Amity Shlaes: Calvin Coolidge and Virtue | BRI Scholar Talks

0:01 [Music] hi welcome to our next Bri scholars talk about our forthcoming US history textbook life liberty and the pursuit of happiness i’m tony williams a senior fellow with the institute and it is my great honor to be speaking to a mini slays today thank you very much for joining us Amity I’m glad to be here next one I’m gonna I’ll introduce you now Amity slays is the prize-winning and best-selling New York Times bestselling author of four books among many others she’s written including the forgotten man a new history of the Great Depression Coolidge

0:51 and most recently the Great Society a new history and I read these all Amity they are really great books she regularly contributes to numerous publications including the Wall Street Journal she chairs the board of the Calvin Coolidge presidential foundation a national foundation based in the birthplace of President Coolidge the Foundation’s goal is to share Coolidge with Americans by hosting high school to be an events at the Coolidge site and through newer media she is currently a Presidential Scholar at the King’s College and the chairman of the Hayek press again thank you very much for joining us glad to be here okay so well you wrote

1:38 an essay on Calvin Coolidge or life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and you wrote that Coolidge demonstrated a number of virtues early on that carry through the course of his life and among these were were perseverance and humility and so my first question is going to be how did these virtues shape the course of his life and and how was his character shaped by family community by his education these virtues shape not only the course of Coolidge’s life but also the course of Americans lives political and cultural so they’re very important thank you for asking that as a young man

2:26 Coolidge as a child even Coolidge learned in Plymouth notch Vermont and at the Coolidge foundation we invite kids to come there and adults to see what it was like imagine a farm town that has a tight community and does all right but does not become rich and has to work for every meal one way or the other so life starts with getting sugar in this spring from the maple trees when it’s still cold and carrying a yoke like an ox too heavy sugar buckets on it going to the summer and through hanging and tanning and shoeing horses into the fall slaughtering animals so the work

3:14 scarcely stopped he he saw that and he observed the tenacity of the citizens of Plymouth his father was sort of a jack of all trades and master of all as well John Coolidge he was Sheriff at times he was a representative in the state capitol in Montpelier at times member of Vermont is tiny he was the bailiff at times he definitely collected taxes such as the snow tax for packing down snow so you could ride across snow in your sleigh it was that period remember it’s dark kind of like Ethan Frome if anyone’s ever read that and there’s no electricity

4:01 it’s very hard to wash dishes when it’s very cold and there’s no electricity needless to say dishwasher I have you ever tried to get a dish on greasy with cold water you can imagine what life must have been like for people into clean plates in this scenario which would be both genders and he’s he’s all that he was definitely his father was up there in the town so he was definitely not the poorest child in the town but he was not by any stretch wealthy and he observed all that and he observed and as he says beautifully in his autobiography that people had good times and bad times and we’re not particularly going to rejoice in or complain about either that

4:48 was just how life was in Plymouth Plymouth very American it’s not foreign to most Americans because Plymouth is where we migrated from many of us so imagine people landing on the East Coast and then going to the Midwest there plenty of people with the name Coolidge in the Midwest and the plains Minnesota so if you say I’m a Texan and I have nothing to do with Coolidge that’s not true there are plenty of people from Vermont in Texas if you go all the way back Vermont was a way station for such families wherever they came from so all that affected his adulthood critically the perseverance part that I

5:34 think it’s important to know too that they were at were in Coe veneer it’s quite accustomed to death and as we are not and expected people to die as we do not and he had some bitter experiences he lost his mother when he was a boy he lost his sister Abby of whom he was very fond she was the more boisterous extrovert of the pair she wanted to be a teacher and at that age in that era if you can imagine who qualifies the teacher at 14 or 15 years old they went to the little school and then they went to boarding school nearby because mom couldn’t drive you ten miles to school that was too far with a sleigh or a wagon and that so they boarded in Ludlow Vermont which is for a reference

