Transcripts For CSPAN2 In Depth Cornel West Robert George 20180101

Provider. Many books including race matters and brother west living out loud. Robert george has written making men moral and conscience and its enemies. Robert george, when did you first meet the man sitting next to you . Must have met in the 1990s after brother cornell came and we were together in faculty, seminars under the auspices we didnt know each other very well. We would just say hello, we interacted a bit in the seminars. We began teaching together in 2007 and there is a whole story behind that. I dont know if you want me to go in that kind of detail but that is when our teaching and friendship began. Host how did the teaching profession again . A brother named andrew. A good student who studied with both of us. Called cream, my course, resin mucin, david hume, he was taking a course from me on civil liberty and he asked me who i would like to have dialogue with, who was a conservative, i would love to have a chance to engage in dialogue. We got together, we had a 45 minute dialogue based on a recording, the recording was over, we continued to talk for at least two or three hours. We have to continue this conversation, we have been gone 11 or 12 years, teaching at princeton. The adventures of ideas. But we had a wonderful time. Family and others, so good to me. We love to engage in the subject matter, the truth is bigger than us and beauty is bigger than us. We aspire to it. Host our meeting that began the teaching partnership, the green light moving in and green bag. Host so they wanted to have a feature. And interview of one professor by another professor. Andrew with a religion maker. That is right. For the very first issue they contacted brother cornell and said we want you to do the interview and who would you like to interview . He said he would like to interview me. Is not a conversation but an interview. A very deep conversation. Andrew came to me and said professor george, starting the magazine, and interview feature, the first interview, feature cornell as an interviewer, we told him he could interview anybody he wanted and he would like to interview you, would you like to be interviewed by professor west . Let me get this straight. He could interview anybody he wants and he said he would like to interview me . That is right. I want you to send a message to professor west, tell professor west professor george says it is i who should be seeking baptism from you. Brother andrew is a brilliant religionmaker did not catch that reference to john the baptists baptism of genius jesus in the jordan river your so he responded by saying ha . He will understand what i am talking about. Of course i will do it. That wonderful dialogue was recorded and we went on and on and i am holding my hand on the car latch for half an hour and a couple weeks after that the senior members of the faculty got a letter from the dean of the college and encourage senior faculty members to teach freshman seminars, we want more interaction, more established scholars and freshmen. When i saw that letter and the request we teach seminars it occurred to me what we should do is have that conversation we were having. And enthusiastic princeton freshman. A story behind that, once the word got out we were teaching this together. Had to read the essays to see which ones we would choose. After that we decided not to do that. We let the registrars office, and they would do it on a firsttime firstserved basis, students were supposed to sign up, and 7 00 on a particular morning and 7 00 that morning they passed the computer system. The beautiful thing about princeton at harvard, princeton, undergraduate education, handson, 16 students there, each registering the thesis focusing on the undergrads, harvard, yale, berkeley, chicago and other wonderful places. Highquality undergraduate education, and i loved harvard and howard and more. I believe in the truth. Speaking the truth. This is under running too. We invited you to talk about your books but why didnt you do that together . We talk about Harvard University press and princeton University Press interested in having us do that and we have two busy guys and a lot of responsibility and obligation, we traveled around having public dialogues, we will get to it. And we have done some of those to gather and the Washington Times and washington examiner. Also princeton magazine. One thing you do in your book is the class of orthodoxies, and your views. That is how philosophy works and education and learning works, that is how scholarship proceeds especially, though not exclusively in humanities and social sciences. We learn giving an argument, providing reasons, producing evidence, letting a critic respond to that, intellectual life in the western tradition, began with socrates engaging critics, subjecting their views of criticism and permitting him to subject their views to criticism. Cornell and i are oldfashioned socratic scholars, we believe in that kind of education. Host you spend a lot of time talking about socrates. Absolutely, very much so. Erasmus used to say think socrates, pray for me. He is a christian, we understand the richness of the socratic athens tied to the prophetic legacy of jerusalem, self interrogation, self questioning, deep education, transformative dialogue, talk about this all the time. How do we learn how to die . We die when we gives more mature, more willing to grow and develop. A matter of trying to keel the prejudice and the narrow ways to be expensive to be fallible, endless progress, in the name of what you are after. Host would it be fair to say your books are about selfexamination . The prophetic legacy of jerusalem, selfexamination. The matter of self giving, giving himself, emptying himself at the deepest level, take this love and see what we can do because i love you. What you get is socratic legacy of self examination, judaism, christianity, muslim, islam and so forth, one of surrendering to something bigger than you to get that fusion of selfexamination and prophetic witness that you cant love until you take a risk or cant love unless you do it through giving our disagreements, did some human overlap. Whatever the barriers are we are going to find that overlap as we wrestle with the various issues. One point i make to our students is self surrender which is a christian i agree, cornell is the ultimate obligation and the paradox of christianitys fulfillment, or what it is like. I stress in order to get to the point you are capable of that we need selfmastery. To control your own desires, your own wants, your own passion, put them under the control reason is in charge, appetite or passion, when things are disordered, passion is in charge, harnessed to the goal, creating rationalizations for activity that can only harm us and others. How do we get to that . Here is selfexamination, liberal arts education, get to selfmastery by subjecting ourselves by interrogating assumptions putting on the table, our most cherished, deepest identity, they dont want to do that. We human beings being human, we tend to wrap our emotion around convictions. If we didnt do that we would never be motivated, the common good for human rights and human dignity, if we wrap our emotions too tightly we become bogged down. And subjecting ourselves, assumptions, arguments to criticism. We become incapable of being what we should expire to, interrogators of ourselves. Host in your book making them moral, laws do not make them moral, only men can do that is only by freely choosing to do the morally right thing for the right reason. Is that something you agree with . Absolutely. This is something so badly needed in the present day because we live in a Market Driven society, image and position and the status you lose quality of character, soul craft has to do, the ways of being human relate to various virtues and various values, talking about moral character is something the market cant teach you and the professional cant teach, something deeper going on. That self surrender is about love, integrity, honesty, decency, we talk about selfmastery in regard to socrates, one of the charges of western civilization is why did socrates never cry and jesus never laughed . Socrates never crying meant he much primacy on selfmastery rightly so, that is not the proper response to your mothers funeral. But tears are the proper response. Jesus wept, socrates never cried. There is a love for wisdom that is important but you have to out Socrates Socrates and make your way to jerusalem, the tears of a hated people and the persecuted people, enslaved people, pharaoh and jesus weeps for jerusalem, lazarus, precisely because he selfmastery has a role but not enough. Surrender is what it is. Tears shatter the numbness, shatters callousness, indifference and lets one know low and behold, you are a human being like everybody else, you are hauling for help like everybody else. You attend black churches, 25 years of working in this place, the best of those black churches is we are people who have been hated for 400 years but teaching about love. That is high quality salt craft. And in his own tradition is that. Any human being face the question what is the point of my life. What is worth living, what is worth doing, what is worthwhile . Every human being is in a certain culture formed by that culture, act in the context of that and has to react to what is coming in that culture and every human being, powerful temptations because it is easy to believe, we live in a culture that reinforces our believe that what is worth living for his status, prestige, social standing, wealth, power. Those are not in themselves bad things and to condemn those as if they were bad in themselves, wealth isnt bad in itself, power isnt bad in itself, depends on how you use those things. To make them what is fundamental, to make the ultimate goal is to fail to see what human life is all about and what is worthwhile. To make people understand integrity, honor, decency, these are what are truly fundamental and make life worth living, this is what we should aspire to not for their own sakes wealth and glory or power or influence or social standing. They are superhigh achievers. Those students are going somewhere and have big futures, investment banking, lawyers and other fields and they can do a lot of good but they faced powerful temptations to believe it is standing, status, influence, power, wealth with other people, what really matters. And through our entire lives, you havent gotten close to being there until you have the strength of character, the selfmastery, what is good and true. And william student, in this culture, you might be called to stand up for what you believe in, arrive at a view if youre truly openminded to engage and arrive at a set up that marks you as an outsider, someone to be rejected and integrity to stand for that knowing it could cost you in terms of further education, when we think back to socrates, we know how he died. Made them drink the hemlock, he is a martyr. Refused to go silent on the truth even when the truth, didnt want to hear it. Free speech and intimidated speech. Gets you in deep trouble, getting a lot of deep trouble. Dealing with unpopularity based on his own commitment to understanding a person of integrity. And in progressive circles, not a question of popularity, we reject the chains of conformity and want to be nonconform, in the world and not of the world and against the world and tied to a kingdom that is so much greater and grander. My great pastor, the kingdom of god is within you that everywhere you go you want to leave a little evidence behind. Coldness, cruelty, oppression, resentment, and the ways of the world. And nonconformist. And accountable there, feed into acknowledging the critical character of your own standing. Tribalism today, big problems all around the world. If your own convictions, your own reflections, your own inquiries lead you to a view on the team in this one and you can be in big trouble. That is true whether you are a progressive like me in the most recent president ial campaign could not in the end vote for donald trump, regard him as morally unfit to be president of the United States, dont want to litigate that right here but using this as an example. Because i wouldnt play for the team i got a lot of heat. You want to elect Hillary Clinton . I didnt want to elect Hillary Clinton, i opposed her too, f anything worse than donald trump. That got pushback from other people at cornell was in the same position. When he refused to support Hillary Clinton after she got the nomination, on the conservative side, the liberal side, Progressive Side, from the left, he wouldnt say i wont said a silent on the team. Host how many times have you been arrested . Been arrested . Going to jail . He has been jailed. How many times i bailed you out. Last time in ferguson. Got a call for my brother and he knows about that. Love, respect and support that he has has vital action. Cornell, 2016 i was being sworn in in the International Religious Freedom Commission and was elected chairman, sworn in as chairman by chief Justice John Roberts at the Supreme Court, i asked cornell if he would do me the honor of holding the bible for me. We have wonderful people upstate new york. Where is that . Up there. This is a special bible. The wonderful people there gave us the bible, big, beautiful bible, imagine what that must of costa poor woman in Harriet Tubmans time, ask live with no money, something about her faith, treasured that bible, and gave us the bible on loan when i was being sworn in chief robertss chambers, as we were walking up the steps in front of the Supreme Court to go into the building, as we walked past a couple Police Officers i see one of them take cornells i and the two of them, cornell and the officer stare at each other and give them a head nod and we continue walking in as i turned to brother cornell and say what is that all about . He said Brother Robert, this is the first time i have been to the Supreme Court when i wasnt here to get arrested. We are so early. That was Martin Luther king day. Chief Justice Roberts was the magnificent moment. A new 25th addition of your bestselling book race matters. In the new introduction to that book, you write we live in one of the darkest moments in American History, a bleak time of spiritual blackout. Spiritual blackout, relative eclipse of integrity, honesty, decency, we have normalized mendacity, we made lies a normal way of life and naturalized criminality, we made crimes look as if they are natural, drone strikes, wall street, engaging in predatory lending, market manipulation, so many different ways peoples humanity is violated. We need a call for prophetic fight back. In a moment of spiritual blackout, not just a political issue but moral and spiritual issue and it is only by example, we need young people to say progressive brother conservative brother still have love, still have respect, willing to fight, willing to disagree, by example. Want to see sermons, the dominant soul craft, smartness. Obvious, obvious, obviously this or that, a word for the in crowd, part of a smart crowd. Like wisdom at the deepest level, no accident that donald trump, the smartest in the room, a sign of his spiritual emptiness, a symptom of a society that idolized smartness and richness, we want to talk about balls, barack obama dropped 22,000 and his last year. Drone strikes 506, the nobel peace prize, respect the coke, hide and conceal when it comes to morality and spirituality it breaks through ideology, not rightwing or leftwing or center but moral and spiritual substance deepening political ideology. What im trying to say is we are in catastrophic times, ecological catastrophe, nuclear