Transcripts For CSPAN2 2015 Tucson Festival Of Books Saturday 20150314

Every weekend, booktv brings you 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books, on cspan 2 keep watching for more television for serious readers. Booktv is live this weekend from the tucson festival of books. Start agent 1 00 p. M. Eastern 10 00 a. M. Pacific well be covering several author panel on topics such as race and politics, Supreme Court, environment, immigration, and more. All this live from the university of arizona the site of the seventh annual tucson festival of books. I give an example in god, guns, grits and gravy of this guy who is heading green peace in europe, and so he is all about wanting to reduce co2 emissions. But in all of an audit of green peace shows he is flying from his home to lux. Boring a couple of times a month, and the output of co2 he is expending because of his jet travel is like 100 times that of the average person. And so when confronted about it, here was his answer. He said well, the train trip would take 12 hours and that would be time away from my family and a whole lot of time that i wouldnt be working. In other words, because its not very efficient. And im thinking well, gee isnt that why most of us fly . Heres the point. If youre going to be an environmentalist and you say its horrible to emit co2, then live like it. And i use the example glen reynolds, a great blogger makes the statement about environmentally he says i will believe its a serious problem when the people who say its a serious problem act like its a serious problem. Kudos to people like ed begley jr. And Darryl Hannah because they are environmentalists who actually practice it and live it and ive read about ed begleys very very spartan life his small footprint of Energy Output and he doesnt fly very often once in a great while he may make a bicoastal trip, but i respect that. Whether i agree with it or not to me if you have a conviction then just live it out and if its authentic, well see it in you. If its not then dont tell me how to live. Dont be al gore and say that the oceans are about to overtake the coast and then build a 20,000foot home right there on the coast. Thats just im sorry. That doesnt make sense to me. If you think your oceanfront property is about to become washed into the sea. Why the heck would you build it . You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Heres a look at upcoming book fairs and festival happening around the country. This weekend booktv is live at the university of arizona with coverage of the seventh annual tucson festival of books. Next week were covering the virginia festival of the book in charlottesville, virginia, and then from march 25th to the 79th the city of new orleans hosts a Tennessee Williams literary festival. That will be followed by booktvs live coverage of the Los Angeles Times festival of books from the campus of the university of Southern California on april 18th and 19th. Let us know about book fairs and festivals in your area and well be happy to add them to our list. Email us at booktv at cspan2. Org. Welcome to book tvs live coverage of the tucson book festival held on the campus of the university of arizona. Today were covering several author panels on topics such as race and politics, the Supreme Court, the environment immigration, and more. First up today, a look at xrays politics and this author panel will be followed by a call insure with one of the participants. Even haney lopez wrote a book this past year called dog whistle politics and will join news an hour. This is booktvs live coverage of the tucson book festival. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] welcome, everyone, to the seventh annual to sun festival of books. I am the host of a half hour Public Affairs show on sunday mornings. I want to thank Cox Communications for sponsoring this venue and james osmond for separate response to find this session. I want to go for 50 minutes with questions and answers so hold your questions until the end and immediately following the session the authors will be autographing books, sponsored by bookstore. Books will be available to purchase at that location and Ian Haney Lopez will be late because we interviewing him live on cspan falling this session. If you are enjoying the festival please consider becoming a friend of the festival. Your taxdeductible will donations allow the festival programming to be free of charge each year and support critical litter see programs in southern arizona. You can learn more about the friend of the vessel will benefit that information booths on line. At of respect for our authors and your fellow audience members please turn off those darned cellphones. Lets introduce our panelists here. Next to me we have Ian Haney Lopez who is the author of a dog whistle politics. Bill maher eric holder one of the best of the year. He is professor of law at the university of california berkeley. Then we have at the 11, he is look at this. My town. Its certainly is. Miami herald columnist and also the author of a collection of his columns forward from this moment and winner of the 2004 pulitzer prize. All right welcome man. And rick perlsteins most recent book is the invisible bridge very thick volume. I use a 9 m fit. Not in this latest. Is continues is chronicling of the conservative history of america he began with before the storm about arizonas Barry Goldwaters president ial campaign. Continued that with nixonland, the continuing history. To data topic is race and politics and Rudy Guiliani has had some interesting comments along these lines recently endive would start with you. The thing president Obama America . [laughter] i think president obama loves america the same way your right to but i dont think he lives in the same way that lets say Newt Gingrich for Rudy Guiliani or sean hannity do which is to say uncritically. I think that he understands what is his name . Senator al franken had net great line, you dont there is a sense among some on the right fit you have to love america like you love your mommy which is to say without any criticism, no blemish, she is perfect and if you deviate from that, that is not love. I think the president loves america like grownups love grownups. [applause]. And that is something many on the political right failed to get and obviously the elephant in the room, the reason. It really did it through the giuliani questions the president s love of america is he represents something Rudy Guiliani finds strange and unsettling. I will say this said dont want to get long winded but i will say this. I find it fascinating when africanAmerican People are called upon to verify their love of country because we are the people who loved the country when the country didnt love us back. [applause] when my ancestors can tell stories like that of a soldier in the Second World War passing from a small louisiana town who wrote about what it was like having to go into the back door of this restaurant eat while the german prisoners of war on the same train went through the front door and 8 in the dining room and yet he is still suspected and still does shed blood for america. Dont you dare question africanamerican law of country. These comments from Rudy Guiliani, he said president obama doesnt raise the police often enough, should be more like bill cosby. Nobody should be more like bill cosby. He also says these comments cant be racist because obamas mother was right. This is certainly the kind of thing in mean when you talk about dog whistle politics. Yes. This is the sort of stock question of patriotism that you see in this sort of left and right dynamic but theres another dynamic too which is an effort to stir racial anxiety, an effort to stir fear, to exaggerate difference and operates in code. It operates in terms that on the surface dont say obama the black man but notice Rudy Giuliani said the reason he doesnt love america is because he wasnt raised like you and i were. It there is something fundamental in his upbringing and his parentage. They say he has this white parents, that too has this sort of wrote within the conservative critique of obama as if to say obama was raised by whites and yet identifies as black. Isnt this another example of racial be frail, racial loyalty on obamas part to blacks and not to whites. This is operating as what is called in the political lexicon dodd whistling. It blows that such a high register you cant hear it but it triggers strong reactions. Says the metaphor of coated speech. On one level this its a race directly . No. It is silent but at another, it is strongly triggering racial anxiety. Recalled for the record that barack obama was not raised by Rudy Guiliani was. His father was not a convicted felon and his uncle was not in charge of the mafia. [applause] and with that i dropped the mic. Okay, we are done. You go back into the 1916s youre covering the Civil Rights Movement, talk a little bit about the development of these dog whistle politics. The most Important Foundation to make about this is this is a tribute the vice mix of religion. The fact is Martin Luther king said it does bend toward justice. And since the history of our civilization is one of greater freedom, the acceptance of more and more people into the citizenry, at least nominal equals, first women get to vote and then africanamericans get to vote and gays and lesbians get to mary, etc. Etc. And in a big theoretical sense what conservatism is is strong allying at todays extension liberty and once that becomes taken for granted retroactively saying we were for that all along. Conservatives embracing Martin Luther king, conservatives even embracing the right of women to vote although an coulter said that should be taken away because it would be better for conservatism. The serious point is this is foundational in what all conservatives across countries, they have to Pay Lip Service to the things that are taken for granted as part of the american patrimony. So when they have to they cant say racist things explicitly. This is a tribute to the martyrs for just as we all celebrate. Conservatism fundamentally in every generation has these sorts of faults liberal rhetoric going on. Sidney blum and fall in the 1990s called it shadow liberalism. They are fighting to preserve Social Security fighting for greater civil rights for civil rights for christians. Whereas in the 1960s civil rights was the communist plot. That is why you need a dog whistle in politics. A couple i will make one more point. The important thing is people forget, this is arguable but i would argue it, barack obama is hated and despised pretty much equally as bill clinton was hated and despised in the 1990s. Remember he was running cocaine out of air strips in arkansas, jesse helms better not come because he might be shot. Easy to forget these things. Is not exclusively race but it is also liberalism and not seeing liberalism as a legitimate part in governing the country. The reason liberalism is not seen as a legitimate part in governing the country is profoundly related to raise and the extension of american citizenship to africanamericans. It is all messed up in this way symbolized by it thinking bill clinton was the first black president. Now the republicans say they wish they had a president bill clinton again that they could work with. That is the other part. Rick was talking about the moral arc of the universe, president obama recently spoke at the 52 anniversary of the selma march saying racism is in decline. In your book you say it may not be so much in decline as it is changing its face. Talk about that a little bit. I want to pick up on what wreck set about conservatism too. Who are we as a people, as a people we are quite a liberal people if we understand liberals in the sense of working hard, having a sense what we should share our prosperity, take care of each other, we really are in this together. That was the sense that launched the new deal, the spirit that created the biggest expansion of the middle class ever. What happened that we turned against that spirit . What happens and there was a profound shift, repudiation of that sense that government is supposed to help all of us, right around 1972 when nixon started talking about law and order, forced busing, what happens with Ronald Reagan . At that point you see inequality released are to skyrocket so we are at levels of any quality we havent seen in 100 years . What happened . I want to say this is not just about conservatism. In some ways i think what we are witnessing is a bastardization of conservatism. I think when rick describes conservatism has a sense of slow but steady social change that attempts to respect important social institutions, attempts to preserve the mend honors them, that sounds like conservatism to me. That is not what the conservatives today are saying. Conservatives today are saying fear your fellow americans, fear minorities, fear gangs fear women who want to work, women who want access to abortion, fear government too because government keeps causing those people so vote against government and the attention to the fact the when you vote against government you are turning it over to the Koch Brothers. Dont worry about that. He will be ok if the richest 1 430 of the wealth of the whole country. That is not the conservatism that cares about the whole society. That is a reactionary freemarket ideology that is almost almost anarchic in its vision. Is mitt romney saying i dont care about 47 of the country. That is marked coin. Delete is going to grab what it can and have the country at dont have to worry that you people because you have an entitlement mentality and you refuse to take responsibility for yourself. What is driving this . A lot of what is driving this is racial anxiety being stoked by the right purposefully. Is not sort of a conservative we want to make sure social change occurs slowly, it is an actual manipulation of people. A stampeding of their fear speaking of arizona, speaking in arizona you know this politics. This is 1070. [applause] alleges latest shelling and Mexican American studies in to sun is about hitting white people. That is ludicrous. But it does create fear. One last point, the arc of the moral universe, it has to be in code because most people overwhelmingly, would reject any politician that said to them stand with me because i will protect the good white folks of the world. They would fat rejected. We have a country have repudiated that racism but we have to work harder to see that the racism we repudiate the white supremacist rhetoric has morphed into a language of culture and behavior is that says this isnt about brown people but illegal aliens who are criminals and bring disease and sneaking across the border and bringing isis and ebola with them. This is about old racial anxieties and we need to repudiate those as well. I agree with everything you said. I dont know it is that we have repudiated racism as effectively as we think we have as we have repudiated the brawl language of racism. But the actual emotion, the actual feeling, in a lot of ways conservatives and beyond that we have taught or stalls or allow ourselves to feel more comfortable with that because it now has his intellectual dog whistle language wherein you can feel those things that dont have to acknowledge even to yourself the stuff you are feeling. The other point i will make just in terms of conservatives, accounted interesting a few years ago when george will started using the phrase, wanting to refer to people like himself started using the phrase thoughtful conservative. Thoughtful conservatives feel this is the fact that you have to use that modify suggests that you realize that a lot of your folks are not wrapped too tight. I found that very interesting. One of my favorite books about conservatism is pointing out the burke was pretty reactionary but let me talk about in e ns work he talks about dog whistle politics, the one propping up their privilege and i live in chicago and we are in the midst of the very exciting, probably historic Mayoral Election we have had since 1987. The incumbents name is rom and fellow running against him is jesus garcia. A member of the county board and also in member of city council under the great progressive reformists africanamerican mayor who tragically died after he won the second term, rahm emanuel has support of lots of republicans, lots of members of the 1 . He got 250,000 donation because we dont have Campaign Finance reform in chicago from republican Hedge Fund Managers to give 1 million to let the gubernatorial republican candidate and recently our senator, a republican said if we liked this guy jesus garcia who is mexicanamerican we might have another detroit. The pattern is striking. Garcia was part of the city tells will that balance the budget, actually raise property taxes because they were too low to support the services and as a member of the county board was part of a team that balance the county budget like they cant possibly ever balances and some progressive people came in, took a hard look at the patronage and balance the budget and lowered taxes so the austerity politicians and the 1 and the editorials, but endorsed rahm emanuel. What is going on here . The fact that rahm emanuel, downgrading chicagos bonds, he is objectively fiscally irresponsible, running against a guy who is objectively responsible and yet the guy who happens not to be white is the guy that is somehow associated with the city of detroit which of course is run by africanamericans. Textbook dog whistle politics, and is very persuasive. Choose things he seemed like a nice guy but he can make tough decisions to balance the budget. So we see this it rated and reiterated and luckily the people in my city who are pretty tough and know what it toughguy is and what a coward is are rejecting the this. But elsewhere you guys are fighting. Let me ask about as idea of rejecting it. It seems as though the country is still sorting between the democratic and Republican Party with the Republican Party relying on white voters at this point. Do you think future generations will start to reject these dog whistle politics and see them for what they are . You were at the selma march and rode a column expressing some concern, not the selma march but the city, the anniversary. I am looking good for 107. I want ask any express some concern that the young people who were showing up didnt really know the history of why that was so important. I have a concern about young people in this country with regard to pretty much everything. I try not to onto a kids these days rand because i think a lot of the deficits kids these days are facing a as a result of people lie age and our failure to teach and preach and pass down stuff they should know. I am much concerned with the fact that things like selma and the importance of what happened and the importance of what happened with the Civil Rights Act and even beyond, the realm of race and politics in this country are being lost because we as americans do not teach our children well and i believe deeply in the truth of the adage that those who dont learn from history are doomed to repeat it and i find it heartbreaking that 50 years after the Voting Rights act i am writing columns defending and demanding the reinvigoration of the Voting Rights act. I should not have to be doing that in 2015. I should not be debating rand paul over the Civil Rights Act. In 2013. Something is really wrong with this picture. As americans we have this vision of our history our racial and political history that says this should be offlimits i write about history, i reject the idea that what happened here does not have some bearing on what happened 50 years ago. Only when i write about the ugliness of race do i receive emails saying why are you talking about this and why are you bringing these things up, you are living in the past, no one ever said that to me about the Marshall Plan or the holocaust, no one has said that to me about the moon landing, the kennedy assassination. But we feel and what we feel about those things and the Marshall Plan makes us feel proud, the moon landing makes us feel very proud. Most of our racial history makes us feel leather and proud. That is because like falkner said. Is not even passed. In this country we are determined to live without a past. Im the junior member, i am 45 and i can speak out for the kids. I meet amazing okay, young fellow. You wont let my age the point i was making was i dont think theres anything wrong with the kids. I think theres something wrong with us as the older generation having not bothered to teach them. We assume that they know these things and Martin Luther king to take one example has been relegated to a mcdonalds hamburger commercial and kids have this vague idea that he stood for peace and love and has become generic enough and hallmark enough that republicans can stand up and say we all stood with Martin Luther king, no you didnt. Not only did you not stand conservatives, not republicans, not only did you not stand with Martin Luther king but at the time he died a lot of black people did not stand for Martin Luther king. Theres a reason he was kerri and dangerous and he was killed and we dont talk about that. We match everything down to this sort of koolaid of history and then wonder why our kids dont get it. That is what i am saying. Talking about your generation. Ronald reagan in 1968 when Martin Luther king was assassinated said it is a sad tragic thing that this is the guy whos that you can choose the law to follow. A scandalous quote. The thing is about history that we shouldnt teach more of it, there are a lot of young people who live very engage in history and know about selma and if they see the movie there were lots of historical mistakes but what it really did establish a brilliantly was that Martin Luther king was the work leader. He was going to war. He was about confronting people in the most dramatic fashion and he was planning like George Marshall would like eisenhower a confrontation creating tension. You see that movie, accept that he was a santa claus figure. You are talking about a movie that came out last year. A lot of conservatives know the history too and they know why some of about a certain ages no history which is why they want to make sure people of your tender years let me the letters you get when you write about race doesnt happen. This is important because it connects to the ethnic studies thing in arizona and connects to the backlash against 8 he history which we have seen in state after state where the people who are running the ap history and College Board are saying here are the things you should teach and conservatives looked at that and said it is not celebratory enough about america. My book invisible bridge, the Central Point is there was a very fruitful and exciting debate about the meaning of patriotism. What is patriotism . Is it saluting the flag and my country right or wrong or is it taking a hard critical look at our structural flaws and addressing them and that is a difficult conversation ended was won decisively by decided that history should be about half the stuff. I call that the powerlessness of positive thinking. You cant have a better country unless you actually understand what we need to better. I dont think anyone will doubt that wreck doesnt know a little bit about history. With the books he has written. Party is history but i think it is contemporary racial etiquette. How are we supposed to talk about race . N tv which is an incredible source of great researchor not. In any event they research their audience. They have been doing polling of millennials, and tv has done great researchers research, shows some where between 70 and 80 of white youth beating racial equality and believe we shouldnt talk about race and here is another figure from the mtv survey 60 of whites, of these white youth believe racism against whitess is just as bad as racism against blackss and these are connected. The of racial etiquette that has been pushed by conservatives for the last 40 or 50 years is never talk about race and if you talk about race if you say a word black or say the word racism say it out loud, you are the racist. You are playing the race card trying to take advantage of stoking race in you are the real racist. All of us who actually want to talk about race are accused of being the real racists. At the same time this coated drumbeat about illegal aliens, gained mainers, innercity poverty, welfare cheats and welfare queens that is constantly permeating our society, we are constantly engage in racial innuendo but we can talk about race, theres no dialogue. This combination has led so many people to internalize the ideas that there really isnt a structural discrimination against minorities. If you are trapped in the inner city if they are poor, not well represented among the ceos or fortune 500 companies it is that culture on their part but we dont have the space to have honest dialogue that says what is happening in race today . I want to say to you all i imagine many of you have adopted the same strategy with your peers, your children, that the subject seem so volatile, seems the taboo that you are better off just not talking explicitly about race. If you dont talk about it explicitly like any social or family dynamic, you dont talk about it it is going to fester. We have got to reject this idea that color blindness is the way we get ahead. Colorblind this is an enormous problem. The way we are going to get ahead in terms of race and politics is by his surfacing all these coded racial conversations and having them among ourselves and with our kids. You remind me [applause] you remind me of an email i received from a reader wants which said, quote, that i should not talk about race because it was not polite. When you say that, that really struck me. The whole thing about you talk about race therefore you must be a racist is such a logical non sequitur that when i first Senate Hearing unfounded difficult to believe someone actually believes that, but i can report to you with confidence that they do. This is the mindset. My feeling is you are talking about nothing makes you the most extreme moderation of that thing, then from now on let me talk about money. Some of that i may become a billionaire. But you are exactly right. I am cosigning what you said. We have entered into this weird thing where we are not allowed under conservative defense to talk about race. That is why the ethnic studies class here is such that the injured. We are not allowed to talk about race because it is so scary but in the meantime stuff festers. Taking it back to history, i love this phrase racial etiquette. The architect, the most profound architect of this racial etiquette is the guy most of us agree was the brilliant rhetorical architect, Ronald Wilson reagan. I right about that in the invisible bridge. There are examples wasnt the biggest dog was litter in the world. There are very bad examples that are famous but what he much more was, was a person this racial etiquette was his gift, his greatest gift to White America and the way he bestowed the gift was what i call a liturgy of absolution. Was so good at looking people in the eyes who felt a certain sort of guilt because they were thinking critically that they need not think of it anymore because they were not racists. [laughter] the invisible bridge. It is magic. To give some specific examples, he is on the radio in 1975, not governor anymore, kind of a radio commentator and he never says where he got the poll, of black people in washington d. C. And he says even more often the white people in washington d. C. Is the black people who want the death penalty, who want bigger criminal sanctions, who are afraid of black crime. If you say calling for law and order is racist it turns out you are racist because you and all the meat and white split blacks who want this tough stuff. And he famously told all sorts of stories that turned out to be quite fanciful about his own racial innocence, when he was a baseball announcer he was one of the people who fought for integration even though he had achieved integration, he was an announcer in the 30s and that happened in the 40s and he said people like him were criticizing cowell, official will book of baseball which began baseball is a game for caucasian gentlemen. There has never been found a book that said baseball was a game for caucasian gentlemen. But the, quote, truth he was delivering what is so seductive and so powerful and poisonous and that is one of the reasons why you criticize Ronald Reagan or even speak of him as a 3dimensional historical figure warts and all, you will receive the same that you will receive in pointing out that in the town of ferguson missouri if you are black and drive without a head like you may end up beam jail for a long time because you cant pay your final you may miss your court date because they arbitrarily change the time or Something Like that. You will be met with the kind of rage that is talking about because you are touching something very deep in people, the sense that they are good people, that they are innocent. There is a sense that reagan conferred, and conveyed by the likes of fox and elsewhere that racial innocence, there