— EDITED TRANSCRIPT — HUDSON INSTITUTE’s BRADLEY CENTER FOR PHILANTHROPY AND CIVIC RENEWAL Symposium on V ISION AND P HILANTHROPY Wednesday, February 16, 2005 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The Ritz-Carlton, Washington, DC Many think the key to success for conservative philanthropy is its willingness to give imaginatively and consistently, and according to a larger, coherent vision of public policy. At this symposium, a group of prominent conservative thinkers, writers, and philanthropists came together to discuss two questions: “What is the conservative vision for America today?” and “How can philanthropy best promote it?” Short texts written by some of the panelists (available online at http://pcr.hudson.org) served as a starting point for the discussion. University of Chicago Senior Lecturer and Hudson Institute Senior Fellow AMY KASS served as moderator. Keynote speaker for the luncheon discussion was PETER WEHNER, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Strategic Initiatives, White House. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Panelists 2 8:30 to 10:00 a.m.: Panel Discussion on Conservative Vision 3 10:15 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.: Panel Discussion Continues: Philanthropy’s 23 Role in Realizing the Vision 12:00 to 1:30 p.m.: Luncheon and Keynote Speech by Peter Wehner 42 Participant Biographies 51 Transcript by: Federal News Service, Washington, D.C. Edited by Krista Shaffer, Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal V ISION AND P HILANTHROPY A Bradley Center Symposium PANELISTS Stuart Butler Leon Kass Vice President, The Heritage Foundation Hertog Fellow, American Enterprise Institute Linda Chavez David Keene President, Center for Equal Opportunity Chairman, American Conservative Union Michael Cromartie William Kristol Vice President, Ethics and Public Policy Center Editor, The Weekly Standard Barbara Elliott Leonard Leo Founder and President, Center for Renewal Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society Pete du Pont Heather Mac Donald Board Member, Lynde & Harry Bradley John M. Olin Fellow, Manhattan Institute Foundation Scott McConnell Steven Hayward Executive Editor, The American F. K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow, American Conservative Enterprise Institute Stephen Moore Roger Hertog President, Free Enterprise Fund Chairman Emeritus, Manhattan Institute Grover Norquist Heather Higgins President, Americans for Tax Reform President, Randolph Foundation James Piereson Peb Jackson Executive Director, John M. Olin Foundation Executive Vice President, Saddleback Church Robert Woodson, Sr. Robert Kagan Founder and President, National Center for Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for Neighborhood Enterprise International Peace 2 V ISION AND P HILANTHROPY A Bradley Center Symposium P ANEL D ISCUSSION: What is the Conservative Vision for America Today? 8:30 – 10:00 a.m. Introduction: William Schambra, Hudson Institute Moderator: Amy Kass, Hudson Institute WILLIAM SCHAMBRA: Good morning. My name is Bill Schambra and I am director of the Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal at the Hudson Institute. It’s my privilege to welcome you today to our symposium entitled Philanthropy and Vision. As the name of the Center suggests, it is a proud grantee of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, located in Milwaukee, and we’re particularly honored to have with us this morning so many of the board members of the Bradley Foundation as well as their spouses and so many of the staff members who have been so important to the Center over the past two or three years. The Center, I hope, reflects faithfully what I learned from my 10 years at the Bradley Foundation, namely that philanthropy need not discourage or ignore civic renewal, as it so often does, but rather that it can promote civic renewal by paying particular attention to the often-overlooked smaller grassroots groups that are the heart and soul of vigorous communities. The center joins in celebrating the recipients of this year’s Bradley Prizes: Ward Connerly, George Will, Robert George, and of course Heather Mac Donald, who is with us this morning as a panelist, as is Leon Kass, who was one of last year’s Bradley Prize winners. Today’s symposium, entitled “Vision and Philanthropy” is, quite frankly, an experiment, and an experiment on several levels. We often hear that the key to conservatism’s success in the policy world that it has the ability to get beyond a litany of isolated policy proposals and instead to offer the American people a unified, coherent vision of the public interest. This is a charge or an item of praise that we hear frequently from our friends at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy and we’re pleased to have so many of them here as well this morning. Furthermore, we often hear that the largest conservative foundations have contributed to this success through consistent long-term support of projects furthering that coherent vision. So we thought we would put