catastrophe, moral catastrophe, survival of the slickest and smartest but economic catastrophe, three individuals in the bottom, 160 million, 360 have wealth equivalent to 50 of fellow citizens. This is grotesque. This looks like louis xiv times. Now we have well to do, tightening the benefits for the poor, what happened to these, the orphan, the widow, the fatherless, the muslim, the jew, gay and lesbian and so forth, spiritual orientation. The book is about where are we 25 years after i wrote the book in 93, spiritually immoral. I agree with the thrust of it. We disagree with things like markets, inequality in itself, economic inequality. The problem is not the market economy which lifted millions of people out of poverty. My critique is we have traded in a freemarket economy for phony capitalism, big and powerful firms can use Big Government to regulate competitors off the field, big firms, for the price of regulation and welcome it because small up sale competitors cannot welcome it. When it comes to economic equality i think any justice will be an economic inequality, i dont have as a goal economic equality. I have as a goal equality and dignity, equality of the declaration of independence, all men are created equal, we are all of equal worth but i chose a career as an academic. Not a particularly high paying deal, made a lot more money, gone to Business School and made more money than. I dont have any problem as long as it is fair, my worry is not free quality, my worry, considerable extent lost, and close to people, my high school friends, this is donald trump, why . They are feeling the effects of being neglected, being left behind, and bigotry and prejudice, certainly on the basis of their own experience of a cultural elite, and have nothing but contempt for the values of people, those are trump voters. Still criticizing some bad things, but i think it is a mistake to imagine those supporters of donald trump are just racists and bigots and horrible people, they have legitimate grievances know when in either party, donald trump reached out to them, whether they were wise, to look at their tribute, i have debated that with relatives and friends, but he noticed those people were forgotten or left behind, waged on their economy. And benefited. Do you agree with that . They are a diverse lot, some who are in fact, racist or misogynist and homophobic, doesnt exhaust the whole group. There are other racists the alt right and also a slice of trump voters who voted for bernie and voted for obama. You have to keep track of that diverse city. You never went to downplay the vicious legacy of the White Supremacy in this country. You cant allow it to be the only thing, intellectuals these days, White Supremacy is always linked to Something Else, linked to predatory capitalism, slavery, jim crow, pay cut patriarchate, homophobia and empire. Black and white soldiers go to the philippines and treat the philippines like cockroaches because you have an empire. You want to be honest in telling the truth. We said lets tell the truth of who they are. They are a heterogeneous lot. Many are suffering under neoliberal policies under barack obama, the top 1 , 95 of income growth. And wholesale economic equality, i want to focus on poverty. And concerned about trying to ensure that poverty is attacked on track to do it with barack obama and others, the Democratic Party had no major concern about poor people, they are tied to wall street and upward mobility for professional middleclasses when it comes to working people who are poor, very little to say under then movement on healthcare and that is Market Driven Healthcare Program, established by mitt romney, saluted or not known for being on the cutting edge of the fight against poverty but in the Republican Party did some decent things to go to health care. That is what a Healthcare Program comes from. Let us try to tell the truth. Deeply narrow when it comes to issues of poverty, jack kemp and others putting pressure on the Republican Party, legacy of Martin Luther king putting pressure on the Democratic Party but the other side of this, which we have to be honest about is Market Driven Corporate Media that made donald trump the center of entertainment where they made big money, one of the ceos made it clear donald trump is bad for the country, good for us, why is it good for you . Revenue. They followed every speech, my dear brother Bernie Sanders got 20 seconds, 30 minutes, why not have equal treatment . It is Market Driven even in the media. Thank god for cspan. Can you imagine what the quality of public dialogue would be without cspan . Fox news, msnbc, the Propaganda Machines. One a conservative Propaganda Machine the other a neoliberal Propaganda Machine. We have dialogue with them and so forth but you are not going to get the most balanced view out of sean hannity or chris hayes. They have their own agendas. You cant just promote your agenda. You got to mention something bigger than your own agenda. That is how democracy works. Highly relevant in education especially Higher Education but k12 through Higher Education. You have to tell the truth. Too often, one extreme whitewash of American History, you take out the unsavory. Working people, labor movement. The other size tells a false story of the American Experience, slavery, White Supremacy, imperialism and so forth leading many of our young people to reject the foundational principles of america which are what make the country great. Other human beings, flesh and blood, dust of the earth but made in the image and likeness of god we are human beings like other human beings, not us as human beings who are exceptional, it is the principles on which the country rests, the principles on which we were founded that it has taken a long time to live up to and we dont live up to them fully and never willfully because they are aspirational but captured we hear so often it becomes a cliche but we need to listen to those words which we hold these truths to be selfevident, all men are created equal, they were endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A nation founded on that principle has the potential for greatness and we need to communicate that to our young people, tell the truth, yes with the words but not imagining history is nothing but words. When Martin Luther king appealed to the American People he did not take a revolutionary attitude that we need to tear down everything that came before because it is corrupt and evil and we need to build something new that no one else has seen before. Martin luther king looked back to the american founding, the man who wrote the words i quoted was a slaveholder but that did not stop king from looking to the american founding and saying the principle is right and good, lets live up to the printable. Our founders wrote a check, lets cash the check, make good on the check. That is what we need to do, call people back. Host your reaction to that, i want to welcome our viewers, this is our monthly in Depth Program where we invite one author to talk about his or her body of work. This month it is a unique situation, professors Robert George and cornel west who taught a class at princeton, cornell west has returned to harvard, Robert George remains at princeton. Here are the numbers, 202 is the area code, 7488200, east and central time zone, 2027488201, in the mountain at pacific. If you cant get through on the phone lines, several ways via social media including twitter booktv, on our facebook page, you will see a video of these two together come make a comment under there, facebook. Com booktv, instagram booktv and finally email booktv cspan. Org. Very quickly, we want to show a few of the books these two have written beginning with cornel wests 25th edition of his bestseller race matters, originally published in 1993. Democracy matters came out in 2004. Brother west, his autobiography, came out in 2009 and his most recent book, black prophetic fire, 2014. Robert george, making men moral 1995, the clash of orthodoxies 2001, conscience and its enemies 2013, Conjugal Union is one of his most recent books, what marriage is and why it matters. We will begin taking those phone calls in just a minute. Your reaction to what Robert George said a minute ago . Telling the truth and the condition of truth allows suffering to speak. We tell the truth about america the other day called the course of empire, makes the deck of the United States, colonial enterprise like new zealand and australia and liberia and israel a host of people escaping ugly conditions to arrive on a land and other people there. You have to decide do you coexist, do you dominate, to use a board night, engage in genocidal assault, the United States, what is distinct as a colonial society, it was a successful, revolutionary effort to overthrow the empire from which it came to fight against george iii with the grand ideals that have universal implications, but still have these ugly realities, you then have slavery, white men who cant vote, who dont have proper teeth, women and patriarchal households, gabriels lesbians and others who are marginalized and by appealing to those ideals in the context of the us social experiment we have been able to make significant progress. How do you stay in touch with humanity, indigenous people, black people, women, working people come mexicans and so forth. At the same time we have a long way to go but it is a matter of trying to tell the truth so we understand what are the impediments . What are the major obstacles. One of the things we wrestle with because he defend the market economy in the right form, not for crony capitalism or any kind of reckless capitalism, he understands there is need for regulation. I believe in market economies in the history of this nation we resulted in monopolies and robber barons of the 1890s, financial elites today who have a disproportionate power and influence, very little democratic accountability. Market economy i can agree with to a greater degree which regulations that dont allow for ways in which people are unaccountable and that has nothing to do with trashing them. Brother crowe, Alan Dershowitz on the palestinian question, one of the finest human beings you will ever meet so we were not talking about the character of friends of his who are much less moral character. Rich, middleclass or whatever but the structure we are talking about because oligarchies and monopolies do not lend themselves to democratic accountability. Host but cornel west, didnt you put everybody in a tribe and talk about is hims that you decried . When we talk about class, we are talking about ways in which forms of power are used to keep track of their humanity, as individuals. For example there are certain individuals who are poor, who choose immoral ways of living in the world. There are middleclass people who choose immoral ways, welltodo people. We are talking about character, what kinds of choices people make, but the structures that are in place, structures have to be confronted as structures. You can have the most benevolent class of slaveholders in the world and slavery is still evil because the structure of slavery is evil and we understand slavery to be as a structure, reduce structures with golden characters characters can choose, and keeping track of structures, what we have this complex with structures and individual structures, and worked on slaveholder to become more moral without an indictment of slavery is still not enough. You would agree with that . A few points to make. First is the last thing we want is the socialization of government control and ownership and means of production. The high road to tear any. My democratic socialism has a crucial role for the private sector. The second thing, i do believe, some things are not for sale. And a place for nonmarket values and debating relationships. When it comes to regulation, i want to minimize regulation, the only regulations we should have are necessary but there are many regulations if we overregularly we defeat our very purpose. We empower Large Enterprises using regulatory obstacles to prevent smaller competitors during the competition, wise regulation and put the market to the extent the market can operate with expectation and undermining institution that are not built on market principles. When we do that, especially less well off people create social mobility, Economic Opportunity that allows people to rise which is the greatest aspect of the american story, how many people come from other lands as immigrants with nothing, shirt on their backs and become wealthy. I want to point out there is nothing wrong with being rich in itself depending money stole their resources. How many people in this country are the children, grandchildren or immigrants who really did come with nothing or very little or through hard work, initiative, willingness to take risk and think about how many of them have become generous benefactors to everywhere the cost of the cost of justice and the cause of human health and the cause of education, princeton and harvard are profoundly generosity of people to dear brother harlan, magnificent, justice fourth for good. It means Power Centers outside the control of government. Got to be antiauthoritarian across the board. If we agree it is crony capitalism, predatory capitalism and no regulation the week and vulnerable are really crushed. The way to beat that is to empower the competitors, to make the market work, not to undermine the market but to empower competitors to compete. Empower the competitors, entrepreneurs, not just monopolies but oligarchies but new starts in the market. The other countervailing force is organized labor, workers have no say in their workplace and for the most part given the orientation of the elites are not treated right, West Virginia, unions and minds. And the corruption of labor and corruption cuts across color, gender, Sexual Orientation, nation, we have some just finished teaching at Harvard Law School where we looked at law in light of the teaching of the modern popes going back to louis xiii, traditional catholic what struck me in reading through these documents, in 1891 all the way to the 100th anniversary. Trying to find a way to avoid errors on one side of socialism and government control and the means of production and the destruction of liberty that comes in the wake of that but on the other side, the kind of capitalism that creates plutocracy, where people can use wealth to squeeze out competitors, get control of an Economic Situation so they can engage in exploitation. One thing the pope scourge, workers to participate not only in management of business where their voices are heard which will benefit businesses and workers but find ways that workers have equity participation in larger firms and that is a good direction to try to go in. When workers are part owners that can benefit the firms and benefits workers. I would rather see us move in that direction than government control and a socialist direction. This is where we learn from scandinavian brothers and sisters, norway, finland, workers on the board. When fundamental decisions are made about the destiny of the enterprise the workers voices have some weight, substance. Michael harrington and the others didnt go too far. We are living in a moment in which years of crony capitalism and a monopoly that is running things, and industrial base, banking and technology. Google, facebook, like this, a connection to silicon valley, intimate relations. Just thinking of the Civil Liberties problems that are created when you have a new Public Square in the form of platforms where people should be able to interact freely. I have no problem with that. If facebook can exercise control over what is sad, engage in