Latest / Liberty + Leadership / Looking Back on 2025: Liberty, Leadership and the Next Generation

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Looking Back on 2025: Liberty, Leadership and the Next Generation · Liberty + Leadership

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_06: Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast, a conversation with TFAS alumni, faculty, and friends who are making an impact today.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_06: I'm your host, Roger Reen.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_06: As 2025 draws to a close, I want to do something a little different on the Liberty and Leadership Podcast.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_06: It's been a remarkable year for TFAS programs and a terrific year for this podcast.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_06: We've welcomed voices from around the world, highlighted courageous alumni, and celebrated the impact our generous supporters have on TFAS students from high school classrooms to Capitol Hill and far beyond.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_06: Today you'll hear some of our favorite moments from the podcast over the past year that capture the continuing mission and achievements of TFAS and our network of over 53,000 alumni from over 50 different countries.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_06: And speaking of different countries, I want to start things off today by highlighting the international reach of TFAS.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_06: We are not only helping leaders think seriously about individual liberty, personal responsibility, and economic freedom from Washington, D.C.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_06: We also host TFAS programs in Santiago, Chile and Prague, Czech Republic.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_06: Prague is the home of two programs, our European Journalism Institute and TFAS Prague.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_06: We started our first program there in 1993 when Prague was still the wild, wild east, as Vaclav Havel called it.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_06: This year, 84 students from 33 countries took part in TFAS Prague, and 28 young journalists from 16 countries attended the European Journalism Institute.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_06: We also had 60 participants from 21 countries attend our program in Santiago, Chile.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_06: Which brings us to our first selection.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_06: It is difficult to imagine someone who embodies the international commitment of the Fund for American Studies more than Ambassador Paula Dobriansky, a foreign policy expert and longtime TFAS trustee who has been a tireless advocate for the Captive Nations.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_06: Here's Paula from a podcast we recorded in March of this year.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_06: Many people probably don't know what that term or those terms captive nations involves.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_06: Could you explain a little of that history and your father's key role in that whole issue?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_08: In 1959, my father wrote a resolution, PL 8690, public law 8690, which was the Captive Nations Week resolution.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_08: The resolution specifically called upon not just only, you know, Congress in this regard, but the President of the United States for every year for the third week of July to issue a proclamation.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_08: And the proclamation would be focused on those captive nations.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_08: And it focused on those countries that were impacted by tyrannical governments.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_08: Here, the proclamation and also the resolution would focus on, in particular, Russian imperialism.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_08: It wasn't only about Russian communism, if you will, because yes, we knew the existence of the Soviet Union at the time, but this was also about Russian statecraft and Russian imperialism, and specifically focusing on countries like those in Central and Eastern Europe, countries like Poland, like Hungary, like the Czech Republic, like also looking at China, looking at Cuba.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_08: Also, we must remember the Baltic states.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_08: The Baltic states never recognized their forced incorporation into then the Soviet Union.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_08: But the hardcore essence of it was all of these captive nations and the captive nations list, the original one and the one to this day, focuses on those countries that are not free, that their governments are tyrannical, that they repress their population, they don't have freedom of the press, they don't have freedom of religion, they are repressed in many different ways.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_08: And I will add just one last thing.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_08: I think it was very significant that every president since Dwight T.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_08: Eisenhower forward has issued a proclamation.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_08: I think that ascribes the importance to which all of our presidents have really underscored the importance of freedom, universal freedom for all, and that no one, no one should be repressed, no matter where they are living.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_08: And all of them have a right to their own culture, to their language, to live in peace.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_08: And that is what Captive Nations is about.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_08: It's a reminder that for those that are repressed here, that we should not accept that state that is just not something that we identify with.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_06: Paula's words on captive nations are a powerful reminder of how clearly her father, Lev Dobryansky's congressional resolution, called out tyranny, whether in Eastern Europe, the Baltics, or China, and affirmed that all people deserve personal, religious, and political freedom.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_06: Paula has carried that work forward in her own service, and TFAS is proud that she has been a part of our story for so many years.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_06: This month, Paula retired from our board and became a trustee emeritus at TFAS.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_06: We're immensely grateful for her countless years of service.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_06: Another podcast guest this year who reminds us of the cost of freedom is journalist Benjamin Hall, who was gravely wounded while reporting from Ukraine.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_06: Ben is a past recipient of TFAS's Kenneth Y.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_06: Tomlinson Award for courageous journalism.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_06: Speaking of courageous journalism, I want to take a moment to mention some of the work of the 2025 TFAS Center for Excellence in Journalism.