isnt absolution. You know longer have to feel bad for certain stuff because it is not honey vault racial animus within yourself, it is failures of their culture or failures of things that they need to do, that they need to fix that it has nothing to do with you. I always say the thing about race that nobody gets to if you want to talk about this function in communities, the Africanamerican Community that is not a matter of either or but both and. When i hear africanamericans say the issues are racism i get very frustrated when i hear when americans say none of the issues are racism. I get very frustrated. Africanamericans if we wanted to bring improvement to the community we could turn off the television, we watch more television than anybody else in the country. We could do something to restore fathers, the Nuclear Family to the table. When you sane fat, conservatives, are applauding but the fact is once i have the child then turned off the television, what good does that do me if you are allowed to shoot him down because hes wearing a hoody, my scholar is dead and you are going to claim culture made me do it i am justified. What good does it do for me to do working teary to my community to restore dad to the table if dad cant get a job or cant get to the job because he gets stopped for existing while black. There is this hole leader more dynamic we buy into. The African Americans are lucky to recognize that. White americans have been given a sleeping pill and magic dust wherein they absolves themselves of any responsibility to that dynamic and it makes for very frustrating conversations. I grew up naively perhaps believing it for having that debate he has the facts wins. If i can show you empirically where racism exists and lingers and continues and the forms lives and aspirations in this country i would think that would give me some credibility. My statistics to come from the nation of islam. They did not come from the naacp. My statistics come from the department of justice, from various think tanks and universities. I would think they would be and in tv. Dont know of statistics can match what fox news will tell you. I want to touch before we go to questions from the audience on the point you make in your book the connection between these dog whistle politics and the studys disintegration of the middle class in this country. That is the other half of the story that we dont talk about nearly enough. We are more and more comfortable with the idea that our electoral politics is organized around race. A couple quick statistics, no democratic candidate for president has won the majority of the white vote since 1964. It has been over 50 years. I did not know of had. The Republican Party draws 94 of its support from whites. And 98 of its elected officials are white. That is a level of segregation you wouldnt expect to see in the golf club. Petter is one of our two major parties. Something is wrong. What is going on . Here is this important other half that has been so destructive. Whites that being granted racial absolution, you are not racist, you are good people at the very moment they are being encouraged to think in racial terms. You deserve everything you got, you are hardworking, decent but government is taking money from your paycheck and wasting and on these minorities through welfare and government refuses to control those criminal black people through lax criminal laws, refuses to control the surging tide of brown people through lax immigration enforcement, fear of round table fear of government, voted in a way that cuts taxes for the very rich and has control over the corporations. That is the politics we have been living. A couple quick points i want to make. This hasnt been just the republicans. Democrats didnt know how to respond, stayed silent and with bill clinton adopted the same tactic, rahm emanuel. The democrats look around and save this poison politics works lets get some ourselves. If we cant beat from, lets join them. That has shifted the politics of the country to the right. Second click point. Most of the whites spam google but as politics are good people. They are good people. And they are in crisis. If you are not the Koch Brothers things are looking at after 2007. People lost their pensions, their jobs not sure how their kids are going to get through school, dont think their kids will have the same quality of life and mobility, as they need an explanation and what is dangerous with democratically destructive these conservatives are saying we will give you an explanation. Those black and brown people did it to you. Women who want access to jobs it to you. A marriage, they did it to you. We need to get beyond that politics and say no, when our government is hijacked to serve the interests of the very rich, that is destructive for the middleclass. This is fact. Look at what happened with wealth inequality. Wealth inequality has surged since the 1970s is now at levels we havent seen since the Roaring Twenties before the great depression. We are a society on the brink of a major catastrophe because we are being told dont worry about the very rich, fears of poor and powerless. We need to get beyond that. [beyond [applause] one quick debt that the bamboozleing of the underclass is a very old game in this country. When i think about that i take it back to 1861 when 4 white people are somehow convinced to become cannon fodder for wealthy slave owners by being told this is a lie that persists to this day, you are not fighting for slavery, you are fighting for states rights. Very popular topic in arizona. You guys brought up 1070s and the ethnic studies where that was challenging to the status quo, was declared a plot to overflow the government and they passed laws to show people they were not addressed by destroying their Educational Program which was somewhat ironic. We have to go to questions from the audience. I invite folks to start lining up at the microphone. I would also ask this last Election Voter turnout was terrible. What do you think have any thoughts on why so many people just stayed home and didnt vote . It is the dynamic in which liberalism itself has become tainted. That means democratic politicians cannot come out in favor of liberal policies because it opens them up to the attack that they are just helping minorities. If you are a black democratic president you especially have to be careful about excessive liberalism and that means barack obama once he was inaugurated went far to the right so much for the change we were promised. Seatac far to the rights of by the time you get to 2014 it is hard for people to be mobilized and if any to come out in support. Post 2014 i wish we got that person in 2009. On voter turnout, the more people vote roughly speaking the better democrats and liberals do. That is a historical fact of longestablished and which is why there is so Much Negative campaigning on the right. One of the new right leaders at a speech chose not to use the dog was lands that we want fewer people to vote. We want our people to vote. That is why you see so Much Negative campaigning. When you see a negative ad is designed to depress turnout. Get people to be disgusted by the process itself. Voted to some franchisees and then vote suppression. This connects with selma. We are seeing levels of Voter Suppression and disenfranchisement we have not seen since deconstruction, since the systematic effort to disney franchise blacks in the nineteenth century. It is unbelievable what is going on and it is all across the country. It is connected to dog whistle politics the says we will try to get anxious whites to vote, we will disenfranchise as many minorities and poor whites. They change the rules so you cant vote on your college campus. Lets take questions. I was very fortunate as a teenager a young teenager to have fought very brief period in one grade school class, a teacher presenting as the basics of propaganda. It was a short period of time. By way of that example historically personally, what do you as the panel have to offer that the Media Representative on the panel can convey to the powers that be by way of Early Education to reduce the problem so that 20 years from now we can have a lot much happier content such as this . Responsibility of the Media Representatives. Good luck with that one. I can do what i can do which is to write a column highlighting those and other concerns. The real power lies in but voters as we just discussed have been swept from the voting booth or discouraged from the voting booth for a variety of reasons. I do the same thing you do except i do it with a megaphone. I get access to the media megaphone and yelled this sucks. I tried to skate in more eloquent language but basically its this sucks. What happens with the electorate after that is not something i have any control over. The Television Advertisements it made atmegaphone. I am a lonely scribe. Wonderful Political Writer his young daughters private school in new york, tons of talk about americas racial problems. They get assemblies about understanding privilege etc. Etc. Etc. They are taught about multiculturalism and all the rest but they are not hot it they are part of the problem of inequality because they attend the 30,000 a year preps school. We need more direct talk about inequality and how we are part of the problem. I would say they have time talking about race . Talk about barack obama or cheryl standard but what they cannot talk about is more people are in franchised and brought into a class that is disenfranchising folks climbing the collateral. That is all true but i also think in addition we need to understand the democratic, republican and Democratic Party today are so heavily dependent on Large Campaign contributions that we should not in our mobilization demand that them. This is a period in the nations history in which we need to think seriously about socialization. We need the immigration folks black lives matter movement, theres a broad need for sweeping social mobilization once we are mobilized politicians will come. We need to mobilize. Politicians dont wheat, they follow. Is important not just have bad news that home. Not be a 1night sound bite but in chicago in the first round of our Mayoral Election the candidate who now spend 121 came in within ten points and denied the candidate who was spending the billionairess money and our great victory. Lets come over here for a question. My question was everything, two elements that havent been addressed, but when we talk about the arc of history i wonder if it will crash and burn at Citizens United and gerrymandering in the state. How are those two things overcome . All this is the most business from the court since the 1920s. This is a racially reactionary court. It is always series of 54 decisions. Beam need to change the composition of the court. I spent years figuring out the doctor and only to conclude it is not the doctrine. Is the politics of the justices the politics of those who appointed them. We need to mobilize and put pressure on the people we elected to appoint different justices. In the short term things like Citizens United a disruptive but it is just a 54 decision. Some of those conservatives will retire. If we have liberals in the white house and they make the right appointments, that decision can be overturned. I have a quick one on that one. Absolutely true. This is the winston sure jilting, americans always make the right decision when they exhausted all the other alternatives. The speech talks about when american democracy democratic structures themselves are crisis point somehow we managed to pull out of the nose dive. 1916, earlier, the sixteenth amendment, the income tax which got rid of the plutocracy. In the 30s the new deal. In the 60s when young people were sent to war as cannon fodder in the vietnam war we got the 21 vote 1972. It wont happen by things that really bad and get really good but Structural Reforms have and do and can happen. Question over here . Related if you could talk to Justice Roberts about the Voting Rights act decision what would you say . I would say please explain to me. Scientists and that you are a law scholar and im just a piddling person here but please explain to me the logic by which you decide the fact that a thing has worked means that this is no longer required. I dont get it sir. Please explain this to me and please explain to me what i am supposed to please explain to me why i am not supposed to fear as a person who has read a lot of history and is familiar with historical cycles and a person familiar with how reconstructionist was done the first time, please tell me how i am not supposed to fear that the decision you made which will make it more difficult for women, for young people and africanAmerican People among others and for people to vote, why i should not fear that that is going to be deformed american elections as much or more than your equally misguided Citizens United decision did, sir. I would say given why didnt you look at the cartridges in the shotguns and rifles in the state legislatures the second you overturn this law. I would Say Something different. I dont think i would engage in a colloquy. I think i would say to him you are contributing to destroying our democracy and you are using the power of the Supreme Court to overturn decisions the rest of us are passing to try to protect ourselves from the rich and powerful. Decisions the rest of us have enacted to move toward a racially Egalitarian Society through the Voting Rights act, you are a danger to our democracy and is incumbent on people like me as a constitutional law scholar inform citizens like you all to stripped john roberts and the Supreme Court of the legitimacy that itself has squandered in these highly political, highly damaging decisions. [applause] unfortunately i think we are out of time here. I wish the panel could go on another hour because there is so much to say. [applause] thank you all for attending. Thank you for your support. Please exit quickly. The authors will be signing. Thank you very much. [inaudible conversations] you are watching booktv live coverage of the 2014 tucson book festival in tucson ariz. On the campus of the university of arizona. The panel you just heard, rick perlstein, Leonard Pitts and Ian Haney Lopez. Ian haney lopez, dog whistle politics is the name of his book, joining us in two seconds to a call in program with our national tv audience. 202 is the area code 7488200. In the east and central time zone 7488201 if you live in the mountain and pacific time zones. Professor Ian Haney Lopez. A lot of conversation about fox news. Can you give an example of something said on fox news that is a dog whistle . I think it is appropriate to Pay Attention to fox news because it serves as a megaphone for racial fears. Would not name just one thing but the constant drum beat. Worry about muslims as potential terrorists not just in the middle east but in the heartland. Worry about whether the president himself is a muslim. Worry about undocumented immigrants framed in the language of illegal aliens. Worry about this idea that undocumented immigrants are coming across the border to take over the country. Fox news plays up this idea there is that conquest going on. All of these conversations are dog whistles. This dog whistle on the surface they are not expressly about race so right underneath is the sense that they are designed to trigger racial panic. One other comment before we go to calls. A lot of conversation about having conversations about race having this conversation about conversations for a long time. I dont think we have. Something very different happened. In the 1960s70s as conservatives started to use race as the racial wedge issue liberals decided they could see it happening and said to themselves we are losing when it comes to racial conversation. Maybe we should stop talking about race, back away from minorities a bit. The starting in 1970s liberals stopped talking about race. When i say liberals it liberal politicians but i also mean liberal pundits, liberal media, the New York Times liberal foundations, things like unions. By and large all of these institutions withdraw from an engage conversation about race as if we are not talking about race but of course at the same time conservatives double down on race through coded language, states rights, welfare queens illegal aliens muslim terrorists innercity increases, and controlled southern border, all of that is race talk or racial innuendo but we havent had an actual dialogue about how race is working in our society, not just minorities not just to certain minorities but to scare white plaids into voting for a system of government which is helping the very rich and hurting them. Professor Ian Haney Lopez is our guest, dog whistle politics how coded racial appeals have reinvented racism and wrecked the middle class. Here is the cover of the book. The first call for him comes from mark in whitehall, pa. You are on booktv. Thank you peter slicken and Ian Haney Lopez. A quick comment. I will try to do the Comment Section as short as i can but anyway the university i went to, i took a field trip in 2004. President bush and senator obama notebooks, institutional discrimination at the executive level. The 4 barack obama appeared at the 2004 Democratic National convention. That is the institutional discrimination thing that propelled him to run for president. You guys are excellent. Thats just a little with of host thank you very much. We appreciate the call. Professor lopez. Guest i think marks comment was really terrific. On one level, and on another level unfortunately i think he misses something important. So what did he get right . He got right that were all human. That its just skin color. Underneath the skin color we all have red blood, were all human, and thats just such a huge point. We have to understand each other as suffering the same pain, having the same hope, experiencing love and dreams the same way experiencing sorrow were all human. That is incredibly important. What did he miss . That were not all located in society in the same position. The society is struck tiered in terms of a hierarchies that say men are better than women, straight ares better than gays, whites are better than blacks and browns and yellows. That set of idea is not just a set of beliefs but a set of practices that has been institutionalized. Institutional discrimination. If you want to see how race works in america look rat your own city your town, the neighborhoods predominantly occupied by whites whites and predominantly wound occupied by blacks and browns. Look at what happens in the inner cities versus the boardrooms of the biggest corporations. Race as a system of organizing people in terms of supposed hire aki. Those who are deserving and those who are threatening, it has distorted our society, and the way to break that down is to pick up on marks First Insight to realize, this isnt right. Our society shouldnt be fragmented shouldnt be arranged this way. We are all basic the same under the skin. We have the same fears the same hopes for our children. Host next call for professor lopez from glen in michigan. Welcome to booktv. Caller thank you very much. Professor, i dont want to sound disrespectful or anything but frankly, i think most of your dog whistle politics theory is basically the same old politically correct dogma muir. I thought it was a bad idea to act like you know better than other people what is in other peoples best interests. Let me ask you a specific question. About immigration. Ow are talking about terrible influence of big money and big business. On your previous panel. Why do you think it is that big money and big business spend so much money lobbying to keep immigration levels as high as possible and immigration laws as weak as possible . You think it might be because they like the cheap labor . And like to keep wages as low as possible . Host thank you sir. Guest glen, i disagree with the first part but like the second part of the question. We need to be really clear, as though first part there is a sort of a standard move in consecutive rhetoric to defend these practices, and the standard move is to say hey, the person who actually names and surfaces race, theyre the ones being politically correct, theyre the ones being divisive. Thats just not right. It would be like saying the person who dialed 911 must have committed the crime. The person who pulled the fire alarm must have set the fire. Thats not right. If we have an important cal dynamic that is dissporting our society, we need to name and it talk about it. We can disagree but we need to talk bit it. The second part great question about immigration. At the very top the corporations do have an interest in immigration, in lax immigration laws, that allows them to bring in people who have been highly educated, outside of the United States why . Because this keeps them from having to invest in the taxes and the Public Education that would make sure that americans were highly educated. We should have a serious conversation about immigration, about Immigration Reform, in a way that says, what is best for the United States best for american workers. But at the same time these same political actors know that they can win votes for their policies of deregulation cutting tacks for the rich if they scare white voters about other sorts of immigrants undocumented immigrants, and so at the same time they want lax immigration laws for technical workers, they also continually pound at the threat supposedly represented by the poor who are coming across to take lowpaying, lowskill jobs. That is how this sort of politics is working out. They have one set of policy interests but they also have this sort of demagogue of politics they know works and theyre willing to pound the drums of racial fear. Host everett is watching booktv in hawaii. Please go ahead with your question for professor Ian Haney Lopez. Guest yes, professor. I really enjoyed your articulation of ideas that strike home with me. But i have a very slight question to pose to you and that is why was the audience at this presentation so wonderfully made consisting almost entirely of white people . I scanned the entire audience and as never saw a person of color. Did you notice that too . Host there were three. I counted during the conversation. Guest so see . Some slight representation. Everett, i want to say aloha to you. I grew up in hawaii so miss home. Listen in terms of your question this is how race works in our society. This is what were seeing. We are not a fully integrated society. Were a society in which race makes a difference in terms of access, in terms of political engagement, in terms of a sense that one is welcome, that one belongs. And so i think what you have picked up on is really a concrete example concrete illustration of how we are a racially separated society. This is our challenge. We have to be able to talk across race lines, to recognize our basic humanity and break down the ability of race to serve as a way that scares people into voting for politicians who really dont care about many of us at all but who are really subservient to the interests of their big corporate donors. Host everett was calling phenomenon a city called kamuela . Sunny grew up on the island of oahu. Host why did you grow up in hawaii. Guest my molks, interracial couple, met in san francisco, moved to hawaii in the early 1960s. I was born and raised there. Many of you viewers wont know but i taped the same high school as barack obama. I was a freshman when he was senior. I attended the same law school. We graduated the same year. I dont actually know him but we overlap substantially in our upbringing and our law school. Host and Ian Haney Lopez wrote this book dog whistle politics. David, maryland. Hi, david. Caller hello. Host go ahead. Caller yes. This is david. I just had a question. Isnt it more about power and greed that the Supreme Court especially about power and greed and existence of the human beings on the earth that its come at a turning point now that everything that rests now, not just it really coming comes down to that. We keep going in this direction and how long we sustain life on this planet guest i completely agree with you. Host thank you sir. Guest so, im using the vocabulary of race, but at the end of the day what im really talking about is power. How does power organize itself. How does power consolidate . How is power wielded in a democracy and right now our politicians are leading the country in a direction that is harmful. Its harmful to the majority of americans. We see this in the Great Recession of 20072008. We see his in truncated life chances, and we also see it in what youre talking about. We have not successfully enacted a series of policies that will help with global warming. Theres a looming catastrophe. Why are we so slow to tact snack because its not in the interests of the most powerful. The Koch Brothers with their petrochemical industry. How do they convince us we should do things that are bad for the middle class, do things that are bad for the environment . Right now, the language is mainly race though its also supposedly disrespect for christianity or people are coming to get your guns or your bullets, gay marriage. All of these sort of cultural or politics are being used as wedge issues to get people to focus on the wrong thing. But youre absolutely right. At the end of the day this is about pour and about how pour manipulates the rest of us. Host professor in your opinion, how has president obama done with regard to addressing the issue of racism and race . Guest im really sorry to have to say issue dont think has done a very good job at all. I think he had an Incredible Opportunity when he was first inaugurated in 2008 to start a new narrative about america. To say, for the last 50 years, race has been used to divide us. Gender religion, homosexuality, all of these have been used to divide us. We need to take a new course and go back to that new deal ideal in which were all in this together and build a society of shared prosperity, in which we refuse to be divided. Instead of saying that, he actually adopted the conservative frames. He started to talk about how government was the problem and how we needed tax cuts and he abandoned this sort of narrative about how we really are one people with one dream, and because he abandoned that that allowed conservatives to come roaring back and to say were not one people. You need to fear this black president. You need to fear this black and brun criminals, fear women. All of that language came back because he didnt seize the opportunity to lead. And now its harder and harder still. We have emerged from the crisis. Obama has been painted as this socialist, this pair gone par paragon centrist to the right, and the rest of us say we know how to solve the current economic problems in the country, we know how to address global warming. Once we realize we are great people because wore hard working and believe in helping each other and were tolerant. That the leadership we need. Host steve texas. Hi steve your on booktv. Caller i just want to say, first of all i agree with you 100 . I live in midtexas, where quite essentially they have proven politicians have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that integration doesnt work. At least not in texas. The reason because of that is because of the money and the politics that go hand in hand with it, which in my opinion is extremely fat. What i la like to know if youre in a position to do something positive about it, what would you do . Guest im a fervent believer in integration. I really believe we need to integrate but we cant integrate in the way we have tried over the last 30 or 40 years. We have given lip service to the importance of integration but all that has meant is allowing a few minorities access to some jobs, some neighborhoods, some golf clubs, some institutions of higher learning, without reforming those institutions themselves. We as a society need to grapple with how deeply race has poisoned us has poisoned our at tattoos towards each other, has poisoned our structures. Think about the kids on the oklahoma bus. Thats racism but thats the tip of the iceberg. These kidsed have internalized these messages of disrespect 0 dehumanizization, of violence. They were not only chanting the nword, they were laughing and joking about lynching. If were going to have integration as a successful approach to building a racial Egalitarian Society, we need a version of integrate that is says were going to include minorities and reform the structures the structures grapple with and dismantle these deepseated beliefs about inferiority. Host professor lopez, something you touched on, on the panel and also Robert Putnams new book touches on this as well. The segregation of education. Guest absolutely. Absolutely. The Civil Rights Movement had as its vision integration. Why . Because the Civil Rights Movement felt if we were integrated, we could get to know each other. If we were integrate it we could overcome stereotypes. If we were integrated, we would begin to realize that we had a shared faith in this society. That sort of integration was fought tooth and nail. We didnt manage to achieve