By: AIF Staff
Dallas, TX – In late March, American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan spoke at Southern Methodist University’s Center for Faith & Learning about how to integrate faith-based principles into public life. During the conversation moderated by Dr. Elizabeth Kincaid, Ryan discussed how he developed central tenets of his faith, how he sought to legislate from a philosophical framework which was consistent with Catholic Social Teaching, and how he used his prudential judgement to assess various public policy debates.
With over 150 students and members of the wider SMU community in attendance, Ryan touched on how faith informed his efforts to reform the tax code, strengthen the social safety, and modernize our criminal justice system. The full discussion is accessible here and selected excerpts, edited slightly for clarity, follow.
Making an impact while staying true to your beliefs:
“In Congress today, we have legislators and entertainers. If you turn on the TV tonight, you’ll probably see an entertainer on TV tonight…. But if they’re in session and you drive to the Capitol and walk around, the legislators will be in those rooms, sleeves rolled up, working. They will be legislating, negotiating, compromising and the carnival barkers, the entertainers, will be on TV getting hits and clicks. So, be a legislator!
What a legislator does is she listens to the other side, absorbs input, tries to put herself in someone else’s shoes to see what their perspective is and what they’re all about. She filters that through her principles that she’s already thought through and then comes up with a conclusion to try and bridge the gap.
The Founders gave us a country that requires negotiation and compromise, that expects and insists that different people, from different places, with different backgrounds, from different parties and with different philosophies figure out how to bridge the gap… and tackle our challenges. The more you’re able to have that as your mindset, the more successful of a legislator you will be. You might not be entertaining, but you’ll get more done and you’ll make a bigger difference if you do it that way.
The entertainers might get famous and rich, but the legislators will have an impact on society. So, figure out what you believe in, what your principles and policies are, debate based on fact and reason, not emotion, and then listen and empathize with the other side. If you do that, you can be a better policymaker.”
How students can strengthen their communities:
“This Saturday or Sunday, put the phone down and go get involved in a civic organization. Go get involved in a charitable organization, get involved with people that aren’t like you and that get you outside of your comfort zone. Get involved where you can bring your talent and your personality and make a difference working with somebody like the Big Brothers Big Sisters or anything like that.
Get involved in your community and by giving, you’ll get more back in return. You’ll also build this muscle memory by putting yourself in civil society and not focusing on social media. You will build inside yourself a muscle memory because it feels good to do this. You’ll make it contagious and you can spread it to other people. I would say: Find that thing you can do with other people, that doesn’t involve any electronics, and that gets you involved in helping other people in their lives.”
Applying Catholic principles to the question of life:
“Life is such a high principle, especially in Catholic Social Teaching, that wherever you can protect life, you protect life. As a practicing Catholic, we believe life begins at conception and so, you want to protect life whenever you can. Now, in a civil society, you realize lots of people don’t agree with that, so you don’t have to be a stick in the mud and be axiomatic and insist on your way or the highway. You can work to find common ground.
We were just talking about Glenn Youngkin, the Governor of Virginia, because I think his Foundation helps here [at SMU]. He found common ground with the Virginia legislature last session and did a ban after 15-weeks. He [worked to] find common ground and get incremental steps towards protecting life and he brought people along.
I come from the school of persuasion politics, not cram and jam politics or the my way or the highway approach, and that means you work to persuade people or at least find where you have the Venn Diagram of overlap and that’s, I think, a pretty good approach on the life issue.
Breaking polarization fatigue and solving America’s pressing problems:
“What I think is going to end up happening is we, as Americans, are going to get so sick of nothing getting done and we’re going to be tired of polarizing each other that we’re going to be tired of [these types of politicians].
I mean, Joe Biden’s slogan is: “I’m not Donald Trump.” Donald Trump’s slogan is: “I’m Trump.”
That’s it right there. There’s really no agenda underneath it. There are no solutions, there is no Contract with America. There’s none of the “I’m going to solve these problems so vote for me and I’ll get it done.” No, it’s none of that stuff.
We’re going to get tired of this and that’s the great thing about the regenerative power of democracy throughout America’s history. I think polarization fatigue will set in and these problems are going to start piling up. We will realize that it’s going to be really ugly if we don’t fix these problems – and I can tell you, a debt crisis hits the poor and the elderly the first and the worst – so I think we are going to get through this.
We will muster the stuff we need to muster to say: I’m going to reward the politician who is a unifier. I’m going to go for the politician who is inspiring, who is not trying to divide us, who is offering solutions. It may not be the perfect solution. It may not be the most conservative solution, but it’s a solution.”
For more on Speaker Ryan’s visit to SMU, check out an interview he did with the SMU Campus Daily, accessible here.