6:23 point for modern people by the home of the ski resort Okemo which is well known to New Yorkers did you go straight up from New York so so it’s a different time he missed his mother in boarding school he was lonely he went to college he was lonely he was a he I wouldn’t say he was a man of outspoken piety that is he didn’t say I am walking with God every morning or dare to walk with God but he was scaped in piety as grandmother taught Sunday school they lived a life of faith everything in their lives had to do with faith even the cake recipes because they

7:08 had a cake recipe which I mentioned in the Coolidge book which in which each ingredient comes from a passage in the Old Testament and maybe New Testament too but it comes from a passage in the Bible that’s the kind of life yet and as an adult he acknowledged the importance of faith in all he did so the second part of the question should I answer how did that affect his politics or just you know the his public service in general he understood that there were four things in the world more important than he was he had a sanctimony none of us has swallows right you have a sanctimony there’s such a thing as narcissistic

7:53 sanctimony I will virtue signal my way to the grave because I am wonderful and I’m pretending to be good but I’m also pandering to my own vanity I am elect I’m a Protestant my name is Calvin right he had a sanctimony but I don’t think it was heavily self-centered he really understood that in his case he really understood that there was plenty of things in the world more important than he which is rare nowadays and that his experience mattered less than what he offered and that’s also a great relief by the way if you’re in the life of service you don’t have to worry about whether you’re happy very very important you have to worry about what you do for

8:39 others he’s one of those people there’s no limit to what you can achieve also if you don’t care who gets the credit and the name three points in his life where this was evident and for the good of the country he he sacrificed self to country one was during the Boston police strike he lie two policemen they went on strike by the way they were key constituents for him politically he was governor and he had an election within a few months when the boston police went on strike Coolidge was famous for getting the Irish wrote what read the policeman they were Irish if he hurt the striking policeman they would not vote for him and he would not be governor again simple as that and he wrote the sights basically just about as much as his father his confident that’s

9:25 important father and yet he did the right thing and as you and I believe in my own he fired the policeman for striking because they were breaking their contract which said you cannot strike we’ve signed it it’s very tough call very controversial call so you have to wonder what he would say about policemen having sick out today when they’re unhappy with what’s going on in their town and Coolidge might be on the same side as protesters because police need to serve this has been pointed out to me by people who want to argue shows Coolidge’s flexibility a second instance would be the I’m just trying to think when he chose not to run

10:10 for president in 1927 you get used to people liking you and being the center of attention we all do and then we look for love the rest of us an affirmation that we are the wonderful people we think we are so it’s very hard to give up the White House or any political office and Coolidge it’s hard to recall but he had been elected once in 1924 so he could be elected again in 1928 or even more in those days but sort of culturally no one would be offended by someone who had only been elected once going a second time even though just before he was elected on his own for the first time he’d become president due to the tragic death of Warren Harding anyway he had every right to run again again in his period

10:56 but he chose not to and said in his autobiography forgive me for the paraphrase American presidents are surrounded by yes men that means they’re not necessarily so awesome in their decisions after time because no one challenges them and also people is a political cycle and American people presidents lose what what President Bush 43 always talked about his political capital that his faith with the voters second terms aren’t very effective for the party the president represents often they can be tragically ineffective and he said well it’s healthy for America to change people in in the chief office in the office of the president so he was closer to the notion of President as presider

11:44 like George Washington whom he honored deeply not as commander-in-chief at home which isn’t exactly what our Constitution calls for but many Americans currently accept and when he chose not to run he was very hurt because nobody said rob ball Calvin Coolidge men of probity everyone should be like him the Republican Party was furious at him because he had long coattails as they say a lot of other people would get elected if he got elected and he was hurting the party by not running when he was popular so he had a terrible purgatory a period after he announced he would not run in 2028 out of character reasons I mean he wasn’t getting any praise for it which is kind of unexpected right it’s normal