it. Now we live in a highly segregated society and we should be clear. The most segregated people in the United States now are whites. And not just any whites. Middle class and upper middle class and wealthy whites are the most segregated people in the United States today. And what does that mean . It means they dont recognize very often the shared humanity with people who dont look like them who dont come from the same class as them, dont speak the same language as them and that has made them susceptible to the politics that tell them, fear the brown and black. Segregation is part of what is destroying this country. And i want to emphasize this. We offer talk about segregation as if its bad for minorities and it is. Its a tragedy. But its bad for a whites as well. Because its what allows politicians to continually stoke racial fears. Host richard, ohio, please go ahead with your question or comment. Caller 50 years ago, a long time ago i spent a new years eve at a Community Action function that was really the vanguard of trying to it was moving this country forward to an integrated society. And there was so much progress all around us at the time that i began to think that really, we were on the verge of solving these problems. This was reinforced that after vietnam there was quite a lot of asian immigration in the neighborhood i lived in, and many times in the evening, looking out in a very middle class neighborhood. It looked like the old cocacola commercial. But the decades have moved on this really turned out not be the threshold of the solution. And in fact i think theres been some degree of regression. And i guest i think youre absolutely right. Caller its always puzzled me why this happened. I dont think that some of your interpretation of current modern history is really sole and complete explanation, and before i back away and listen to you, as a historical note, with the with relationship to the corporations the First Corporation that was established in the United States was part of the Union Pacific railroad. And it was called credit oba cull Lay Corporation that the Union Pacific acquired so they could have the advantages of the legal aspects of Corporate Limited liability. Guest right. Host richard, thank you, sir. Guest i thinko your story about integration is actually really helpful. We made as a society a really strong concerted push to integrate, really start neglect mid to late 1960s. Brown versus board of education, the decision that says segregation is inherently unequal, that is 19534. We didnt really try to integrate until the mid1960s. By 1968 Richard Nixon is elected. By 1970 at the realizes he can win votes by scaring whites by talking about integration. So the talks about slowing integration in the south, starts campaigning against forced busing. Was the issue busing putting School Children on buss . No. People have been putting School Children on buses constantly. The issue was the integration the busing was designed to achieve. In the 1970s conservatives started to square white. S. What do liberal does . Er were losing and were going to back away. So both factionsboth sorts of sets of leaders decide basically in the early 1970s theyll stop promoting integration. Some communities kept trying to make the effort. I think in particular of seattle and louisville, but in 2007, the Supreme Court 54 with a with these conservative appointees, said even when communities want to pursue integration, they cant do so through race conscious means. So that sort of politics of racial fear that has wrecked the middle class it has also guaranteed that we remain and are increasingly a segregated society. Host booktv is on location in tucson arizona. This is the seventh annual tucson philosophy of books, held on the campus of university of arizona. So if youre in the area, you. Come down. Great crowd, great weather. Were in the gallagher theater in the Student Union and were talking with professor Ian Haney Lopez who just participated in a panel on race and politics. Next up for him is kevin in irvington, new york. Caller mahalo, professor. I was reading an interesting oped we matthew high schoolie in the times time today and all about the greek system, and Everybody Knows the deprivation of the greek system. Theyre not reading the classics. What do you think you can do on a campus like berkeley to totally reform that system . And what part does the university play in that . Or do they have in making that happen . Guest so, what i want to say about universities is they play an incredible role in fostering Critical Thinking and in fostering social engagement across divisive lines. Why is this relevant . If you listen to the panel conversation, we need a citizenry, a electoral body that it thinking critically about who we are as a country. What have we achieved . Whats the basis of our greatness . What are our interrupted dreams . What do we still need to work on . So many are rooted in illegitimate social hierarchy. We need people people to get to know people across the divisive lines. Thats the way universities lead. To the extent they have a greek system, the greek system should be part of this project of educating people but also of breaking down these lines of division and i think that was one of the tragedies of the oklahoma event. Rather than the greek system in a university breaking down unwarranted social divisions that are socially and democratically destructive, they were building them up and they were laughing and joking and partying essentially validating and legitimatizing the very social devices that universities should be breaking down. Host just so happens our next call comes from oklahoma. This is bob on the line. Bob, where in oklahoma are you . Caller thank you. Thank you. Important. Mr. Lopez, id like you to you specifically address how the policy of cannabis prohibition since 1937 has pretty much destroyed american farming and divided the country in racial ways, its divided the country divided the white people from one another in terms of Family Structure friendships, how we go about looking at our work and careers. When we know what we know about the scientific legitimacy of such a crop host all right bob. I think we got your point. Well have professor lopez respond. Bob, can you give us a local perspective of what happened the university of oklahoma . Caller the local perspective on the university of oklahoma . I would say its kind of tied into these Old Fashioned points of view about how society should be run. For instance, what im talking about. And how its divided us from each other. I doubt if youd see president boren addressing the Industrial Hemp ias a legitimate concern for our host all right. We got your point, professor lopez, is legalization of marijuana a racial issue . Guest surprisingly, i think it is but it really takes us to this other dynamic. What has been happening in criminal law over the last 50 years . In 1970 the United States as a whole had 200,000 people in prison. Today we have 2. 3 million. We have five of the worlds population and 25 of the prisoners in the entire world, right here in the United States. Why . Part of the answer a very large part of the answer is, the beginning of the 1970s politicians started telling white voters you need to worry about criminals and resent government for not cracking down hard enough on criminals. And in 1992, bill clinton as a democratic picked up on the same language, and so for the last 50 years, republicans and democrats have been competing to show who is tougher on crime, and the result has been a war on crime that has built up our prison population, built up our Police Forces militarize our police forts, and one of the prime ways this has happened is through the disproportionate enforment of drug laws. So many of the prisoners are there because of drug law violations. Those laws have been enforced disproportionalitily. A vast proportion of the prisoners there, for marijuana violations, are africanamericans. When whites know that i marijuana use between blacks and white is more or less the same. And congress made a distinction between powder cocaine and black cocaine, powder cocaine more associatinged we White Communities and crack cocaine with blacks, for the same amount of each drug, the sentence was 100 times longer for crack cocaine than for powder cocaine. So this buildup of a sort of a racialized system of mass incarceration is deeply rooted in drug laws that badly, badly need to be reformed including i believe through decriminalization of marijuana. Host how do you think president boren did at the university of oklahoma his response . Guest i think he did really well. Im very proud of him for stepping in quickly, for stepping in forcefully. Die believe that sort of behavior its not just chanting the nword its channing the nword and connecting it to lynching. This is a level of dehumanization, of violence, that really cant be tolerated, that poisons the academic environment and that i think is a real threat to peoples ability to learn and peoples ability to then contribute to society, and i think that in some sense president boren understood this was a moment for learning not just for oklahoma but for the university but for the state and the country as a whole. We have a lot of work to do in terms of rooting out racism but we should be clear, the chanting of those songs on a school bus that wasnt the sum total of racism in our society. Thats theof the iceberg so hopefully this this will turn into an opportunity for a real engaged National Dialogue on race, howl its hurting minorities and skewing our electoral system and hurting the middle class as a whole. Host there seems to be a nascent leftright coalition on Prison Reform and drug law reform. Guest so, very welcome to see a sort of a new effort to reform drug laws. The 100 to 1 disparate has been reduced, down to 18 to 1 still egregious but an improvement. Also you see some republicans some conservative politicians spending out on prison reforge very welcome. This in some sense heralds a diminishment of dog whistling around crime. That is the good news. The bad news is that the dog whistling around crime has easily been replaced with dog whistling around undocumented immigrants on the southern border. I expect that between 2014 and 2016 were going to see a big upsurge in how much conservatives are dog whistling or trying to create racial panic around undocumented immigrants. At the same time i think post 9 11 we have also seen the way in which fear and anxious site about muslims has increased across the country. So yes on one level, i think crime as a major dog whistle frame is fading but on another, i think its easily been replaced by rhetoric that warns people about muslims and about undocumented immigrants. Host peggi is in lahaina. Guest right on. Host hawaii hi peg good. Hello. Were listening. Caller im so excited to call because i went to the university of arizona. Im glad youre there. And i went to school in well, let me start gem itch was born in south america, venezuela. I went to school in mexico city and the university of arizona mitchell father was in the army. We traveled and lived different places, and of course i live in lahaina, which we all love because of all the races we all get along so well and i also want to thank your parents for raising you as a rational, intelligent person. Im just so proud even hearing you speak. Ive never met you but my husband and i are having breakfast and were going this is too exciting to hear somebody who is really a rational person, and my think is that i think the Supreme Court has really hurt our country terribly and but i also feel that the media is not covering things anymore. The today show is nothing but entertainment. Cnn, i dont know who owns cnn now. But its just like in the media, even the salem walk was and obamas speech was not covered that much the next day and i was host peggy, i apologize, were out of time so well gate response from professor lopez. Guest a quick response. The New York Times started a race beat that had one journalist. They kept it for less than a year and then ended it. Thats ludicrous. The media i think has a duty to substantial exseriously engage with race and the only way to do so is to have journalists who are specialists talking about how race is playing out in our society. What happened with the media is it budget into this idea that if you talk about race youre part of the problem. No. Talking about race being serious about the divisions, the threat it poses our society and the way we all progress when we overcome these divisions, that is what we all need to embrace. Thats walt we need to recognize and push media to recognize it has a role too in seriously engaging race in order to help create a racial Egalitarian Society in which we all Work Together for the betterment of everybody. Host dog whistle politics is the name of the book. How coded racial appeals have reinvented racism and wrecked the middle class. Uc berkeley law professor, Ian Haney Lopez author. Thank you for being on booktv. If appreciate the opportunity to talk to yall. Booktv is live, this is the tucson book festival. We have several hours left in our Coverage Today and then well be here again tomorrow. Several callins coming up in just a minute youll hear m. I. T. Professor alan lightning talking about the accidental universe. After that professor lightman will be joining us here again for a callin program. And well be talking to the found dean of the law school at uc irvine and the buys can the case against the Supreme Court an historian gwen will be with us to talk about the civil war and Stonewall Jackson. All this, many more panels follow us on twitter, book tv to get updates or find the full schedule at book of. Org. Good morning. My name is jim cornell. Im the president of the International Science Writer Association and a member of the science Book Committee of this the seventh annual tucson festival of books and i welcome you all here this morning. This mornings presentation the accidental universe is sponsored by Cox Communication and by the u of a wildcat corps, part of americorp. I you want to become a friend of the fifth festival your tax deductible contributions can help us make this a free event for all the anymore soarizona and contribute on the literacy programs in this part of the state. Be sure to pick up you can find information about the friends, how to become a friend online, or you can go to an information booth on the mall. The mall will also be the site for booksigning but our author today. Just outside the front door here. You take a right as you go out to the mall the university of arizona book store signing area and book sell are area. If you have not yet picked up copies of the authors book you get them at the book store and bring them to the signing area. Indeed youll have a little extra time today because this program is being broadcast by cspan. We have an interview with the author immediately after our session here so he will be delayed by about half hour, but he will show up on the mall at 1 00, and youll have plenty of time to talk with him out there at that time. Let me remind you that this session and all the others are being broadcast on cspan2. Members of the audience may often sometimes appear on screen so if you dont want anyone to know where you are today this is a good time to leave. [laughter] also, out of respect to our Television Audience and not to mention the speaker, the moderate and people sitting next to you, please turn off your cell phones and any gaming devices you brought with you. I hope you will have time for questions at the end of the session. There will be mics in the aisles. Please line up behind the mics and well try to take as many questions as we can, which means be short succinct and clear. Im very pleased to introduce todays speaker, dr. Alan likeman, longtime friend and onetime fellow staff member at the Harvard Smithsonian center for astro physics. Alan is both a theoretical physicist and a writer, a most unusual combination, which i reflected by his dual faculty appointments in both science and humanities at m. I. T. In cambridge. The author of six novels including the International Best seller einsteins dreams and the diagnosis, a National Book award finalist, also published several books on science and two collections of essays on the. Complex interaction between science and society. The subject of todays session the accidental universe is just such a collection ofes says exploring how our vision of the cosmos has been shaped as much by human imagination as by new imaging technology. Es the essays originally appeared in scientific journals. Harvard magazine 2012 issue, and the title issue, also period first in harpers and what chosen by the New York Times as the best essay of the year in any genre. Reminiscent of the way 18th 19th century scientists often communicated the results of their research directly to the public through books and periodicals, and like the work of those authors, his ifs essays are marked by miracle prose that transcends the bound science and scientific literature to reboth the beauty and mystery of the natural worlded and how the strangeness and weirdness enhances our humanity. With that id like to turn it over to alan. Welcome. [applause] thank you. Im very happy to be here at the tucson festival of books. Its my first trip here, and delighted to have been invited, and very happy to have been introduced by jim cornell, who has, as he said has been friends of mine for at least a billion years. Since we were talking cosmic terms here. So, as jim said the accidental universe is a collection of essays that explore how developments in modern science have affected our understand offing ourselves and our place in the cosmos. And im going to talk about the title essay, the accidental universe, and then read you a little bit from one of the other essays. Until very recently, scientist believed that almost all aspects of the physical universe could be explained as necessary consequences of a small number of fundamental laws and what is a fundamental law . One example is einsteins principle of relativity, which states there is no such thing as absolute rest or absolute motion. That only relative motion has meaning. And from that fundamental principle or fundamental law einstein derived and quantitative detail his theory of time and space. We discover the fundamental laws of nature by experiments and by inspired guesses but ultimately, of course, they have to agree with experiments. From a small number of fundamental laws we have been able to calculate and quantitative detail such things as the orbits of planets, the color of the sky the size of raindrops, and many other physical phenomena and until recently we believed that given a small number of fundamental laws that only one selfconsistent universe was possible. Our universe. Like a crossword puzzle that has only one solution. Very recently we have learned that this belief is probably wrong. Starting with the same fundamental laws it appears that there are a huge number of different universes possible with very Different Properties. Some universes might have three dimensions, like ours, some might have seven dimensions or 23 dimensions. Some might have complex molecules like hemogloben and dna, and others might have only subatomic particles. Some universes might have planets and stars and others might not. Some universes might have life, living forms and others might be devoid of life. It appears our particular universe is just an accident one among many universes, a random throw of the dice. This collection of all possible universes we call the multiverse, and im sure some of you have heard that phrase before. The multiverse. The idea of the multiverse which has been begrudgingly accepted by many scientists is disturbing to scientists and are and especially disturbing to theoretical physicists. Theoretical physicists want to be able to explain all physical phenomena as necessary consequences of a mall number of fundamental principles. You start with a few fundamental laws and only one outcome is possible. That has been the Historical Mission and belief of theoretical physicists. And finding out that that is no longer true, that some important aspects of our universe must be accepted as incal clue incalculable accidents is very disturbing and let me give you an analogy. You go into a shoe store to buy shoes and find out that a size 9 fits you. And you also find out that a size 11 fits you equally well, and a size 13 fits you equally well. Its sort of like that. [laughter] well, so, why has our view changed recently . Well, for two reasons. One is to we have invoked the multiverse to explain a few odd features of our universe andry tall talk about that more in a moment. And also there are actually some theories and modern physics that predict the multiverse predict these many different universes that exist in addition to ours. Back in the 1960s, physicist first noticed that there were certain parameters of our universe that appeared to be finely tuned to allow the existence of life. If these parameters were a little bit larger or a little bit smaller than they actually are, that life could not have emerged in our universe. And let me give you a couple of examples. One is the strength of the Nuclear Force. The Nuclear Force is the force that holds subatomic particles together at the centers of atoms. If the Nuclear Force were a little bit larger than it actually is, then all of the hydrogen in the Early Universe would have fused together to make helium. There would be no hydrogen left in our universe. And with no hydrogen you dont have water. Even though biologists are not sure what conditions are necessary for life, especially on other planets, we think that water is necessary. On the other hand, if the Nuclear Force were a little weaker than it actually is, you couldnt form complex atoms like carbon in silicon and oxygen anything higher than hydrogen. And we certainly believe that you need complex atoms to form all of the chains and arrangements that you need to form the structureses that go into life. So thats one example. The Nuclear Force appears to lie within narrow range to allow life. Another example, and an even more striking example, is in the discovery of dark energy. About in the late 1990s astronomers discovered that the universe is actually accelerating, that the galaxies are not only moving away from each other but theyre motiving away from each other at increasing speed like someone put their foot a cosmic excel accelerator pedal and that is caused by an antigravitational type force which in term in turn is caused by some energy. We know the energy is there. We cant see it directly. We can measure its effects and we call it dark energy. Its causing the acceleration of the universe causing the universe to expand faster and faster as time goes on. Astronomers have been able to measure the amount of dark energy in the universe by seeing how fast the universe was expanding at different times in the past. And that value is around 100 millionth of purr cubic centimeter. You dont have to know what an urg is at all or the number, but the point is it has been measured and its a particular value. If the dark energy were just a little bit larger than it actually is, then the universe would expand so rapidly that matter would not be able to clump together to form stars planets, galaxies. Structures. On the other hand, i the dark energy were just a little bit smaller than it actually is then the universe would have recollapsed before there was time to make complex atoms. The fundamental lauds of laws office six allow the dark energy to be very, very gig and very very small and yell its actual value in our universe is within a very narrow range to allow the emergence, creation of complex molecules, and the emergence of life. So the great question is why . Why are these parameters like the strength of the Nuclear Force and the amount of dark energy and there are many others why are they in a narrow training allow the emergence of life. Why is that . Well one explanation is intelligent design. Maybe the universe was created by some intelligence lets call it god any intelligence and that intelligence wanted for some reason our universe to have life and so when that intelligence designed the universe adjusted these parameters so that they would lie within the narrow training allow complex molecules to form and life to form. But the argument of intelligent design does not appeal most scientists. The other possible explanation to this finetuning is the multiverse. Suppose that there are lots of different universes out there with very Different Properties some with Nuclear Forces much stronger than in our universe some with Nuclear Forces much weaker, some with values of the dark energy much higher, some with dark energy much smaller. A wide range of different possibilities. Some of these universes would be dead lifeless hulks of matter. Some would allow the formation of complex atoms and molecules and life. Most of the universes in the multiverse would not allow the emergence of life. Most would have parameters that lie outside of the narrow training allow the emergence of life. That doesnt matter because we happen to live in a universe where the parameters do live in that narrow range, otherwise we wouldnt be here to discuss it. One analogy to this line of argument is suppose you began wondering why are the conditions on earth so favorable for the emergence of life . We have oxygen to breathe here. We have water. We have a very nice temperature so that water is not a solid and its not a gas it can exist in liquid form. So, why is that . You might think well somebody of course the earth is just the right distance from the sun to make the temperature right to allow liquid water, and you might say somebody must have designed the earth, put it at the right distance from the sun, et cetera, et cetera, to allow the formation of life here. But then we look out and we see there are other planets in our solar system none of which have life as we know. They dont have the same conditions on earth. And our rain uranus has temperature at minus 37 degrees. Venus has rain that sulfuric acid you. Cant have life on that planet, either0. So the explanation why the conditions are so favorable on earth is simply its an accident there are many other planets where conditions north favorable for life to emerge. Planets ate different distances from the sun we happen to be on planet that is the right distance from the sun, that has other properties to allow the emergence of life and thats why were here to talk about it. So that explanation is very similar explanation why the multiverse answer solve this problem of the finetune offering the universe. The multiverse explanation, of course does not require an intelligent designer. However, theres a tradeoff because the Historic Mission of physics to explain all properties of the universe as necessary consequences of a few fundamental principles, that Historic Mission is a beautiful pipe dream. Its futile. In the multiverse idea there are many, many different universes with many Different Properties, starting from the same fundamental laws of physics so were just an accident. Our universe is what it is because we are here. Let me give another analogy. Suppose that there is a group of intelligent fish, and one day they begin wondering, why is it that our world is water . Isnt that wonderful . We know that we couldnt survive without water. Why is that . And a few of the theoretical physicist fish [laughter] begin calculating i dont know what theyre calculating with [laughter] they began calculating and they try to prove why the world has to be filled with water. Why that is the only possibility, why thats a necessary consequence of the laws of nature. And they work on it and they work on it and work on it and just cant quite prove that the world must be water. And then a wise and old fish says well, maybe not all worlds are filled with water. Maybe theres dryland dry land somewhere and we just happen to live in a world that has water, because otherwise we wouldnt be here. Other worldeds with the dry land. So thats an analogy to the multiverse situation. So let me now say a few words about some of the modern theories of physics that predict the mulledty verse, and one is string their rhythm strength theory, which is string theory which is the i think the first string theory was in the 1960s and has been modified a lot since then. String theory proposes the basic constituents of matter are not subatomic part killed but tiny ultra small, one dimensional lines of energy, like string. These strings of energy vibrate and the different vibrations, like violation vibrations of a violin spring, correspondent to different notes but in this time they correspond to forces. String theory requires that these tiny vibrating strings of energy have to exist in a world of ten dimensions, seven more dimensions than what we see around us here. We dont see these extra dimensions, the other seven because theyre curled up in ultra tiny loops, the same way if youre looking at a garden hose from a few hundred feet it looks like a line because you cant see the thickness of the hose. You just see a