censorship, how far have we respected Civil Liberties, monopoly or oligopoly has faced itself in a position functionally of government exercising censorship and there are a lot of conservatives who are concerned, worried about cases where the conservative point of view in places like facebook, other perspectives, by conservatives and if you have a competitive marketplace. The free flow of information, with firms like google, and to be impossible, radical places that have deeprooted, when it comes to Public Square which is driven one of the fundamental questions, how do you bequeath to the Younger Generation the best visions, examples of courage to the Younger Generation because without those milestones in the past, connecting to those milestones all they have to go on is chaos in the president is all about money, spectacle. Neoliberal because not just political but spiritual, moral and tells young people the end and aim of life is to be successful in terms of material wealth, power and military might, but little about greatness in terms of the quality of their spirit and moral character and now the best of any civilization, no civilization can survive and lose sight of the rich examples of those who came before and bequeathed to them a moral and spiritual heritage, not just a great example of success when it comes to money and power. The point in which i fundamentally agree with cornell, we have got a wonderful form of government, our constitutional system, the madisonian system has shown you can make a republic work, there was an open question in 1776, 1789, 1791 whether the republican government could work because it was tried, the ancient world, medieval and renaissance world and failed and we have a wonderful system of republican government, a wonderful constitutional system. I would like us to be more faithful to it, we often deviated when we shouldnt have. Indigenous people that slavery we have a great system. The market system is a good system if we can push out the crony capitalism and get the market to work as a competitive thing so that we get the benefits of better goods and services at lower prices, the market does its work of reducing cost estimates but in the long run you cannot sustain either republican government or the market economy, great benefits to our people, if you do not have a moral foundation. Moral foundation. And that moral foundation doesnt just happen. That spiritual formation, that moral formation, that sound understanding of what matters in life, what it means to be human thing, what our obligations to others are, the market will not produce that. Nor will the between theve parties that for u either with a system of government president for you. It will be produced by the family. The institutions of Civil Society of religion, neighborhood, Civic Association that assist the family in its role as the basic transmitter of values, character to each new generation. We need to protect those institutions of Civil Society because beginning with the family they really are the primordial department of health, education and welfare and they k do more than just a for the kids and get them fed and off to school and so forth they form them as the kinds of human being they will be. Thats what i mean by being transmitters of values. Look, the economy and the markev system and the republican form of government both depend on h something that neither can produce and that is reasonably virtuous, decent, honorable citizens canan be good good citizens of the republic can be good participates in the market and they can produce them and they rely on Something Else to do that. Like in irene and clifton. Very much so. When you tell them about mom and dad and you talk about your parents and you talk about persons who have been shaped by what the isaac brothers call a caravan of love and the love of and the love of justice and the love of neighbor and as christians we love our enemies but we dont try that on your own. In the love of the holy. Granted, i think theres a whole host of atheistic and agnostic brothers and sisters who have great spirituality and moral character and sometimes even more than we questions so i dont believe a love holy is a prerequisite for being a person of integrity. Integrity who do not believe in god but as a christian myself i know that i cannot preserve my sanity without viewing myself as part of the great tradition of a hated people taught the world much of how to love it when youu look at the history of the American Public for example what wouldve happened to the United States if instead of frederickla douglass and Harriet Tubman you had black versus other clans. What would happen to america if the 1960s you didnt have Martin Luther king junior we had a black version of the clan so when they killed four girls in birmingham your response is to kill for white girls on the vanilla side of town. It was spiritual and moral character of black people that constituted the lesson for the american democratic. There wouldve been a civil war everyon generation if you had a terrorist of black people. Or if we had black isis or black version of ice is what they in america there would be no american democracy because you cant keep track of all of them. It was a moral, spiritual tradition that produced irene, cliff, my sisters, cynthia, and i would say i was a gangster for eoe jesus but now im a gangster with proclivity but i still hav, gangster proclivity and i need jesus to keep me in place. My loved ones and what have you but the important thing is to robbies point is he is the linchpin, if you lose that moral and spiritual heritage you have a war all against all and the triumphs over socrates might makeses right and impose coercin and tremendous violence as opposed to a love of justice in a dialogue and a democracy and an attempt some kind of civilized society. We are reaching the point where were running out of gas. Were running out of spiritual and moral gas in the United States. In the 40s, 50s and 60s is not a foregone conclusion that the way forward that African Americans would adopt would be the peaceful one of Martin Luther king and there was Elijah Mohammed was the early malcolm x. Before his time conversion to an orthodox form of islam and many others who were appointed in another direction, more radical, more violent. We had the soldiers coming back and fighting a thug which is racism and you come back to t raise from any of jim crow and you know the story in terms ofin the double victory in racism in europe and racism in america and we crushed the thugs in europe, thank god with the help of black and white soldiers together and the soviet army. Come back home in these black soldiers treated like secondclass citizens, all of them, in uniform. Is what made that possible i want to suggest and what made it possible for africanamericans to opt for the past of Martin Luther king was the black church. That culture that produced irene and clifton west was sustained by the black church over all those decades and centuries of slavery and jim crow and oppression and i think people these days forget that. They forgot the role the black church played in sustaining africanamericans making it possible for us to make progress that we have made. As much credit as Martin Luther king deserves its not just Martin Luther king. Its not something that happened starting in 1961 or 1969 or 1965. This was over generations. One footnote to that and this is where we get to the music. I think the black musical tradition is one of the is not the greatest tradition in the modern world of moral and spiritual fortitudede and by fortitude i mean diffusion of courage and magnanimity, encouraging greatness of character because character can be icing you can have a nice seat untrained nazi soldier who still has courage but when you courage and greatness of character so that the when the music that came out of our church the ray charles and the Aretha Franklins and the marvin gayes and theisre dramatics ofe whispers in the main ingredients they would no longer always questions but the music that they were producing was still shot through with the love ethic that kept through of the humanity of others. James baldwin who leaves a church but the love ethic never leaves him and the black music has played a fundamental role in humanizing our relations with each other much of it rooted in the black church but not always tied to the dogma. [inaudible] it doesnt fit into christian dogma but it fits into question love and that has played a crucial role in allowing the vanilla brothers to say lo and behold these people have an intelligence and creativity and imagination and creativity that speaks to my small so White Supremacy might be a lie. Even though it might be alive ii might be a lie. Brother robbie can play some qatar. He understands the role of musit that flows from the church but also plays outside of the church but that love ethic is still informing that and Bruce Springsteen hes a blue vanilla brother and hes connected to the black church through the what is rooted in what he does coming from the white side of town andha doing it in his own way. It is a fascinating relation to the spiritual stuff that we need in order to go forward. In your autobiography you refer to yourself frequently as a bluesman. Ug what does that mean to smart. First and foremost im a bluesman. Its the personal narrative was shocked with catastrophe but engages in lyrical expression of that catastrophe and doesnt allow the hatred to have the last word in that is what blues is. Bb king says no one loves me but my mama and she might be [inaudible] too. Thats catastrophe at the highest level. Thats sophocles play where how does he respond to catastrophe with a smile, with style, with compassion, with the sole emptied himself to connect to other peoples sole that even when hes playing guitar hes connecting on a human level to his audience whatever color they are but hes coming out of jim crow, gut bucket, mississippi genius saying this love ethic will not be stopped mediated with this guitar. You can hear robert johnson, betty smith in that tradition all through his music and then hes not the only one. We can begin with the king and we can talk about bessie smith and you talk about more rain and you can talk about stevie wonder, whoever, and the role oh music, i believe the artist of the vanguard of the speech is the musicians but to the artists. When your music gets market ties and no longer has moral and spiritual substance like so much music today you know that spiritual crisis is intensifying. We had spent an hour talking and will get our colors involved but is this at all similar to what your classes were like . [laughter] [inaudible conversations] we have text bouncing off of but now we have each other with the subject matter we have the text. Much would it cost to attend this class . [laughter] princeton and harvard, i think the tuition and fees are now well over 60000, and my right . Because of generous donors to these universities and the big endowments they been able to build which is a big issue now what those endowments should be taxed but because of that there are very generous Financial Aid on packages sois large percentae of our students are well over a majority and certainly in princeton, as you know is harbor, they receive Financial Aid many of them are receiving large Financial Aid packages in a fair number of cases it ends up being cheaper for a student to go to harvard or princeton that would be to go to his Home State University because of the generous Financial Aid that is available. The problem is of course there are a limited number of spaces e at these universities. S the competition will of spaces is extremely intense so places like princeton and harvard are only admitting five districts permit 10 . Of those who apply. Absolutely. As notable professors on these campuses are you encouraged to fund raise . Not really no, generally not. I began becoming a fundraiserow and i am one now when princeton authorized me to found a progran called the James Madison program that was back in 2000 and sore in the 17th year and this is a programmer brother cornel and a year before last this center and program builds on princetons work strength in areas like political philosophy, constitutional law, American History to try to enrich our history and understandings of americas new institutions and the broader civilizational structures that made possible the american founding. When i founded the Madison Program University Made clear that while they would assist with fundraising we would not be given an annual allocation from the universitys central account i have to raise the money each year for the program and we are now up to a 2 milliondollar annual budget so i have to be out there raising money in our developing office is very full of preference and im grateful for them for helping me and some of the generous alumni and the foundations support us and that particular circumstance for me i have become but didnt pressure me tm do that. I wanted to do something and i wanted to do something new and i wanted to introduce as a model and hope other universities a program that would enrich our students understandings of basic american constitution moral principles and that ended up making me a fundraiser. I met a lot of people that way but it is a burden. [inaudible conversations] your charm help facilitate the warm relations and ive been very blessed to be with him. Hes got fellows who dont have economics support and i was part of the fellow because i was teaching in the seminar and use open enough to be able to jointly support that seminar. Some fellows who receive support and somed fellows are just like to be there. Im glad to be there because im just in there for the dialogue. And that the Madison Program funded in Princeton University the course and it was. [inaudible conversations] you can see that i am not the ideal person to go out and raise money for an elite institutiono because i love to be part of the conversation but a lot of times my critique can be so intense that they say to themselves we are not really sure that this public face is the most effective in terms of being able to raise money and sometimes they do with their Broad Perspective and committed to a robust uninhibited conversation then i think we might be able to get some contributors but i think. I think districts when i wasr on the guggenheim one of the conditions i had was that they supported the learning through the arts and that we had to make sure that children were from harlem and they had it access to instruments but you come into these big institutions and their concerned about the weekend and the week and the vulnerable and they are taking sure what they are intended to and what theyre about. I think generally speaking they probably would hold off on me. Its an enriching experience ive had because when it comes to my fundraising our donors almost universally including our conservative donors and many of our donors are themselves politically conservative have counted it very much in favor of the program that cornel and i do together. I got out a single complaint from a donor or anyone else about our sponsoring cornels course last year and making him a fellow. And i was on martin king and desmond. Exactly. In the work that cornel and i do both in princeton and around the country i find that supporters were enthusiastic about that. This is what they want to see. They want to see the civil but robust engagementes of ideas and they want to see working together across all sorts of different times. But we have to be together i think. Im not sure they did bite me all by myself. [laughter] it is understandable because. [inaudible conversations] last year we spoke at the