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_06: This year, we awarded three Joseph Rago Memorial Fellowships for Excellence in Journalism and seven Robert Novak Fellowships.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_06: Also, our Student Journalism Association now has 30 campus publications, a number that has doubled since its launch only two years ago.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_06: Our team of journalism program officers undertook more than 60 training and mentorship visits this fall, launched the Campus Transparency Fellowship program with 18 fellows from across the U.S., and had a hand in publishing over 1,500 articles.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_06: To hear more about the transformative journalism work TFAS is doing, I invite you to listen to my last episode, which shin the light on all of our exciting journalism programs and the direct impact TFAS alumni have on the news media.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_06: Now, here's a moment from my conversation with Benjamin Hall from May of this year.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_06: For those who aren't familiar with what happened to you in Ukraine when you were covering the war there, and who may not have read your first book, Saved, would you mind just recounting or providing a backdrop to your new book, Resolute?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_10: Yeah, it was March of 2022 in Fox News, and uh we were covering the conflict in Ukraine just after Russia had invaded, and our team was inside Kyiv and we were reporting on everything that happens during a war.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_10: I'd covered conflict for over a decade at that point, and um this was obviously the biggest land invasion that we had seen in Europe since World War Two.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_10: So a major story.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_10: And on March 14th, me and my team were just outside Kyiv covering the story about a bombed-out village called Horenka, and we filmed how it had been obliterated by Russian shelling, and uh it was abandoned at the time.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_10: There was no one there.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_10: We were with uh Russian uh a couple of Ukrainian military, and as we were driving back towards Kyiv, we slowed down at this abandoned checkpoint, and out of the sky, out of nowhere, came these shells targeting our car.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_10: The first one missed by about 30 feet, and quickly the driver tried to turn the car around and reverse, but a few seconds later the second one landed just alongside the car.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_10: Now that one knocked me out.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_10: I believe that's when I got a lot of the facial injuries, uh shrapnel in the eye and in the throat, and at that moment it went to total peace, total black.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_10: I could hear, see, nothing.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_10: It was all peaceful.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_10: And at that moment I saw my daughter Anna in front of me.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_10: She was eight years old, and she said to me, Daddy, you have to get out of the car.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_10: You have to get out of the car.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_10: As lifelike as anything.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_10: And it brought me back, and I I I came back and suddenly all this noise, everything was happening.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_10: I grabbed for the car of the door, I took one step out of the car, and the third shell hit the car itself.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_10: That one threw me away.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_10: And uh I woke up a little bit later, I was on fire, and I was rolling around, I was trying to put the flames out of my body, and I managed to do that, and I I was badly injured that day.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_10: My right leg was gone, most of my left foot, and I had it was very badly burnt across my body, my left thumb, and and this began this whole journey of trying to first of all be saved.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_10: It took about 40 minutes before we were found.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_10: I think the saddest part of that whole day is my team died.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_10: The rest of my team died that day.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_10: Cameraman Pierre, fixer local producer Sasha, the two Ukrainian soldiers who we were with, they all died.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_10: But it began this very brutal three-day evacuation where some this incredible group called, say, our allies, came into Ukraine to find me.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_10: You know, I'm despite the accent, I'm an American, and they knew an American was a bit injured.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_10: They didn't know where I was for the initial period, and they had to come in and find me.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_10: And finally they did, and they found a way to get me out with all my injuries, and um then began this journey to recovery.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_10: And I wrote about that in Saved, my first book, and Resolute is the follow-up, and it's sort of a much more personal look at some of the hard moments and how I got through those.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_06: You returned to Ukraine, right?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_06: Some 631 days, was it, after the attack?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_06: Could you just briefly talk about that as something you write about in the book?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_10: Big, big moment for me.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_10: And I wanted to go back straight away.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_10: Like I was never gonna a lot of the book is about never hide from bad things that happen, never pretend they didn't happen, face up to them, talk about them, stand up.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_10: You know, if you get knocked off the horse, you get back on it.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_10: And um, I knew I wanted to go back to Ukraine.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_10: I I had to go back and for a few reasons.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_10: First of all, personally, like I needed to show that I wouldn't be stopped.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_10: You know, you can hold us down, but I will keep moving forward.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_10: Uh I also wanted to go back for journalism.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_10: I honestly felt that you know the way I saw it is that Putin and the Russians tried to silence journalists that day.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_10: Like we were targeted that day.