straight line. It turns out that there are a vast number of ways that these additional seven dimensions can be folded up to produce to very small size to produce what we see as only three dimensions and each folding corresponds to a different universe with different fundamental parameters, different basic parameters, different strengths of the Nuclear Force, different values dark energy and so on. So the strength theory predicts many different universes resulting from different fold office the extra dimensions. The other theory that predicts the multiverse is called internal inflation. The inflationary universe model holds that in the very Early Universe, when it was less than a trillionth of a second old the universe ban expanding very, very rapidly exponentially fast and then resumed the leisurely expansion of the standard big bang model. And that exponential expansion was caused by Something Like dark energy but the dark energy had a different value at each point in space and each of those points in space began expanding exponentially, producing a new universe with Different Physical Properties different parameters. Some aspects of the inflationary universe model have been confirmed by experiments so i would say that most physicists now accept it as a standard part of cosmology. So lets go back to the intel intent fish for a moment. Intelligent fish for a moment. I should mention that neither the inflationary universe model nor strength theory has string theory has been proven with the same certainty that say, relativity theory is proven or quantum physics is proven. But the multiverse explanation seems to be the explanation that most scientists accept for the finetuning problem i mentioned earlier. Lets go back to the intelligent fish. The wisenned old fish have conjectured that there are many other worlds, some with water, and some with dry land. They live in a world with water because otherwise they couldnt exist. Some of the fish grudgingly accept this explanation, some are relieved some are despondent because their lifes work of trying to prove that their world had to be water is futile. Some of the fish are deeply disturbed because theres no way that the conjecture can be proven. They live in the ocean, and they have no way of proving for sure that dry land exists. They cant live on dry land. And that uncertainty is what disturbs physicists today. Not only what must we accept that certain basic parameters of the universe are accidents, that we cant calculate, that just have come from a roll of the dice. Not only must we accept that but we also must believe in a vast number of other universes out there, which are unobservable. Theres no way to know whether they exist. Certainly no why in the imaginable future. So we must believe in what we cannot prove. We must believe that these other universes exist on faith. Does that sound familiar . [laughter] we must take their existence as a matter of faith. And that is the delicious irony that modern science has found itself in. I wanted to read a little bit from one of the otheres says in the book other essays in the book. For all the writers here you know the essay is a delicate literary form in which the way you Say Something is as important as what you say. So its very hard to summarize an essay. So im going to just read portions of one of thees says and the book. The tilele is the temporary university. Last august my oldest daughter got married. For. Radiant in her white dress, a white doll yet in her hair, my daughter asked to hold my hand as we walked down the aisle. It was the perfect picture of utter joy and a airtran judaism wanted my daughter back as she was at age 10 or age 20. As we move together toward the lovely arch that would swallow us all, other scenes flashed through my mind. My daughter in first grade holding a starfish as big as herself, her smile missing a tooth, my daughter on the back of her bicycle as we rode to a river to drop zone in the water. My daughter telling me the day after she had her first period. Now she was 30. I could see lines in her face. I dont know why we long so for permanence. Why the fleeting nature of things so disturbs us. We cleaned to the old wallet long after it has fallen apart. Week visit and revisit the Old Neighborhood where we grew up searching for the remembered grove of trees and eagles fans. We treasure our old photographs. In our churches and synagogues and mosques we prayed to the everlasting and eternal. In every nook and cranny nature is screaming at the top of her limbs that nothing lasts that is all passing away. All that we see around us including our own bodies is shifting and evaporates in and one day will be gone. Where are the 1 billion people who lived and breathed in the year 1800, just two short centuries ago. The evidence seems overly clear. In the summer months, mayflys dropped by the billions within 24 hours of birth, drone and its parish in two week, leaves bloom and will leaving dead paper restocks, forests burn down leaving and replenish themselves and burn down again. Ancient stone temples and spires flake in the salty air fracturing in fragments, dwindling to spindly nubs in the venture will be dissolving into nothing. Coast lines be road and crumble. Glaziers slowly but surely climb down the land. Once the continents were pulling. Once the air was ammonia and methane. In the future it will be Something Else. The son is as fleeting as nuclear fuel. Look at our own bodies. In the middle years and beyond skin sags and cracks eyesight fades hearing diminishes, bones shrink and turn brittle. Physicists call it the second law of thermodynamics. It is also called the arrow of time. Oblivious to our human yearnings for permanence the universe is relentlessly wearing down, falling apart driving itself towards a condition of maximum disorder. Is a question of probabilities. You start from a situation of improbable quarter like that deck of cards perfectly arranged to number and suit or a solar system with several planets orbiting nicely around a central star. Then you drop a deck of cards on the floor over and over again, let other stars randomly go by your solar system, with their gravity, the cards become a shambles, the planets get picked off and go aimlessly wandering through space. Border has yielded to disorder. Repeated patterns have yielded to change. In the end you cannot defeat the odds. You might beat the house for a while but the universe has an infinite supply of time and can outlast any player. What about our sun and other stars . Shakespeares caesar says to caxias, quote that i am constant as the no. Star whose true fixed and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament. But caesar was not up on modern astrophysics or the second law of thermodynamics. The north star and all stars including our son are consuming their nuclear fuel after which they will fade into cold embers floating in space or blow out in a massive explosion. Buddhists have long been aware of the evanescent nature of the world. In permanence, they call it. In buddhism is one of the three signs of existence, the other being suffering and non selfhood. According to the buddhist scriptures win the buddha passed away the king deity added the following quote in permanent are all component things, they are prized and cease, that is their nature. A come into being and passed away. We should not attach to the worlds say the buddhists, to things in the world because all things are temporary and they will soon pass away. All suffering, say the buddhists comes from the attachment. If i could only detached from my daughter may be i would feel better. To my mind is one of the profound contradictions of human existence that we long for immortality. Indeed fervently believe that something must be unchanging and permanent when all the evidence and nature argues against that. Either i and delusional or nature is in complete. Either i am being emotional end vein in my wish for eternal life for myself and my daughter or there is some realm of immortality that exists outside of nature. As a false alternative, the need to have a talk with myself and get over it. After all, there are other things that i yearn for that are either not true or not good for my health. The human mind has a famous ability to create its own reality. If the second alternative is right then it is nature that has been found wanting. Despite all the richness of the physical world, the majestic architecture of adams, the rhythm of the tides, the luminescence of the galaxies nature is missing something even more exquisite and grand, some immortal substance which lies hidden from view. Suggs such explicit stuff could not be made from matter because all matter is slave to the second law of thermodynamics. Perhaps this immortal fame we wish for exists beyond time and space. Perhaps it is what made the universe. Of these two alternatives i am inclined to the first. I cannot believe that nature could be so of this. Although theres much we dont understand about nature, the possibility that it is hiding that condition or substance so magnificent and so utterly unlike Everything Else seems too for postures to me to believe so i am delusional. My continual craving for e eternal youth and constancy, and i am being sentimental. Perhaps with proper training of my unruly mind and my unruly emotions i could refrain from wanting things that cannot be. Perhaps i could accept that in a few short years my adams will be scattered in wind and soil, of my mind and thoughts on my pleasures and joys vanished. I can not accept that fate even though i believe it to be true. I cant force my mind to go to that dark place. Suppose i ask a different question. Against our wishes and hopes we are stuck with mortality, does mortality branch mortality and the grandeur all its own. Even though we struggle and howl against the brief flash of our lives might we find something majestic in that brevity. Could there be a preciousness and value to existence stemming from the very fact of its temporary duration . I think of the night blooming cereus a plant that looks like a leathery weed, 364 days year but for one night each summer, its flower opens to reveal silky white petals which encircle yellow threads and another flower like a tiny sea anemone within the other flower. By morning the flower has shriveled. One night of the year as delicate and fleeting as a knife in the universe. Thank you. [applause] we have about 15 minutes time for questions if any of you have a question stepped in to the island come to the microphone and i will take you in order. One interesting personal comment. I have been shopping with my wife three years ago and men in the audience will understand i went to barnes and noble when she went shopping and was going through the magazines, among thought hot rods there was the o magazine an obscure literary journal, this essay was in it so i sat and read it and my wife came back and said why are you looking so more rose . Pondering my mortality in starbucks. The lady on my right over here. Speak right into the microphone. I thought i would pose some questions as a former journalist. Talking about dark energy, you were talking about dark energy and that the universe is accelerating to 2 anti Gravitational Forces. It acts like an anti Gravitational Force would gravity attracts and the force resulting from the dark energy is pushing apart. I had seen a special on television may be ten years, i think it was a lady harvard professor. What she posed was perhaps that there was a stronger Gravitational Force in another universe we tend to think we have strong Gravitational Force when the truth of the matter, perhaps truth of the matter is perhaps we dont and they were pulling up in that. That is one of the conjectures that some of the other universes and higher dimensions exert gravitational effect on our universe. It is not anything we are going to approve. It is conjectural like the whole multiverse conjecture. That is more conjectural because it deals with very specifics of the universes where the general multiverse idea is there are other universes with Different Properties. The harvard lady physicists. Of very smart physicist. Lets go to the left here. Here we are at a book festival. Are you writing a new book . A new book just came out. A question. I am always fiddling around with something. My question. I read the accidental universe. Beautiful book. But theres one part i want to challenge you on. Use said it again today that the universe is the way it is because we are here and i feel it is the other way. We are here because the universe is the way it is. I wonder why you phrased it i like your phrasing better. It made more sense. Thank you so much. We are here because the universe is the way it is. The gentleman stepped up already. I am not familiar with your views about the nature of the big bang. It is fascinating to me we can talk about what must have happened in a trillion of a second after the big bang. But there is this in movable blockage and physicists are kind of in a quandary about that, isnt that right . Perhaps the multiverse 11 they dont really know what to do about the big bang. We will never know what happened before the beginning but we have theories that say that there was a Quantum Space of some kind with lots of potential universes and just as we can reproduce in a laboratory matter out of energy, we know it can be done, you can produce a whole universe out of nothing at a very tiny scale and that universe began expanding and got big enough to produce stars and galaxies and so on so we do have a hypothesis about what happened very near the beginning. I should stay that there is a lot of Experimental Evidence to support the general Big Bang Theory going back to tiny fractions of a second after t zero. We have a lot of experimental confirmation about that. The big bang model is really much more than hypothesis. Is really a pretty well supported explanation of the universe. I knew it was supported but didnt know if there was an explanation. Thank you for the question. I was interested in your idea, what you call your delicious irony between the and no ability of the religious belief on the one hand and the and no abilitys of the multi firsthand string theory but that is really cutting it as close as it should be . After all the idea of string theory and the multiverse is supported by a complex body of mathematics and scientific rationalism whereas religion asks you to believe and take the leap of faith as it were. The distinction to be is a very profound one. I was wondering if you could address that. I agree science and religion are not the same activities by a long shot. The kinds of knowledge we have in science that different from the kind of knowledge, the way we arrive at knowledge i wasnt trying to draw a 1 1 correspondence. I was saying there is an irony that we have to take something as a matter of faith in science but the argument of intelligent design is an appealing to most scientists. I was trying that comparison. I was not saying religion and science are the same kinds of knowledge in the same way of achieving knowledge. That is a whole discussion which we dont have time for right now but thank you for the question. I will settle for 2,000 years of life. I have faith in rakers while r ray kuzweils vision. Anyway download my brain . How big is your brain . Not very big guy think. When you comment i think eventually we will be able to extract a lot of information in the brain, yes. I think we will also sooner and that have computer chips that we can implant on our brain that will connect as directly to the internet so that you will have the enormous amount of information not just at your fingertips but the tips of your neurons. I think that will come about. I think that revolution will require us to understand how to store information, how information is stored in neurons that which point we will download brains. Just wait a while. I was wondering, you were making fun of Julius Caesar but i was wondering what you thought about people and hundred years from now how much they will make fun of the multiverse maybe they will have technology so rapid, wondering what you think of that, see what we think right now but maybe a hundred years from now it will seem stupid. That could well turn out to be the case. Stay on this side. I wonder if theres speculation on what appears to be the foot writing the gas pedal of intelligent design with the turtle elements of yearning for but everything is temporary, to limit the eternal spark for creativity. Some are created in the evil realm and wonder if temporary nurses to confine evil to put limits on it. That is a very interesting point. The temporary nature of our universe really is fundamentally tied to the second law of thermodynamics which just says improbable situations become more and more probable when you start with an improbable border of arrangements. A deck of cards with all the numbers lined up, that is a very improbable arrangement. If you just shuffle the cards a lot you will get a more probable arrangement which is everything mixed together. That principle is so fundamentally is sort of like the principle of natural selection. It is almost automatic. It doesnt need an intelligence to be involved in any way at all. Maybe i am not why is this may be that is not something why does 2 plus 2 4. The fact that improbable things become more probable is as fundamental as 2 plus 2 equal 4. I guess i cant go any further than that. Time for just two more. Please, keep them short. So we can get the young lady here. I will be quick. It seems very bleak with the dark energy in our future of our universe and to top it off with the implant and a microchip in our brains, you see that as a positive point in the future . Great question. I dont necessarily see it as a positive development. I think there will be all whole new area of the law which deals with intellectual property. But i think technology by itself is neither good nor bad. I think it is how human beings use the technology that makes it good or bad. You could ask the same thing as the cellphone a good thing. It has it is used wisely in some cases and unwisely in others. It is as human beings that determine whether the technology is used for good or for ill. This will be the last question. Not as much a question as a statement. I have a problem with use of the term big bang. It was oil who used the word in just because he was completely against the idea of the expansion. And it was hubble who proved it through his telescope that the expansion of the universe is real and is now called hubbells law and i would much prefer if scientists started using the accurate term for the expansion instead of using the best term, thank you. I want to thank multiverse one for an excellent presentation. [applause] and i want to thank the audience for supporting the festival and our authors. If you would like to interact some more with Alan Lightman he will be appearing in the second session called a human perspective on the universe, together with carl devito, the main stage at the far end of the mall this afternoon at 4 00 p. M. I invite you to join him there. I should also note someone set us up for this. Alan lightman had a new book out within the last month called the screening room. Is the memoir and it has been described by one critic as the suddenly fictionalize emotionally refined and reasonable description descriptive chronicle of his stirring Family History, often confounding boyhood. A colorful jewish enclave in a segregated 20th century memphis. The novelist is more succinct and, for calling it screwball, heartfelt and true. I agree with that one. Copies of this and other volumes by Alan Lightman will be available outside the university of arizona books bore sighting area but remember we are going to have an interview with cspan2 live following this so Alan Lightman will be for his appearance by half an hour. See you at 1 00. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] you are watching booktv on cspan2. This is live coverage of the tucson book festival on the campus of the university of arizona. If you have been listening to Alan Lightman talking he is going to be joining us now on stage for a call in program. 202 is the area code if you want to talk to Alan Lightman 7488200. For those in the east and central time zone 7488201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. We have several hours, several more author panels of live coverage. In half an hour or so the next panel is called narrative nonfiction. It is three historians who will be joining the panel talking about the civil war the boys on the boat which has been a runaway best seller this year that is Daniel James Brown and hampton 5 in the kingdom of ice. Those three historians will be on the panel together and afterwards f c gwynn who has written a book about Stonewall Jackson will join us for a call in to talk about the civil war. That is coming up. If you want to get updates for what they follow us on twitter at booktv is our twitter handle and you can go to our web site booktv. Org to see the full schedule of 5 events. Everything you are seeing today will air this evening at midnight eastern time which will be 9 00 p. M. Eastern time out here in the west. Now joining us is Alan Lightman. I want to ask, in the accidental universe the world you thought you knew you have a chapter called the spiritual universe. My question is rather inarticulate but is religion real . It certainly is a real. There are a few thousand years of Human History that a test to quince reality. How does it tie in with what you do as a physical theorists, fit theoretical physicist . It doesnt tiein at all to what i do as the theoretical physicists. As i human being, physicists are people. We live in Human Society and my mind, religion and science have been the two most powerful forces that have shaped human civilization so if you are ignorant of religion or you dismiss it, you are discounting a lot of Human History. Are the incompatible . I dont think they are incompatible. I have many scientific colleagues who are devout believers. There are fewer scientists who are devout believers than in the general public, but the fact that there are scientists who are devout believers shows that they are not incompatible. I think there are not incompatible and all if your belief in god is the kind of god who does not intervene in the physical universe. A god who sets things up and sits down on the sidelines. That is not incompatible at all with science. I would also add i dont think there is any way science can prove or disprove the existence of god. Host what is a theoretical physicist . Guest a theoretical physicist is a person who studies the laws of nature using mathematics. So a lot of nature might be for example different objects attract each other. The Gravitational Force. And experimental physicist with studies that law by dropping lots of things and seeing how long it takes an object to fall to the floor. A theoretical physicist would work out the mathematics of that. Einstein was a theoretical physicist. Isaac newton was a theoretical physicist. Those are some of the most wellknown of that species. Host has the big bay and theory, the success of the Big Bang Theory program on cbs enhance your work . Interest in your work . Guest i think it probably has. Science depends a lot upon the support of the public, for funding. And i think the more the public is interested in science, the better. Programs that are on cbs, nova on npr, science magazine, scientific american, not only that but in recent years we have seen at number of artistic venues in which science appears like plays and movies. The movie a beautiful mind, the play copenhagen. These are other venues in which people can experience science and the culture of science. Host m i t professor Alan Lightman is our guest. The first call is from can in daly city, calif. You are on booktv. Thank you for taking my call. A question here now. Back before kepler astronomers were trying to describe what appeared to be the erratic motion of the planets in the solar system and of course because it was at the time the church dictated earth centric solar system. Some of these included intricate geometrical shapes, and they just never got anywhere until they conceded the fact the we had our solar centric heliocentric solar system. Anyway, could it be with all the elaborate mathematics we have the we are making something very elementary, something we are not seeing that should be there but is not being included . Of course, yes. That is a good question. I think we should always view science has a work in progress. We should always be open to new series new ideas new discoveries. Just about 12 years ago we discovered the dark energy, what we call the dark energy, this anti Gravitational Force that appears to be pushing the galaxies apart as opposed to normal gravity which pulls the galaxies together. That was the New Discovery which has shaken up science. It is certainly true the we could be missing something very important right now and we have to be open to that. Host what exactly is dark matter . Guest dark matter and dark energy are two separate things. Dark matter is matters that has a normal gravitational effect. It pulls things together like a normal gravity, but it is a matter whose existence we can infer from its gravitational effects on stars and galaxies but we cant see it. It is not making any light. Dark energy on the other hand acts as that repulsive Gravitational Force that is pushing things away from each other as opposed to normal gravity which pulls things toward each other. We know about dark matter since the 1930s even though we cant see it. We inferred its existence. Stock energy is something we just discovered very recently. Host johnny in maryland, good afternoon. Hello. Thank you. First i would like to say Great Questions to everyone who asked them. I heard several contradiction in your belief that rose out of your dry humor. It seems to me the irony the redundancy of your use of the word futility. A child cannot know all that he does. Case in point imagine knowing more than scientists and engineers who designed and built. I doubt scientists will be hundreds of feet below the surface. I am a little nervous. I would like to say the Scientific Community and physicists one piece of the puzzle has been excluded is philosophy. This might take a while. I dont know if this is Stephen Hawkings book the grand design was a disappointment in the last paragraph when he said since we have gravity there is no need for the existence of god. That was like the worst conclusion i ever read or even seen in a movie. Getting back to the point. The Community Must be two more letters. You have theory. Host i think we got your point. Lets get an answer from Alan Lightman. Guest i appreciate your comment. I think i said earlier, and i believe that science can never prove or disprove the existence of god. I want to put that on the table right away. Philosophy and science they are different disciplines. They are both important. Science makes propositions about the physical world that can be tested. If you cant test the proposition of science than it doesnt belong in the realm of science. It belongs in the realm of philosophy. Philosophy helps guide us in terms of what matters in the world. It was not replaced by a science. His own discipline science cannot be replaced by philosophy either. They differ in their experimental contact with the physical world. Philosophy makes statements of the value. It raises very important interesting questions but questions which cannot be answered by experiment. For example is it right to kill an enemy soldier in a time of war fare . That is a question of ethics values, a philosophical question. Science cannot touch that question. Science deals with those questions that can be answered by experiment. That bill is the difference. They are both valuable enterprises. Host heres the cover were talking with Alan Lightman about, the accidental universe the world you thought you knew. He has also written a book called feinsteins dreams and a new book out, the name of that is . Guest screening room. Host what is the topic . Guest it is about the south that i grew up in 50 years ago. Is also a book about my own family in the south going back to the 1800s. Host bill in california. Guest are you able to hear me . Host i am listening. Caller i have a question that has long since bothered me, wonder if you can answer it. We are able to look back through the telescopes almost to the big bang, 11 or 12 billion light years away now. What i have been wondering about is i would have thought that the message of the late, they from magnetic radiation or whatever from those initial quasars would have long since passed us by in the place in the universe the we have come to occupy. Like coming upon dont know if you need the analogy, but sort of like coming up on an accident five minutes after it happened. Someone should have seen this. Guest i get your point. Thank you. The point is as we look further away we are looking back in time. It takes light a finite time to get to us so if we get galaxy that is 8 billion light years away it took white 8 billion years to get from their to here. Five