American Enterprise institute they were wonderful and as youre walking out brother cornel and we were treated so graciously but brother arthur and as we were walking out cornel said i have to say im not sure think tank would have treated you as well as i have been treated here and i hope that is not true but we havent. I do wonder. Thatsas very true but when you have money and power and privilege might be easier to treat someone nice who basically are pushed against the wall. The left was so weak and so people. I dont see it that way. I see it the opposite way. [inaudible conversations]ca joan strikes in surveillance and nasa Security State in ways we have to be critical of. Host gentlemen, were going to get our colors involved. Organic begin with a call from e in maryland. E, you are on with cornel west and Robert George. Go ahead. Caller i would like to call this a true spiritual serendipity. I just came out of prayer about an hour ago and everything seems to fit. The only question i would like for you to focus on is what do you think of disavowing being in the republican and or Democratic Party and file as independent with a more spiritual, truly spiritual stance and i host were going to leave it there and will let cornel west answer. Robert george, if you flip the switch on your box that should turn off your audio. Not that one, dont to that one. Will come in and take care of that. For now,ju ifo you will answer t call or we will figure that out professor george. Glad to one, i want to thank you for your own spirit in terms ofd resonating with what were trying to convey but as we know the spirit can go in so many Different Directions and concerned when we talk about spirituality that is tied very much to social justice for the most vulnerable in our society no matter who they are. Vulnerable and therefore when it comes to choosing which anrticular Political Party i think we ought to look at the world through the lens of the most vulnerable is a question for me that means to look through the lens of the cross. When amos talked about looking at his own society through the lens of those who were suffering and that could easily lead toward you being an independent very much so. I think that could be a sign of a certain kind of integrity because i think both of our Political Parties are just shot through with levels of myopia and cowardice and tied to big money that is so sad and so disempowering i think we need more independence but again the choice is up to you. I dont believe in dictating anybody stories. Host next up is ron in babylon, new york. Ron,n, good afternoon. We are listening to you. Please go ahead. Caller yeah, i respect the values of love and caring for others and the liberation of self and the concern for others and o i think that is somethingi really respect and think both of you gentlemen you talked about it and are champions of. The question that i have is you also have the principles of our country and police in our country in the way the country is set up and part of that is the congress and part of that congress is the actual compromise of the congress saying that the current tax bill there are good things and bad things in that tax bill and how does that deal with the idea of morality and love when indeed the road we are on is an incremental road and a growth road and compromise sometimes has some bad elements in it. I have a question in the area. Thank you. Robert doherty missed about her kind comments about this discussion andrn then she went n to talk about the tax bill. Cornel, if you like to start do i think Brother Robert should jump on it. I think the textile is a colossal failure when it comes to issues of morality and spiritual tied to the vulnerable. You start slashing corporate rates for tax and corporations are able to hire these very, very smart lawyers to create loopholes already. They have offshore tax havens already and now youre going to slice it with some 39 and they take it on the 20 . I dont believe the conservative argument often puts forth and i follow conservative but many if you the taxes of the rich that somehow that will generate Economic Growth that will have an uplift for the most vulnerable, i do not see evidence of that and i hear it over and over again so i do resonate with what you said initially about our conservative and about the vulnerable and if you look at our text its particular tax bill to the land of the impact on them its a colossal failure. My own view is that we did not need to cut taxes to make our own businesses more competitive. We have among ifco not the hight Corporate Tax rates in the world and that has adverse consequences for american workers. This is a classic case of watching thehe sausage being mae and watching legislation and yes, there are lots of compromises that are made and some of them are unfortunate but i have a worry that caused senator corker from tennessee tt vote against the bill in thee senate which is that we are further expanding the deficit were not dealing with spending issues. I think a lot of ordinary people get a small tax cut and a lot of other people get a marked larger taxcut and taxes will go up for some and wealthy and not for t others but it will be a completed situation but at the end of the day i dont think what we will have his fundamental change. I dont see this as a big breakthrough and i dont see it as a big catastrophe. Itll shift a few things around but its not fundamental change. What i would like to see is a rethinking of the system that means tackling something that no one wants to tackle and that is the spending side. Also, i will introduce an issue that almost never is the issue of the monetary side. We have had artificial low Interest Rates forai a very long time, perhaps an unprecedented large mana time, but certainly in my life weve never had such a. Of very, very low Interest Rates and of course that is the work of the fed. There are winners and losers as a say as a result of that and we dont pay nearly enough attention to Monetary Policy and i think there should be a serious and robust debate about that but again its not happening. I think were getting in this tax billll at the end of the day afr all this dramatic speeches by the senators on both sides is not a lot of change just relatively minor rearrangementg. And therefore we need is not happening. Guest both sides agree that for every 53, 53 cents out of the dollar goes to the military and when it comes to serious interrogation and accountability as the military in the complex very little talk coming out of either party and that is tied to our venture is and tied to our Foreign Policy that often times does not have financial accountability for Public Interest. Guest im a person that believes in a strong military, as you know, but a military has to be accountable. Most accountability and too often its just easy to say ive increased military spending and vote for me and i made our nation stronger, but for me. Guest and that money is taken and you dont have money for schools of quality and jobsl with a living wage and decent housing and so forth. Host barbara in oak bus, massachusetts. Good afternoon. Caller hello, thankff you. Whoever said one in one doesnt make threesh has never encounted this particular roadshow here. Absolutely thrilling conversation. I learned that mit put their entire curriculum online years ago and i would like to ask these two to get this freshman seminar films online for pbs or npr or to be radio or a podcast but just get it out here. Okay . The obvious power of this partnership ist so extraordinary and its almost like a left brain, right brain partnership because brother west is so warm and brother other is so cool and yet the words and the ideas are one more thing. It is very important that we use them in mes intelligently now in the social media age and i came in ten after 12 and i heard the word soul craft and i had never heard that. Obviously its an invention of brother west here or both of them together but for me to be the better meme to focus on is integrity because integrity is historical. Its not connected to religion and it doesnt have and i dont want to badmouth soul because of that magnificent thing you did on the music and all that and its true but for this Younger Generation i am 70 and im ah reformed deal and im an intellectual but we have to understand that we arent gonna be here much longer and we have to figure out how to communicate this moral integrity thing to this next generation. It is not their fault. They were born into it. Host we can leave it there and were to hear from brother west and Brother Robert,. Guest brother other. Guest i want to think our collar for that and the kind comments. My own graduate courses which is a course in Civil Liberties is going to go online up really soon and we will do the first online version of that starting thisi spring so this is an experiment forot me. Been looking at what some other scholars haveel done including y friend who has partnered with us on justice and done it successfully so im hoping to make that work for my Civil Liberties course but the seminar is a different thing in a special thing. Cornel and i have wrestled with the question of whether we should make our seminar moread public. For example, weve had a lot of reporters have asked to get in on the seminar into an article or do a quick about it on a newscast or Something Like that and we had in the end always decided no. He why . When someone is in there watching and reporting or when you are online or youre doing it as an online course the students know that they are on display. The beauty of a seminar is that people knowing that they are not on display are willing to experiment with ideas and to speak their minds and to try to think out even if it might turn outin that it will not work and might even be embarrassing. To try to pursue the intimacy of the seminar and to try to make sure that students do not feel as though they are on display in that format we have opted against any broader involvement of people in the seminar trying to make it more widely available. It is a shame because theyre such magic in the seminar and we would love to share it but we just havent been able to find a way to do that. We could shift to a different format and we could do a big lecture course together and i will let the viewers in on a little secret and you get to bigmouth showoffs in the classroom in six or 800 students and youre gonna lose some of the magic. [inaudible conversations]ro guest he and i teach a course of the law School Called american democracy and we put each lecture on youtube and hes been doing this for a long time. That is the case for you to persons who give lectures and very Little Exchange because by the time were done the class is over or you miss that socratic element that is so very, very important that brother robbie and i just revel in because he learned so much from each other and we are empowered by each other and our students are able to feel that energy ricocheting off our interactions but i love you my dear sister from oak bus said because of bluff is a special place. Isnt that Marthas Vineyard . Special place. Thats the chocolate section of Marthas Vineyard with highquality black folk live and come to terms and i do it in our dear sister is in good company. In terms of soul craft when i talk about the eclipse of the integrity and the generosity she is absolutely right that we talk about soul craft is a fancy term and i didnt make it up, this goes all the way back to plato and medieval social theorist and political theorist all the way through our mind and time. The issue of the integrity, honesty, decency, courage, fortitude, magnitude magnanimity all these need to not be talked about what people have to see it exemplified and enacted and on the ground and day by day and grinned by guerin and touched by touch, left by last, movement by movement. Our. Are caller raises an important question. Could we jettison religion or relegated to the purely personal spear and interpublic discussions just talk in terms of things like integrity apart from religion and dismiss and talk about soul . Ive heard this suggestion before and i know people proceeded but i cannot persuade myself that it is correct. I think that if we go down that road what we will be doing basically is spending down the capital of our great religious tradition especially in our culture and the jewish and christian traditions andow spending on the capital without replenishing it. Yes, i agree with brother cornel and i know from personal experience that one need not be a religious believer and there is no question about it but can we sustain a culture of integrity and can we defend these ideals and can we make them meaningful for people including our young people shes right to focus on our young people they are our future. Can we do all of that by cutting off and by going silent about religion. Do we have a way of defending our ideas of honor and integrity on the basis of a purely materialistic metaphysics or an idea of man of the human as mere material forces as in a world exclusively made up of efficient and material causation for there is no soul and where there is no sense of a person of more than material. I am dubious about this my very grave doubts about this. John adams famously said our constitution is for a moral and religious people and will not serve well any other kind of people and that was not controversial in adams day but controversial in our day. Even adams knew that there were people who were skeptical about religion and work honorable people what he was doubting is what i am doubting. Whether you can cut these concepts of integrity and decency and honor off from the religious roots in our culture or relegate them to our merely personal and still sustain them. In the face of the natural human desires to gratify ones own needs and to put ones own self first and to favor oneself and ones comfort over others and to seek honor and glory and fame and power and influence and how you fight back against all of that if he cut off the roots oft our basic understandings of moral concepts. That is my worry. Guest i think of the last word in henry adams education he said bella did three words shutter speed to yes, exactly to what you, do with the death shutter and what you do with the despair shutter and all of us shutter as like like the mother in faust but to be here is to shut her in the face of knowing you are on the way to extinction and to knowing that you may bed, betrayed by friends and knowing that you may be misunderstood and misconstrued and knowing that you will be rebuked and scorned and if religious is at their best allow us to come to terms with that shutter you cant deny death. You escape and go to disneyland but sooner or later youll have to leave main street orlando and come on back to your street and live your life. You work through that shutter and try to write possibilities of how to how to take risk and be vulnerable and have a certain kind of openness to others in without those religious species we know that they have been crucial but on the other hand we also know that we live in a very secular time in that the debate between t. S. Eliot you cant make it without religious tradition. Here comes [inaudible] saints were the best people are not religious but religion has gotten in the way and has promoted theit hatred of jews ad promoted the hatred of nonchristians and promoted the hatred of muslims with the various crusades and so on so how do you wrestle with that set of issues in an honest way and it ise a tough one. Guest we can make a case and we can put things in terms of the dignity of the human being and a creature that is rationale if we believe in those things but even stated in that way