David Frum

I'm not being pushed by the force of events.

I sometimes think, and I hope this is an accurate quote or that it's an authentic quote and that I'm reproducing it accurately.

But I recall Friedrich Hayek once saying that when he was a young man of 20, the only people he could speak to with mutual understanding were old men of 80.

And now that he's an old man of 80, the only people he could speak to were people of 20.

I feel that really hard.

But what he specifically meant was he had been 20 at the beginning of an era of authoritarianism and war and statism and control.

And that was the common stuff of Paul.

And you had to be kind of a screwy oddball at age 20 in 1917 when I think he was 20 to believe.

I still believe in freedom and limited government and a world in which goods and people move.

And only at the end were those things rediscovered.

And so we say the old ideas have failed.

Well, there were the old ideas and there was failure.

Have the old ideas failed or is liberty an idea that's eternally new?

The Atlantic editors advised me to footnote things that need to be footnoted, but you know what?

I'm just going to let Simpson Bowles pass into the dust of history without elaboration.

Those who remember, they remember.

And those who never knew, they're not missing anything.

Tim Miller, thank you so much.

Those were beautiful and wise last words.

I'm so grateful you joined today.