12:30 let’s think and he really didn’t have much say none of us does about who would be his successor his successor was Herbert Hoover Coolidge didn’t like a river he was a different kind of man but not like me right whoever Hoover filled the room with his energy he was very bossy and he was definitely a jump in crisis leader so imagine the discomfort of Coolidge doing the right thing and not getting much praise for it and being lonely by the way and going into the abyss of the post presidency that was an extreme example of overcoming personal need desire want for the nation and for character I just

13:15 saw a lot of humility there I think so what was his view the role of the very expansive changes in the role of the federal government particularly you know with the Progressive Era and the expansion of the state and we’re over one you know what was his what were his use of a lot of those changes going on in American society and particularly in government well that gets me to the third thing which I’ve forgotten the last question so that’s good Coolidge was not a grown up progressive he was a governor progressive which may be a governor grown-up but as a president he was you know in his maturity he was not progressive and he

14:03 had a lot of you know hesitations about progressive progress so while governor was still a nominal progressive because recall that Republicans were the progressives at that time by and large he kind of supported progressive efforts you don’t hear a speech by him saying there should be no Federal Reserve from 1912 or 1913 you don’t hear him say we need to get rid of this commission or that agency that’s a product of the progressive wave well these institutions you know there are a lot of commissions at that period which were the expression of progressivism you don’t really hear that when he’s a governor and once in a while

14:50 he’ll support a progressive bit of legislation as a governor but when he becomes president for whatever reason um I think because he thinks progressivism is okay for states but not for Washington right it’s one thing to be a state progressive he gets a little more opinionated and louder and he wrote a speech called the limitations of the law she I think it was when he gave his vice president it’s wonderful and then a few others he did not believe the federal government could do everything and that every wrong could be righted by the federal government or perhaps even the state so that’s very clear very much they’re very concerned that the progressive wave is building to a

15:38 and we’re reversible and totally destructive tsunami you didn’t like the progressives in his party particularly but didn’t didn’t speak up because he was a party man on individuals too much and if you look at what he did that was deeply conservative and important and often left out by social historians is Coolidge signaled that the tax rate must always be downward and we can’t tell you what the rates going to be but too much taking by government is legalized larceny he said or some others similar term he also used and he he really

16:26 didn’t like the government to have too much money and Along Came Andrew Mellon the Treasury secretary in some ways senior to his own president it was said of Mellon the great Treasury secretary that three presidents served under him because he was such a mighty sort of like having warren buffett plus i don’t know Elon Musk plus Jeff Bezos all in one man in the Treasury and the poor little president comes along and you know he didn’t agree with everything that mellon wanted but he did want less government in the way of people and Mellon had this

17:11 idea that if you cut the tax rate the government will get more money Coolidge was torn about that because he wanted the government to balance the budget it did but he didn’t want the government to get more money because then Congress might spend it mm-hmm get bigger right she’s very torn and this is an example of character the third example but Coolidge went along with this whole key theory that if you cut the tax rate you get more revenue than you expect at least by the math because he believed in the principle of delegation and he knew that Mellon was better than he was abstinent and therefore if Mellon said me you must do this Coolidge was his servant as president not the other

17:57 way and he gave speeches in which was very uncomfortable you can see that there are few tapes of Coolidge and one one TaxACT not too satisfying was passed in 24 and Coolidge gave a speech about around then and he gave speeches later he wanted another tax cut from Ellen buddy you can see the deep discomfort in him what is it smell and backfires and we don’t get the money in our deficit widens arms or appear someone’s what if we succeed too well we get too much money cars then Congress will spend it and you can feel almost the physical tension of his anxiety over backing mill and yet he did sometimes you have to back your deputy that is wonderful and