it lacks the compelling this of the hebraic concept that human being is made in the likeness of god of the supreme judge and ruler of the universe and having a transcendent significance and something that goes beyond the here and now. If in fact the truth is that human beings are atoms and molecules in motion that no more significance than a rat or and and that we have the basic truth in the best way that we can and im not sure about that guest uni democracy and friendship and you need it that transcends individuals among secularists that take it outside of themselves that is transcendent. Guest but can you give account on that and if all human beings are material stuff and na greater significance than a rat or an aunt you can give no account of why human beings should treasure f friendship or never betray a friend or should make sacrifices for rent and should have integrity even at great cost and should be willing to sacrifice himself but you can ascribe significance to friendship even if you believe in a bundle of molecules in the relationship without necessaril referring to an external god speak to all that does is not as the question how is this host this would assume theres no answer. Guest its a secular source in a pagan source. [inaudible conversations] mark twain ends of their because hes a spiritual being and guest living off the capital. Guest and its metaphorical but as im a. [inaudible conversations] host lets interrupt that and hear from back in inglewood, california. Caller hello. Thankk you for taking my call professor georgeig and professor west. Here is the bigger picture. Im very concerned regarding a potential military conflict between the United States and north korea. Here is the exact question, can you identify any person or group of people that may have an level of integrity and moral character to carefully and peacefully guide is way from any potential conflict that can affect, not just the United States but the entire world . I will hang up and wait for the answer. Thank you. Host thank you, back. Gentleman. Guest very serious question. Administration after administration has tried to come up with a way of dealing with north korea and with the dictators of north korea. All have failed. Will President Trump do any better, well, we can only hope so but so far it doesnt look like it will do any better. It made it worse. This is a grave situation. We haveo very little control. All we have been able to do so far is put pressure on china and put pressure on north korea and that will assume that china is in a position to put pressure on north korea we like to believe that and to some extent i think that is true but i think it is limited. There is also the question ofus chinas will to put pressure on north korea and that is very dubious to me. I wish i had a solution and i wish i knew what to do. Yeah, i can think of people i would trust to manage the most difficult of situations and ics have my own favorite people in politics but it would be an enormous challenge for anyone and, so far the record of administrations republican and democrat, liberal and conservative, has been record a failure. Guest the fundamental perry. I wish that President Trump had more of the poise and diplomatic maturity that was found in president obama and im not uncritical of president , but ill go at him with tooth andco nail but when it comes to the diplomatic maturity and the use of language and ways in which you try to lower the temperature because this is an all or nothing and its a matter of pushing buttons and lo and behold for in a completely different time and space in zone so that the kind of childish nonsense that you get in the hyperbolic rhetoric of President Trump as opposed to the more mature diplomatic language of president obama you have to acknowledge that and that might be a way of learning the temperature but its not a direct answer toward your sisters question because i dont know of a set of individuals who you could really trot out to help mediate this thing and i just dont know if any. Guest the only possibility anyone has come up with isbu trying to work through china an guest maybe south korea may have some secret of having connections with the north on the down low and therefore been able to surface but at the moment we do not have the crucial answer to that question. Host cornel west you met your first president in 1968, who was it . Guest my first president . . Host 1960 wasnt president at the time. Guest i met Ronald Reagan when my brother was the number one miler in the country at uc berkeley. [inaudible conversations] we got a chance to interact and he was a kind and gentle person and i was very close to the black panther parties and i was upset with what he had done with angela davis pushing her out of ucla and philosophy and we had a nice little dialogue and i was 14, 14, but ive been raised by mom and dad to treat people kindly evenic if i had deep ideological disagreements. Host have you ever met donald trump . Guest oh yeah, i met donald trump years ago. Absolutely. I metcl him in Atlantic City and he was exactly the same way then, narcissistic, insecure, all spectacle and very little substance just being the t smartest and the richest in the room. The problem was that he was one of the few White Brothers in the room so for the most part he had to keep his mouth shut. He was in there with mike tyson and yet keep a small shut because we had a certain kind of prominence of style that pushed him to the margins but you could tell that he is the same little will not little, but the same person who never grew up and he oldoesnt feel as if he is accountability beyond himself and i would never have thought someone had told me then that he would be in the white house i wouldve told them to get off the crack pipe. No possible way that he would be elected by fellow citizens and low and behold, here we are, in this mess. H host hundred. Guest its worth asking yourself how did this happen. Its a big part of that story. Can i tell a story . Of course, brother cornel met Ronald Reagan long before we knew each other but i will tell you a story about it. One of my brothers happen to be at a reception where he met former president bill clinton and he was telling me about this and my brother keith he was in charleston, West Virginia and he had a hell of a conversation with former president clinton and i asked how did that go and keith is a strong conservative like myself. He m said well, what is interesting is that he was so warm and engaging and when he talked to me he made me feel as though i was the only person in the room and so i was reporting the story and i told it just as i tell my viewers are now and i said brother cornel, isnt it interesting that politiciansng have that ability. They have this knack for talking to people and making people like them andki making people feel as though the politicians talking to them and that theyre the most important person in the world and for now replied saying well, ive met bill clinton on numerous occasions and hes just faking it. With Ronald Reagan it was real. Guest bill clinton is a master at it. There is no doubt about it. By being a master he is able to appear to certain kind of way. Host one of the things we like to do an in depth is ask our guests with some of their influences are and what are some of their favorite books and what they are reading now. Here are the responses we got from Robert Jordan cornel last. We are back with Robert George and cornel west in our new york studio. This isse our inDepth Program d sean in battleground, michigan, youve been very patient, please go ahead with your question. Caller battleground, washington but thank you for this a wonderful opportunity. Doctor west, i have in my hand a book that you coauthored about 20 years ago called the war against parents. Coauthored it was in doctor west you reference the scandinavian economic model and its not a mystery what causes healthy, positive outcomes for children and families they been practicing in scandinavia for years and years. The christian right and the libertarian rights have been marching arm in arm with deregulation and the utilization policies that we know that state poor and workingclass children and families. These families have been catching hell now for the last 40li some years in this country and when you people like Charles Murray writing books like coming apart and attacking the poor and workingclass for having poor moral fiber andnd you have somee like Speaker Paul Ryan who claims to be a question and makes required reading i iran out list shrug means the question right god is not jesus but their god is a kind of nietzsche, entrepreneur type who epitomizes the kind of petty walk mentality and could you expand. Host we will start with cornel west and then Robert George. Guest no, brother sean was on fire and laid it out there. When you talk about the christian right certainly there is such a thing that danger with hatred and the contempt that we see too often but its not homogeneous either. Theres a variety of different voices there. The case thate is its not justt a question right the american right as a whole has suchnm a deep suspicion of government playing a fundamental role in the lives of everyday people that they can easily overlook theai ways in which Government Intervention to the lives of everyday people can be probably empowering as opposed to simply being authoritarian and repressive. We had to keep track but certainly when you look to norway andan finland and other placespo the government and we look to canada with what is north of the border and the government is very Important Role in intervening into the lives of through enhanced liberty to enhance wellbeing so part of it is the ideological and a political question of perception and the question right suffered from it and the judaic rightnd and the british right to but i had great fun writing that book with my great sister sylvia who has gone on to plaintiffs and things in terms of issues of inclusion at the corporate level of women and people of color and gays andor lesbians in trance and she still going very strong with her center for talent in information right here in new york. Was over 20 years ago. The ways in which parenting is the ultimate nonmarket activity in a Market Driven society. Host brother other, defense,. [laughter] shots comment was i detected a dogmatism in it and i am not a fan of iran iran and im a strong critic of irene iran but the question right is not randian and most of the christian right is not randian and i have simon criticism these days as you might imagine but work done by Charles Murray and Robert Putnam and david and amber laughed and others on the Cultural Foundation of the moral collapse that we see not only in minority communities in innercity places like that but in appalachia and in the south and an old west belt cities among white workingclass communities and the Cultural Foundation of that are real and theyve got to be dealt with. We can go all the way back to 1965 when Daniel Patrick moynihan was then just a Young Harvard professor working as assistant deputy of labor, if i recall quickly, did his study that showed the out of wedlock birth rate among africanamericans had risen 25 and moynihan could see what the consequences of that would bepp for this historically persecuted and oppressed secretary of our society and that meant widescale fatherlessness and with that delinquency, despair, drug addiction, violence, incarceration and in a vicious cycle. When moynihan warned about all of that, warned her it would lead, for his efforts he wasat labeled a racist. He was stigmatized and so people went silent on cultural questions on the Cultural Foundations of that family collapse and moral collapse. They were feared of being treated the way he was treated and the very significant aspect of the part of the problem was that under the rug. One thing moynihan was wrong about was he thought it had mainly to do with race and history of racial oppression. We now know that that is too specific an account because seeing the same effects happening for the family has broken down for similar cultural and orderly cultural reasons and white workingclass communities and in appalachia and other rural areas. Now we can make the mistake also imagining that its only culture and economics is nothing to do with it. Other factors including racism has nothing to do with it. That would be a mistake, too. Just as it would be as mistake to leave those factors is also a mistake to leave these other factors are. You can stigmatize murray and you can call him a racist and hes a libertarian and im a critic of libertarianism but in his recent work, calling attention to the disparities between the haves and the wealthy and the havenots, black and white and the cultural basis and the importance of families and especially intact families and the success that people have that citizens and as human beings he is doing a service. So as putnam and belt laughs and other sociologists were finally calling attentionoi to this. My point is to not oversupply. Dont think it is only culture but leave dont leave culture out of it. Dont shoot the w messengers however much you dont like them. When the message is right. Two i would at one point when you think about legacies and Martin Luther and mark next and accenting the moral lapse among elites and the moral lapse of wall street and the moral lapse of Ivy League Institutes in the moral lapse of the journalistic elites and not our dear brother thank godos for sister betty and his beloved mother but were talking about more lapses that cut across class and they go up and they go down and they go horizontal and not just a matter of focusing on the vulnerable ones and those coming apart for the poor blacks or pro browns or poor reds. This spiritual blackout there were talking about cuts across every nook and cranny insight to it also has to be pointed out that while the spiritual consequences of this moral collapse are born most heavily in the spiritual consequence are borne by everybody but the material consequences are born by the most vulnerable whether black or white or green. People are finally starting to call attention to that problem and one of the most things murray says in his new book is r very often you see now are rebuilding and successful marriage culture with lower divorces and among educated and affluent elite things to be t going in the right direction while things continue to go inpl the wrong direction for poor and workingclass people so murray sayso it is time for elites to start preaching what they practice and dont preach moral relativism when youre practicing the moral virtues that are weaning successful lives for you and your children. Workingclass and poor people who often are devout religious believers and who preach a message of family integrity fidelity, uprightness need to actually practice what they preach and there is some truth to that. I think we need to call really on everybody to lead the kind of life that will not only produce spiritual value but also make them materially better off. Host from Robert Burgess book conscience and its enemies, professor west, he writes the two greatest institutions for lifting people out of poverty and enabling them to live in dignity are the market economy and the institutionn of marriag. These two stand or fall together. Guest yeah, im not sure and i certainly would acknowledge the importance of those two very much so but have to first examine much more closely what kind of market economy were talking about. What kind of marriage were talking about. There are many marriages that need to terminate because of people catching hell in patriarchal violence and callousness and so forth. Certainly what