American Idea Foundation

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Press Release

At SMU, Ryan talks about rebuilding civil society, navigating faith and public life

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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. 

On OU President Joseph Harroz’s podcast, Ryan offers advice to future leaders & details America’s 21st Century Challenges

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By: AIF Staff

Earlier this Spring, American Idea Foundation President and former House Speaker Paul Ryan served as the keynote speaker for Oklahoma University’s 2024 Presidential Lecture Series. While on campus, Ryan spoke with local media outlets, met with students, and was a featured guest on Conversations with the President, a podcast hosted by OU President Joseph Harroz Jr..

In the podcast interview, Speaker Ryan discussed his experiences as the leader of the legislative branch from 2015-2019. He shared advice for students, talked about transitioning out of politics and pursuing other meaningful vocational efforts, and detailed how current OU students and recent graduates can positively impact their communities. Excerpts of the podcast, edited lightly for clarity, follow. Listen to the full interview by clicking here.

Ryan offers advice to OU students

“Scale new learning curves, that is a key piece of advice. Always be hungry for learning. Always be hungry for knowledge. And whatever you do, have a good attitude.

I tell this to my kids; I tell this to our interns and new staffers. If you’re coming out of college, you’re bright, ambitious, and I assume you’re hardworking. These are things you must have and often are taken for granted. The difference-maker is: Do you have a good attitude? Are you hungry and is there no task beneath you?

The knock on this current young generation who are coming out of college is they feel “entitled.” They feel like they should automatically arrive at success because they saw it on TV and this should automatically happen for them. The people who think like that are not going to do as well as those who are hungry and ambitious, who have a good attitude and have humility. Oklahomans have humility… so you’re already off to a good start! Lastly, I would say that you have two ears and one mouth, so use them in that proportion.”

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“The best advice is put the phone down, get out of the social media mediums, and do what you can to grow civil society, which is the space between ourselves and our government, where we live our lives and where we actually relate to each other. Do whatever you can to try and bring civility back to our spaces through your interactions. Get to know and be friends with people who are not like you, that’s really important.”

Ryan on a possible “third act” to his career  

“The third career is either to become the Ambassador to Ireland when I’m in my 70s, because I’m an Irish Catholic guy, or to do some [more] public service. I’m not saying I want to run for anything, but just another round of public service after doing business and philanthropy.”

Ryan on the biggest changes in American politics

“It’s deinstitutionalized in a lot of ways. I hate saying this. I mean, I spent 25 years in the Capitol building, 5 as a staffer and 20 as a Member. I have such a deep affection for the institution.

The quickest way to describe it is: 10 years ago, the people that came to Congress were Tom Cole-types, Stephanie Bice-types. These were policy people who wanted to go do policy things, who wanted to effect change. They wanted to pass legislation. They wanted to make a difference. They wanted to represent their constituents and do what the Founders intended.

But what happened in this new digital age that we are in, which started about 10-12 years ago, is we have a new wing of both political parties that are ascendent. I call them the entertainment wings of the party. These people have realized they can come to Congress and get famous really fast. If they’re provocative, if they’re entertaining, if they can be good on social media or on cable news, they can build themselves into a household name.

In the old days, if you wanted to succeed in politics, you had to be good at legislating…. It was a meritocracy that you scaled, and the unit of measurement was policy and persuasion. That’s not how the entertainment wing works. Their units of measurement are entertainment and provocation….

This has brought a new crop of people to Congress who are not there to play the team sport of legislating and compromise, negotiating and advancing principles. It’s brought a new crop of people who are there to be famous, to entertain, and that means they have to one-up the last person who did the same thing. It’s why voting against rules – and I know that’s an inside baseball thing – is now an ordinary thing, but it was unheard of when I was there just five years ago. The motion to vacate, which was there for just extreme circumstances, is [now] done because someone doesn’t like a bill that came to the floor which a majority of Congress supported. You see a degradation of the standards and I’d say the quality [of representation]. It’s a bit of deinstitutionalization.”

Ryan on foreign threats to democracy

“Our adversaries are definitely out to undermine us. Our adversaries – China, Russia, Iran, and a little bit North Korea, though they aren’t as good at it – are trying to do two things. They are trying to demonstrate to the world that their form of government – tyranny, autocracy, dictatorships – is better than democracy. Their form of government is faster. It’s leaner and meaner where one guy makes a decision and things get done. I think that’s wrong, and I think they’re wrong, but they want to prove that.

The other thing they want to prove is they’re trying to get us to hate each other inside of our countries. They’re trying to hyperpolarize America and democracy so that it renders itself incapable of solving big problems. They want to get us so wrapped around the axel, so conflicted and polarized that we can’t reach consensus and make decisions to solve our problems, to put our best face forward, to defend our national security, to grow our economies. They believe that we will relativize ourselves into self-immolation in the 21st century because of this massive polarization….

The whole debate about TikTok is a good example where they are trying to, from the outside, stir up the public. “Russian bots” is a phrase we use all the time, the Russians have entire buildings full of people whose goal is to inject poison into our public discourse online and get us stirred up and hating each other.