18:45 of course when there’s less money to spend progressives have less money and there’s less political ambition for progressive projects seems like a person a boy with his finger in the dike and on the other side of the dike was depressing the great ocean of the progressive movement and he was able to hold the waddled water back in the 1920s we might have had a progressive Ocean tsunami a decade earlier had we not included okay so that’s to use of progressivism and you you tell you touched on teased a little bit of his political and economic philosophy but can you can you explore that a little bit more what were the some of the essential tenants or central ideas of his political and economic outlook um

19:32 men do not make laws they do but discover them there are a few laws underneath it all to come from from God or from but may I mean mainly are things of the spirit uh so what we are doing is lawmakers is making explicit something we already knew that’s very different conception from modern lawmaking where we are architects of the law architects of the Constitution re architects of the country he had a Greek expect for the framers and for the principle so that you don’t elaborate too much in law either if you write in a law that the nurse every two hours must dip her hands four times in antiseptic

20:19 and six times when she’s working with them all people and that’s in the law the nurse get knows she must save the old people from covenant but she’s pretty darn irritated because she’s breaking the law all the time once in a while she’d only gets to dip her hands three times and once and what you know that is the more prescriptive along the more detailed the more there is the possibility of breaking the law even inadvertently he believed that the best laws were laws you could you could you could manage not to violate you can see attention with prohibition in that regard for example but this is the period when the hard liquor was illegal basically and that’s almost impossible to enforce and when he saw that that eroded the rule of law itself having a

21:05 law that was impossible to enforce and it graded on him so simple few laws some inspired from above and that civilization doesn’t make ideals we don’t make it ideals and meaning ideals make civilization he said I’m giving you all these legal and sort of government rules because they’re so wonderful um don’t expect to help the weak by pulling down the strong oh we know leveling it doesn’t even help the weak that’s important to us give administration a chance to catch up with legislation lawmakers want to justify their existence by passing a law otherwise they’re losers right and won’t

21:51 get reelected every two years their congressman or every four years or every six years right but in reality administration needs to learn the new law before we can gauge whether that lies effective so he knew that better to kill a bad law than pass or sign a good one he wrote that to his father in Montpelier it goes on like that it’s astonishing to me that me didn’t learn more about him in school because he has a very Church II way of writing he’s heard a lot of sermons and his speeches are as clear as a good sermon most of them and that’s rare in a president he fighting larger his own

22:36 speeches his best speech was written even before he was governor it’s called had faith in Massachusetts and at the college foundation we whenever we can and sometimes as part of the curriculum have kids recite that speech in Coolidge’s church the church is non domination denominational not particularly religious anymore but it’s a serious place and to be in that building and that is we have secular events in the church it makes the kids stand up and the ground and stand up and we try to have good diction have faith in Massachusetts just the length of a good sermon a few minutes not 25 certainly not 20 so so I think he he’s

23:23 someone who can be read and recited over and over again and that’s what we emphasize at the college foundation now with thousands of kids very like the Bill of Rights Institute by them good and so World War one erupts 1914 America gets involved in 1917 and then of course the war ends and America is considering the the Versailles Treaty under the Wilson administration and so it’s it’s really causing great changes in the world and America’s role and role in the world what were some of college’s views of these larger and important events what Coolidge was first and foremost a domestic politician that did not mean however that he didn’t have a foreign

24:09 policy his policy was that America must lead by example not by intervention city on a hill the model of America is as important as its guns or soldiers right send it it you know there was gun boat diplomacy and he was involved in it including for example in Nicaragua but that wasn’t this room or inherited efforts and responsibilities he was mainly a city on a hill person the Republican Party was against the League of nation led by nations had led by Henry Cabot Lodge there were some compromises such as the

24:56 so called World Court Coolidge was okay with that you can always get them through he did want to do something symbolic again America as leading by example so he allowed his foreign secretary his secretary of state or maybe Secretary of War I can’t recall but it was called anyway Frank Kellogg to get together the kellogg-briand pact which outlawed war and is always mocked I’m not sure it should be mocked by the way um anyone who mocks it too fast any teacher don’t let him intimidate you into mocking along with him before you do your own independent analysis of the

