The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America

Summary: In The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America, American Enterprise Institute’s Arthur Brooks declares that it’s time for a new conservative movement — one where fighting poverty, promoting equal opportunity, celebrating earned success, and valuing spiritual enlightenment are embraced as universal goals. A movement with a positive agenda to help people lead happier, more satisfying lives. A movement that can speak to voters’ hearts as well as their minds and reunite the country. Capitalism has been the greatest tool to draw people out of poverty around the world. Yet here in America, the conservatives who champion this system are viewed as callous and disinterested in helping the poor. And, ironically, while American-style free enterprise has been changing the developing world, decades of ineffective government policy in the US have left our own “war on poverty” stagnate. Brooks identifies some new canons of conservative thought. Among them are rebuilding human capital to help people succeed, maintaining fiscal conservatism while making “peace” with a safety net for the truly indigent, reforming education, and fighting for entrepreneurship — not for the wealthy, but for those at the very bottom of the income distribution. Mr. Brooks discussed his latest book and answered audience questions on this Teleforum call. -- Featuring: Arthur C. Brooks, President, American Enterprise Institute and Author, The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America.