is the quality of each one of those categories that he puts forth. I think robbie would agree with that. Requisite conditions for the flowering of our fellow citizens. And theres a variety of different kinds. Lets look at the kinds of marriages. Theres a variety of different kinds of marriages. There are some very ugly, patriarchal marriages of abuse that theres no way that the woman can live a life of wellbeing, you see. There is no way the woman can live a life like that. Im sure brother robbie will recall that. That would be the first, my First Response in that particular sentence. My point is if you destroy one of them you will destroy the other. If you destroy both of them then no one is going to flourish. Im not defending every form of market economy. Im, not defending every marriage. Ive already said that it think the problem with crony capitalism is that it undermines the functioning. It prevents the market something with the market does well when its properly functioning which is it increases quality, lowers prices for those her at the bottom of theo scale and enables them to rise. When i sit in a thats what i am interested in. And i want ad culture in which families function to transmit the virtues that children need in order to be successful lives, to lead successful lives and the good citizens. Thats in the way to license abuse or any of the other its true brother robbie and i really wrestled with the issue of our precious day brothers and lesbian sisters and trans. Its the very notion of something called samesex marriage, or a love that flows in which person of the same gender, that brother robbie is always in our dialogue, been very cautious, very careful in saying as a christian he still loves gay brothers and lesbian sisters made in the image of god. And so is trying to stay in contact with their humanity even as he is critical of samesex marriage. Is that a fair characterization . Absolutely. I push him on that because im i very much one who supports love flowing in the bright a different forms, even in legalized status when it comes to gay brothers and lesbian sisters or trans folk or whatever. And there we get theological in terms of what kinds of resources can i pull, can people to generate support for his argument, to generate support for myio argument. Thats a serious matter because its a biblical passage that one can invoke that a highly critical of samesex marriage. Ic understandings of the biblical text in which you focus very much on jesus, why was jesus silent on the issue. If paul says x, paul says, slaves, be obedient to your masters, well, were not going to accept that. Paul says something about samesex marriages, we might accept that. Those are the kinds of dialogues that we have, and i think those are the kinds of dialogues that we need to have in the country that begin with the preciousness of each every one of us as human beings. And then move to various ways in which we disagree regarding the coming together in a marriage or coming together in a relationship or what have you. Guest yeah. The bedrock principle is that of the profound, inherent and equal dignity of the human being. Guest right. Guest thats it. To put it in religious terms, the idea of man made in the image and likeness of god. Now, in these areas of morality and family, my own argument, i suppose, would be typical for a catholic. Different for a protestant. Natural law. Not appeals to scripture. I do think that scripture can enlighten us guest thats true. [inaudible conversations] guest thats right. Its guest yeah, or im glad you correct me on on that. Yeah, absolutely. Guest that tens to be made more central tends to be made more central. But the fundamental issue for me, i mean, the great majority of cases youre going to have opposite sex relations, the critical thing for me is that those relationships be supported by a culture that will enable them not only to last, but to provide the milieu in which parents can transmit essential virtues that will enable their children to resist all the terrible temptations that can reduce them to narcissism, selfishness. Were living in the wake of this was our generation the me generation whose motto, whose slogan was if it feels good, do it. Well, a lot of young people of successor generations have taken that to heart. And its a very, very bad message. Now, how can we empower men and women to transmit to their children a different message and to inculcate it in them in a way that will enable them to resist the temptations to think that what really matters in life is me, me, me, me, me. Money, power, influence, wealth, social standing, status, respect, so forth. Guest i mean, the sad thing is that so many children in the last 30 years or so, reminds me of Phillip Larkins thing about how my parents messed me up, its the parents who have been narcissistic. Its the parents who have been indifferent, the parents who have been callous. And they passed that on to the Younger Generation. The Younger Generation has to find countervailing ways of being in the world over and against what their parents transmitted to them. Guest you know, when we moved in the direction of nofault divorce going all the bay all the way back to the 60s, decent people thought it would be good for the spouses because they could separate, and that would be that, and it would be less fuss and bother and less of the burden on the counts and on the public purse because the public purse supports the courts and so forth. And they even thought it would be good for children because its got to be bad for children living in conflict situations with their parents. But if you look at work thats done by sociologists today, people like the lapps and others work on the consequences of nofault divorce, you know, it has not been good for children. Children in most cases where theres not violence or abuse, even where theres a high degree of conflict do better with their parents sticking together. But what have we done to support marriages . Very little. What have we done to encourage parents to stick together . Very little. What have we done to provide cultural support for parents, to make it easier for them to sustain their a marriages . Really very little. Now, this is not a critique of government fundamentally because theres very little that government can do here other than get divorce policy right, get family law policy right. The real work has to be done by the institutions of Civil Society. Its got to be done by those nongovernmental institutions, what burke called the little platoons; family, extended family, church, other religious community, neighborhoods, civic groups, groups in which people of different ethnicities and faiths and so forth support each other. Thats where the real work in supporting marriage and the family has to be. Guest but if the government did help provide jobs with a living wage, quality housing, arts programs, music programs, sports programs that channel the energies of young people in such a way that was tied more to Public Interest rather than just privatistic orientation, that would be a way in which, like scandinavian countries, families could possibly be sites where children would flower and flourish. Guest you certainly need those things. Guest yes, yes. Guest now, whether government should be the provider guest not the sole, but can play a partnership and a role and a fundamental guest right. But the part of the way we do that is have taxation at a rate that will enable people to retain enough of their money to be able to provide things like Music Lessons and ballet lessons and religious education for their children, also to put parents in a situation where if they want to choose private, including religious youve been very good on this education theyre able to do that. The situation now, of course, is one in which people pay property taxes to support Public Schools even though they want to send their own kids to religious schools. Its increasingly expensive even in the old days when priests and nuns did most of the staffing. Well, the vocations crisis in the Catholic Church now means its more difficult to do that. The costs of education become higher and higher, its harder for parents to afford to send their kids to catholic schools. So i think government does have a role to play here, but often it is in facilitating rather than in actually providing the services and support thats needed. Id rather see Civil Society liberated to do that providing than to have government come in and try to do it directly. Host cornel west and Robert George are our bests. Heres a couple of their bookings. Cornel west east best selling race cornel wests best selling race matters. A new introduction. Democracy matters came out in 2004. His autobiography, brother west living out loud, came out in 2009. Black prophetic fire, 2014. Heres a couple of Robert Georges books including making men moral, 1995, the clash of orthodoxies which weve talked about today in 2001. Conscience and its enemies, 2013. And Conjugal Union what marriage is and why it matters. Weve done a little constitution on that today as well. Cornel west, if somebody wanted to buy one of your books, which one do you recommend to them . Guest i would tell them to buy James Baldwin [laughter] listen to some Curtis Mayfield and John Coltrane and nina simone. Theres so many other voices more important than mind. I would never promote my own text. But if they had a little extra time, i would say read race matters with the new introduction. Host Robert George, same question to you. Guest well, i suppose it would depend on a persons particular interests. If theyre interested in the deeper sorts of philosophical questions, then id recommend my bookmaking men moral Civil Liberties and public morality, which is the subtitle of that book. Thats the book on the basis of which i was given tenure at princeton, so its kind of a special book. It was my first book. Guest absolutely. Guest i reread it recently, and i still think im right about that. [laughter] much of the rest of the Academic Community thinks im wrong about it guest for 32 years. Guest found it interesting enough to award me tenure. If people are interested in contemporary issues, issues of marriage and sanctity of human life and all the kinds of things weve been talking about today, then perhaps my book conscience and its enemies which is my most recent book would be, be the one to look at. Ive also written with coauthors books on particular topics, so if people are interested in abortion and euthanasia, infanticide and those kind of issues, i have a book that ive written with the philosopher Christopher Tollefsen could embryo a defense of human life. And if people are interested in the marriage issue, i have a book that i wrote with two of my former students, a pair of brilliant young men, and that is what is marriage man and woman, a defense. Host eric is in lutherville, maryland. Hi, eric. Caller hi, how are you . I have a question host go ahead. Caller primarily for professor west, but also for the other professor as well. Im trying to understand [inaudible conversations] caller the last eight years of the obama presidency, and he painted a very Progressive Agenda when he was running as a candidate, never delivered on a large portion of that Progressive Agenda. And im wondering whether that was caused because the agenda i wasnt his real core beliefs, whether he lacked the courage to pursue those beliefs or when it was just the whether it was just the dynamics of the political era that were living in. Guest yeah, appreciate the question. I think one of the revealing moments of the Obama Administration was march 2009 when he met with leading wall street haze of firm heads of firms there, and they told him that they were wondering what he had to say. And he told them i stand between you and the pitchforks, but i rest assure you i am on your side, i will protect you, you have little to worry about. Thats a failure of nerve, thats a spinelessness, thats a lack of courage, that thats what you tell poor people, thats what you tell working people, thats what you tell black people. You dont tell wall street elites that i will protect you, i am on their side. Its no accident not one wall street executive went to jail given the massive crimes that were committed in terms of the predatory lending and inside trading, market manipulation and fraudulent activity. It was very clear youd have a wall streetfriendly, neoliberal Democratic Party in power, and the same was true in terms of his Foreign Policy. When he preserved his elites in the state department and in the pentagon so that the same folk tied to drone strikes, the brennans and others remained in power. When he brought in tim geithner from wall street, he brought in my dear brother larry summers. Smart as a tack but at the same time at that time tied to deregulating neoliberal policies. It was clear he had wall streetfriendly, drone presidency escalating and, therefore, a lot of the progressive rhetoric and that audacity of hope would become empty in regard to poor people and working people. Symbolically, he was masterful. What i mean symbolically, is to have a black face in the highest place in the American Society empire in government meant that not only had he made progress, which we had, but we had black people being empowered. We were in power for eight years, and you look around at poor people, look around the ghettos, look around the schools, look around at the massive unemployment and the massive incarceration, wow, who was in power for eight years . Theyre the ones who did very well, ask the folk in prison, ask the folk in the hoods whether they were in power. Not at all. There was a failure of nerve not just among barack obama, but among intellectuals, black intellectuals became cheer leaders for barack obama. The same folk would talk about Martin Luther king jr. As the extemplar of justice didnt want to talk about policy. The same people talked about Martin Luther king jr. As a great example of justice didnt want to say a word about the drone strikes that were dropping on babies in yemen and pakistan and so forth. The same folk even on the middle east. Want to talk about justice consistently, didnt say a mumbling word when 550 precious palestinian babies were killed in 50 days. Barack obama didnt say a mumbling word either. Why . Because he lacks courage. Hes spineless. He didnt want to tell the truth. Hes a politician. It was not in his interest to speak about that kind of suffering, you see. And so we ended up with another politician rather than a visionary leader. Now, was he a good politician . Absolutely. He got elected twice. Was he better than john mccain . Absolutely. Who was the other brother who ran . Mitt romney, absolutely. But did he fall short in terms of the standards of the martin kings and others . Absolutely. And not enough people told that truth. Guest ill let everyone in on a little secret. Big business does not consider Big Government to be its enemy. [laughter] guest thats true. Guest it loves the government. Guest exactly. Guest wall street loves Big Government. Now, upstart entrepreneur dont necessarily love Big Government. Small Business People dont necessarily love Big Government. Guest thats right. Guest but big business does because big business benefits. Ill tell you my own story. Obviously, it doesnt have to do with president obama, who i never met. But i was, i served during the Bush Administration as, the second bush, george w. Bush on the president s council on bioethics, and i was in the white house advising him on bioethical issues. We developed a good relationship, i have a lot of respect for him. He called me in, though, with two or three other professors right at the end, in his last week in office to