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_10: And I know that he wanted to silence journalists, and I wanted to go back to say, you may have attacked us, you may have tried to science us, but I am back and I am still reporting.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_10: You will not stop journalists.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_10: We will always report, no matter the threat, because I think that's so important.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_06: Ben's story is a powerful reminder that freedom is fragile and that telling the truth about tyranny can come at a terrible cost.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_06: It is also a reminder of why TFES exists, to educate and equip young people who will stand up for the ideas of liberty, whether in journalism, public policy, business, law, or wherever they are called to serve.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_06: This past summer in Washington, D.C., nearly 300 students took part in our programs.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_06: Many of those students are just beginning their journeys as leaders.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_06: And two recent alumni who are off to a very strong start are TFAS alumni Katherine Shea and Caleb Davis, who I had the pleasure of speaking with at our annual conference in Naples, Florida.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_06: What's one highlight from last summer that kind of sticks out?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, as I think most people here know, you you took some courses, you took a course in economics, I think both of you.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_06: You had a lot of different lectures and career events to attend.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_06: You had your internships, you probably got to hear Chris Allman whistle, but what was the highlight?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_12: The highlight for me was certainly my internship.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_12: I had an amazing experience at the Department of Agriculture.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_12: I worked primarily on high-priority policy issues.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_12: It was a nice period of change to me joining the department.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_12: And I also worked on geospatial data analytics.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_12: Working under Ingram Ripley, who is the executive director of the single-family housing guarantee and loan program, she is so active with TFAS and really encouraged us to dive straight into working hands-on with the policy that is going on in the department.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_12: But my highlight had just been meeting Secretary of Wilsack at the end of my internship.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_12: He's so passionate about the individual family farmers and the issues that they face.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_12: And hearing someone in such a high position in government who is connecting with the issues of individual farmers, it was really wonderful to hear.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_12: That was the reason why I was so interested in the Department of Agriculture, coming from a family where many people are small family farmers.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_12: I have an appreciation for the struggles that are very apparent every day in family farming.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_12: And seeing the government being able to support those issues, even if they haven't had that personal experience, it was really wonderful to see.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think the highlight of my internship, at least, was that it was a bit of a smaller firm, so interns, if they wanted to do a lot more work, they could.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: The workload kind of depended on how much you wanted to do.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I was able to go to meetings with our lobbyists and our clients, as well as like congressional staffs on the Hill.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that was really cool to just see the interaction between the private sector and the public sector and see it hands-on, like these conversations about you know certain policy issues happening right in front of me.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that's like probably the highlight in terms of my internship.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think just the overarching highlight of the summer and something that I've just really appreciated about TFAS is that every single day I was learning something new.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was just a consistent summer of learning.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: And whether it was with guest lectures or my classes, internships, you know, people I'd meet in DC, I truly accredit that to TFAS and the opportunity that you know TFAS provided to continually learn throughout the summer and didn't get a lot of sleep because there were so many opportunities through TFAST to learn and grow and network, but I'm very appreciative for it.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_06: Catherine and Caleb are just two examples of the young women and men who come through TFAS every year and leave with a clear sense of purpose.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_06: In 2025, students from 12 countries, 36 states, and 154 universities attended our programs for college students.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_06: Many of those students go on to do important work in public policy and public life.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_06: One of those alums is economist and author Kurt Couchman.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_06: Kurt joined us to talk about his new book, Fiscal Democracy in America, and why our current path of debt and deficits is unsustainable.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_06: Your book includes two pairs of words that I think are important.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_06: Fiscal democracy is one of them, and the other is sound governance.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_06: Your proposal really is built around the fact that if we could get a balanced budget amendment, like the principles-based one, into the Constitution, it would lead more toward fiscal democracy and sound governance.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_06: So I think a good note to end this conversation on would be to talk a little bit about what that looks like.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_06: If a balanced budget amendment is adopted, does it improve the way we're governed and how Congress operates?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_05: I very much believe so.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_05: We have basically two goals with a balanced budget amendment.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_05: One is fiscal responsibility.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_05: That's the obvious one.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_05: The other one is catalyzing Congress to think deeply about how it's set up and how it could be better.