minutes later that white will have passed us by you are quite right but we will see a galaxy that is a little bit further away in the next five minute. At any point in time the furthest we can see we are seeing out to a sphere where it just has time for like to arrive to go from there to here. Each day thats fear gets a little bit larger because we conceal little further out into the universe. I hope that answers your question. Host another call from california anthony in santa monica. You are on the air. Caller first, how do your ideas square with Stephen Hawkings search for one theory that explains everything and 2, how does your theory square with time travel to the past . Have you read richard gods book on time travel and einstein . And how to thank you. Guest the one theory you are talking about we call the grand unified theory or the theory of everything. I think physicists are split on whether such a theory exists. String theory could be the grand unified theory, the one theory that explains everything. We dont have any experimental confirmation of string theory. It might be wrong. I think many physicists do believe that there is one unified theory that we havent yet arrived at. We have unified some of the basic forces of nature but not all of them. The Gravitational Force still remains a unified with the other basic forces. Regarding time travel, time travel seems to require very special conditions that probably are not able to be created. I would say that although richard gots work, time travel requires a very special configuration of matter and energy that may probably is impossible to produce. As you know time travel causes a lot of problems with causality, with having causes come before their effects. Most physicists believe time travel is not possible even though it is a wonderful concept. Host and is on the line from gaithersburg, md. You are on with professor Alan Lightman of m. I. T. Caller good afternoon. To understand the concept of when you look out into the universe, looking into the past, what i want to understand is so if we are on another planet somewhere out there and there is intelligent life out there, and we are looking at earth, are they looking back at earth also into our past . Guest yes. They are looking in our past, that is right. The first radio signals that earth produced that are capable of escaping earth were probably the i love lucy shows in the 1950s and scope now we are at 2012, we are about 62 years after the first i love lucy shows which means if there in Television Life on a planet 62 light years away from us they would just now be receiving the i love lucy shows. It has taken 62 years for those radio waves or tv waves to travel through space to get to that point. Host why did you pick the i love lucy shows . Guest that some of the only earliest television we broadcast. Host are those the ones that can transmit outside . Guest television and radio signals. The program you are broadcasting right now were working on cspan, right now that is only a few light seconds out into space but if we wait five years, those tv and radio waves will have been able to travel five light years away and five the is from now the program we are broadcasting will have reached the nearest star. In 100,000 years from now it will reach the edge of our galaxy. Any living creature is at the edge of the galaxy will be able to watch our program 100,000 years from now. They wont be able to watch it before then because there will not have in time for those radio and tv waves to have traveled through space to get there. Host if you are watching it 100,000 years from now dont call in because we wont be here. We wont be able to take those calls. This is a laymans question. Is there life outside our planet in your view . Guest i think theres definitely like outside our planet, multiple life. There are 100 billion stars in our galaxy and recent work by the satellite has yielded the result of probably about 3 of those stars have Life Sustaining planets planets that are the right distance from the central spot to have liquid water and so on. That is hundreds of millions of planets out there with the conditions right to sustain life. It seems to me it would be a miracle if there wasnt life on one of those planets. Host next call for professor Alan Lightman comes from trish in lakeside, montana. You are on booktv from tucson. Caller thank you so much cspan. I enjoyed your as a tremendously. I am going to pick up your book. Here is my question the some of the earlier questions tie in to my question. I struggle, the first half of my life believing there was the god, trying to find faith and now that i am 49 and watched neil the grass tyson and read more on science, my question, the age old question of religion and science how do you with your tremendous scientific expertise how do you personally, how high you able to reconcile . This might help me to reconcile your personal beliefs and face with your own learning and expertise in science over the years . Host thank you. Guest that is a great question and i dont have any answers. I have been struggling with this for many years myself. The one thing i do believe is there is no cosmic meaning. I dont think there is the universal meaning out there this is the way you need to live your life. This is what is good, this is what is bad. I think each person has to find their own meetings. That is all i have been able to come up with so far. Host you talk about and the accidental universe the world you thought you knew the transcendent experience in the spiritual universe chapter. Guest i think many of us have had at transcendent experience in which we feel connected to something larger than ourselves. That may involve god. It might not involve god. But i think most of us have had some experience of many experiences like that. Is one of the most wonderful experience as a person can have. Host is it contradictory to science . Guest it is not contradictory to science. Not at all. Host next call tim, batavia, ohio. Caller thank you for taking my call. Thank you for taking my call. I am in like mind with the professor. I see absolutely no contradiction between science and religion. Bose do the same thing. Religious people lincoln events in their life and do a spiritual mathematical equation and come of with the answer god intervened in my life. Scientists do the same thing. They look at how things interact with each other and come up with their conclusions. The pathology of thinking is basically the same. Having said that theres a question i want to ask and you are the perfect person to ask this question. The big bang, i heard that the universe expanded faster than the speed of light. We now know that the speed of light is the speed limit of the universe, 186,000 miles per second. When scientists look at that, isnt the universe really slowing down . The beginning point was faster and the speed of light and winnow see guest when people say the ever expanding faster than the speed of light they are not quite stating the situation correctly. What we believe was happening in the Early Universe is space was being was expanding. Doesnt mean two objects were actually that an object was moving past another object sp exceeding the speed of light. It just means space was expanding at a very rapid rate. That is the way we envision the situation. It is hard to intuitively think about how space expand but what we mean by that is the distance between any two points like two adams was increasing and that rate could increase as arbitrarily high rates without one of the adams passing another at a speed exceeding the speed of light. Host susan in louisville, ky. Caller hello. I am wondering if multiverse one discuss the big splash at pherae earlier. I joined the program very late and content to watch the repeat of it but would like his opinion on the theory that i read about, lisa randal mentioned it in her book on the multiverse. Guest i am not familiar with the big splash theory. Host we move on to dan tim clarksville, tennessee. Caller thanks for taking my call. I was curious if there is any consensus among those who are speculating about multiverse as to whether or not they shared the same what do you call, t zero, the same origin in time or could they have begun at different times or is time even at the mention that might not pertain to some of these universes . Guest that is the core rate question. I think the last thing you said is probably true, that what we call t zero was a period in which time did not exist as we think of it now so we do believe that the different universes had difference starting points so if you were to try to translate the different starting points into a time dimension you would say they started at different times. Host a few minutes left. Did you have some more . A few minutes left with our guest professor Alan Lightman of m. I. T. John in wilmington, delaware you are next. Caller hi. I think Alan Lightman is the most thoughtful Science Writer today. I have enjoyed his work tremendously. I want to ask about his book, mr. Gee, to many people who is a religion and science are incompatible but i would like to hear him say little about what motivated him to write that book and specifically how the book relates to his answer to the caller a couple minutes ago asking about his own faith. Concluded there is no cosmic meaning in the sense that you could figure out a way to live your life and i guess when i read the book i understand the god he posits is that kind of god who doesnt compute any meeting but on the other hand he had the option at any point to answer the prayers he found confusing anyway. That is too long a question but i would like to hear Alan Lightman speak about that. Guest my motivation is i wanted to have a playful discussion of the interaction of science and religion. I thought it would be interesting to portray god as a modest fellow, the most organized religions on earth. In terms i was not trying to make a particular statement about science or religion in the book other than to have fun in a literary sense with the. Host we can fit in another call, dave in oakland calif. You are on booktv with Alan Lightman. Just a second. In the theory of dark matter is it possible theres no such thing as dark matter but instead dark gravity . Host why do you ask that question . Caller the theory of gravity has gone through different transformations in the past. Einstein upset our concept of gravity. Just that median alternative hypothesis that there is Something Else besides dark matter. Guest einsteins theory of gravity actually allows for dark energy. I think you are referring to dark energy and not dark matter. One version of his theory allows for it but it doesnt say what caused it. I dont think dark energy hypothesis which is not been experimentally confirmed, i dont think is in conflict with einstein with einsteins. Gravity. It actually fits fundamentally into the us theory. Is just the we dont have an explanation for what causes dark energy. Host calif. Last call. Caller thank you for taking my call. Could you give me your opinion about the soul of the body . No matter how much science advances people are still interested in that confluence of science. Heres a book we have been talking with m. I. T. Professor Allen Eichmann about the xml universe the worldview that you knew. Dr. Lightman thank you for your time on booktv. Thank you peter. Our live coverage from tucson continues. We are in the campus of the university of arizona for the seventh annual tucson book festival. About 120,000 people attend this and when you go outside and its all set up in the quad here at the University Just a big crowd enthusiastic book crowds. Its a nice income about 350 authors are down here. We are going to be light today for several hours and then again tomorrow all day. Go to booktv. Org and you can get our schedule and follow us on twitter to get updates throughout the day and atco booktv is our panel handle. The next panels about ready to start and this will be a panel what they are calling narrative nonfiction. Its three historians talking about their book. S. C. Gwynne has written about the civil war many times. His most recent book is on Stonewall Jackson. Hampton sides in the kingdom of ice and finally Daniel James Brown is here the boys in the boat nine americans in an epic quest for gold in the 1936 berlin olympics. Booktv on cspan2 from tucson. [inaudible conversations] what a pleasure. Thank you so much to everybody. Thank you for your help. Wed really appreciate it. Enjoy. [inaudible conversations] i think we are live now. Hello. I would like to welcome you. My name is bob houston. I will be moderating this group of very distinguished writers and i hope gentlemen. [laughter] i want to thank Cox Communications for sponsoring this venue and apologize for the fact that i have laryngitis this morning. We also thank jennifer and George Johnson for sponsoring this session. We will last about 55 minutes and we will leave about half that time for questions and answers. So if you dont mind please go to your questions until these gentlemen get through with their presentations. Immediatelyg this session the authors will be autographitographing books and the usa bookstore tent on the mall sponsored by the university bookstores. Books are available for purchase at this location. Please note s. C. Gwynne or sam gwynne if he doesnt cspan which is recording and broadcasting. Cspan booktv. If you are enjoying the festival, please become a friend of the festival. Your Tax Deduction donation allows us to offer festival programming free of charge to the public and to support critical literacy programs in the community. You can learn more about friend of the festival benefits at the information booth on the mall and at our web site. Out of respect for the authors and your fellow audience members, please turn off your cell phones. I have to be reminded of that every time also. There will be guards circulating. Im happy to introduce ive been given 30 seconds only which is something of a disservice given their distinguished bios. Daniel james brown is the author of the acclaimed new york bestseller bestseller, the boys in the boat, nine americans and their epic quest for gold at the 1936 berlin olympics. He has also written for the different stars above about the illfated donner party in 1846. Under the flaming sky, the great hinckley firestorm of 1894. He is from the bay area. I was reluctant to admit it sometimes. And graduated from berkeley and ucla. S. C. Gwynne or sam gwynne that is allowed, is the author of four books including rebel yell at violence passion and redemption of Stonewall Jackson the book i just finished and 20,014 New York Times bestseller and empire of the summer men Quanah Parker and the rise and fall of the comanches the most powerful indian tribe in American History history, which was on the New York Times bestseller list for 82 weeks. And was a finalist for both the pulitzer and the National Book critics circle award. He won the texas book award, oklahoma book award. Sally money is about his years as an International Banker and many other interests. This journalism for the Texas Monthly magazine is legendary. Hampton sides is the author of another book. I have just finished all of your books by the way. Critically acclaimed in the kingdom of ice, ghost boys and other bestselling works of narrative history. On his trail about the murder of Martin Luther king jr. And the International Manhunt for assassin james earl ray. Ghost stories, which is also sold over a million copies has been translated into a dozen Foreign Languages and was the basis for the 2005 miramax film the great raid. In the interest of disclosure i am someone who has written a few pieces of historical fiction and i have given these gentlemen my permission to beat up on me whenever they want. I would like to get us started with a question which we have discussed briefly in emails. Exactly what is meant by narrative techniques and writing history and what are the limits . Are you looking at me . Whoever wants to answer. Theres a lot that we can say about this. This is where fiction and nonfiction in their site. I think all three of us here do agree that we are not the sort of writers who will make anything up in the context of writing nonfiction. We dont make up Little Details. You dont embellish and say the way someone was feeling at any given moment or the weather. You did not embellish and you are not allowed to do that. I think at least from my background is a magazine journalist having been fact fact checked within an inch of my life by editors for 25 years at some point you understand what the fact is some what isnt. Theres a lot to say about this and im not going to try to say everything. I know both of my colleagues here have advanced notions of the same thing basically what you he can do and nonfiction is you can use conventional narrative techniques to build your book and by that i mean here you have your book and the book has characters. These are nonfiction characters based on documented stuff but you can use those characters in ways that you see fit. Who are you introducing first . Who are you bringing out on stage i . Who is the foil . Can Flash Forward and backward in history. There are all sorts of things that you can do that are techniques that a novelist would use except that you are dealing with the modules in your hand are real and thats the only difference. So what you can do i think a lot of were one major change in the way introduced by the new journalism back in the 60s was beginning to use fictional techniques techniques, not inventions but techniques to write narrative nonfiction. And you know im going to pass it to my colleagues here at this point but i just want to say that what we do in effect is we imposed story upon inchoate chaotic mess. Thats what we do. Look at one of the first great big stories, lets say the Old Testament for example. The Old Testament the history of the jewish if something happened and Something Else happened in somebody did this in history just flowed in time just load and there was no particular story. Then somebody came along and said im going to make a story out of this. We are going to impose a story upon the unformed historical facts that have gone for long time and we are going to make a story about something. Its going to be about the relationship of the to god and its going to be a story that has suspense and whats going to happen in the egyptian exile in and all the things that happen. It becomes a story. Im not saying the bible thats not the argument today but it is just as homer did, youre imposing a story where there wasnt one. So in effect that is our business. Our business is to impose a story where there was not one before and that is sort of what we do. We do stories the last syllable in history stories. I subscribe to everything sam said. I think theres one place i might depart a little bit which is that i will report what somebody is thinking if i have heard that directly from that person or from a very good proxy for that person. I agree completely. Im sorry. The other thing i would add to that is something that often gets lost in the discussion about writing what i call narrative nonfiction and some people call it narrative nonfiction. There are variations of how this genre is described. I think its important to point out because i think there is kind of the misconceptions sometimes. Imagination actually plays a huge role in what we do and i dont mean that we are imagining things that they then put in the book that i write almost entirely in small chunks that i think of as scenes and i tend to think very visually. Part of my job before i write a scene is to research the heck out of everything that might go into that particular scene in say the boys in the boat. But then my job becomes to use my imagination to figure out and sam alluded to this, what distress, what character to bring forward, how much of the physical environment to describe describe. For me its an inward process of visualizing that scene and composing the parts that will make it up. And i think that is use of the imagination. So i just think sometimes i think we shy away from that term because we do want to make it clear that we are writing nonfiction. I think very much as a novelist uses imagination and nonfiction narrative nonfiction writers also using imagination, working with the facts before him or her in order to assemble and bring alive the scenes. I think a lot about this question of nomenclature. What we call what it is that we do. If first of all bugs me that we have a negative in front of our profession. Derek jeter is the nonbasketball player. This should be the other way around. Truth and be that as it may i agree with everything these guys say and by the way i feel very honored to be onstage with these guys. They are really at the top of their game and its a really interesting time to be doing this kind of nonfiction, whatever we want to call it. I dont like calling a creative nonfiction because that already implies that you are making something up. It seems Literary Journalism or Literary History sounds a little precious i thank. So i dont know but i call it narrative nonfiction. And you know one of the things it is compared with and often with a certain note of hostility is academic. All of us write history so there is academic history and then there it is whatever it is we do. Popular history and i have never fully understood the puzzlement and the outright hostility that exists in academia towards narrative, telling stories. I give talks all over the country at universities and im also a teacher at Colorado College in colorado. What i do is like a hot potato. If no one in the History Department wants anything to do with it. I get called in to speak under the auspices of the American Studies Department journalism, mfa programs, english departments. Everyone seems to recognize what i do is a completely and utterly legitimate thing but not these books. So i dont fully understand it but i dont think that the birds would fly backwards of narrative for todd little bit in History Departments. I think its viewed as entertainment or history light. Im not, dont fully understand it except i think that one of the major differences between what we do and what goes on in academic history, even very good academic history is the absence in our case of argument. I dont argue in my book. I dont have a thesis exactly. Somewhere along the line to History Department got taken over by a bunch of lawyers. That is what we were taught to do. That is what i was taught to do in history at yale was learn to build an argument, a beautiful well reasoned argument. Marshal your facts build torture conclusion. Come to your conclusion and then of course go to the office of your professor and defense your thesis. Its a very different model from narrative which is really trying to tell stories. Its one of the oldest art forms. Its perfectly legitimate. The early historians were doing it like herodotus in their cities. I dont know exactly why its gotten to be sorted viewed as perverse or seditious or dangerous within academic departments so its a little bit of an issue for me. Those are some of my thoughts on the issue. You cant make anything up. The. I feel exactly the same way and i think the tragedy of it is that people who feel that way are missing the extraordinary power of story story and storytelling is as ancient as we are. What we do and it has the power to move people. That doesnt make it illegitimate. For all of my books i have heard from many readers who have said i never read history and it was an interesting history until i picked up your book or hamptons book or sams book. Particularly young people that were not particularly into history. A good story that is also history will like them up and will engage them in the context of the history in my case of the United States and germany in the 1930s in a way that no number of textbooks or dry dissertations will be able to do. So i just think theres a tragedy and the fact that History Departments and certain other academic cornerstone to embrace the enormous power that story has to engage the imagination and pull readers in. Thank you. That covers a great deal of it. When you mention that the Old Testament readers are Old Testament tellers understood that the function was different from gods because didnt god didnt have an editor. [laughter] then that is where it came from and hampton may be your answer is when scientific rationalism took over everything universities, History Departments to follow also. Another question that occurred to me that you guys might want to address is the fact that it seems to me what you are doing and this is a quote that i mentioned to you earlier. Attributed to John Steinbeck who said that history tells us what happened. Fiction tells us how it felt. But it seems to me that what you guys are all three doing is trying to combine those two hand 10 that is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. Thats why so many people are responding to your writings. I would agree with that. I disagree with steinbeck. I dont say that fiction doesnt tell people the way things feel. Thats what it does better than anything in the universe but that sounds of you know trying to come if you know i just wrote a book about Stonewall Jackson. Stonewall is a very very complex and tragic character and its all about him. On some level its nothing but about what Stonewall Jackson was, what he meant and what he felt and what he did. I think theres this idea of using imagination. That is what you bring to bear on it. You are constrained by facts. You must follow the facts. I didnt mean to mislead anybody. If i have a document from someone saying how he felt that what he was thinking of thats exactly what i will say. I just mean i cant make that up out of whole cloth. So i think when you are able to tell a story you were able to introduce Something Like things like suspense and suspense is great. Withholding information is one of the most critical techniques in any kind of writing and certainly fiction but when you are doing nonfiction expose to be good story and your withholding information. You are setting up and the opening of my Stonewall Jackson book i have got a man coming into a Railway Station and there is chaos in charlottesville and no one knows whats going on. The confederacy is going down and who knows what might happen . Richmond is threatened in richmond is going to fall and the whole confederacy is all going down the chute. This little disheveled guy arrives at a train station in charlottesville. Okay now whether you like it or not its my intent to build, whats going to happen next . The suspense. Can Stonewall Jackson say the confederacy . This disheveled guy with two divisions of exhausted men could that possibly be true . Im not dealing with a single thing that is not documented truth, fact but i choose to open that moment in charlottesville. I choose to say what it felt like to be standing in that Railway Station and watching as the train with all the cinematic smoke which by the way is real cinematic smoke just as good as the scene in dr. Zhivago. Its real small, to real train. There were 2000 confederates clinging to it and there was chaos and nobody knew it was going on. Richmond was going to fall. You know what i mean . So im in the business of creating that suspense so youre going to say what the heck happened next sam . Could richmond fall . But also you know trying to communicate what it felt like what the emotion of the scene was, with the emotion of the moment was. All those are techniques that can be used in any good writing and in fact hampton and i both come out of the world of magazine writing. This is absolutely critical. This is how you structure your 6000 come a thousand word piece around suspense and withholding information information that will sing it piecemeal as you go along, creating tension between the characters. Anyway i digress. And the scenes are so key to what youre talking about. You mention the word cinema and all of us have been accused at some point of writing cynically or cinematically. Thats a complement. I think its great. Thats the way in my magazine work was and thats the way i tried to do it in my books as well to advance the story in scenes not in arguments, not an exposition, not an analysis but in scenes. You could have an argument and analysis embedded in the scenes that the scenes are kind of the basic Building Block of these books. Im reading boys in the boat now and its just one scene after another. Doesnt really let up. Theres not that moment where you step in and sort of get the brand analysis of what its all about and think. Its really just scenes and there is such a discipline to writing scenes. I think a lot of people think that writing a scene is including a sunset like once every 35 pages. That is not a scene. Thats a nice little detail but its not a scene. The scene is finding a very pregnant moment for a moment fraught with meaning or something is about to happen or suspense as sam talks about and really playing that moment out and sort of injecting it with every piece of information that we can find out about what was happening. What were they wearing . What was the architecture like . What was the season of the year so we can begin to say what flowery plants were or you name it. You have to use your imagination as a reporter to dig up those details. Its a joy. Its a lot of fun doing that but it is a lot of work. I do think back to the argument in terms of academia i think theres this perception in academia that this is easy. This is entertaining. Its easy to do this stuff when in fact i would argue there is an enormous discipline to it, an enormous amount of work. Its every bit as hard to paint a masterful scene and not that im calling what i do masterful but i would say this guy is. And at least aspire to a masterful scene as it is to advancing a brilliant thesis. The truth is we need all the tools. We do need to know how to argue and we do need to know how to explain. We do need to pull back and set the larger stage. But the scenes and the cinematic sense of the scenes is really what animates this kind of nonfiction. Just a little bit more on the topic of scenes because it is so critical. Id go so far as for many of the scenes in my book too literally think of myself as behind the camera when im laying out the structure of the scene. Just very briefly the first scene in the boys in the boat is joe and roger morris walking across the campus and going down to the shell house turning out for Group Practice the first day. A whole bunch of Research Went into the details of that scene but when i sat down to write that scene i remember literally thinking about duo wants to pull back and show the whole campus here are . Do i want to zoom in and just show roger and joe and literally with their faces look like and i tend to do that when im composing a scene that i tend to by putting myself behind the camera and working from that premise. Its not always that cleancut but its a good sort of starting point for me at least to make sure that the scene is visual and cinematic and for me i take that as a compliment not as an insult. Also in terms of the narrative techniques of the novelist. There are others of course that are very important to me and to all of us im sure that in a couple of the most important for me are setting and character development. I am kind of particularly on setting im kind it is not about, a fanatic about creating as vibrant and real a setting as is possible. So for me it was a huge challenge to describe for instance the alloway in the 1930s because i wasnt around in the 1930s. May look that way but i wasnt. [laughter] but aside from that i grew up in the bay area not in seattle so i knew something about the bay area during the depression from my dad that i didnt know anything about seattle. In order to get that sense of the setting i spent days in the isuzu loeb library at the university of washington hunched over microfilm reading issues more or less random issues of the Seattle Times and the seattle pei from 1933 34, 35 and 36, from cover to cover reading the whole issue for a particular day knowing i wasnt going to use 99. 