talk about his memoir. He was already planning his memoir. So we were talking about his eight years, and right in the front of his mind was something that had just happened which was the bailout of the big banks. The big bailouts. And unprovoked by any of us, he just said as if talking to himself almost, he said, you know, i hated to do that. I hated to authorize that. Everything in me said, no, you dont bring government in to bail out businesses that have failed, that have failed because of their own practices. Thats not the role of government. Im a free market guy. And yet, he said, what what coui do . The leading people on wall street and the leading wall street representatives like snow in my administration are telling me that if we dont do this, it will be a 1929 stock market catastrophe. What could i do . I had to authorize the bailout. Wall street has tremendous influence in any administration, republican or democrat. They can be very promarket in theory, profree market in theory, but if wall street wants a Big Government intervention in the market, wall streets going to get it. They can be very progressive in theory, but if wall street wants something, wall streets going to get it. Its very hard to stand up against that. And in president bushs case, i mean, he did not want to be the president who presided over the next great depression, and he felt that his hands were tied on this, and he had no choice. Wall street got what it wanted. Free market guys were not in favor of those bailouts. My free market friends were scandalized by it. Yet wall street wanted it, wall street got it. Guest but the difference is president bush didnt put a figure, a representation of Martin Luther king jr. In the corner acting as if youre working on his project and based on his legacy. It was more consistent even with president bush as a conservative. If youre going to be someone coming out of the legacy of martin king, youre going to have to be courageous, sacrificial, serviceoriented for the week. If not, just tell the truth. Im a neoliberal, i might have a statue of him, but i dont have no plans of following through. Im not going to bail out main street, im not going to bail out the homeowners, im going to bail out wall street. Be honest. A lot of black people have been moderates. Whitney young was not Martin Luther king jr. , didnt run around acting like he was malcolm x. He was whitney young, he was a moderate, head of the urban league. Dont act like youre some kind of progressive and radical when youre really a moderate. That was partover of my part of my critique of barack obama. Dont use Martin Luther, he suffered too much, he paid the ultimate price. Quit manipulating his witness with neoliberal policies. If youre going to get in trouble, youre going to follow martin. If you want to be moderate and adjust to the status quo, follow whitney young. Just tell the people the truth, thats all. Thats like saying you show up at a concert acting like you al green, and then you start singing like a brown version of pat boone or something. [laughter] hey, tell people the truth, this is who i am. Quit lying about yourself. Thats the thing that upsets me. Not only that, but thats part of the best of the black tradition. Host robert, email. Facebook, twitter have become the new nonstate powers which have a huge impact on societies worldwide. They seem to accelerate polarization and disinformation. Guest theres some truth in that, and i cant contradict can it. Now, now, i also spoke earlier about my worries about monopoly and oligopoly and especially when it comes to free speech issues, these type of firms and platforms. But i think that people who care about the quality of our civic discourse can use those platforms to counteract the bad things that this gentleman rightly points to. I, in my own work, use facebook as a kind of ongoing seminar. I have serious discussions with facebook friends of source issues. I call to the attention of my friends things that i think are worth reading. When i say my friends, these are mostly people ive never met in my life, but theyre people with whom ive developed relationships online because theyre interested in the kinds of moral and political, civic, religious issues that im interested in. So my advice to the gentleman is lets make the most of facebook. Its not going to go away. Facebook and twitter are going to be here. Were not going to get rid of them. Now, there may be some steps that we can, that we can take to make them behave a little bit better than they are behaving, but we ourselves in using those assets can use them to counteract the bad things and to advance things that would improve the quality of our civic life. Host absolutely. I mean, you think, for example, the great reverend William Barber ii whos reviving the Poor Peoples Campaign right now. When he uses this new technology, its a way of reaching out across and race, class, jenner, Sexual Orientation to bring people together. Thats different than the neonazis who we were staring down in charlottesville just a few months ago. We use the same technology to bring together the fascists and others to try to bring some kind of contemptuous attitudes toward blacks and j everything ws and muslims and gays and he lesbians and others and catholics. Even david duke is catholic in the klan. Get a catholic head of the ku klux klan, my god. Someday youre going to have a negro head. I did see a black person who marched in charlottesville. Guest s with nazis . Guest s with nazis. Theres confusion everywhere. Very much so. But generally speaking, it reflects who we are as persons. The bastardization, the division and so forth. Thats what we bring to the technology. We havent undergone [inaudible] guest yeah, thats exactly right. Host suprea is in edgewater, new jersey. Please go ahead with your question or comment. Caller hi, thanks so much. Its been great listening to both of you. Im really, i feel more than just informed by this conversation and educated, but i feel my heart is healed a little bit, and so i want to echo the calls from others to figure out a way, there is a way. And i know, professor george, i think youd been kind of wrangling this issue of bringing your seminar to the public, etc. But there is a way, and much more Creative Minds than i can figure it out. But weve got to get you on television, and weve got to get this out because i think the way that you both i think the way that people go about having these discussions, disagreeing with each other and the affection for each other is really important. Having said that let me get to my question which is going back to a framework that you brought up earlier. You were discussing earlier for how the American Experience or experiments worked with these three elements. We have the free markets. We have the foundation of virtuosity, and we have, sorry, second pillar of democracy. I guess my question is how in the world, where do we begin . When you think what has become so obvious to so many of us in the last year, we have some really deep problems in all three of those areas. Ive been spending the last are trying to figure out where to focus my attention and im one person of millions whos doing the same exact thing. Questiono is, where do we begin . Is thereof a chicken or egg situation . Are the things we can be doing that are more host thank you for your time today. Lets hear from the professors. Who wants to start. Guest thank you for your very thoughtful question. Its the right question. I have wrestled with it myself. Heres the best i can do. I think all of us can do a service to all of the rest of us by reaching out to people whom we know have very different perspective on basic issues than we have. So if youre not a troll personp and especially if youre someone highly critical of trump are some of whos afraid of trump, get to know a trump voter. Get to know them not just to lecture them, not just to harangue them right to try to where theyre coming from. I think that would be a service. If youre a troll person, a trump voter, and you think that trump is the treatment of the people to stand up against these horrible elites, get to know one of those horrible elites. Reach out in a personal way and just listen. One of the things we need to do, one of the great things, i love listening to this guy. And listening is where it begins. Begins. I think sending a signal across the ideological or partisano divide that im willing to listen is the necessary first step. We were badly divided in this country. We are deeply, deeply polarized. Its not the first time. We go back to the election of 1800. 1800. Look at the civil war, the division over slavery. But it still isnt considered against that historical backdrop, this is a time of deep polarization, animosity, resentment. Americans resenting other americans. Americans thinking of other americans as villains. Large number, 62 million as villains with the other side thinking the first 62 million as villains. If this precious experiment is going to survive, we will have to get past this and it begins with talking with each other. And you cant talk to someone else across that kind of divide and less you signal to the person the present willingness to listen. Lets begin there. Eg one begins with oneself because on the one hand, has been shaped by traditions in the past. We critically appropriate the best, also if you attempt to exemplify in your thoughts, in your actions, in your organizations, in your networks the kind of truth telling what is buried but also more than that. This relates to robbie and i grew up in a time in which you had tenderness and sweetness and kindnessss shot through your music. You would groups that sing, not just into a a touch the soul at the deepest level. They were not just titillating the body. These days music titillate theed body in order to make money asou opposed to shaping the souls, io order to make persons stronger, to make persons spiritually equipped and ready to take on the world. Curtis mayfield didnt sing just to make m money. He equipped people of all colors to do with the crisis and catastrophes with smile, style, humor. Thats whats missing. We did all that in our own lives. We knew that in movements, in leftwing movements, centrist movement. Where is the humor that allows us to laugh at ourselves so that were can grow and thereby be better relatives who we are . But you can touch them, you can unsettle them. But if they shut down before you even get a chance to touch an unsettled, then were even more divided in that way, you see . Robbie and i, we brothers for life. And were going to fight, were going to struggle and so forth we are going to fight and we will struggle and so forth and so on but at that human level where it is no matter how unpopular we become or whatever and its not about unpopular but the kind of human beings we choose to be poor the worms get our body. That is the kind of tradition we come from and the kind of peopl. We come from. Not just from this country but every other country. America has no monopoly on integrity. W theyve got in lithuania and kurds in turkey and jews got it in tel aviv and the palestinians have it on the gaza bay if theyre willing to be courageo courageous. You have the same cowardice in each place. In that sense its a humanan thing. Most of Human History is a history of domination in nature. Thats what it is. All were trying to do is interrupt it. Guest i think hank williams. Guest hes a genius on the other side. Country music, soul food to the core. Different kind of rhythm, different kind of drumbeat but very similar story. [inaudible conversations] one of the things we tend to do is we try to signal things to each other especially others in a group that were already comfortable in to make clear that were in the in group and were on your side and we say things especially other people with different beliefs and we strengthen our bond with people in our tribe and i think we need to be willing a little bit to be a fly in the tribe and do what theyve done on the Progressive Side in question thesen established orthodoxies and dont worry so much aboutt signaling that im an insider or be willing to take the risk of being an outcast and if you made an outcast that is something or not we will have to live with. Its much better to have integrityf its better to try to on the situation then deliver the comfort of being in the in crowd by saying what people want to hear someone have you ever been criticized with your friendship work with cornell west. Guest very and i have to get it to my friends. Very rarely and i think one exception would be on issues having to do with israel where cornell has been perceived by some conservative as going over the line into harshly critical and i know in my heart there isl not anything in the medic about cornell west. He has got a heart for the Palestinian People and they are suffering and they want to see justice and we might have disagreement about israeli politics but their government and i want all of my friends who share my support for israel to understand there is no government that should be immune from criticism and the h Israeli Government has made mistakes and they have done things that are wrong and no one is perfect and those criticisms are perfectly legitimate and there are people that is what causing the sensitivities and there are people who go over the line who use criticism of the Israeli Government and the state of israel as w a pretext for s expressing antisemitism and spirit there are people who like to see the jews disappear from the corners of the earth. [inaudible conversations] i think that has caused the sensitivities that in some circles has caused people to say how can you have a strong support of israel in this people associate with cornell west. People who knew me also know that i have been one of the leading voices and i think it is fair to say me if im wrong, cornell on the christian and conservative side in defending the rights of muslims. I made that a big part of my work on the committee on International Guest we have both given statement supporting on the local level and you have the local Muslim Leaders guest i need to avoid tribalism of any sort but im really proud of my conservative friends who seen value and they have Great Respect for him one have you been criticized . Guest oh sure. The left tendbi to be more. Rick than the right when it comes to that. A number of them and said why we dont understand what you spend time and we wrestle on the abortion issue and we wrestle on the extended regulation and so forth and i just tell them one, when you dont understand who he is as a human you have a stereotype and you understand the conservative and then think that somehow by some law of transitivity you can grasp this complexity because he calls himself a conservative. Every conservative in a stereotypical sense is in no way a human being who is conservative and has a variety of different complexities orientations that dont conform to the stereotype. I tell them up front youve never met them. Come to dinner with us and come to lunch with us and have a drink with us and have some coffee with us well, he doesnt drink but i still have my cognac. In that sense and is the same sense in which we tell them that well, brother west says that the palestinian occupation you would say the exact same thing and [inaudible] palestinian baby has the same value as a jewish baby and vice versa. Innocence oncs both sides and humanity on both sides and how do we perceive we can disagree on but we have to make sure our spiritual and moral foundation are in place so it as with Brother Roger and i went with terry flower and its an all pack pressure of young people there and his engagement and its not just at the personal, spiritual