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_05: Some of that's fiscal.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_05: But the truth is that most members of Congress are interested in controlling deficits and debt, but they're more interested in lots of other things.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_05: They're most interested in being relevant as a member of Congress, as a legislator, someone who can bring solutions, bring ideas.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_05: And the current process shuts that down.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_05: If we were to adopt some of these budget best practices, comprehensive budget, no shutdowns, heck, don't let the president give the State of the Union until you get the president's budget request and the national security strategy from him.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_05: Those are all good things that would help Congress succeed in their job of representing the many, many interests, geographic, ideological, whatever else, of the American people.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_05: Because the point of a legislature is to discover better ways of mutually accommodating each other.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_05: We have a problem in this country right now of political violence, or the normalization of it as well.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_05: And if we were to see legislators who disagree deeply on so many things coming together to agree on this piece here, that piece there, this overall budget, then that shows that we see things differently, but we can work together for a mutual benefit, move the country forward, add value for the people.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_05: That just brings the temperature down.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_05: There will always be crazies out there.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_05: But the hope is that there will be less radicalization and more of a coming back together where even if you see the world differently from someone else, you still recognize their inherent dignity and worth as a human being, and you're more willing to have conversations with them.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_06: Kurt's work is a great example of TFAS alumni thinking seriously about long-term questions that affect every American.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_06: Others are doing that work behind a microphone, such as TFAS alumnus Dan Proft, a longtime talk radio host in Chicago and an entrepreneur who first came to TFAS in the 1990s.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_06: At our annual conference in Naples this year, Dan and I had a wide-ranging conversation about how he fell into radio and how his time at TFAS helped shape his outlook on public policy and debate.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_06: But here he is sharing his thoughts on the state of legacy media and how 2025 marked a clear shift in the makeup of the White House press briefing room.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_06: Let's shift a little bit over to your profession in the media.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_06: I'm seeing encouraging signs of change that may impact the legacy media eventually.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_06: But one important change the president made was opening up the press briefing and not just having the legacy media there, but letting podcast hosts and conservative press have more access to the White House.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_06: And you have thoughts about that?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the media landscape has been changing for a long time.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_04: There are podcasts and online outlets that have more consumers than the legacy dailies, uh, than most of the shows on CNN and MSNBC for that matter, that completely had a sort of outsized influence.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's great to introduce new voices into the press room to be able to ask the press secretary questions, just to give them the standing that says basically, look, you know, some of these podcasters and representatives of new media organizations are just as on the ball or more, have just as incisive questions, are coming at these stories from different angles.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_04: So it sort of enriches the conversation and expands the parameters of debate.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_04: So I think that's excellent.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's long overdue.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_04: And the whole AP business, too.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, you know, there's no constitutional right for you to be.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_04: A member of the Washington press room.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_04: So, I mean, that again is sort of this entitlement mentality that legacy media has as well.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_04: That I think, you know, nobody is running around going to die in a hill over sort of AP's access.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_04: You're a news organization, nobody's stopping you from being a news organization, but you don't get the privileges you think you deserve codified by one administration to the next.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_04: That's all.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_04: Deal with it.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_06: Dan's comments highlight just how dramatically the media landscape has shifted this year.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_06: New platforms, independent voices, and emerging outlets are challenging old assumptions about who gets to shape public debate.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_06: That aligns closely with what we're seeing across TFAS programs.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_06: Students and young journalists who aren't waiting for permission to ask sharp questions or explain complex issues.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_06: One of those voices is Washington Post editorial writer and TFAS future of freedom participant, Dominic Pino.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_06: His work brings sound economic thinking into conversations that are often dominated by political noise.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_06: Here, Dominic applies his economic way of thinking to the issue of limited government.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_06: In your recent stat in National Review, you posted uh 96% was the stat, and that is the proportion of the growth of government employment that's been at the state and local level in the past, I guess it was a decade or so.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_06: But can you talk some about that?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_06: And you know, we all think the federal government's growing so big and that it's overwhelming state and local governments, and certainly it is in terms of the power shift to the federal government.