9 or any of what i found but i found after doing that i would look for roving stuff for a while and more or less take a break. I would read a whole issue from cover to cover and i think it helped a lot because even though i threw out virtually all of what i learned it gave me a real sense of seattle in the 1930s. It taught me what kinds of movies were in town and how important movies were in the outset of the depression and what it meant to people, how much money it cost to go to a movie and what kind of a tradeoff there was, just all kinds of little factoids that then i hoped would create a rich and reasonable semblance of what depression era seattle was like. This whole issue of research is one that i think the audience might be interested in also. A very good historical novelist ron hansen and i were talking about the research he did for his wonderful novel on jesse james and he said his initial impulse was to include everything that he had learned historically so that no one else would ever have to do that much of a search. [laughter] but in the final version he realized what he had to let go of was all of the historical detail and keep the story. You guys seem to be doing that. But theres another kind of research that i think is interesting that doesnt involve libraries. Can you talk a little bit about the need to actually be there and walk the streets and smell the air . Is that something that interests you . I think hampton should talk about that because i just finished reading his most recent book in the kingdom of ice and its a tremendous book on all kinds of levels the one of the things that impressed me the most was when i read this note and realize the places he had gone, the extremes to which he had gone to visit those places. So i defer to hampton. I do think its really important to go to these places. Not just for the little incidental details that people pick up in this case going to be arctic in siberia and remote parts of the russian high arctic but the other reason beyond the details is this confidence it gives you to write your scene or private moment to have heard the ice and to have experience with sun sound does when it travels over the ice, the fog the sound device at war with itself, the shrieking and shuttering and terrifying noises that ice makes. All of that inform informed the book in ways large and small in ways often hard to measure but i think its really important. Research is the fun part of doing these books for me and probably for all of us. I didnt have to actually turn in a manuscript i would probably still be working on my first book and 20 years into it. There are a lot of obstacles that come up. One example is my book blood and thunder which is about manifest destiny about the life and times of kit carson and his role in the conquest. The obstacle was the kit carson was illiterate, real problem when you are dealing with when youre a historian. So i went to the library come the state library in santa fe where i live in they said they had the kit carson papers. This was really great and i was very excited. They ruled him out in a cart and sure enough they had them in a box. They opened up the box and they had the kit carson papers, both of them. So then i had to really get creative here. I figured i live in santa fe the new age capital of the world home of high and aura massage and all that. So we have a seance and that book is based on direct communication with kit carson. [laughter] otherwise you have have to do it the oldfashioned way which is good at the archives, go to the place physically. Im sure you walk the battlefields of Samuel Jacksons battles. It just gives you so much richness of detail that works its way into the books. I feel totally the same way. Ive fortunately didnt have to go to outer siberia for the boys in the boat. The furthest i had to go was to prevent or the eastern sectors of berlin to the racecourse for the gold medal race was held. Again i would not have written a book if i could not have gone to do that. Its so important to me, even though of the things i saw and observed and the observations i took in again i probably didnt use 90 of what i thought that the things that i did use were little tiny details that i think just added another dimension to the story but i couldnt have gotten. I have lots of life photographs and news reels olympia footage to look at in terms of what was happening on that piece of water in 1936 that being there seeing the swallows fly over the water the Little Details that vermeil made a lot of difference when i sat down to write that scene. So i wouldnt do it any other way. And the word scene keeps coming up again. For me, i agree with all that. There were things for me that for simple that sets so much. It would just tell this whole book of information coming through. One of them was just when i was writing a book about the comanches and tired of summer meant to go out on the high plains and stand in the middle of them for a while and not do anything but look around and remember back when the comanches ruled those planes there wasnt anything out there. Just stand in turn 360 degrees and of course its very flat out there. There is a musician from lubbock who says west texas is amazing. You can see 20 miles in either direction, in any direction and he said if you stand stand on a tuna fish can you can see 50 miles in any direction. [laughter] they say its country you can watch your dog run away for three days. [laughter] i live in santa fe i live in santa fe. And think for a moment that these comanches could navigate 800 miles easily across these planes. Imagine just simply being there sometimes and going back to imagination and imagine because they were real. They were absolutely real. There was another moment for me it was very telling. Its always fun doing the research. When i was a reporter its like you just wanted to keep reporting on the story. By the end of the reporting on the story you were the worlds greatest authority and he wanted to keep going being the worlds greatest authority never having to do anything. The Stonewall Jackson he lived in lexington virginia and he lost his first wife giving birth to a stillborn son. He was so distraught and so overcome with grief people that he was losing his mind. What he would do if he would leave the house where he was living a walk to the graveyard, his wifes graveyard and stand there. Then he would turn and he would walk back to the Virginia Military institute where he taught. I think i gave that walkthrough for times and it gave me chills every time. The graveyard is the graveyard where the wife still lives and where he is now. I remember was a cold november day as it was when he was there. The wind howling and the leaves blowing. I mean just seeing and feeling it and then turning and walking as he did, tracing his walk. He was walking back to a section of it and that just gives me whole worlds of information. I hate to do this because i have lots more questions also but im sure you do and we are running a bit short on time. So i think i will turn it over to you while and let you ask questions that are pressing for you. Theres a sense of excitement about the scene. Step up to the microphone please. A sense of excitement when you describe scenes is really wonderful to hear it but im wondering when what it is that you achieve closure on the scene and say now its done. Do you have somebody else read it or do you reread it because i also sense that maybe you could go on and on and on with certain scenes. For me, first of all let me Say Something about how my writing process as it pertains to these chunks i called scenes a research the heck out of them. I get to the point where i have thought about this first scene where joe and roger walk across the campus from every conceivable angle. I get to the point where i cannot write it down. I get to the point where im afraid if i dont write it down i will lose it. This unfortunately usually happens to me when im in the shower so i come bursting out of the shower wrap a towel around myself and head for the computer. So i have to get it down. The writing for me actually is almost never painful. It is more like a release. I get that scene push down on the paper. However i then put it in a drawer and i wont look at it for at least a week and hopefully more like three or four weeks while i move on to write other scenes. I know when i come back to it and look at it the way of readers going to look at it im going to see strengths and weaknesses and i may throw the whole scene out for a certainly will tweak it and fiddle with it and improve it. I will do that a number of times as the manuscript evolves. To me im not not sure theres ever closure. The thing goes off to the publisher at some point because it has to go up to the publisher. You get the book and you realize theyre things you could have done better. So im not sure theres ever complete closure but that thats sort of the way it works for me. Your subjects are so interesting, some of which im aware for some of which im not. My question is very basic, how do you choose your subjects or events . Hampton has a good story about how he found the kingdom of ice. This whole question of how you picked topics is definitely something that i have tried to analyze a little bit. You dont fully understand it. Its sort of half rational and half irrational. The rational part is are there good documents has it been told recently . Hasnt been told well is it part are you going to be swimming uphill against the current in order to get that kind of story published . Things like that and the irrational part is like the feeling. Its just like a hunch. Its literally sometimes i will feel that kind of tingly spine kind of thing that you feel like wow this is just a haunting story, beautiful story, poignant story and its something i have to tell. So its great when you have both. As far as the most recent book yeah and i think i do magazine journalism between my books and there is a semipermeable membrane between my journalism work in my book work. I got an assignment for National Geographic to go to oslo norway to write about in a region explorer who has a museum in oslo called the frond museum, this boat and inside the museum there are repeated references to an American Expedition called the uss jeannette, George Washington delong and its mentioned for a five times with the assumption that you know what it is. I had never ever ever heard of it and i filed that away and decided there was a book in there. As soon as i got home i found out that it was a big deal in the 1880s. These guys were household names. This was a u. S. Navy expedition very important one but it somehow felt between the cracks of history. Thats really how i got the idea for the current book. Just a note on that, this is a field exploration that was absolutely scrubbed within an inch inch of his life for a decade and a half. Everybody wrote everything they could possibly find because i thought of 10 or 11 ideas that had already been done and hampton found the scene. Its interesting where you found it. You didnt find it at the new york public library. Anyway we are all trying to do that. Do you ever start with a place . I love this place, there has to be a great story here . I want to live in this place imaginatively . Ive tried that because it really appeals to me because i said a minute ago setting matters to me. I meant very into place as a writer. I have tried that and it has never really worked. Not to say it couldnt work. Its one of many possible starting places but it hasnt worked for me. Its very much what hampton said and i sort of leaned towards the feeling part of it this king william sensation you get when you come across something you know could not just be a story but it may be a really great story. I know that feeling when i get it and then unfortunately my agent does not agree, doesnt get the same tingly feeling. [laughter] so we move on. They are more focused on the rational part of a sometimes. As far as places concerned i seem to come up with story ideas like siberia. My next book is about a battle that happened in korea. I never come up with brilliant book ideas that take you to hawaii. [laughter] i just dont think that way unfortunately. Im not sure which of you to his next. The question concerning argument and story. His sister in argument or is it a story . It depends on whether or not you have a thesis as hampton was saying. One of the academic books are often driven by some sort of a thesis whether you are Frederick Jackson turner or Walter Prescott webb theorizing about the american west. There has to be a single central driving concept and one of the things i think we all share here, i know of hampton and i do and i think dan does too we believe the truth of something lets say the civil war can come through in your presentation of the piece without having an overarching thesis of some sort into which all of your factual information must be put. We deal in stories and i dont think its any less valid a way to communicate to lets say someone why the comanches were important American History or why y. Stonewall jackson was important to do the confederacy or how he affected the war. There are still plenty of ideas inside of this but there is no overarching single idea that you are arguing. I think that is the difference between me and people that write books that we would call academic books and im with hampton. The differences are exaggerated. I love many academic historians. My favorite historian is william manchester. He wrote the twovolume piece on churchill. Anyway im stumbling and fumbling. I think its kind of a false dichotomy. I dont think its either or. I think its both. Its all of the above and i dont think nrda should replace traditional academic writing either. I think it should just be one kind of tool in the arsenal of how to teach and read and enjoy history. Like i say the tectonic plates wouldnt shift. It would be okay but a lot of academic diplomacy to fear it or make a subversive. Then they make home at night and read sam glenns book or something. [laughter] the argument may be between the propaganda of the story. Thats a clear distinction. Speaking of propaganda i didnt set off to write the boys in the boat in order to teach my readers about the depth of cynicism that were involved in nazi propaganda surrounding the 1936 berlin olympics but i think if you read the story you are going to come away with a pretty vivid sense of how dark and cynical that effort was. So again i agree i think its a false dichotomy. I think that story does teach and does make an argument. If its worth its salt that will do that. Yes maam. This may need to be just about the last question unfortunately. Well, two more. By questions about using letters internally within your work. Do you try to summarize generally what you know is your writing or do you try to sometimes use quotations and if you use quotations how often do you use them . Are you talking about when a letter is the source . Yes, letters between people so you have actually what they said and did many cases this is very oldfashioned english. Personally i do both. It depends. If theres there is a particularly apt line in the letter that i think summarizes or gets across the key thing that is really essential i make a direct polk from it. Its a more general sentiment for instance bob months wrote to tell him his Family History was jewish. I didnt quote from that message message. It was paraphrased paraphrased basically so i think both have a place. Just about the only way you can get away with using first person in history is quoting from letters and journals. I think one of the things, my big dilemma in writing my civil war book was in my just quoting it in the body of the text itself so i would say two sentences in the body of the text and when am i breaking up the peace . When is so significant even though it is written in 19th century language, when this is so significant that i will break it out . That is the thing i wrestled with every page almost. Which quotes should come out like this and just let the guy or the woman speak for him or herself. I did that in the most recent book. I have this experience but i think all historians fantasize about but it has never happened to me before. Thats finding a distant relative who says you know i have got this trunk in my attic. [laughter] full of letters yellow old letters, would you please take it off my hands . It proved to be a treasure trove of the personal papers of the widow of this commander of this voyage. I use them a lot. Just go forward into the whole thing from beginning to end. But thats rare. Usually there are phrases or snippets. This gentleman has been waiting. Just a minute. I guess i would like to get something clarified. I think it was mr. Sides he said he didnt marshal arguments and try to make a case. I thought if you are writing a book you were telling a story one of the things readers want to know is what did the writer think what are his conclusions . That you draw conclusions . Was joe mccarthy bad or good good or do you just put the facts and expect the reader to draw on the conclusions . I think what i tried to do is to draw conclusions through narrative and not the argument. I wrote this book about kit carson. Kit carson is a very complicated did. Consider this great indian killer. His first wife is indian, his second wife was india. He was very Close Friends with many tribes. A complicated person just as Stonewall Jackson was a complicated person but i dont want to tell you, i want to show you what he was like. Let you decide so yeah i dont like to be completely coy and say i have no opinions on the writer. You decide but i dont either like to have this great summation of this great conclusion at the end of ties it all up in a bow and says this is what he or she was like. I hope that begins to answer your question. I agree completely. I think probably for instance with the nazi propaganda top of that is a hard case to make. When im done treating that topic i expect youll probably come to a particular opinion but im not going to tell you what that opinion should be. Its perfectly reasonable to do that but thats not something i choose to do. Im arguing every paragraph in some sense. It depends on what sense you mean i guess. Im arguing that comanches when the horse tribe swept south and eradicated the apaches and changed history and change the entire balance and the entire history of the country does that sound like argument to you, it is. But i have been doing that constantly. I do it all the time. Im arguing but its maybe the style or the type. I dont quite know how to answer that question that anyway to some extent i want you to understand what i think that im going to try to persuade you that this is what i think that im going to go out of my way to persuade you. Stonewall jackson was secretly a passionate 19th century romantic with an abrasive beauty. Im going to argue that point and make you believe it. [laughter] [applause] i would like to thank you for attending this session and your support of the festival. Dont forget to become a friend to ensure our festival remains a free event and supports important literary programs in our community. All audience members are asked to vacate the venue quickly. [laughter] so the next program can commence. You guys were great. I just want to make sure they get the signing. Where do you start with your signings . [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] booktvs live coverage of the tucson book festival continues. You have been listening to s. C. Gwynne Hampton Sides and Daniel James Brown all historians talking about what theyre calling narrative nonfiction. Well, joining us in just a minute is s. C. Gwynne has written a book on Stonewall Jackson rebel yell is called and we will be talking about the civil war and Stonewall Jackson. From what you heard from the panel or if you have any questions for this author 202 is the already area code 7488200 eastern and central timezones 848201 and we are live from the university of arizona where the tucson book festival is held. Its a Beautiful Day out here in tucson. Unfortunately we are inside but fortunately we have some very interesting authors that are taking your calls. We have got a couple more hours of programming to go today and we will be light again tomorrow. You can get updates at booktv on our twitter feed or you can go to our web site, booktv. Org and you can see the full schedule there as well. Joining us is s. C. Gwynne. Here is his book. Lets show you the cover. Its a pretty dramatic cover rebel yell, the violence and redemption of Stonewall Jackson. Mr. Gwynne first of all what was it like to research as Stonewall Jackson . I the archives wherever you went pretty good . The civil war, have to say the civil war suffers from no shortage of data a broad data and information. Its the most written about and Research Topic in American History. Unlike some subjects like in my previous book where they were few and far between, in some ways you were drowning in data and the weight and research of letters and microhistories and Everything Else and to some extent the challenges to find your way through it. Note. The story of this award is a story of a transformation in the generals are the best. With the the civil war transforming people all over the world there were two versions one was the political general, other of glorious senators and congressmen and speaker of the house and those who often came to the ear of the war and were incompetent and word cowardly and washed out with a very negative side. Of the other side you have ulysses s. Grant leading on the broom just before the war with failure at everything he had ever done. Just like failure in business. With the obscure failure of a physics professor these transformations follow with amazing speed what is amazing he went from being an eccentric physics professor to the most famous military in the world. What did he employed it made him successful is wellliked . That is a very complicated question. First of all, he won it when everybody else was losing. That is simplistic but winning accounts. So he moved armies at speeds of known at the time to train and away they had not before. And to rely on history and deception and speed and astonishing ability to make decisions out of the great wilderness. And to have a tremendous ability to do that. But then to not get out of the of park but then the confederate general was compared to napoleon and suddenly is the most famous general of the war. But he was wellhead ahead of his class with the generals of the early war. How to fight. Host march 2015 right now. Was Richmond Virginia like . At the end the whole commercial side was the famous pitcher was from the Warehouse District from hiroshima the warehouse of Industrial District of where the south was in fact,. But the subject of my book Stonewall Jackson died may may 1863 so it was still the prosperous capital. Host rare was Jefferson Davis . Had he fled . Just to be fair my book ends may 1863 so the whole end game of the war i really did not give in to say youre probably better asking a jeffersonian. Host we will take some calls for you. Caller i am calling because i enjoy this program and a one to express my gratitude to mr. Gwynne for empire of the summer moon. This. Guest thank you. I appreciate that. Host what is the topic of the empire of this summer moon . Guest it is the history of the comanche indians. A book i wrote five years ago and then to get through that part through the texan and american and every indian tribe you could name. Host new york goahead. Caller i have to question is. With regards to Stonewall Jackson. He was a very religious man but it seems he was not very compassionate. And the other one is more generic. In the third is completed with consent. Antitakeover as prime minister. The touche discuss the attack on bismarck to disable the steering mechanism. And there is always mention of the world every so often i will come up with different accounts of what is happening. I dont know what to make of it or what to do about it. Guest you are afraid of that third book that he did not finish . I must say i am honored churchill or world war ii scholar so i have to disqualify myself however the first two volumes of the history are my favorite single night ever read. With but this is not my field but to is your original question he was extremely religious. The it turns out there were people in all sorts of wars that our religious and tolerate killing. Liggett world war ii for example,. In the early war one of the things he advocated was to march north to march to the great lakes and even with the black flag war it is not a pretty idea at all. How is a devout presbyterian to be racist . In the end to end the war quickly with the least possible casualties. So instead of having a very long war for man and woman and child try to end it quickly. Nobody did that although he tried it later. But so did linkedin and lee i am not here to sort out who decide god was on but to find the overwhelming weight of christians that we were of the right side of the gods reside in the germans and the japanese and italians were not. So natalie for christian nations to inflict death but to believe that god is on your side. But history has come down on the other side of history. But i dont think it was contradictory in the larger tax at the time. Host Stonewall Jackson was see a diehard believer in the confederacy . He was but not as much with the fire eaters in parts of the south. Extremely strident convinced the south needed to get out of the union. And absolutely convinced the absolution of slavery, he was a unionist until the very last minute. Jackson was not in favor of secession. Said he tried to organize a national day of prayer for what he saw coming. There was no one who believed for that institution of slavery. To fight off the invasion. So there were many different versions you could say of why people thought that. Host washington d. C. Caller thank you. I have a question it is in about Stonewall Jackson and i apologize. He is unfamiliar with but my great grandfather was born in d. C. And around the Old Navy Yard to hell with the big succession of mitt and at the start move the family