government less and the attempt of course most important of all to balance the budget. I do think that the politics of fear has come into play people many old people are absolutely scared to death that there are going to be massive cuts and that's been language has been used you can certainly say that the Republicans are trying to slow the rate of growth. You can certainly say that in doing so they're going to make life somewhat more difficult for Citizens on Medicare than before but you can't say they're cutting it but that's only in Washington DC. Can you say that slowing the rate of increase is a cut? So that's that's one one problem that exists one of the things that interests me about the Medicare debate. I bet you know the number in the end. There's only what eight Is it trillion billion eight billion dollars difference over the seven year period between the Republic and the Democrat proposal is very close. I probably have the number not quite right that about (00:35:18) it in the year 2002. I think the difference between the two plans is in the ten billion dollar range, but aggregated of course is a much more notable difference (00:35:35) still the two are within range of each other. And why are we having this debate scaring the heck out of old people across this country. Why are we doing that when we're so close that we should be able to work it out. So that's my analysis of the Medicare situation and I guess I would just recommend that everybody become knowledgeable about one situation like that so that It's not ignorant armies clashing by night. You know that line. It's wrong to Matthew Arnold poem called Dover Beach and he was at a time in his life where he was very discouraged with his culture and he said it's like watching ignorant armies Clash by night maybe if we could all help shine a little light on what's going on the battle would be more productive and less bloody. (00:36:28) Thank you very much Miss Chaney. You're listening to Lynne Cheney the author of a new book called telling the truth and the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. She speaking to the Minnesota meeting in Downtown Minneapolis. Next question is from Gary Gilson, who is the executive director of the Minnesota news Council? Mrs. Cheney is distressing of some of this relativist history is and and ought to be corrected. It's not surprising that there would be this kind of reaction to the out of balance history. We learned when we were children. I don't remember any A book that said that Smedley Butler said that we invaded Nicaragua in behalf of United Fruit Company. Those things were suppressed by the people who were in power and Smedley Butler was not a flaming radical. He was a commandant of the United States Marine Corps. My question to you is about an objective truth that I perceive as objective and I wonder why the people who are so hostile and frightened of homosexuals hostile toward them and frightened of them don't recognize the truth that homosexuals don't choose to be homosexuals that seems to be at the root of a great deal of the problem in this country. (00:37:43) You know, I find almost universally people now say sexual orientation as opposed to sexual preference. Now that perhaps only a small step in the direction you'd like to see people go but it is a step that's been taken your other point about how the history you and I learned when we were growing up was inadequate is exactly true. We did not learn we did learn a celebratory version of American History one that was insufficiently attentive to our many failings. I think if you open up history books now, you'll see that we have certainly remedied that and perhaps begun to go a step too far in the case of the National History standards. We have certainly gone too far and I guess the the point is two wrongs don't make a right, you know, just because we did it wrong before doesn't mean we should do it wrong again. We should really try for that accurate understanding. I don't know about commandant Smedley in Nicaragua, but I bet if we put our minds to it we It distorts the truth of that out. Thank you. Our next question is from Robert White who is editorial editor at the Star (00:38:51) Tribune know the former inter toilet. I just write opinions. I don't have to be objective (00:38:56) nice. And you know, that's where the opinions belong isn't it on the editorial (00:39:01) page. Well, I'm persuaded by a lot of your your arguments reference to the Aztecs. I concluded that I'm against human sacrifice and a lot of the other thing and I don't think Oliver Stone is the best historical reference that one could have I wanted to pursue some of the other questions about prescriptions. I like what you said. For example about people getting informed about Medicare and about talking with with students and teachers in elementary school. I appreciate your objections to the history standards, even though I think they're somewhat a straight the the objections not the standards. What would you suggest be done by average folks like us with regard to higher education. We would you want us to argue with the professor's or to sit around in classrooms. Most of us don't really have time or opportunity to to do that. We can say go seek the truth, but that that's a little bit fuzzy give us some ideas of things that you like better do (00:40:09) have a very concrete suggestion about a year ago. I became the chairman of an of an organization called the national alumni forum. And our goal is to help alums all across the country understand what's happening on campuses, too. Meet with them discuss and try to discover ways in which alums who very much want to support their institutions can do it in ways that they think encourage the pursuit of Truth as opposed to the pursuit of politics. This is an entirely bipartisan effort. I'm the chairman but Governor lamb of Colorado former Governor lamb Democrat is the co-chairman Hank Brown Republican senator from Colorado is on our board. But so is Joe Lieberman Democratic senator from Connecticut, we've made a very great effort to be bipartisan because what's happened on our campuses the jettisoning of the idea that scholarship and teaching should be about the pursuit of Truth is of concern to people all across the political Spectrum. So in this case, that was a great question because I have a really good concrete answer to give you join the National alumni for him and anybody wants more information and see me afterward (00:41:20) the thank you. Mrs. Cheney. We have a question now from Devon Moore who's an attorney in Burnsville. Thank you. My question is in the (00:41:28) search of Truth. Once you say that the greatest truth of US history is a truth of slavery and segregation which is completely ignored today completely ignored today. I'm I can't possibly agree with that. I'm not sure that we can talk about one greatest truth, but certainly slavery and segregation are parts of the American past that our children should know about they should also know though that we in this country have probably gone farther than any country ever has in history in terms of giving women and minorities full and equal rights. I can see you don't agree with that. But I think if we sat down and examine the evidence that we would see that we have managed our diversity for All the Troubles we have had in a way that is given greater equality to more people than any other Nation ever have thank you. Our next question is from one of our student guests. Gretchen gibe is from an wotton middle school and they are hosted here today by Dane Bosworth. She has a question for you. By your speech is it's very difficult for adults to get to the (00:42:37) truth to have their voices (00:42:40) heard. So how do we as children? Get our truth turd in an adult World gee. What a nice