Former White House official speaks on the good life

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Former White House official speaks on the good life
Paul Ray delivers speech entitled, “Living the Good Life in Law and Politics”
Olivia Hajicek | Collegian

What makes something good? Hillsdale alumnus and former Trump administration official Paul Ray ’08 declined to answer that question for Hillsdale students. They would have to order more pizza in order to pursue that topic, he said. 

Ray gave a speech at a Federalist Society event on Sept. 16 entitled “Living the Good Life in Law and Politics.” He spoke about the common good in society and how individual people can contribute to it.

After graduating from Hillsdale, Ray went to Harvard Law School and later clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. In 2018, he joined the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, serving as its administrator from January 2020 to January 2021. 

Ray began by defining a common good as “a single thing worth sharing with multiple people.” He gave the example of a conversation, saying that more than one person can benefit from the same conversation.

He contrasted a common good with a private good. Ray used the example of the free pizza at the meeting. While two people could share a pizza, each individual bite of pizza could only benefit one person, leaving less for anyone else, he said. 

Ray posed a question: “Are there ways of being at work that are good in themselves and common, or shared?”

He gave the example of an orchestra. 

“You’re only playing your particular notes,” he said, “but the thing you’re at work doing, your being-at-work, is the symphony.”

“Suppose that instead of the musicians, we have everyone you know,” Ray said, “the whole community. Instead of playing music, they’re each living out their lives. Instead of musical instruments they have skills; they have material possessions. Instead of musical ability, they have the virtues. Instead of an orchestra they compose society, and instead of a symphony playing beautifully, what do they have?” 

He went on to explain the benefits of members of the society working together. Like the end of the orchestra, this common good of society is, in Aristotle’s words, primarily something we do rather than something we make, Ray said. 

“The best thing you can give to your community is not a particular result—a really great law or a really good judicial decision, although those are incredibly important,” he said. “The most important thing is being at work as a good man or woman.”

In response to a question from philosophy professor Nathan Schlueter, whose Law and Society students attended the event as part of their class, Ray gave his perspective on law school. 

“The point of law school is not to learn about the law,” Ray said. “The point of law school is to learn to think like a lawyer and to get good grades. All the rest is irrelevant.”

“Now what would also be really important is learning what law is,” he said, “but law school won’t teach you.”

The audience laughed. 

“His take on law school was very interesting,” said Joseph Hoppe, a senior studying economics and politics, “that law school is not for the purpose of studying law; it’s for the purpose of learning to think like a lawyer and get good grades. I definitely wrote that down.”

Junior Thomas Curro, the marketing and operations director for the Federalist Society, agreed. “One thing that really stood out to me was just emphasizing how different law school is than we often think it is. It’s not always mastering the law but learning how to think like a lawyer,” he said, “and just training yourself for the rigors of the discipline.”

Curro said he had never considered this perspective. 

“It opened my eyes to what I would be getting myself into,” he said. 

In response to a question from Hillsdale Federalist Society President Leo Schlueter, Ray shared advice he would give to someone in government working for a principal, such as a court justice, secretary, or cabinet member.

“You owe your principal two things: you owe obedience to the point of resignation, and you owe good counsel,” he said. “When your principal has made a decision, you have to execute the decision all the way, faithfully, as if you had made the decision, as if you think it’s the best decision that’s ever been made, unless it is against your conscience, in which case you must resign immediately.”

He said he faced the possibility twice during his time in the administration that he would be asked to do something against his conscience and had come in both days prepared to resign.

This example stood out to some of the students who attended the event. 

“The importance of your loyalty and how that relates to what you’re willing to tolerate and what you’re not willing to go through at your job, at the risk of your job, was really interesting,” freshman Ella Lichtenberg said.

“I think it’s really admirable that someone in his position of power was willing to sacrifice it if the need came,” Curro said. “That’s something that I, if I ever follow in his footsteps, would hope to emulate.”