to richmond and well looked like it would fall he slipped back into his Old Neighborhood and in between there he had a son he named after beauregard. Said he is back their late 64 semi question is was there a lot of this is going on where were they would slip into this house and then slip back into d. C. . I would say that is fairly unusual. Earlier it was easier but then it got harder. But i would say generally speaking to say richmond into washington and those things that got very much more difficult. In sympathies for through . The union . But where do the sympathies lie . I think he is gone. I hope that answers your question. Host michael from alabama. Caller good afternoon. It is an honor to meet you. I am very interested in Childrens Book writing widow, from the perspective of a professional historian miami studio artist. Loving to work at the mgm Warner Brothers hannabarbera style. And to make it come alive so with historical fiction and is not a professional historian. And i would really respect political history with those ablebodied white males in the past to make decisions that would cause more fair from later on. From the treaty of versailles and how they snubbed japan however hobbyist history is a term that i use about wars like the civil war and political decisions and so forth to say nothing of the kings. Host i think we got the point. Thank you very much to call an. Guest the first question i think is for people under the age of 19 i think the with my first book empire of the summer moon, my first history people would say this is interesting everything we learned about the west was dry and dusty. I think it is just telling stories. Instead of giving somebody a through z beginning of time if im talking to the eighth grade class i will tell the story where this six shooter came from these guys went out there who were being killed by indians and there were bands of fraziers to fight the comanche and then they had a terrible problem they didnt have enough bullets to shoot against their enemies and somehow that little fire shot of all for invented by a colt from the skin into their hands and i tell the story of that was the sixth shooter in he became one of the richest men in america how the of rangers rated the comanches. You can tell stories that are fun and dynamic and interesting that either involve the an individual such as this case the greatest texas ranger is possible to do anything certainly in my field of has been neglected. Host Stonewall Jackson the slave owner . Gimmicky was. He has an interesting rela he grew up in of parts of West Virginia where slavery was not a big part of against the laws of virginia that said you are not allowed to teach the slaves to read and write which he did in violation of the law. Host the next call for s. C. Gwynne comes from connecticut. Caller mr. Gwynne. Host turn off your television and listen through your telephone and go ahead. Caller freeman implied that if jackson had lived then south would have won the civil war. Day you agree with that . He is a wonderful historian but there is the big debate between the south and north. I think he died two months before gettysburg. The south failed to pursue its the advantages to take the high ground if jackson had been there almost certainly he would have taken the high ground and i dont believe what we believe now of what happened the battles were the same. So lets just say that it ended up with a confederate victory which it might have so to me it is more interesting now you have a Confederate Army victorious in so many battles the only one it didnt have a significant victory was antietam and now withdraw. But the army of Northern Virginia of losing to the north are they going to burn philadelphia . It is amazing to think of the demons and the spy would go so far to say gettysburg could have been a confederate victory. Host florida goahead talking to s. C. Gwynne on his new book with Stonewall Jackson called rebel yell. Caller good morning. How were you . I am holding your book right now i got it from a local library i have 100 pages to go. And is coincidental you were on tv today. It is fascinating from the civil war buff going back to my freshman year at the university of florida where my dorm was malory all named after Stephen Valerie the confederate secretary of the navy. I think it is well established most americans understand the majority of the southern population were not slaveholders but yeah generally supported secession. Day you have any numbers or percentage to tell us about the flip side . So many southerners at that Secession Convention at the second or third ballot who did not vote to secede and what percentage of the south would be considered unionist . Guest that is a very difficult question to the answer. But it depends where you are if you were in the border states are up at in the north the views are radically different in virginia they were radically different from other places particularly in the Southern States that seceded. I think virginia ideas wrote a book about virginia mostly so look at that. I would say majority. You get up to the end and what happened is those attitudes changed and they change very, very quickly. Sometimes i think it happens in a war within invader to the north invading the south in virginia across the potomac river, suddenly you have battles and people who die and relatives to die and attitudes harden and whatever you thought if you did was of good idea or if you thought the union was the way to get things done he was a moderate states rights democrat he would rather be inside the tent rather than outside to work with enormous representatives with advantages but they think the attitudes were so different between the early states that seceded after fort sumter in think those attitudes were very different it is difficult to generalize. Host a few minutes left with the ninth caller go ahead is mr. Gwynne hello. Caller i heard you talk about the war and if Stonewall Jackson called realistic he could have done that or could he have sustain that and how did they feel about him doing that . They thought he was crazy. Just look at the War Department in richmond had as a view that jackson was basically on of control he needed to be reined in and he had radical posture is in the early war the south had an idea it was said defensive war we were not to the invader and the moral sector was on their side it was a radical idea but eventually 86 degrees then they have the march in pennsylvania. But what could jackson have done initially . Absolutely but think if it would have had the effect that everybody always wanted everybody in the south wanted those invasions to have to make the north feel the pain to bring them to the table to win the 1864 election perhaps a sense they should intervene or mediates with the idea you could bring the war to the north was not a plan to dominate. Nobody rationally believed that would ever happen the south did not have the resources but maybe they could bring somebody to the table or ended on their terms where they ended up being recognized. Host overall what was his relationship with robert e. Lee . Very quickly relationship with dave is up through your the end, what he had with robert e. Lee was the Extraordinary Partnership that determined the first two years of Eastern Theater than and anywhere else. They were opposites in deeply religious but they found each other somehow these aggressive spirits found each other early in the war and formed a partnership that changed the world. Host we have one more call from seattle. Caller there is a piece of information that i think is very relevant for the civil war. Of course, i am against slavery but the piece of information i have never seen anywhere is what is the total value of the slaves in the south . Of course, the southerners were fighting to save. Why havent i ever see in that figure or estimate . And number two what is the estimated value of the slaves . I dont know the answer however if you hold the idea of constipated with we will put all the war for years to buy slaves justified everybodys freedom to a fair market with compensated slaves for for 05 years. I remember i dont remember if there was the number set . I dont recall seeing it but this abject was absolutely considered. Host may 12, 1863, what was that they like . Enrichment jackson is dead lying in state. One of the points i make in the book that historians have missed is that jacksons death had the first great outpouring of National Grief in america period. Not north or south. The Founding Fathers were old at the end people came for zack taylor is funeral but he never got anything done but it was shattering to the south as lincolns was to the door thous was jfk but the first great outpouring of grief the tides of history have watching this over was jackson. He became the National Funeral. For all the funerals that would never happen for the boys that would never come home it was deeply symbolic National Funeral and the trade would go back to the homeland of course, we did was bigger of Abraham Lincoln was bigger but what happened subsequently overshadowed immediately jacksons death in the south which in part if given dismiss said invincibility the you could win with the inferior resources with the underdog of the south and not only that but he was also more generous but Abraham Lincoln wasnt people believe he was a christian and warrior and a man who was fighting for the wrong kinds. Host s. C. Gwynne most recent book rebel yell the violence, passion, and redemption of Stonewall Jackson. Booktv live coverage from the tucson book festival at the university of arizona continues. Author of the book the case against the Supreme Court is next. Founding dean of the law school at uc irvine he is the only guest and afterwards he will join us. Then there is a panel with the nation magazine contributor and one of those has written a book is she is also joining us so we have plenty going on left here date number one of our coverage of tucson. Now we have the case against the Supreme Court. [applause] [inaudible conversations] welcome to the seventh annual tucson festival of the books i teach constitutional law and related subjects year the university of arizona thank you for sponsoring this video to Cox Communications also the cunningham family. The presentation will last 55 minutes including questions and answers so please hold your questions to the and. He will be available to sign books later but immediately following the session he will be doing a call in program with cspan said he cannot sign books until 4 00 then he will have a very short window before he passed to catch his flight t consign books from 4 00 through 4 20 p. M. I hope you can catch him then. [laughter] that is at the bookstore attend on the ball at the university of arizona bookstore they are purchased at that location if you are enjoying the festival we encourage you to become a friend of the festival your taxdeductible donation allows to offer programming free of charge learn more about friends of the festival benefits that the information with our at tucson book festival website at of respect for the author and fellow audience members please turn off yourself comes at this time if he thinks you have please double check to make sure it is actually off. With that i am very pleased to introduce the founding dean of the university of California School of law which the six short years as one of the finest law schools in the country. A prolific scholar a legendary teacher of constitutional law and related subjects he himself argued many cases before the United States federal courts including the Supreme Court. A frequent public commentator on issues and perhaps the most gifted translator legalese into plain english. [laughter] which the public oppose him a huge debt of gratitude. Caller. Thank you. Let me start by thanking the tucson festival of books for having me and for all of you for coming it is enormously gratifying for me as an author but to see so many people on a beautiful afternoon coming to hear about the Supreme Court and the constitution is wonderful. [applause] thankyou. I will tell a story that the book begins with. I was teaching with acacia were very familiar with that involves a woman born 1906 and Charlottesville Virginia with a normal childhood show to local Public Schools through junior high and always received passing grades. Her father left her mother her mother was destitute and had no choice but to place the girls in foster homes. When she was 17 she was raped by her foster fathers nephew became pregnant as a result. The foster parents were embarrassed by her pregnancy her foster parents had institutionalized called of homes for epileptics and the feeble minded. She gave birth to a daughter in soon after virginia began to in voluntarily have her sterilized. Virginia adopted a eugenics what a short hearing was held. She was given the i. Q. Test which was the earliest form testified she had a low iq. Many years later that harvard professor found carry and gave further career version and it was in the normal range. Another witness testified at her hearing that the social worker had agreement carries baby then six months alone and said something didnt see a normal about the baby. Just as the state of virginia ordered a tubal ligation be performed to be surgically sterilized. The lawyer took the case to the Supreme Court it should have been an easy case. After all the constitution and prohibits cruel and unusual punishment she had done nothing wrong. Even by that point in history with the word liberty in the constitution and translated fundamental rights surely one of the rights is a right to procreate but the Supreme Court eight one decision written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes ruled against carey. With the most revered jurist one of the most extensive language anywhere the Justice Holmes said three generations of imbeciles are enoughs. 1 4 her the sterilization. 60,000 people in the United States or in voluntarily surgically sterilized as the results of the of movement and the Supreme Court decision. I was teaching this and my knees students understandably were outraged by the case. The night after the class are realized i had been making excuses what the Supreme Court had done but all too often in my teaching or by writing a was making excuses. But if i thought about it critically to realize the Supreme Court has often failed at the most important times and wanted to write a book that said that. [laughter] host what d. C. Is the purpose to have a constitution in the first place . Guest i think the constitution is an effort with a document that is difficult to change. What makes it different from all other laws is in a statute passed by congress can be changed by congress any ordinance by the city council can be changed by the city council but the constitution it takes threequarters or twothirds of the states chancery quarters and houses of congress so why as a nation and sees itself as a democracy want to be governed by a doctor mitt the documents so difficult to change . Those who wrote the constitution do that there would be tremendous temptation is to compromise the precious values they do from World History that a crisis is the time to centralize power so they wanted to put a separation of powers into the document that in times of crisis there would be a of prescience a one hour most precious values in the document so in this sense it is the elaborate edifice to make sure the shortterm passions dont lose sight of longterm values. What is the purpose of the Supreme Court and the constitutional system part. To enforce the constitution also to ensure uniformity of federal law but i think the preeminent purpose is to enforce the constitution. The question i asked in the book all of you is how has the Supreme Court done over the course of American History to enforce the constitution . Host the most important constitutional issue writeup until the civil war was slavery. How would you grade that handling of that . America is it possible to give the f dash f. [laughter] until the 13th amendment that was ratified to abolish slavery not a single Supreme Court case expanded the rights of slaves every Supreme Court decision progressively and forced the institution of slavery and protected the rights of slaveholders. I dont believe on its own it could have eliminated slavery but it could help to chip away and it did not have to with dread scott purses sanford to say that slaves our property and that is born in the United States are not citizens. Dread scott was a slave who was taken from the state of missouri he brought a lawsuit in federal court been taken to a slave state to a free state was made a free person. The Supreme Court have ruled against them but instead said the matter where they are born our property but not citizens so they cannot sue the allows citizens of one state for the citizens of another but then they went further to say the missouri compromise was unconstitutional this was the key compromise that dealt with with the Louisiana Purchase specifying which states could be slave states or free states and the Supreme Court said the missouri compromise had the effect to take the slaves away from slave owners and violated the constitution and helped to precipitate the civil war. After birds congress adopted in the states ratified 13, 14 and 15th amendments. Guest those amendments radically changed the nature of society, government. The 13th amendment prohibited involuntary servitude also with laws to enforce it. The 14th amendment begins by overturning dread scott verses samper that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are United States citizens and. Also says the state deprives life liberty or property without due process and it can deny any person a coproduction and this is the first time the constitution would ever directly implied state and local governments than the 15th amendment adopted 1870s says the right to vote cannot be denied on race or previous condition of servitude. Host how would you grade the Supreme Court early interpretations without a mandatory curve . [laughter] guest i would give f or f. Why . Unless you are lawyers she probably never heard of there first Supreme Court case ever interpret the amendments 1870s three called the slaughterhouse cases. Louisiana adopted a law to give a monopoly to a slaughterhouse to the louisiana legislature. Some butchers who did not want to workfare brought the challenge in the Supreme Court rejected the challenge and in doing so narrowly interpreted every provision of the amendment and for example, the Supreme Court said the equal protection clause could be used only to protect African Americans from discrimination. But that is not what it says this is no person but because of that case not and tell 1971 the Supreme Court found anything other than racist to violate the constitution . Then for the first time when sex discrimination was unconstitutional with disabled opinion of the slaughterhouse cases the Supreme Court effectively had a provision wrote that out of the constitution when provisional mention no state can deprive any citizen of the privileges or immunities of United States citizenship to make sure states could not deprive people of their most fundamental rights. But the Supreme Court said federal courts cannot use the privilege immunities clause for state and local laws deemed unconstitutional it was five years old plan and the constitution the Supreme Court said no. Since the slaughterhouse cases there is a new one Supreme Court decision that has not been ever ruled that uses that privileges and immunities clause so what they did was projected a few years later that is rarely get to 1896 with plessey verses ferguson the Supreme Court held a separate but equal as constitutional that the law requires racial separation is permissible because of that jimcrow covered every aspect of southern life to imposing apartheid to so much of the United States. Host another charge is one that has failed with a crisis. Where some of the of worst decisions that took place . Why have a constitution . To make sure in a time of crisis of shortterm passionist to not lose sight of longterm values. One example the worst Supreme Court cases in American History of 1944. During world war ii 110,000 japanese americans aliens and citizens and 70 thousands were routed from their homes and placed what roosevelt called concentration camps. Race alone was used to determine who would be free and who would be incarcerated. Of japanese families were housed literally in horse stalls they should have been an easy case for the Supreme Court. Grace alone should never be used to determine who is free or incarcerated it never can be used to determine who is a danger. Nonetheless the Supreme Court in the six three decision upheld that decision of japanese americans justice black wrote the opinion for the court and he said war is about our chip this is just a hardship that japanese americans have to bear. Given the book you said dissent of the case as a rough paraphrase of editing is fundamental to our system is the idea that gilts is personal rather than inherited. The later jackson rates mcadoo not suggesting should interference the army to carry out the task is the people ever let command fall into unscrupulous hands the courts wielded no power equal to its restraint. Was there anything the Supreme Court could have realistically done to stop the internment of japaneseamericans . Guest it is decided 1844. At this point the tide had turned no longer fear of a Japanese Invasion on the west coast for glenn not saying that is justified but i think it would have been so easy for the Supreme Court to say that this was unconstitutional. Remember Robert Jackson was attorneygeneral of the United States under Franklin Roosevelt and even he said it was unconstitutional and what particular a troubles him is the decision for the space like of loaded gun to be used for the government and the future to take away liberties in wartime and i think that is what we have seen since september 11. Host another dark chapter in the Supreme Court history as you tell if it was the first 35 years of the 20th century period that professor is often called the of what in our era. How did the court golan . From the late 19th century the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional over 200 federal, state, and local laws that were designed to protect workers and consumers. Congress passed a law that prohibited the shipment of goods made by child labor. It wasnt even that protected it prohibited children under 14 from being used and for children over 14 they could not work more than 10 hours a day or 60 a Week Congress did not prohibit child labor but just said if they are used the goods cannot be shipped with interstate commerce clearly timed its authority to article one among the states. Nevertheless it was declared is unconstitutional and said that congress could not regulate commerce in this way. How many children were maimed or injured or even died as a result . This is an example when states tries to get minimumwage or the maximum our laws were declared unconstitutional. And congress tried to protect consumers it was declared unconstitutional when congress tried to regulate Agricultural Farm subsidies it was declared unconstitutional. It is like president franklin proposed to the Court Packing up for a long period of time 1895 through 1936 the Supreme Court designed all of these as unconstitutional. So i the failures seemed to consist of failing to protect minorities against oppression by popular majorities but it seems to be the opposite the Supreme Court for its though will of the democratic majorities that in each of these laws were supported protecting consumers or children subjected to horrible working conditions. When should the court stand up to popular majorities or when shouldnt step back and differ . Guest that is the basic question of did a constitutional law thinking about the constitution. When do we want the court to defer to the political process or stop the process . That is the key difference between liberals and conservatives. To examples. Their recent. Tuesday june 25th, 2013 the Supreme Court to five four declared unconstitutional a key provision of the Voting Rights act of 1965. The five conservative justices wrote the majority the liberals resented it is a provision that in 2006 congress extended 25 years almost unanimously 98 o was only 303 no votes in the house. It is hard to imagine this congress being so close to unanimous but yet the five justices declared unconstitutional the critical provision to usurp the states rights of congresss power. The liberal justices said deferred to congress his judgment it is unnecessary for Voting Rights. The next day june 26, 2013 the Supreme Court five four declared unconstitutional Section Three of the defense of marriage act federal law marriage had to be between a man and woman. The liberal justices plus Justice Kennedy the four conservative justices dissented say we need to defer to congress. [laughter] it cuts both ways isnt it interesting on tuesday it is the conservatives and we will not differ to congress on wednesday the liberals want to defer to congress only kennedy was the majority in both cases. Both liberals and conservatives want to differ and sometimes dont so of the agreement should be when. I think the constitution exists to protect fundamental rights in times of crisis you cannot leave the protection of the minority to a the majority. I think it has a very special role to enforce the constitution for minorities that cannot use the process to protect fundamental rights. In other areas we should give a great deal of deference to the political process to democracy. Host you talk about the Roberts Court. What is his background and his contribution in his role as chief justice . Guest he grew of request indiana his father was an executive in the Steel Company and he grew up in a privileged family. He went to Harvard College and Harvard Law School and was a clerk for a judge all United States court of appeals said can circuit than a clerk for chief justice rehnquist. Then he went to work for the Reagan Administration the office of Legal Counsel in white House Counsel then went to work at a law firm in washington specializing in representing business interests before the United States Supreme Court and took time off to go work at the Solicitor Generals Office they present before the Supreme Court he was the number 2 to Kenneth Starr while there he would refer urging the Supreme Court to overrule roe vs. Wade weighed in with prayer in schools he went back to be a lawyer in tell president george w. Bush made him a judge on the court of appeals to the circuit and spent two years there and tell a july 2005 president George Turvey bush nominated him to be chief justice of the United States john roberts was 50 years old then. If he lives to be 90 when stevens retired you will still be on the Supreme Court and another 30 years. Host in a nutshell what is the case against the Roberts Court . Guest i think it consistently has favored business over employees and consumers and all of us. The Roberts Court has very much close to the courthouse door to those who are injured. To illustrate of opec an example from the book and might surprise you. Did you know, if a person is injured from taking a generic drug that person cannot sue the generic drug company . Not for failure to warn, not for the design defect lot of federal or state court that is resolved to roberts Court Decisions in 2011 and 2013 for quickly tell you about the latter case. The woman in New Hampshire was given a prescription for the pain reliever. Was filled with the generic form of the drug and she took it as prescribed. She suffered a rare horrific but unknown side effect twothirds of her body burden blistered she is permanently blind and was put in a permanent state of a coma and then to say there was a design defect the Supreme Court ruled five four that makers of generic drugs cannot be sued for design defect for failure to warn. Had she taken the brandname version then she could have. This matters because according to the fda over 80 percent of all prescriptions are filled with generic drugs ever is a generic equivalent over 90 percent of the time the prescription is filled. The robber is Court Decision has the enormous victory to the pharmaceutical injury industry but a huge loss to us. Host the previous case is a preemption case as some of the other pro Business Case is so how did they get a wrong . Guest if federal law and state law conflicts federal law wins. Article six says the constitution is the supreme law of the land and in technical terms tread federal law on one hand state law on the other it was preempted but what is interesting is it is a drug that is often prescribed for those with diabetes or other conditions to speed digestion and it is now known a significant percentage of college users users, 29 percent will suffer a horrible irreversible neurological side effects. And now has a black box warning to a different women took the drug for a long period to suffer the side effect. They sued the drug company that they fail to adequately warn consumers. Shes a man that was meant to protect consumers, not to lead to injuries were they cant recover. The majority has two alternatives. Theres a third. The company could choose not to sell that drug. If it chooses to to sell it than to compensate those who are injured. Another series of transient cases decided by the Roberts Court involves something called the federal arbitration act. What is the federal arbitration act and why should the rest of us why should nonlawyers or anybody else care about it . Sure. The federal arbitration act was adopted in 1925. It says the contracts in interstate commerce that have an arbitration clause shall be enforced unless they are revocable under state law. Let me give you a concrete example where this comes up and then i will answer your question directly about why it matters to all of us. At t was advertising free cell phones for those who signed up for service. The concepts in ons and married couple went to get their free cell phones. They like all of us had to sign an agreement. My guess is like most of us they didnt read the agreement they were signing. They were surprised when they got their first monthly statement. They were each charged dirty 2. 