question. What a tough question. I actually tried to talk to some students when I was writing this book not just to students on campuses but to students in elementary and secondary school. And what I found was that Common Sense doesn't seem to have any age barrier to it that there are a whole lot of really sensible 8th graders in this country. I actually came across a sensible fifth grader who who told me her trouble about Columbus and she had been assigned to write an essay about Columbus and she said I didn't make him look bad enough the first time And so she said I had my teacher said I had to rewrite it again because I hadn't made him look bad enough. So she said what I did is the teacher wanted me to say it was really bad. I kind of did it half and half and she accepted it. But what what I felt bad for was that the student didn't think she could have a discussion with her teacher about it. She felt she just had to compromise herself, but I was also very gratified that she was so self-aware. She knew that she was being pushed to say something that didn't make her totally comfortable. Columbus wasn't a great guy, but she he did cause a whole lot of harm to Native Americans she understood that but she just didn't feel as though the teacher were letting her talk about what an amazing thing. It was for him to have decided undertake that Voyage he did and four other men to have and I was appreciative I guess that I would just take that wonderful common sense that I've seen in young people around this country and hang on to it. Don't let anybody take it away from you or tell you that you don't have it either. (00:44:29) Thank you. Mrs. Cheney and we have a question now for Mary Schneider who's an academic advisor at the University of Minnesota and therefore works with a lot of students. (00:44:36) You say you object to the idea of relative truth and yet you subtly allude to the idea that only conservatives support objective truth and leave us to speculate that others don't how do we bridge the gap of that kind of polarization and begin a dialogue with one another so we can accomplish some common goals. Did you misunderstand me perhaps or you might not understanding your question because I was really trying to make the point that this is of concern to people all across the political spectrum because I am a conservative and because I'm publicly identified that way I always try to be very careful to say this isn't something that just concerns people with my voting record that it concerns marks Luca the man who wrote War of the Worlds the book I told you about and he's certainly not a conservative it Turn George Orwell and he's certainly not a conservative. It concerns Arthur Schlessinger, and he's certainly not a conservative. So my only point was perhaps to break down some stereotype. I thought you might have had of me. Thank you. Our next question is from John Herman. (00:45:41) Isn't it a fact that because we brought government into so many things that we brought politics into and if we get the government out of it, we could keep the politics out probably too. (00:45:52) I'm not sure the government has brought politics into it, but I can certainly tell you that a lot of taxpayer dollars have encouraged the politicization that has gone on in our schools and our colleges and our universities and that's one of the reasons I someone asked me today. If I was going to talk about the fact that I think the National Endowment for the Humanities and organization that I headed for six years should be privatized and indeed. This is the reason it was a history standards that were for me the radicalizing event. It's one thing if a group of students are I'm sorry group of private people get together and promulgate these history standards. But as soon as you put the money and the force of the federal government behind them, you give them a power that is really quite amazing, even though the Senate has now condemned these history standards. There's 30,000 copies out there paid for it taxpayer expense being used by teachers being used in curriculum development. Your point is a good one though. I'm not sure I would put government down as the root cause the way I see it government helps disseminate and propagate tendencies that already exists in our society. (00:47:05) Thank you very much. Miss Chaney. You're listening to Lynne Cheney the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and now a distinguished fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. She's going to take a question now from John you will who's a local freelance journalist in Minneapolis. Thank you for coming Miss Chaney a few moments ago in an answer to mr. Gilson you referred to or you warned against taking tooth celebratory and approach to history yet most of your talk here, you've suggested finding models of behavior in history is the result of a search for truth. My question is doesn't that overlooked the very result of scholarship when facts about the behavior of historical icons conflict with the Transcendent truths you wish to (00:47:47) promote. I suppose that's it. Thomas. Jefferson was a slave owner question and in a sense, you're exactly right. I mean we do need to know the underside of Jefferson's life. I think we should also be aware of how tortured he was by being a slave holder. I think we should also be aware that he accomplished great things nonetheless and what we should avoid at all costs. And this is perhaps the most crucial point. I would make what we should avoid at. All costs is exaggerating even though it's a horrible thing to have been a slaveholder. It's even more horrible. If Jefferson did take advantage of a 14 year old slave named Sally hemings the stork approved for this is not there but we propagated it widely. It is widely believed. We just had a recent movie produced by very respectable Movie Makers that that advanced it. So I don't mean that we should ignore the bad side of anyone's character. But we shouldn't let the fact that all of us are failed human beings all of us are less than we might be prevent us from looking to those aspects of Heroes of the past that made them heroic. Thank you. We have time for one last quick question from Sandy Hale who is the president of Enterprise Management International having been accused of being liberal over the years and having been vehemently accused more recently of being Politically Incorrect. I want to ask you what you mean by the definitions of liberal and conservative you've used them a number of times and other people have asked about the polarization of that but I'd like your own definition of those two characteristics. Well, I don't have an easy definition in terms of what's Happening Now in Washington. I do think that there are two views of government one view that that government is essential to help us out of the bad spots were in and to make sure that we thrive in the future. The other view is Ronald Reagan's formulation that government isn't the answer government's the problem. So that's it in a political dimension in a cultural Dimension. The stereotypes often go like this. What liberals I want is to mindlessly jettison the past and move ahead in in some direction that will involve and this is a stereotype that will involve all sorts of license and Liberty and not having standards conservatives on the other hand of these people who are blind and they just want to go back to a past that they believe was golden and wonderful and and not pay any attention to the bad things that happened. So those are the stereotypes and sometimes stereotypes are useful in terms of formulating Polar Opposites. It does seem to me that it is time for us to see if there aren't some truths we can pursue like how to fix Medicare Beyond those poles beyond that polarizing debate. We usually have