this proposition to the test: What happens when we bring together some 20 of conservatism’s leading thinkers, activists and philanthropists, representing a wide range of academic disciplines and professions as well as a variety of conservative intellectual traditions, and ask them: What is this much-vaunted coherent conservative vision that we hear so much about, and how would you suggest philanthropy go about promoting it? Does, in fact, a unity 3 emerge from this diversity of voices? That’s the first experiment whose results we will begin to witness shortly. Lest you think that genuine discussion is unlikely under the gaze of the public and the press, I should point out that the panelists, in their writings, have already taken issue with virtually every aspect of the very premise of the conversation this morning, some noting that conservative vision is oxymoronic nonsense; some that it’s way to early to talk about conservatism’s success; and some that foundations have been a hindrance rather than a help to the development of healthy conservative ideas. The second experiment today is in the format of the symposium. My mentor from AEI, Bob Goldwin, who is with us this morning, often noted that public policy conferences are typically hideously boring affairs because audiences are compelled to doze through the reading of long prepared papers, and the best part of such conferences, he often observed, is the lively and uninhibited conversation that occurs among participants outside the framework of the conference, in the hallways, in the rooms afterwards. Following his lead, our objective today is to cut to the chase, so to speak, and try to get directly to those lively conversations and to bring them into this room and out of the hallway. A number of our panelists have prepared brief responses to the questions before us, but they will not be read aloud. They’ve been distributed in advance and they’re available in the conference packets so that we have a solid common basis for the conversation today, but there will be no formal speeches, no formal reading. This will be a conversation, I hope, that will reach some depth and nuance because we are going to have the same panelists with us here for the next three and a half hours or so, with opportunities along the way for the audience to join in – obviously not exactly the same as the panelists. Some panelists have already told me they would be arriving late for various reasons, and some will have to leave early, but we’ll have a core of folks who will be with us for the entire morning. We’re also going to dispense with long introductions of our panelists, whose biographies are also available in your packets, but we’re honored and pleased to have with us today Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute; Peb Jackson of Saddleback Church – Saddleback, incidentally, is pastored by Rick Warren, who is the author of The Purpose-Driven Life; Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center; Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform; Barbara Elliott of the Center for Renewal; Bob Woodson, the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, Bob Kagan from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Jim Piereson of the John M. Olin Foundation; Linda Chavez of the Center for Equal Opportunity – she’ll be joining us shortly; David Keene of the American Conservative Union; Pete du Pont of the Bradley Foundation and the National Center for Policy Analysis; Leon Kass of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the President’s Council on Bioethics; Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society; Scott McConnell of the publication, The American Conservative; Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation; Heather Higgins of the Randolph Foundation and the Philanthropy Roundtable; Bill Kristol, the Weekly Standard; Steve Hayward from AEI. Joining us shortly will be Steve Moore of the Cato Institute and the Free Enterprise Fund; and finally, Roger Hertog of Alliance Capital Management and chairman of the New Republic. The part of today’s proceedings that is definitely not experimental is our choice for moderator of the discussion. Amy Kass, who is our moderator, is an award-winning teacher with some 25 years of experience as a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago and is one of the most skillful seminar leaders in the land. She is editor most recently of The Perfect Gift, a collection of fiction and nonfiction writings designed to explore the purposes and techniques of philanthropy. We are 4 honored to have her as a senior scholar at Hudson, and to have her as the leader of today’s discussion. And so I now turn the proceedings over to Amy Kass. AMY KASS: Thank you very much, Bill, and thank you all for being here. Our plan for this morning is to have two separate sessions or conversations: This first will focus on the idea of the conservative vision, the second on the practice of philanthropy, or more precisely, what philanthropy should do to promote and perpetuate the conservative vision.