By: AIF Staff
Grove City, PA — Earlier this month, American Idea Foundation President and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan joined former Vice President Mike Pence at Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania for a thought-provoking discussion on the enduring relevance of Ronald Reagan’s principles and how they can be applied to today’s economic, constitutional, and geopolitical challenges.
As part of Grove City’s 18th Annual Reagan Day Lecture, Vice President Pence asked Speaker Ryan about Reagan’s governing philosophy, the key elements of Reagan’s economic and foreign policy agendas, and how they still animate the modern conservative movement. Speaking to a full house of Grove City College students and supporters, Ryan and Pence encouraged future leaders in attendance to study foundational texts, reject performative politics, and “be happy warriors” who defend freedom and free-market principles with seriousness, integrity, and joy.
Video of the full event, Morning in America: Reagan’s Lessons for Today’s Challenges, and excerpts of Ryan’s responses follow.
On Reagan’s legacy and the foundations of conservatism:
“You have to go back to core, irreducible, primary principles to really understand what conservatism is and what it is you’re trying to conserve as a conservative. When we say conservative in this time, what we mean really is a classical, liberal, traditional conservative [who believes] natural rights and natural law were articulated in the Declaration of Independence and operationalized in our Constitution, and they work beautifully. These are timeless principles that have as their offspring freedom, free markets, liberty, self-determination and the institutions that we defend and support. Faith, family, and federalism. That’s what we’re seeking to conserve as conservatives.”
“Conservatism is about conserving natural rights and natural law—timeless truths that gave us freedom, free markets, and self-government.”
On advice for the next generation of conservatives:
“My mom told me, ‘You have two ears and one mouth—use them in that proportion,’ and that turned out to be some of the best advice I ever got. Don’t be this young guy who thinks he has it all figured out, because people older than you have lived so much more life. Don’t let ambition cloud your judgment, because when you do, you cut corners and compromise principles. TikTok says do this, Instagram says do that, and those pressures will tell a young and ambitious person to say whatever people want to hear.
“Don’t chase social media applause. Play the long game. Let the game come to you—don’t compromise principles for popularity…. Temperament matters. Be joyful, empathetic, and curious. When they expect anger, meet them with optimism and confidence.”
“Be a happy warrior—don’t be an angry troll—and articulate timeless principles in a persuasive, inclusive, and joyful way.”
On the debt crisis and fiscal responsibility:
“The most foreseeable and the most predictable crisis in our country is the debt crisis. It basically means we’re consigning the next generation to an inferior future. The legacy of this country, because of [our founding] principles, is that you leave the next generation better off, and when we were growing up, we all believed that because it was true. This is not what most [younger] Americans think these days, and in many cases, it’s not true. And if we keep on this path, we know it will not be true, and we will have severed that legacy for the first time.”
On trade, tariffs, and economic principles:
“The International Emergency Economic Powers Act… is a sanctions law. The word “tariff” doesn’t exist in it. Congress did not designate the President this kind of power to whimsically, on his own, tariff the whole world or any country—that power was not delegated from Congress to the Executive Branch.
Tariffs are a tax increase on the American people, and the vast majority of the costs are paid by American businesses and consumers. It’s not just bad economics; it’s based on a philosophy that life is a zero-sum game, that there’s a winner and a loser and nothing in between. That is not how it works—trade is a positive-sum game because both sides benefit.”
“Tariffs are taxes on Americans, and they rest on a zero-sum view of the world that just isn’t true…. If we want a mature economy, we must make things and sell them to the 94 percent of people who live outside America.”
On the dangers of moral relativism in today’s polarized environment:
“My worry in this day and age is [the type of populism] coming from the left and now from the right are morally relativistic versions of populism. Both of America’s political parties are kind of the parties of moral relativism—where might makes right, the ends justify the means, and the most important principle is just getting elected so that the other side is not elected. That is not supposed to be the end of this. The end of this is [supposed to be realizing] these principles that built this country and that we care about—life, liberty, freedom, self-determination and our rights coming from God, not from government. The kind of populism that is dominating both parties is not producing that.”
On Reagan’s moral clarity & support for allies in Ukraine:
“President Reagan spoke with moral clarity, and his speechwriters tried to soften those speeches, but he insisted on that clarity. I do worry that we’re losing the plurality for defending our principles the way President Reagan did. My successor, Rep. Bryan Steil, said the Ukraine aid vote was politically the hardest vote he’s taken all year, and that tells you how much the lines have shifted [in our party]. There are those voices in the conservative movement drifting into darker corners, back to the moral relativism of might-makes-right. The anti-Semitism that has always been over on the left is now percolating on the right. It’s very dangerous, very insidious, very immoral.”
On China, globalization, and strategic competition:
“We always believed that the more we traded with China and the more we had diplomatic exchange, the more they would move toward the practices of free, democratic nations—towards private property and towards respect for liberties, especially religious liberty. The opposite happened. [Welcoming China to world bodies] made sense at the time; it was a different leadership over there, and then Xi came in. I frankly regret the vote with hindsight, and I think free trade with free countries is the way to go. With mercantilist countries that cheat, steal, subsidize, and dump, you’ve got to play tough with them.”
On principled vs. unprincipled populism:
“[President Milei] in Argentina is a populist, but his populism is directly tied back to these conservative principles and universal truths, and that, to me, is good populism. The kind of populism we have today [in America] comes from the left, which is progressivism, but we also have a lot of this populism on the right as well. These two wings are almost forming a full horseshoe, but this populism is not rooted in these core principles. Populism untethered to principle— but that’s tethered instead to a cult of personality or whatever is deemed popular on a given day—is not what I would call “principled populism,” and regretfully, that [untethered populism] is what is dominant in our party right now.”
“Populism tied to principle can be powerful, but populism tied to personality becomes dangerous.”