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_06: But this is just an explosion of employment at state and local government.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_06: And I know often state and local governments, they're the operational deliverer of programs that the federal government mandates.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_06: So I'm interested in hearing more about that 96%.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: So the number goes back to 1955.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's the first year that the Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps track separately of federal, state, and local government employment.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously, we all know the federal government is much more powerful, bigger than it was in 1955.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: 1955 is before the Great Society.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: You might expect that a lot of that growth in government employment would come from the federal government because government employment has surged since 1955.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's grown at about twice the rate of the population growth over that same span.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not just because we're a bigger country that it really is growing relative to that as well.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: But if you look at the actual growth, a lot of it comes from state and local government, nearly all of it, in fact.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: State and local government have both increased their employment by over 300% since 1955.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: One of the cool things I found as I was doing this is actually the total state government employment for all 50 states combined was lower than federal government employment as recently as 1972.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: And now it's just like crazy to even imagine that all 50 states put together would have less government employment than the federal government.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: There's other factors going on here, right?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: As you said, a lot of federal programs get administered by the states, and so federal government's responsible for part of that growth.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: But state governments are responsible for a lot of this growth too.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: In sectors such as education, you see enormous surges in employment in the education sector with basically no improvements for student outcomes.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: And now we see a declining public school population in a lot of places as school choice expands and as people have fewer kids.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so despite all of that, the employment in government keeps going up.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think a mistake that we can make as supporters of limited government to say, you know, employment is the problem when the federal government is much too powerful.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not because they've hired a bunch of people.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's not because employment is too big.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually because of the laws and regulations that come out of Washington, D.C.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: that give those bureaucrats lots and lots of power, even if there's not that many more of them than there were 50 years ago.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_06: The issue of the size of government isn't exactly a textbook economics topic, but Dominic's clearly applying the economic way of thinking, looking at incentives, trade-offs, and what really drives government growth.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_06: That's exactly the kind of lens we want TFAS students, teachers, and future leaders to develop.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_06: And it's the mission of the Foundation for Teaching Economics, one they have advanced for 50 years, helping young people understand how economics shapes the world around them.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_06: Through the Foundation for Teaching Economics, TFAS is reaching record numbers of high school students and teachers.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_06: This year alone, a record 1,200 students took part in 30 week-long FTE programs, such as Economics for Leaders and Advanced Economics for Leaders.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_06: Over 1,600 high school teachers attended 52 TFAS economics training programs.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_06: To mark 50 years of FTE, we welcomed Executive Director Ted Tucker and Director of Operations and Teacher Programs, Lisa Chang, to the podcast.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_06: How does FTE go about taking these complex economic concepts, or at least concepts that some people view as very complex, and then, you know, being able to make them accessible to high school students and engaging them in learning at FTE programs?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_07: So as you know, we do student programs, but we also do teacher programs.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_07: So we're sort of trying to hit both ends there and reach the students really to communicate these concepts.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_07: But one of the best ways that we found to introduce these complex concepts is through experiential learning or hands-on active learning that essentially means incorporating fun activities for the students that get them out of their seats and demonstrate the actual concepts of what they're getting from regular lectures.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_07: As an example, we've got a great activity called the Magic of Markets, which I think you both are familiar with, obviously.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_07: And that just teaches students that trade is the voluntary exchange of goods and services.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_07: There's an element of fun and surprise for the kids.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_07: And it teaches them that trade can only happen when trading partners expect to gain from the exchange.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_07: So they're put into a trading simulation that's designed to illustrate a complex marketplace with the conditions that encourage or discourage trade among individuals.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_07: And it's a lot of fun to see.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_06: I know the organization's developed dozens and dozens of those types of activities-based ways of teaching important economic concepts.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_06: And that's great.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_06: I know that one thing, I guess, that perhaps it was Milton Friedman suggested, is that you adopt the Paul Hain approach to the economic way of thinking.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_06: Ted, how do you kind of incorporate that into the FDE programs beside, you know, the activities that Lisa's talking about?