25:41 kellogg-briand back but he said basically it to to Kelley is it unconstitutional does it give away too much American sovereignty to sign a pact agreeing to end war no one did it he thought it was very important symbolically so we signed it he also did in terms of foreign policy he with Mellon worked on the refinancing of the debt of European nations throughout that twenty students have heard of the Dawes plan in the young plan tragically that wasn’t enough there’s one area of foreign policy where he really screwed up but his by way of explanation though non excuse is so did his entire party the Republican Party was for tariffs and tariffs for foreign countries and if I’m the one and you lower interest rates for foreign countries but on the other you preclude

26:26 them from selling you goods you are sending a mixed message to be polite to them about your respect for them in the world then we did hurt Germany by routinely I don’t know randomly imposing tariffs worldwide and Germany turned against the world we also hurt Cuba and if you’re ever innovating and really want to get calvin coolidge and hate his guts I think the strongest argument is that he and it’s a stretch but you could certainly do that in high school or college was increased or permitted the increase of tariffs on sugar from Cuba well sugar is really important to Cuba it’s about all the exported so what what

27:12 are we doing at Cuba when we do that in order to help what maple served an American sugar right so he did that and I think a real stretch of a paper but a fun one would be to argue that Coolidge caused the rise of communism in Cuba I always want to write that one I never got around to it there’s an effective doubling of sugar tariffs in the 20s the data are there in NBER pages or history books okay so I’m moving forward into the 1920s and during the time in which he’s president many scholars really talked about the idea of a return to normalcy in which the Republicans created an era of excess sandwiched

27:57 between kind of the more reformist movements of the Progressive Era and and then the New Deal how does how does the kulish presidency contribute to that idea of a limited government against those those two movements yeah but and yet promoting a dynamic economic growth in a vibrant civil society you know how do you have a vibrant America and yet still have limited government that’s it’s not yet or it’s limited government creates a vibrant America there’s no conflict there’s no such thing as excess in the

28:44 private sector because that itself corrects if a company makes too many cars the cars do not sell the company ceases to make too many cars it loses money its shareholders lose money its employees get laid off made an error there the only access that so there’s nothing wrong with domestic private wealth access there’s something that can’t be corrected by reality government if you rate if you if you buy your children too many proud of her sees your children will be spoiled eggs and you will pay for it and they will pay for it little girls will try to person’s little right if you buy your son too many rifles they bought you know and so

29:33 on you know there’s a cost to behavior in the private sector that means almost always excesses ephemeral and disappears government excess is permanent and damaging 12 so he pulled the government back so that the private sector might do better it did better the twenties really did roar that was wonderful what do we get and you decide if it’s excessive how did we get they were particularly what we call productivity gain studies you could make as many more more objects in an hour cars than you could formally because of the assembly line because of electricity because of all these new things coming on the internet of that 20s was electricity you could plug in a vacuum

30:19 cleaner for the first time um what did you get that did you get a feeling we’re being excessive know you got Saturday off because in five days men could make or women what they had formerly made in six Oh what do you do with that Saturday so is that a problem you know you you do something very important to you you just think for your community you or you lie around that’s that’s your discretion but but there’s I think most people would agree that it’s better we have five days worked and six we got indoor plumbing from the excesses of the 20s that it Nora if there’s one thing that if you wanted to find the difference to be working for and poverty its indoor plumbing once you have

31:07 plumbing you are no longer really as out of it as miserable is unlikely to be healthy as you are without indoor plumbing it’s a real line moving towards the middle-class indoor plumbing I mean in other countries of course still India right so the the 20s for the area where era where we got a radio Saturday off maybe a car and indoor plumbing I rest my case they were an awesome decade with a lot of patents and a lot of great minds going into the period the argument that the stock market went too high in my view it did there’s an argument that it didn’t written by Nobel Prize winners by the way though you’d never hear that look up Prescott PR e SC OTT Edward or