We’re doing a pretty good job on our own, but they are adding accelerant to it. It’s clearly an attempt by illiberal regimes to try and show that democracy doesn’t have the stuff that it takes. Now, at the end of the day, I think we’re going to win this thing. I think the advancement that comes with innovation, free enterprise, private property rights means we’re going to lead on technology. We are going to win the race on quantum computing and win the race on AI, so long as we don’t regulate it to death, and I think we’re going to win at the end of day but it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

Ryan on the journey to being Speaker of the House

“After we lost the 2012 race when I ran with Mitt [Romney] for Vice President, I went back to being the Budget Committee Chair. I wrote all of our budgets back in those days. My goal was really to become the Chair of the Ways and Means Committee which oversees the issues I’m very passionate about: poverty issues, entitlement reform, tax reform, trade, welfare reform. So, I achieved that and in early 2015, I became the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

I reached the goal that I had set for myself in Congress to work on those issues that fell within the Committee’s jurisdiction and then, this may sound a little familiar, a House Freedom Caucus member filed a motion to vacate against John Boehner. If that sounds a little familiar it’s because it’s happening again now, in real time. It happened recently with Kevin McCarthy and so, John Boehner, under that circumstance… he decided to leave and the next person in line, and this will sound a little familiar as well, was Kevin McCarthy. I was nominating Kevin [for Speaker in October 2015] and I was supporting him to do the job. It turned out he didn’t have the votes for it, and I became the consensus candidate.

I got drafted into the job. The good thing about my particular situation was I was able to set the terms for taking the job. [I told my colleagues that] I’ll do this, if two things happen: 1) We have an agenda that we compile that’s based on our principles, we run on that agenda and take it to the country so that if we win, we earn the right to put int in place. I wanted mine to be a substance-driven Speakership and a policy-driven Congress, not fighting about politics but fighting for policy. And 2) I had a young family and I wanted to be home on weekends. The Speaker is expected to raise all the money for [House Republicans] and it’s a big on-the-road job. I wanted to be home on weekends and I learned that it was very difficult to do that. I was basically on the road in Wisconsin on Saturdays, on the road every other weekday, and I was basically home on Sundays.

At the end of the day, why I just did two terms as Speaker and I didn’t want to do any more is because I had kids in high school, who I was only seeing on Sunday. If you have high school kids, you want to get to know them and for them to get to know you before they’re off to college and on with life.

I’m a Catholic. We do guilt really well and I was just feeling very guilty about not being around for them. We had a tremendously successful session that last session – criminal justice reform, tax reform, opioids, the cancer moonshot, all those things got done. I felt like that was a good note to retire on so I retired in the beginning of 2019.”

To watch or listen to Speaker Ryan’s speech at the University of Oklahoma, click here.  

Ryan delivers keynote address at OU’s Spring 2024 Presidential Speakers Series

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By: AIF Staff

On March 27, American Idea Foundation President and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan delivered a keynote address on the State of American Politics. As part of OU’s Presidential Speakers Series, Ryan was invited to share his thoughts on the challenges facing the next generation of American leaders and to discuss how we can overcome them in a way that reflects our nation’s timeless principles.

Ryan’s entire speech is accessible via the following link. Excerpts from his address (edited lightly for clarity) are included below.

A personal connection to the University of Oklahoma:

“I was in this room not even a year ago for the Owl Ceremony for my late mother-in-law, Prudence Little, who was inducted (posthumously) in the Order of the Owl. I have lots of deep roots here that span the length of my marriage and so, I call myself a kissing cousin to Oklahomans… I’ve been coming to your ball games every other year during deer season, which some people around here also call Thanksgiving.

I’ve been coming here since 1999 and to give you a sense of the appreciation that I’ve developed over the years for not just this particular institution, but for this community, this network of people, this tight state of people who care deeply for one another – my father-in law, Dan Little, is here. Our cousin, Dan Boren, is here. And just to give you a sense of how the decisions get made in my house, as many of you are, we are big bird hunters where I come from. I import cheese to your state, and I export venison and ducks from your state and so, my wife and I decided to get a couple of bird dogs. And as a lifelong Wisconsinite, whose parents lived in Madison, I thought naturally our dogs are going to be named “Bucky” and “Badger.” Long story short, our dogs are named “Boomer” and “Sooner”, so you understand how we make decisions in my family!”

The State of American Politics & Tests facing our Democracy

“The state of American Politics today is under duress. It’s easy to identify where and how and under what circumstances, it’s a little hard to identify what we do about it but… it’s not just America. Democracy itself is being tested around the world in two basic ways: From without and from within….

We are being tested by our adversaries – the illiberal, anti-democracies like the Communist dictatorship of China, the thugocracy of Russia and Iran and North Korea. We are being tested by autocrats where one man makes a decision, and they get stuff done…. [These adversaries are hoping their form of government] will be better than democracy. It will perform better than democracies. It will be faster and leaner and meaner, and they’ll get to the finish line faster than we do. That’s their bet and that’s a serious test.