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: The economic way of thinking, you know, what Paul Hayne was doing, he was an you know an economist/slash philosopher, and he really wanted to understand human behavior.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: And he ultimately distilled his idea, the economic way of thinking, down to just the idea that all social phenomena emerges from the choices of individuals in response to expected benefits and costs to themselves.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: And what we've done is we've taken that theme that Paul created and really came up with these economic reasoning propositions, which we think really encapsulate the economic way of thinking.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: And these are, you know, people choose, and the individual choices are the sources of social outcomes.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: Choices impose costs.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: People receive benefits and incur costs when they make decisions.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: People respond to incentives in predictable ways.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then finally, of course, institutions are the rules of the game that influence choices.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know, laws, customs, moral principles, superstitions, cultural values all influence people's choices.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: And we take that and we quit those propositions and make them sort of a theme throughout all of our programming.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: Because we really want students and teachers when they leave the programs to be using this kind of economic way of thinking and any sort of decision making that they need to make, whether a high school student has to decide do I go to college or do I get a job right out of high school?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: When you're in a voting booth and you have to make a decision about who to vote for, we just want to make sure that students and people have that kind of thinking when making those important choices.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_06: The growth of programs for high school students and teachers has allowed FTE to shape economic understanding at a scale FTE founder Jack Hume probably never imagined.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_06: As we have seen this year, these programs are now reaching over 100,000 students through the teachers we train.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_06: One of the great ambassadors for economics education is Amanda Stiglbauer, an AP economics teacher, FTE instructor, and our new FTE Economic Education Curriculum Fellow.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_06: You made a mention earlier of personal finance courses.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_06: And I know there are a number of states, I think it's more than 30 now, that require some sort of course in high school in either economics or personal finance.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_06: And I know those are very different courses, and both probably very important courses, but is there sometimes confusion between students who are taking personal finance versus really learning the economic way of thinking in an economics class?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_11: Yeah, there has been such a growing trend with personal finance education.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_11: Um, and sometimes at the expense of economics education, states are passing laws that say personal finance is now a requirement.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_11: You can take personal finance instead of economics.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_11: And I know some states have scrapped economics altogether, which is which is really sad because they are, as you said, two very different subject areas.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_11: When their parents come in on open house night, they think, oh, yes, you're gonna teach my student how to write a check and you're gonna teach them how to balance a budget.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_11: And in South Carolina, where I teach, that's actually true because we have what we call a hybrid course in economics and personal finance.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_11: But now there's the push to have both standalone economics and personal finance courses.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_11: So there is a lot of confusion.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_11: Most people, a lot of times, unfortunately, I feel like they err on the side of we need personal finance.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_11: And as you said, personal finance is so important.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_11: But economics and understanding the world around us, the policies that we're voting for or not voting for, and how the world around us works is equally as important.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_06: I now want to turn to a story that reminds us what can happen when economic and political freedoms are taken away.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_06: Earlier this year, I spoke with Mark Clifford, president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong, about his book, Troublemaker, recounting the remarkable life of Jimmy Lai.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_06: Jimmy is a Hong Kong entrepreneur, publisher, and longtime advocate for democracy who has been in solitary confinement in Hong Kong for his defense of free expression.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_06: Here is Mark describing who Jimmy Lai is, how he became such a powerful voice for freedom, and how that expression shaped his commitment to liberty.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_06: Let me start by asking you to give listeners a brief description of who Jimmy Lai is and why you chose to write this biography of him.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, thanks.