31:56 Ned Prescott but so the stock market went too high in those days the president was not in charge of the stock market there was no securities exchange commission stocks were regulated locally and by the states and in Coolidge’s experience the stock market had crashed four or five times without any great depression so he himself so it was kind of too high you can see from his correspondence that he was looking for maybe crash-proof stocks he thought maybe grocery chains might be a good investment because people shop even for food even when they they forego luxury goods but you know there’s not once you can blame on Coolidge or even on the 20s a period of prosperity a period of strong exemplary prosperity that we

32:42 would love to have today with low unemployment and Saturday and so so Coolidge contributes to this more restrained view of government but he also contributes to a more restrained viewing of presidential power especially compared to maybe some of his predecessors like Teddy Roosevelt Woodrow Wilson and then his successors like Franklin Roosevelt just just to name one so so what was his view of presidential power how why did he want to restrain it more than than the others he lived close to a constitution and as I think I might have mentioned um president presider not King why is it called president because he’s supposed to preside not play King that that was

33:30 very clear to him he was quite aware of the Monarchs of Europe so so that’s true and I’m often asked you know there’s a project debt I think mark ADIS looking at executive orders because that would be an expression of executive ambition right the president makes whole laws for the executive orders is that right is that constitutional and and those who quantify these executive orders orders are always confounded because Coolidge it’s supposed to be a small government guy signed a lot of executive orders and what I’m waiting for please is the dissertation that analyzes colleges executive orders because my impression perusing them he had 50 vetoes he killed a lot of laws but my

34:17 impression looking at his executive orders is that they were very narrow in scope such as this Native American land moves two inches to the right on the map because even then Native American land was different and under the auspices of the federal government you know in some situations on or the this very very small executive orders not usually big ones but that’s only anecdotal and I don’t have all of them because all of them are not online or even easy to retrieve they called them different names sometimes they weren’t called executive orders all the time in that period and whoever writes that dissertation is going to make a great contribution because the executive

35:03 orders of college are mirror of his approach to federalism his vetoes were beautiful he worked very hard in his veto letters he was sometimes overridden particularly you know the Republican Party is remembered the progressives were in his own party so he only represented some Republicans other Republicans were way way more progressive than he but he generally he vetoed veterans bonus because he thought that would set a precedent moving toward Social Security he was prescient he didn’t always he vetoed farm subsidy which is deeply on the expected by some because he was from a farming family what you’d farmed in Vermont how hard is farming there you farm rocks in Vermont someone said that

35:51 farms don’t lay that that was the humorist Will Rogers in Vermont they hang because they’re up and so people thought he was our dairy we say when we you know that is dairy would be the most important lobby for someone from Vermont but he was not at all concerned with dairy and there’s a wonderful scene where some farming Lobby people went to see him with them and Coolidge was a master of pauses when he didn’t say told the story as much as what he did and so I’m gonna try and replicate it without the accent I would inflict that on you it’s like they said please give us agricultural money of course you understand why agriculture needs subsidy your father as a desperate little cheese

36:36 factory you know and he said well farmers never have made much money I don’t suppose they ever will pause pause don’t suppose there’s much we can do about it he without sick people in a room till they left ooh very familiar type to those of us who grew up around such people and there are a lot of them in the United States and the olden days fewer now just don’t say anything so I think that’s enough about his principles but if there’s one you want to get to I’m ready well in

37:23 thinking about the expanded role of the federal government throughout time which is something that students are asked to do often in in US history classes how did the presidency of Calvin Coolidge compare with some other presidencies that you’ve written about too clearly a presidency like Franklin Roosevelt with his New Deal Lyndon Johnson with his greatest society how would you compare those there’s 20th century presidencies well he didn’t lead with the because he thought that was weak and wrong my heart feels four months my eye sees Vermont is flooded bridges I know are swept away the lieutenant governor I know his drowned should I go