The good news in this – and I think Stephanie Bice and Tom Cole will agree with me – the one basically bipartisan thing in Congress today is this mutual bipartisan agreement that this is a challenge. We have got a China challenge on our hands and the House Select Committee on China has been remarkably bipartisan. They put together a huge vote the other day on tactics and theories and things we need to do to address [TikTok]. So, I think our political system is rising to the occasion to take on this challenge from “without,” to take on this challenge from tyrannies trying to undermine democracy and poking and prodding at us in many different ways….

The bigger test of democracy is from within ourselves. It’s this polarization. These tyrannies are betting that America cannot get this job done. They are betting that we will so polarize ourselves and tear ourselves apart and relativize ourselves into self-immolation. We will be so polarized that we will render ourselves incapable of solving big problems, of coming together and achieving consensus and solving the things in front of us. They are betting we’ll be too slow to act versus their lean, mean, efficient, one-guy-makes-a-decision system.

We’ve been at each other’s throats [in America before] but we really haven’t had this level of digitization and a new wrinkle in this story is this idea of moral relativism. This idea that there are no fixed truths. It’s your truth, his truth, her truth, my truth, whatever your truth…. And the challenge with this type of relativism is we’re not putting any premium on actual facts and actual truth.”

Overcoming the “zero sum” mindset to solve America’s problems:

“When you have politics designed to divide, when you have a digital system where the incentive structure is to tap into emotions of fear, envy, anger, hatred, and differentness – not hope, inclusion, and inspiration, when you have a political system with that center structure baked into it, we end up with a type of politics that has all of us playing a “zero sum” game.

“There are a lot of games that are zero sum. We have static games all the time right over there in that football stadium. I love watching OU beat OSU, but a football game is “zero sum” where there’s one winner and one loser. This is, frankly, not how the game of life works. It’s not how individual personal relationships work; it’s not how economics works; it doesn’t need to be how national alliances work. You can have “positive sum” games. You can have win-win situations.

My whole management philosophy in Congress was to set as many “positive sum” games as you can possibly have so that legislators – men and women who came from districts with individual passions, with different political stripes and parties – can play a “positive sum” game. I wanted them to find that Venn Diagram where things overlap and can move forward so we get things done.

It’s why you are so blessed here in Oklahoma. You have legislators. You have do-ers. Tom Cole is the manifestation of someone who works…. really hard, who knows his stuff, who is respected by the other side of the aisle, who looks for the Venn Diagram of “positive sum games” daily and gets things done. Tom is about to become one of the most powerful guys in Congress, the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee…. The only thing that has to get done every year is writing the federal budget and Tom Cole is about to be named Chairman of that Committee. It’s really a high honor and we need more Tom Cole’s coming to Congress…. That’s also why you’re blessed to have Stephanie Bice…”

Reasons for Optimism that America will meet its challenges:

“The thing that makes me excited and happy and hopeful is the afternoon I spent with students here at OU. They had amazing questions and were such thoughtful people who are really interested in learning about the world, making a difference, and finding their path in life. I’m trying to find the happy ending here – and there is a happy ending here – which is America is known for regenerating itself….

We’ve got adversaries trying to take out democracy and replace democracy. We have problems internally where we are at each other’s throats and we’re sending people to represent us who are going at people’s throats, but we know we can regenerate and get ourselves past these problems. That’s the one amazing thing about America and that’s the upside of all of this.

We have some serious problems. We’ve got big fiscal problems. We have all these foreign policy challenges. But every one of America’s problems are totally within our own capacity to solve. What I think we’re going to go through — and it probably won’t be in this election cycle – is polarization fatigue where people are unsatisfied and sick and tired of problems going unsolved. And when that polarization fatigue sets in and when the pile of unresolved problems gets high enough, I believe, just like we have always done in the past, the American people are going to demand results. They are going to demand we stop this and actually solve problems.”

Channeling Winston Churchill:

“Winston Churchill said two things that I think are so appropriate for today. The first thing he said is democracy is the worst possible form of government, except for all the other forms of government.

Democracy is messy and sloppy but when it resolves itself, when the consensus occurs, nothing can stop it because it is the true power of a self-determining people. We are a free society and the things that come out of free societies – the innovation, the private property rights, the freedoms – are going to beat the tyrants. They can’t centrally plan the kind of things that democracies can do and that’s why we will win the 21st century. These are things that only a free people can do and that’s why I am so bullish about it.

The other thing that Churchill said, and this is where the entire world is looking to us, is the American people can be counted upon to do the right thing, but only after they’ve exhausted all of the other possibilities.

I think we are going through that churn now. This is going to be one ugly election. We all know it. It will be [one of the longest] general elections we’ve had in modern history but at the end of this thing, because you’re electing people like Tom Cole and bright rising stars like Stephanie Bice, we are going to get through it.”

To read more about Speaker Ryan’s visit to the University of Oklahoma, check out these articles from the Norman Transcript, the Journal Record, and theOU Daily.