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_03: Jimmy is a 77-year-old man who's now sitting in solitary confinement where he spent for most of the past four years in a Hong Kong prison on completely trumped-up charges while a lengthy, very lengthy, one-year-plus national security law trial is underway that tries to portray this wonderful man as some sort of enemy of the state who should be locked up for 10 years, if not for life.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: He started out, he was born in southern China, just across the border from Hong Kong.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_03: Came into Hong Kong, smuggled himself in on a fishing boat at the age of 12.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_03: First night he was there, he slept in a factory, he worked in a factory.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, 15 years later, he owned a factory.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_03: Classic Hong Kong uh success story.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_03: But he wasn't just one of another 10,000 really successful entrepreneurs.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_03: He really was something more.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: And within five years or so of starting a manufacturing operation, he had the biggest sweater maker in Hong Kong.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: He parlayed that success into an extraordinarily successful retail clothing chain, was about to go into fast food when the Tiananmen Square killings of 1989 saw the Chinese government murder hundreds, maybe even thousands of its own people, many of its best and brightest students.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_03: And so Jimmy decided to go into media.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: So with all the same kind of energy and uh extraordinary verve and creativity that he brought to making sweaters and selling shirts, he started uh first a newspaper, then a magazine, first in Hong Kong and then in Taiwan.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: And these publications, especially in Hong Kong, became almost like an opposition political party.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the newspaper Apple Daily, the magazine Next uh magazine were successful in rallying, uh helping spur millions of Hong Kongers come out in the streets in a you know a series of demonstrations, uh culminate in the summer of 2019.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I think ultimately the Chinese Communist Party decided Jimmy Lai was too hot to handle, and the only way they knew how to deal with him was to lock him up.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_06: People need to know the story of Jimmy Lai, and we'll be hearing a lot more about him, hopefully, in the next few months, and pray that it's because he will have been released from his captivity in Hong Kong.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_03: Just to underscore what you just said, I mean, you know, none of us fighting for freedom have have armies uh at our disposal, but you know, we do have moral right on our side, and we do have elected officials who can influence China.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think if we can keep the eyes of the world on Hong Kong, on Jimmy Lai and the other political prisoners, we really have a strong chance of some meaningful change or at least meaningful amelioration of some of these conditions and of getting some of the prisoners out.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_03: And that would be a step.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_03: That would be a really important step.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, thanks for your support.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for everybody who's watched and everything they're doing.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_06: Since that conversation with Mark, Jimmy Lai's situation has only grown more serious.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_06: He has spent more than 1,800 days behind bars, and recent reports describe serious concerns about his health as he awaits a ruling that could effectively mean life in prison.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_06: Jimmy Lai's story is one reason TFAS continues to highlight the importance of free speech and the rule of law.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_06: Another friend of TFAS who has been a thoughtful defender of constitutional government and ordered liberty is Lord Daniel Hannon.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_06: He was our most popular episode this year.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_06: Lord Hannon has served in the European Parliament and now sits in the UK House of Lords, gave our annual Neil B.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_06: Freeman lecture in Washington, D.C.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_06: this past summer.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_06: We're excited to announce that Lord Hannon will serve as the TFAS America 250 visiting fellow in 2026 to help us celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_06: Let's shift a minute to your book, Inventing Freedom.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_06: I'm curious a little bit about it.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_06: Is it because you've covered ground that really others haven't covered?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_09: We're coming up to the 250th anniversary, and I think that's a a really big deal.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_09: But I'm interested, as a British conservative, in how the US Declaration of Independence is kind of part of my heritage as well.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_09: The authors of it were not acting in a vacuum.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_09: They were drawing on ideas that were centuries old.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_09: And it's important to remember that when the conflict began, no one saw it as a national conflict.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_09: Nobody saw it as, you know, when you go to Concord and Lexington, now you get the tour guide saying, well, the British were here and the Americans were.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_09: You'd have sounded like a lunatic if you'd said that in 1775 everyone was British, right?