level buthe also in terms of the framework that he provided in terms of [inaudible] thats empowering to them and hes the only vanilla brother in the room. The Human Connection is made. Flowers Visionary Leadership makes a host i need to tell your viewers about this. Guest doctor and mrs. Flowers is a labor of love on their part in the have no public funding whatsoever andt, they take the children of prostitutes, drug addicts, kids who you think are lost in the unknown future they will end up in jail and end up in trouble and they take these kids and they give them a firstclass education. I dont even know how they do it, cornel, but they do it out of love. E. I know why they do it but how they pull this off and the kids end up going to notre dame and baylor and stanford and all over the. [inaudible conversations] guest she is one of the greatest artists of our time so you have a variety of different kids there all beautifully black and brown and yet harlem has made a contribution and. Host who is harlan pro . Hes come up a few times. [inaudible conversations] hes a donor to many good causes including the school thei flowers run for black kids in lallas. Its wonderful to see the kids are there in their School Uniforms and theyre being taught not only classroom skills but the human skills and the rules of selfrespect and congeniality. Guest how to be sensitive to other peoples needs and all those things that go into the making of any human being. T guest at the end of the day this is a Retail Operation and so craft is a Retail Operation. It is working with individual kids somebody, parent, teacher, coach, appearance, pastor working with individuals kids. Host i just got a message from my producer that says you can just go home, its cool. They got this. [laughter] south dakota, you are on with m cornel west and Robert George. Caller good morning, gentlemen. I have a question to both of y you. C host jim, turn down your volume of your tv because theres a problem with account. My question is what are your thoughts about rere rewriting the constitution to make it truly more equal for all peoples . Guest thankou you. Host a thank you, jim very much. U. S. Constitution. Guest i rather like the one we have now. I do think that from time to time reconsidering elements of the constitution and the constitution provides its own amendment so it contemplates thn possibility of improvements its the fundamental structure of the constitution is a work of extraordinary genius and we would be making a bad mistake if we threw over things like the separation of powers. The concept of the National Government is a government of delegated and enumerated and therefore limited powers in the state of government as government general just restriction exercising plenary authority, federalism, there are crucial dimensions of our bill of rights that i wouldnt want to see touched. Now, Thomas Jefferson believedd that the dead hand of the passion not control the living he wanted to have a new Constitutional Convention every 20 years what his sense of a generation movie. I dont think that would be a good idea. The founders of this constitution have given us a way of preserving something that was before that time impossible to preserve which is republican government. Government not only of the people which all government is not only for the people but which is all Good Government which is a benign desperate butm government by the people. Our problems have not come from our constitution or from our excess of constitutional pistols. Our problems whether racism or whether it will matter what it is has been a lack of fidelity to our constitutional principles. Had he honored thehe declaration people that all men are created equal we would have done away with slavery from the very beginning. We went had jim crow when we went and had segregation and the problem wasnt possible but our failure to live up to the principal. The same is true separation of powers. The same is true in so many other areas, an area of concern about is the seepage of legislative authority off to the executive branch and agencies on the one side and off to the court of the other side. Congress does everything but legislate. And they take responsibility and be accountable for legislation. We are governed not by our government elected the or by yourself where governed by people weve never heard of and bureaucratic agencies were governed by courts on crucialus issues. I want to see fidelity and want to come back to the constitutional people that we have. We do not a new one with a greater fidelity of what we have. Guest theres a wonderful book i just read called in the shadows of the american entries written by a brother named alfred mccoy. He makes a point that to live in an empire in which the executive branch eclipses the others in terms of its ability to engage in preoperative activity and do things with little accountability people have called us the imperial presidency but its our presidency that goes handinhand with an imperial america which weve got 587 bases in 47 countries and 140 special operation activities around the world and so we are in essence a kind of empire in a very real way and the question becomes can government by the people, for the people and of the people survive in the face of an empire with militaryha overreach, corruption of elite, a culture driven by market sensibilities, unconcerned about the sociality of public life, common good andnd the rule of lw that can be undercut by big money. Now that is a serious situation. I think it requires more than just a rewriting of the constitution and it has the kind of people we are. The marvelous constitution we have is still a proslavery document for over 80 years. The marvelous prostitution after the 1880s was Still Limited with a pro monopoly capitalist constitution in which poor people didnt have the right to vote or to be have collective bargaining. It took until the 1930s. Argentina had itwo in the 1830s. Argentina is not known as being cud cutting edge of social justice. They were 100 years ahead of us when it came to working people. Women voted when 1920 anything constitution with persons who were not prepared to fight for working in four people can be used when they are wealthy or behalf of everyday people. Would you accept that . Guest parts of it. [laughter] im less inclined to say our military is an imperial. Guest while we been an empire since guest well, men like my father, joseph george, my fatherinlaw marched over to germany and they defeated hitler and they came home and they didnt occupy and they werent like the roman legions and they werent like caesar they defeated the nazi tyranny and they came home and they handed it to the german people a democracy and the handed it to the japanese people a democracy so i think the picture is located and i do think we need to be respectful to our military and we need to be respected to our veterans. A lot of disrespect these days advance a not good and i think l of this is americans should acknowledge whatever mistakes we have made when it comes to. Ne guest but theyre following the rules and willing to put their lives on the line but ite is the rulers who too often dont have the kind of vision required relative to the courage of the ordinary soldiers. Host letset hear from california,. Caller its an honor to be on your show. If we didnt have cspan im not sure what wouldve happened to us. I say that during the whole talk that these two gentlemen are talking about telling and the role of the family and my question is what kind of parents would you suggest you would be or your neighbors for your friends would be when they talk to their kids about the main source of the human problems right now, isis and the force of religion in our culture and in this country . Isis is when they chop off the reporters head and they arrest believe it or not they call it [inaudible] abrahams tradition so their hero is abraham that is revered by muslims and jews and christians. So if we introduce this man is a hero to our kids then of course we will have people like isis and of course we will have failed states like iran, pakistan, israel, sudan, afghanistan. All of these countries are failed institutions, failed states. And please bear with me because you encourage your viewers to talk about the truth. This is my version of the true then we have to face the fact that these failed institutions, judaism and islam are failed institutions. Host i think we got your point. We are almost out of time. Gentlemen, we have three minutes for that question. Guest would need to be careful with their children about all things good when it comes to religion, the greatest, most generouss things that ive ever been done h have been donen the basis of religious motivation and in the name of god. But the other side is, some of the most faster than horrible things have been done on religious motives in the name of god could isis does act in the name of god and as far as we can is sincere, it is horrible, unjust. They sincerely believe they are doing what god wants. There is no guarantee of justice just because you are doing it on religious motivation. The rest of the truth is some of the most terrific deeds ever done in Human History have been done on a secularist motivation. The great ironies responsible for the highest death tolls of any regimes in Human History were validly secularist regime. Thee communists. So i dont think it is fruitful to try to drop a grand Balance Sheet and say on the whole religion is bad and recognize things can be done in the name of religion. That things and avoid that thing. But we should all agree is the dignity of the person in the image and likeness of god. Others may have a different way of articulating the basis of the dignity, but when we are focused on religious teaching on human beings have dignity and are not to the status of answer rats, then we will do could things in honor people and practice. I think we are just talking about thed species. Wilson at the end of his career top develop social biologists, evolutionary fears. We need something to push back or egotism, tribalism in which people can be proud together. That is what is the best in many ways. Most of Human History is the history of mendacity comment criminality in the domination, exploitation and how to be disrupted in keeping alive traditions of love. The love of truth, beauty, goodness and enacting the love with body, mind, soul, Network Organization and democracy at the very difficult efforts to fuse the love of truth and goodness and beauty so it might disrupt the history of domination. Imperial democracies have their own forms of domination so they are incomplete, unfinished. In the india have won by a graphically. What are you going to do in relation in your own love of truth and goodness and beauty and how will it be connected to others involved . Can i Say Something to parents based on my now 33 years of teaching and that is parents, please comment care as much come i care more about the integrity of her children. Care about who they are to need to about getting into williams or yale or princeton and go on to Harvard Law School or go on to that. And they will encourage them to be high standing and make good incomes. Im not denigrating that. What is more important than not this character and integrity and that is where your real focus has to be. Robert george of princeton. Cornell west of harvard, thank you for being on booktv. Guest thank you. Always a pleasure. Guest thank you so much. The next region that is incredibly interest in is called the insular cortex. Now, the insular cortex is in fact incredibly boring after a lab rat or any other mammal because it does something very straightforward. You bite into a piece of food and its spoiled rotten and rants in all of that and what happens is that the results come your insular cortex activates and it triggers all sorts of reflexes peter stomach lurches, you cant, spit it out. You have a gag reflex. He keeps mammals from eating poisonous food. Getting a few men volunteer your inexplicably is convinced to buy into this food that is to that is the rancid and disgusting and their insular cortex that debates. We do something fancier. All we have to do is think about eating something disgusting and it activates. But then something much more subtle. Sit down someone in your brain scanner and have them tell you about a time they did something miserable and rotten to some other human or tell them about some other occurring doing something miserable and rotten to somebody else and the cortex will activate a never other mammal on earth it does gustatory discussed. But a nice, it also does moral disgust. What that tells you is why it is something sufficiently morally appalling we feel sick to our stomachs. It leaves a bad taste in our mouths. We feel soiled diet. We feel nauseous because our brain invented the symbolic thing of moral mores and standards some 40, 50,000 years ago i didnt develop the brain at the brain of the timing of the subcommittee meeting and they said okay moral disgust, theres the insular that does their portfolios now. Give me some duct tape. The insular cortex will do moral disgust as well and has trouble telling the difference. Let me take you on a very, very brief 20, 30,000 year history. Very, very brief history. When we were hunter gatherers, primarily lower costs with the god this guy because what was important at that point was geography, landscape and so the way we understood our connection with the deities was through those aspects of nature that helped in the hunt. And most of those deities were mailed deities with the exception that is often seen as a deity, but often a female deity. But the sun is most definitely a male deity. This guy is a mailed deities. Thunder, lightning, mailed deities. When we transition to agriculture, interestingly enough, our focus when from the sky to the earth in the earth as opposed to the sky is associated with female deities. Obviously, right, it gives us life. We plant seeds in it. It sprouts life. We live off of a. The fertility of why men became in a way. But then, something very interesting happened, which is what type of culture came the rights of civilization. With civilization can the creation of organized religion. Religion, like we was not stable. It was in constant movement. When we stopped moving and we settled down and began to plant the fields and build villages and cities, we also build temples, a place to house the gods. Heres the thing about temples. The second you build Something Like that, you need someone to administer it. You need someone in charge of that thing now. The idea of the intermediary between god almost always felt to men. There were exceptions, particularly in mesopotamia when you have liked very, very powerful goddesses or as we know her, ishtar. Those goddesses are extremely powerful and would have women in charge of them. But even that was a patriarchal thing because the idea was that god is busy woman and so requires funding to take care of her. But the other god, those are all just male dominated. And so, that is the process whereby what we start to see as the creation of organized religion almost immediately becomes a patriarchal thing. And that just extends for the next, you know, it can come at 12,000 years. It is sort of an unbroken chain that can really go back to the very first civilizations in the very first temple. From every part of the nation, almost every state, and were all bound by a simple set of principles. We want to be able to deliver the best quality, highest Speed Broadband to all americans regardless of where they live. Weve got work to do because there still are americans that dont yet have broadband, and were aligned to make sure we