Heritage Events Podcast

A conversation with Dr. Kim Holmes and Amb. Terry Miller about why Economic freedom matters and how Heritage's Index of Economic Freedom became the measuring stick by which governments evaluate their own performance, and compare their progress to their neighbors.

Threats to religious freedom in China were on the rise in 2018, especially after the Chinese government instituted its new Regulations on Religious Affairs in February 2018. Christians in China are facing newfound persecution. Between September and December of last year, three major churches, the Early Rain Covenant Church, Zion Church, and Rongguilli Church were shuttered. Muslims in Xinjiang are experiencing terrifying surveillance and between 800,000 to more than 1 million individuals are now held in political “reeducation” facilities facing unknown fates. Persecution of Tibetans likewise intensified with religious structures and homes of Tibetans destroyed. Persons of faith are increasingly under siege as China attempts to “Sinicize”, or secularize, religious practice so that it conforms to the values and priorities of the Chinese Communist Party. Promoting religious freedom has been in the U.S. ethos for generations, and over the past year the U.S. government has consistently condemned heightened threats to religious freedom in China. Please join us as we consider next steps the U.S. government can take to hold China accountable for its violations of religious freedom.

We are seeing a significant increase in the number of nationwide injunctions issued by federal district court judges against the federal government. Are such judges acting outside of their jurisdictional limits? Are their actions constitutional and within the procedural precedents of the U.S. Supreme Court? Do such injunctions promote forum shopping and do they violate class action requirements? Does this restrict the development of the law and violate the organizational structure of the federal judicial system by freezing legal issues in conformance with the holding of a single federal district judge, rather than allowing the 13 circuit courts of appeal to reach their own conclusions under the supervision of the Supreme Court? These important questions will be discussed in a lively forum by both academic and government legal experts.

Today, a college degree is not necessary to achieve the American Dream and live a fiscally successful life. Sure, for many, college can be the perfect launching pad. The societal aspect of school can be transformative, and the exposure to different people, different thoughts, and different ideas is crucial. But for millions of young Americans, college is not the answer. What about the teenager for whom sitting in a classroom is unfulfilling and frustrating? What about the kid with a skillset that can’t be nurtured on campus? In Class Dismissed: Why College Isn’t the Answer, Nick Adams explains how you can achieve the American Dream without receiving a traditional education. An essential tool for parents and grandparents, this book discusses how families can recognize whether their child will get more from a trade school or a mentorship than they will from four years of study.

In October 2008, as the U.S. economy plunged, the Federal Reserve began paying interest on banks' reserve balances. The resulting switch to a "floor system" of monetary control, in which changes in the interest rate on reserves, rather than reserve creation or destruction, became the Fed's chief tool for influencing economic activity, was to have far-reaching consequences--almost all of them regrettable. Besides intensifying the downturn by causing banks to hoard reserves, the floor system all but destroyed the market for unsecured interbank loans that had been banks' ordinary "first resort" source of last-minute liquidity. By depriving the Fed's asset purchases of the ability to stimulate investment and spending, it also compelled the Fed to compensate by purchasing assets on an unprecedented scale. All of this resulted in a substantial increase in the Fed's role in allocating scarce credit. Finally, by severing the ordinary connection between the stance of monetary policy and the extent of the Fed's asset holdings, the floor system risks turning the Fed's balance sheet into a fiscal-policy playground. Selgin’s book is the first comprehensive account of the Federal Reserve’s new post-crisis “floor” monetary policy operating system. Selgin will share his three-year research journey into this new experimental system, how the Fed stumbled into it, and its consequences for the economy — including how it could turn the Fed into a Trojan piggybank of fiscal profligacy.

Who could be against a law that promises equality and bans discrimination? Parents who’ve already experienced grief, despair, and witnessed medical harms as they attempted to get help for their gender-confused children. Medical experts concerned about how adding "gender identity" into civil rights law would cause physical and psychological harm. People who have transitioned, and then detransitioned, concerned with what this ideology will do to children. Lesbians who have been punished for having the audacity to say that men are not women. Radical feminists concerned that nearly all sex-segregated spaces, colleges, sports, dormitories, and women's rights in general will disappear if “gender identity” becomes a protected class and the dangers this poses to women and girls. Please join us for a panel discussion featuring speakers from the political left as they share their stories of the harmful consequences of what will happen if "gender identity" ideology is enshrined into U.S. civil rights law.

Taxing Wars explores how a country decides to pay for wars and how that decision shapes how the public and the military experience the conflict. Dr. Kreps explores how the way that the United States has funded her wars fluctuated through time. Government fund their activities through one of three mechanisms: taxation, borrowing, or printing more money. All three have been leveraged in different levels through American history with the noticeable use of domestic borrowing through war bonds. Those methods of raising resources to fight a war have consequences to how the public experiences the conflict and therefore on sense of shared sacrifice that they generate. In a democracy, this sense of shared sacrifice directly impacts the country’s ability to fight. Taxing Wars explores this connection and more.

The Index of Economic Freedom (www.heritage.org/index) celebrates its 25th Anniversary in 2019! The Index evaluates government policies and economic conditions in 186 countries. Since its inception in 1995, the Index, an annual cross-country analysis by The Heritage Foundation, has tracked the progress of economic freedom around the globe and measured the real impact of advancing economic liberty. The 25th anniversary edition provides compelling evidence of the dynamic benefits for individuals and societies from greater economic freedom. Around the world, governments that respect and promote openness and free markets provide greater opportunities for innovation, progress, and human flourishing. Join us as we unveil the Index rankings for 2019 and examine the link between economic freedom and prosperity around the globe.