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_09: Paul Revere riding through saying the British are coming would have been a bizarre thing to shout at a Massachusetts population that had only ever considered itself British, right?
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_09: It was it was only much later, after the French got involved, that people started thinking of it as a war rather than a civil war.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_09: I wanted to explore the extent to which the founders were, in some senses, conservatives rather than radicals.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_09: That they were in their own minds restoring the privileges that they believed they had been born with as Englishmen and that were under threat from the innovations of a German king.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_09: And I think you see that very, very clearly in not just in what they were saying and writing in their letters, but you know, in the in the conclusions of the first Continental Congress and all the rest of it, it was very clear that these were people who were embittered by the betrayal of their birthright.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_09: I mean, they they probably exaggerated that, but they were not wrong to see that there was a betrayal at least of the idea of comprehensive representative system where taxes should reflect the right to representation.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_09: There was a line that Jefferson wrote that was eventually excised from the Declaration.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_09: It was a rather haunting and beautiful line where he said we might have been a great and free people together.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_09: And so I wanted to talk about what does the Declaration of Independence mean to the rest of the world, not particularly to the rest of the English speaking world, because we share this tradition coming from Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights and so on, but actually to everybody.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_09: I believe that the US by succeeding as it has elevated and ennobled the idea of individual freedom and autonomy.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_09: And when the US diverges from those principles, because human beings are flawed and nothing in this world is perfect, all of us lose something.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_06: It's not just your problem.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_06: Maintaining those ideals of individual freedom and autonomy continues to be as important as ever.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_06: And it is the heart of what TFAS wants to emphasize as America approaches its 250th birthday.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_06: Which brings us to 2026.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_06: In the coming year, TFAS will continue to be one of the foremost organizations preparing young talent who advance individual liberty, personal responsibility, and economic freedom in their careers.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_06: The need is clearer than ever.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_06: Our country lacks honorable and courageous leaders with a commitment to limited government and a free market economic system.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_06: TFAS is developing those leaders with programs that reach young people in high school, college, law school, and as young professionals.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_06: The best example of our success is in journalism.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_06: We have programs that have developed talented journalists and credentialed them so they are hired and advanced in key media positions.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_06: This is transformational.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_06: Our graduates host leading radio talk shows, serve on editorial boards of major newspapers, and publish stories almost every day on important national and local events.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_06: They are holding college administrators to account.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_06: Through their reporting on campus events that could otherwise be neglected or covered up.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_06: Our strategy that is working to transform the media can now be applied by TFAS to other professions of influence, including government, public policy, and the legal profession.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_06: But it requires your continued and increased support.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_06: Perhaps the most difficult thing we do here at TFAS is to inform a talented and eager young person that our scholarship pool has run dry or a particular program is at capacity and therefore we can't accept them.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_06: It is difficult because we are asking ourselves, did we just turn away the next Ronald Reagan or Milton Friedman or William F.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_06: Buckley?
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_06: So that leads me to say thank you to all our supporters who are enabling us to build this organization as the leading developer of talented young people who make a difference in the future and ensure that our country remains the last best hope for mankind.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_06: As we close this year-end edition of Liberty and Leadership, thank you for listening and for standing with TFAS.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_06: The voices you've heard today are only a small sample of what TFAS has been privileged to be a part of in 2025.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_06: This year, TFAS programs served teachers and students from around the world and built an alumni network that now includes more than 53,000 people in over 50 countries.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_06: We're excited to carry that work into 2026 as we help a new generation think more deeply about individual liberty, personal responsibility, and economic freedom.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_06: On behalf of everyone at the Fund for American Studies, thank you for joining us.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_06: We wish you and your family a joyful holiday season and a very happy new year.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_06: We look forward to being with you again in 2026.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_06: Thank you for listening to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_06: If you have a comment or question, please drop us an email at podcast at tfas.org, and be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app and leave a five star review.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_06: Liberty and Leadership is produced at Podville Media.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_06: I'm your host, Roger Reim, and until next time, show courage in things large and small.