38:13 to Vermont no I must not go to Vermont because I am President of the United States not president of Vermont if I go to Vermont I will be showing favoritism to my home state that would be wrong a very moral argument he can’t do for his own what he didn’t do for others is what the way they paraphrased it in Vermont very upright nowadays and so you think of Johnson particularly Johnson led with his heart if I saw how poor people are in Texas and how much education they need when I pass an education bill I’m gonna run to Dex Texas and show Texas what I did because I love Texas and what

38:59 my heart feels must be bright coolers so then people who believe president should lead with the heart whatever the result thought Coolidge Coles but this is not of course just a presidency contest or evaluation this happens to introverts like college all the time people who speak less and who speak less heatedly or betray their own sentiments list don’t have less heart they’re just set up differently and sometimes they’re more moral sometimes they’re less more than anyway they’re different in Coolidge’s case he had a lot of heart but he was very moral and he didn’t believe you should play favorites he didn’t even he also didn’t believe that charity from the federal government I

39:45 mean I don’t think even could conceive of the scale of our entitlements but charity from the federal he didn’t think the way to reward the veterans for their service was with a national pension because that would be Social Security for veterans and then everyone else because he felt that um well we did that we might run out of money and then someone else would lose out no matter how much we loved the veterans and one should serve the country not for money but for the honor of serving whoa he said that today you’d be really killed out of the room nonetheless there’s a great component of truth to it can you tell us more about the coolest foundation I know you work a lot with with students as we do it the Bill of

40:30 Rights Institute and and I’m sure our teachers and students and other citizens who are listening and watching would would love to hear more about what you do well we have worked with the Bill of Rights Institute and your colleagues have been up to teach our students and that’s wonderful I think it was your Institute that gave out George Washington’s letter on etiquette for young men is that correct yes there’s a Washington one in a Franklin one and I can’t remember so what we do is we do because what’s important we believe is is civility in order to learn we need to be civil and our education doesn’t

41:17 always give us both sides of arguments particularly non-economic and US history arguments so we have a high school debate program that has served thousands now we’re culminating in the Coolidge cup to which you can apply even if your school does not debate in Vermont and we bring kids to Vermont we pay the kids who make it to come to Vermont when you qualify you get a scholarship when possible excuse me to Vermont to debate and kids debate both sides of an issue we are very concerned that kids know all the arguments for both sides so we do offer briefs from which they may argue we insist on topicality which is very

42:02 important in debate because a lot of times in debate nowadays the debate will ramble off into other areas if we’re debating the merits or demerits of the Quarantine shut down as we were now we’ve looked at the economic arguments for both sides and we insisted our debaters do the same and they did have a hot competition and that’s a beautiful Plymouth notch in Vermont by the end where you get to see the wonderful mountains of Vermont and the wonderful homestead of Coolidge we also have a national scholarship contest which is even more hotly contested this year we had thirty four hundred candidates for three scholarships the 3443 we have scholars will win the Coolidge

42:49 which is a full ride to any college for academic merit we also have a senators program for the top hundred kids who have won as well even to make it that far into thirty four hundred it’s harder to get the scholarship and to get into MIT so our Senators learn about Coolidge in Washington they learn about the history of federalism they learn about government they hear from both sides of the aisle politically but they but they learn with an emphasis on Coolidge values and they learn that Coolidge house which is in Washington in lovely Georgetown because you want to get a feel for the architecture of our history when you’re learning about our history so you can know what what rooms the

43:38 Coolidge might have moved in George and rooms as in the White House or colonial rooms is at the notch and also what rooms were moved in bike or lived in by those you most admired Oh keep up the tremendous work on civics education and the scholarships for young people and and all the fine work you’re doing and we look forward to your your next book and I want to thank you very much for your contributions to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and also for our conversation today well thank you for supporting Calvin Coolidge the Bill of Rights friends have done a lot of work on Coolidge the more the better he’s wonderful president way underrated