In 2004, the first students began participating in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program – a private school choice program serving low-income families in Washington, D.C. This year marks 15 years of the scholarship program’s operation in the nation’s capital, with more than 1,650 children currently using D.C. OSP scholarships to pay tuition at participating private schools across the city. School choice programs have increased considerably across the country over the past decade, with more and more students having access to options such as vouchers and education savings accounts. What has been the impact of this consequential school choice measure, what does the future hold for the OSP, and what does it mean for families? Join us during National School Choice Week for a conversation with Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, led by Heritage Foundation president Kay Coles James, followed by a discussion featuring program stakeholders and scholars.

Last year alone, 16.7 million individuals suffered some form of identity theft. This crime exposes victims to many difficulties in their daily lives, ranging from the inability to participate in our economy to the inability to prove to a potential employer (or even our government) that they are a US citizen. Our antiquated system of collecting trivial facts and government IDs to confirm the identity of individuals contributes to these problems because anyone with sufficient information about you can literally “BE” you. Join us at the Heritage Foundation as our panel explores how new blockchain technologies can help prevent identity theft and protect millions of Americans.

On December 4, 2018, after five years of failed attempts to get Russia to return to compliance with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty obligations and verifiably destroy its 9M729 missile system, the U.S. officially announced its intentions to withdraw from the treaty. There is much debate regarding what actions the U.S. should take as it prepares to withdraw from the INF treaty. Most analysts agree the U.S. should continue to encourage the Russian government to renegotiate an updated INF Treaty. Some experts propose that in parallel with these efforts, the U.S. should develop and field new low-yield nuclear weapons as well as improved conventional ground-launched cruise missile systems and cruise missile defenses. They assert that these actions would better deter Russian use of low-yield nuclear weapons and better defend its NATO allies from Russian cruise missile threats. Opponents of these recommendations counter that the U.S. development of low-yield nuclear weapons, ground-launched cruise missiles and improved cruise missile defenses will only antagonize Russia and lead to a new arms race. Please join us for a discussion on the recommended way ahead for the U.S. in a post-INF world.

Conservatives, classical liberals and libertarians celebrate the fact that people have unequal (or diverse) talents, preferences, risk averseness, attachments and cultures because these are the central element to the rich tapestry of an enlightened, humane and prosperous society. These differences will inevitably lead to economic differences. And those differences are not objectionable. Any political system that mandated economic equality would be unjust. It is unjust to treat unequal situations equally. Instead, we should seek equal protection of the law or equal justice under law. Government should not enforce a pre-determined distribution of income or wealth. Individual effort, merit, preferences and values matter morally. An unplanned distribution is just if the distribution is the result of individuals acting freely in accordance with just rules. However, because poverty hinders the ability of the poor to flourish and to lead a fulfilling life, public policies, private charity, education and other initiatives to address poverty and improve opportunity are warranted. But the pursuit of economic equality is not. In fact, the pursuit of economic equality can be extremely damaging to social welfare and manifestly unjust. For a complete list of speakers, topics, and dates of the Free Markets: The Ethical Economic Choice speaker series visit heritage.org/free-markets.

It has been 25 years since Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) with near unanimous support. Since then it has prevented the government from infringing on the freedom of a wide variety of religious individuals and groups to exercise their religious beliefs. But with the new Congress, there could be legislative efforts to limit the application of RFRA. Join us for a keynote address from Acting Attorney General Whitaker followed by a panel discussion featuring Jewish, Muslim, and Christian perspectives on protecting religious freedom.

Did you know that contraception and abortion were not originally part of the women’s movement? How did the women’s movement, which fought for equal opportunity for women in education and the workplace, and the sexual revolution, which reduced women to ambitious sex objects, become so united? In the book Subverted, Sue Ellen Browder documents for the first time how it all happened, in her own life and in the life of an entire country. As a long-time freelance writer for Cosmopolitan magazine, she wrote pieces meant to soft-sell unmarried sex, contraception, and abortion as the single woman’s path to personal fulfillment. She did not realize until much later that people higher and more clever than herself were influencing her thinking and her personal choices as they subverted the women’s movement. Many pro-life women now reject the “feminist” label because of its association with radical pro-abortion groups and policies, while maintaining their belief in equality, dignity, and rights to opportunities afforded to men. They reject the notion that a movement or belief system that advocates on behalf of the disadvantaged can simultaneously advocate for the right to destroy vulnerable, innocent human life. In the age of the Women’s March and #MeToo, can we address the needs of both women and unborn children? Or is a movement that claims to support the interests of “all women” forever destined to not include the voices and interests of people who identify as pro-life? Confusion reigns thanks to the early promises of the feminist movement and its current manifestation. Join The Heritage Foundation and Live Action for an illuminating discussion with expert panelists as we explore how we got here and discuss what today’s women can do to counter the radical forces that hijacked a worthy cause. Copies of Sue Ellen Browder’s book will be available for purchase.

The Constitution contains a number of provisions designed to protect economic liberty, including the contracts clause, the takings clause, the Privileges and Immunities Clause, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clauses, and others. The structure of the constitution and the negative commerce clause also protect economic freedom. This reflects the founders support for limited government, private property and freedom of commerce. Please join us for a discussion of the constitutional protections for economic freedom and the original meaning of these constitutional provisions. For a complete list of speakers, topics, and dates of the Free Markets: The Ethical Economic Choice speaker series visit heritage.org/free-markets.