80 in sales tax. They believe that at t promised free cell phones so it should have to bear those those costs. They decided they want to sue at t for fraud. It was a classaction suit great at t said theres an arbitration clause in the agreement that you signed. It says if you have any dispute you have to got arbitration and he cant be part of a classaction. But the california Supreme Court had ruled in the discover bank case of arbitration clauses are not enforceable in california in a routine consumer contract. The california Supreme Court said no one is where these clauses. There is no agreement to these clauses so the federal court of appeals said the concept c. Ons when. This is a closet is revocable. The Supreme Court 54 report reversed the decision. Justice scalia talked about the evils of class actions. Class actions terrorize business business, force business to settle claims of arbitration clause has to be enforced. The conceptions cannot bring a classaction not even in arbitration. Justice breyer in his dissent said the reason when a class actions in situations like this where a large number of people each lose a small amount of money no one is going to sue or go to arbitration for 32. 80 so why does it matter to all of us . Arbitration clauses are increasingly ubiquitous. They were found in Employment Contracts, consumer contracts and even in medical contracts. Not that long ago i went to see a new eye doctor for the first time to the receptionist gave me a big stack of papers to fill out in the middle there was a former is asked to sign that if i had any dispute with the doctor arising out of the treatment i could not see the doctor didnt have to go to our arbitration. I asked the receptionist at the doctor would still seem if i didnt sign the form and she said she didnt know. Nobody ever asked her that question before. That doctor did see me but i know many physicians will not see patients unless they sign arbitration agreements come in other words unless they give up their right to sue in court. Around the same time i bought a new dell computer. As you know when you use a computer or tablet like an ipad or a phone for the first time you have to click that you read the terms and agree to them. For the ipad the terms are 46 singlespaced pages long. I just click a green use the machine but this is why i decided to read the terms. Sure enough there was a paragraph that said if i had any dispute arising out of the computer i could not do dell and it have to go to arbitration but i wrote dell a letter saying i did not agree and in him they agreed i could sue them in court if we had a dispute. [applause] delta. Writeback but the computer still works. And i dont mean by telling that true story to undercut the point point. Arbitration clauses are pervasive if they take away the ability people to access the their right to have their day in court. Here today in the many portions of the book we have not yet had a chance to discuss them probably wont have a chance to discuss due to our limited time you paint a pretty bleak picture but there are some bright spots in the book. Can you tell us about what you regard as on the Supreme Courts greatest successes . I dont mean to say that the Supreme Court always is wrong. I chose my words in the book very carefully and saying the Supreme Court is often the most important times the most important tasks. Brown bee board of education on may 17, 1954 were the Supreme Court held that separate but equal has no place in american Public Education overruling plessy versus ferguson at least with education and ushering the end of jim crow laws. Yet i also believe the Supreme Court could have done so much more than it did in bringing about school desegregation. Think about american Public Schools today. Separate but not equal and becoming increasingly separate. I put up great deal of blame on that on the Supreme Court. I applaud the Supreme Courts decision in United States versus nixon won in 1974 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the president s claim of executive privilege to not allow him to keep the white house tapes secret. Mix and produce the tapes when he learned from them that nixon committed a crime, obstruction of justice telling the fbi not to investigate the watergate breakin because it was a cia matter. If we hadnt have the Supreme Court there to enforce separation of powers than the key check or checks and balances would have been lost. I applaud the Supreme Courts decision from june 26 of 2013 the United States versus Windsor Holding section 3 of the defense of marriage act unconstitutional and im hopeful late june of this year the Supreme Court will say state laws that prevent Marriage Equality violate the constitution and and have the same right to equal dignity and love and commitment that heterosexuals have eyes had. A cynical reader might think you like the Supreme Court was liberal and dislike the Supreme Court with its conservative. How do you respond to that . [laughter] but as my examples dont fit into that pattern. Lets begin where we started our conversation. I know of no one liberal or conservative who would disband the Supreme Court decision with regard to slavery like in dred scott. I know no one who would defend the Supreme Courts decision in plessy versus ferguson. Their few today who would defend the their few who would defend the Supreme Courts decision in that child rape cases. Brown versus board of education was unanimous decision. It was a liberal or conservative. United states versus nixon was a unanimous decision. It was not liberal or conservative you think about all those examples where liberals and conservatives would agree both to the failures into successes what im arguing overall is not ideological. Yeah are cases where there are ideological disagreements. Citizens united versus the federal Election Commission which i believe is a terrible mistake by the Supreme Court but i think i can make a strong case against the Supreme Court just focusing on cases where liberals and conservatives agree. You say a number of times in the book that you think on balance in the Supreme Court has made things worse rather than better. Would we be better off without Supreme Court . No, though i have to tell you i spent a lot of time pondering that as i was writing this book. There are constitutional scholars who believe we would be better off without Supreme Court with the power to strike down federal state and local actions. A very perceived as professor at Harvard Law School wrote a book called taking the constitution away from the court saying we should no longer have judicial review. Larry cramer wrote a book called for popular constitutionalism. He is the dean of Stanford Law School in which he says we should and judicial supremacy and yet as i reflect on it i believe that the Supreme Court got it right in marbury versus madison in 1803. They are the Supreme Court said the constitution exists to limit government. There are limits on those limits are meaningless unless they are enforce enforced. Without the court they will often go on enforced. I spent almost 40 years now representing prisoners including some on death row. They represent one time a detainee that they represent a homeless man in United States Supreme Court. A realism that for my clients use the courts are nothing. Criminal defendants, prisoners Homeless People rarely will win in a legislative process. One is the last time a state legislature adopted a law to expand the rights of criminal dependence . When was the last time a state legislature in its own passed a law to increase the rights of prisoners . So even though these groups they often lose in court for people like my client is really the courts are nothing. Are the benefits to people who like your clients were some of the cost you identify in a book on the cost to people like ms. Believe this if that was the plaintiff was the plaintiffs name in the plea this case and the children who were subjected to the conditions, the horrible working conditions of child labor during the years and so on and so forth . The honest answer is i dont know. I dont know how to add up all of the instances where the court make society worse than without the court compared all the instances where the court make Society Better and the 2a them. I would know how to identify all the benefits and costs let alone how to weigh the benefits and costs. I believe we need a court to enforce the constitution and the key is to think of ways to make the court better as an institution less likely to make mistakes in the future. Please join me in thanking professor cherinsky. And our wonderful moderator for his questions. We have about 15 minutes for questions from the audience. There are mike sent a child and i would encourage you to please keep your questions as brief as possible so we can get to as many people as possible. If you would line up behind a mikes i will point to one side of the room and then the other. You point out that the court got it wrong but at that time there were many states that were passing laws or it in voluntary and posted for quite a while. The last one i believe was rescinded by North Carolina in 1975, 70 something rather. Since it became clear that states were backing away from those why is it not possible for the Supreme Court to go back to that decision and say this was a bad decision bikes we overruled it ourselves. Its implicit in this question and you are absolutely right. The Supreme Court has never explicitly overruled buck versus valeo. Its overruled in 1942 and skinner versus oklahoma. That involved oklahoma eugenics law that said person three times convicted of a crime involving moral purpose it would be sterilized. The right to procreate is a fundamental right. Laws that provide for involuntary sterilization are unconstitutional. What happened in the 15 years between buck versus bell in 1927 in skinner versus oklahoma in 1972 . Obviously the nazi movements eugenics cause the United States to no longer be palatable. You mightve seen recently virginia passed a law directing compensation to those who were voluntarily surgically sterilized. Its a symbolic gesture. Most of those people are no longer live in no money can restore the inability to have children but i hope theres a day the Supreme Court says skinner versus oklahoma implicitly impede the court explicitly overruled buck versus bell. Will you share your view on the constitutionality under article iii of the federal arbitration act and the likelihood of the Supreme Court might decided that issue reaches reaches . I will answer simply and quickly. I think this is a very proarbitration of the Supreme Court. Arbitration tremendously favors business over those who were injured by business. Why . Because business doesnt want cases to go before juries. Business perceives that juries are proplaintiff or proproin favor of those who are injured. An arbiter is somebody who is likely to be displayed by emotions. Also its important that business gets to strike those who are arbiters as to consumers but individuals who want to make the income as arbiters notepad if they develop a pattern of business they will no longer be employed to do it so theres a subtle bias. One way in which the Roberts Court is being probusiness is to systematically rule in favor of attrition selecting the court will consistently uphold arbitration rejects constitutional challenges. Thank you. Could you address the issues in the arizona case before the Supreme Court right now regarding redistricting a vote of the people . The case was just argued in the Supreme Court about 10 days ago. Its Arizona State legislature the arizona redistricting commission. Arizona i think wisely adopted an initiative to take districting progression of districts out of the hands of the legislature and give it to an independent commission. California followed arizonas lead in the california has created an independent district for state legislative districts. In fact i shared an elected commission and we put him back in the late 90s and independent commission. Otherwise the Political Party that controls the legislature draws districts to maximize their seats for that party. Computer programs are sufficiently sophisticated. There can be an enormous variance between the amount the Political Party state for state and the number of districts bearable to control. I strongly favor independent district commissions paid arizona legislators brought a challenge this thing article i of the constitution says that the legislature of the stage to set the time, place and manner of state elections and they say therefore you cant give that to a districting commission. The United States court of appeals for the ninth circuit upheld the arizona law. It said legislature refers to the political process of the state. Its not just the legislature itself. Besides that look at the language of the constitution that the legislature should know the time, place and manner of elections. To me that doesnt say anything about districting and i think its permissible to give districting to an independent commission. When i first heard of this case i thought the challenge was frivolous. I thought it was so clear that the people unless they wanted to do this they should be able to. The conservatives would most like this because this is after all a state choosing parts up in the people of the state choosing. Its clear from the oral arguments 10 days ago that the most conservative vote to strike us down i dont know whether majority is going to be on the case. Its not possible to solve an oral argument but an independent commission for districting is a key, its progress towards key government and i think it would be a shame if the court takes that away from the states in their ability to do this. [applause] you have made the case against the Supreme Court. How do we fix fix it . [laughter] thats the last chapter of the book. The last chapter before the conclusion i hope you all get the book and read it. Let me quickly because im getting more questions, i list many reforms that i think together could make a real difference. It would change the way justices are picked and merit selection of justices were a think a president can create an independent Commission Democrat and republican say i wanted to send me names and out i promise to pick your names are asked for additional names. We need to change the confirmation process in the senate to make it meaningful. I strongly favor 18 year nonrenewable term limits. [applause] i think we need to change the way the court communicates. I believe there should be cameras in every Supreme Court proceeding. [applause] the ethical standards that apply to Federal District court in federal court of appeals judges do not apply to Supreme Court justices. We should apply the same ethical worlds to the Supreme Court justices as we do other judges. We should also make it that no justice gets to decide whether you are accused. Those are just some of the reforms in the nexttolast chapter but i think i can make the case that together these are steps that may have prevented mistakes in the past. During the American Civil War lincoln jailed several of his critics and the Supreme Court ruled that was unconstitutional. Lincoln ignored the decision so in a time of war if the president of the supreme Supreme Court disagreed that the Supreme Court actually have the ability to defend their rights . Es is the answer to your question but the history is somewhat but not completely accurate. You are absolutely right that during the civil war lincoln jailed his critics in lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus so his critics couldnt come to court. I was clearly unconstitutional. But it wasnt declared unconstitutional until the ex parte milligan case after the lincoln was no longer live. I believe that the court could have declared it unconstitutional. Is there a chance that a president could ignore a Supreme Court ruling . Sure there is but i believe the Supreme Court has so much institutional credibility over such a long period of time but that is unlikely to happen. Richard nixon initially said he was going to disappear disobey the Supreme Court ordered to release the tapes and he was told by the Republican Leaders that he should not do that but he should comply with the law. So yes theres a danger of president s of the finance in the Supreme Court but thats not a reason for the Supreme Court not to enforce the constitution. You you just touched on this but why are the Supreme Court justices the only justices and federal, Appeals Court that do not have to follow the canons of judicial ethics . I think its wrong. That is just the way the law as written written. Federal district court, federal court of appeals judges have have to meet ethical rules or they dont just apply to Supreme Court justices. Also when i alluded to this very quickly now theres a motion to a Supreme Court justice be disqualified is left to that justice to determine it. No one should be a judge for himself or herself really got to come up with a different procedure for it. Im going to stick with this line of readers since all of you have been in line. Thank you. Do you think the Supreme Court was the correct place to take the issue of who won that election, gore v. Bush . No but for technical and not obvious reason. The question up what was the question of florida law. Even assume that the Supreme Court was right that counting uncounted ballots without preexisting standards violated equal protection. There were two possible things to do, create the standards. It would be easy to do. How many corners of the chad had to be attached and pick whatever number you want and you got it or stop the counting of the ballots which to do with the question of florida law. There is no doubt liberals and conservatives would agree to that. The law is very clear and has been from the beginning of United States that state law is left to state courts to decide. Its not for the United States Supreme Court to decide. Questions are purely state law. What i think the Supreme Court got wrong in gore bush v. Gore was they sent it back to the Supreme Court discussed borderline that discuss bush v. Gore in the book. Much of our discussion this afternoon has been on the arbitration system and the arbitration clause. Could you describe that process and a little bit more detail so maybe we might understand that . Sure. Anytime theres a contract the contract can say that rather than go to court the parties agreed they will go to an arbiter. The arbiters are private individuals. Its not a judge. There is the American Arbitration Association. There are groups of arbiters. You are a high, a lawyer or nonlawyer could be designated as an arbiter and the contract would specify how the arbiters decided. Let me give you an example of the Supreme Court called circuit city versus adams. Do you remember circuit city . Adams applied for a job there. On the back of his application in small print that said if he had any dispute was circuit city he would have to go to an arbiter and couldnt go to court. Who reads all the small print in an application for a job . A few years later after working at circuit city he had a discrimination claim against circuit city and he sued them in california state courtbased on california law. The United States Supreme Court ruled 54 no. He edited the contract was circuit city because on the back of his application is set up a good arbitration. So whether its an Employment Contract or a consumer contract or medical contract if people agreed to give up their right to good go to court and go to private arbiter instead they are then bound to do that. Arbiters decisions are generally not published. They are very difficult to get an arbiters decisions overturned and by so aggressively enforcing arbitration agreements the Roberts Court closed the courthouse door to all of us when we are injured. Im afraid we are out of time unfortunately. Thank you all for attending the session. Dont forget to become a friend of the festival to ensure that the festival remains a free event. Additionally all participants are asked to exit the event quickly so we can get to the next program on time. Thank you very much. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] you are watching booktvs live coverage of 2015 tucson festival of the book held on the campus of the university of arizona. That was Erwin Chemerinsky talking about his most recent book, the case against the Supreme Court. A couple of years ago he wrote a book called the conservative assault on the constitution pity can see the numbers on the screen. If youd like to join us for a call in with professor chemerinsky 202 is area code 7488200 for those of you in the east and central timezones 7488201 for the mountain and pacific timezones. Professor chemerinsky still chatting with the audience as you can see. He will be joining us in just a minute. After that after we are done with our callin program theres another panel here this afternoon and that his contributors to the nation magazine. Representative Raul Grijalva who is head of the progressive caucus in the congress, he will be on that panel along with Katha Pollitt who has written a book called pro reclaiming abortion rights and also leave fang who has written a book called machine, field guide to those three will be participating in a panel in just about 30 minutes or so. We will bring that to you live then after that Katha Pollitt will be our guests for another call in. We have to call ends to go and im going to grab professor chemerinsky and bring him over here so we can get started. We have a full day of coverage again tomorrow. 7. 5 hours of coverage tomorrow seek go to our web site booktv. Org and you can get the full schedule their pity well see see on the righthand side scroll down a little bit and youll see in the righthand side were so scheduling could it be at the print button you will see the full schedule there. So we have four more collins or five collins tomorrow so you have lots of chances to talk with authors who are participating. We have been sitting here in the gallagher theatre here at the university of arizona. Its a Beautiful Day in tucson. About 120,000 people attend this festival on an annual basis so it is held in the quad of the university of arizona. The cspan bus to tenure. If you follow our twitter feed you can see some of these outside shots that we have been getting. We have been outside a little bit and we will show you the crowds and some of the setting out here. Joining us now here on our set is professor Erwin Chemerinsky. Professor chemerinsky lets go right to cause because we have lots of people waiting to talk to you and we are going to begin with a call from rob in san diego. Robbie robby were on the air. Go ahead. Caller thank you very much better knowing them them and them a number can people watch cspan and want to have the comment on the Supreme Courts rulings freedom of speech and our high school specifically contrasting the fabulous tinker case with morse and fraser and hazelwood. Just go share. The first case that you alluded to is a case called tinker versus des moines board of education and in tinker the Supreme Court eloquently said students do not leave their freespeech rights at the schoolhouse gate. The court protected right of students to wear black armbands to protest the vietnam war but in every case since then and you mention them by name, the Supreme Court has ruled against student speech in favor of the ability for school with ministers disbanded to punish speech. One example is worst versus freddie. The olympic torch was coming through journal. Guest . A student got together friends with a banner that quote bong hits for jesus. The principal. That was a message to encourage illegal drug use. She confiscated the banner and suspended a student from school to the Supreme Court 54 said the student of the punish for the speech. As Justice Stevens says its hard to believe that the speech had the slightest effect. Hard to believe any student the smartest or slowest is more likely to use drugs because of this banner. This case shows the deference given to school with administrators alike are protection of student speech. But today was calling in for madison wisconsin. Hi david. Caller hi. Professor guinevere proposals to reform the court require a constitutional amendment and if so what should the amendment say . Guest thats a great question. Only one of my proposals term limits and Supreme Court justices would acquire require a limit. For example any president could create a merit selection panel. Jimmy carter did just that in the Federal District court and federal court of appeals judges and never got a Supreme Court omission. It would take a constitution take a constitutional meant minute to create term limits for justices. I am encouraged by the possibilities even though constitution limits are difficult. This afternoon when i mentioned term limits there was enthusiastic applause from the audience. Texas governor rick perry obviously no liberal when he ran for president in 2012 for an 18 year nonrenewable term. In answer to your question which of the memos say . Just what i proposed, the person nominated to the Supreme Court in the future and confirmed that serve for no longer than 18 years and they could not be renewed. Host when was ucirvine law school formed a wellwisher role . Guest of the regents of university of california proved it in 2006. I was named the founding dean in 2007. I moved to irvine in 2008. We accepted our first students in 2009 and that was our sixth year of having students. Host are there any Supreme Court cases that you dont know . Guest there are many Supreme Court cases i dont know but one virtue of being a specialist having been a law professor for 35 years as the ability of knowledge in the field. Host when you read a Supreme Court case what do you look for . Guest i start as everyone does i wanted to understand the facts of the case may teach my students the importance of looking at the facts. Then try to understand whats the holding . Was the principle lot stands for for . How broadly or narrowly has the quarter to believe that the minimum interested to see what is the defense and whats the difference between them . I like everybody else look at the line of the justices. Soften Ryan Anthony Kennedy is as a swing vote. One place to start where did Anthony Kennedy cannot . Host how important our dissonance when it comes to the actual law . Guest dissents often are the basis for the future. This afternoon we were talking about the Supreme Court decisions in 1890s and 1936 that ruled against laws to protect consumers. The dissenting opinions became the majority opinions in the future so i think the dissents are there to put forth the idea so future justices can take advantage of it and make it the law. Host we are talking here in booktv with Erwin Chemerinsky. Heres his most recent book, the case against the Supreme Court. Jim into, washington you are on. Caller yeah professor chemerinsky as an undergraduate Political Science major i studied the Supreme Court and wrote my senior thesis on the equal protection opinions of the chief justice harwin who served on the court during periods of civil rights vote lib litigation. In your discussion of the Supreme Court cases following the civil war amendments and how those cases affected those amendments they have a think a really profound impact on the country and open the door to jim crow. Im wondering if he could, on that for a moment. Guest of course. In 1875 Congress Passed a statute that prohibited places of public accommodation like restaurants from discriminating on the basis of race. The Supreme Court in a civil rights case of 1883 that you mentioned said the Congress Acting under the postcivil war amendments could not regulate private behavior. It could only regulate state and local governments. So the Supreme Court not only struck down the statute but also greatly limited the ability of congress on laws that dealt with discrimination and racial injustice. Host barbara in new york city, good afternoon to you. Caller good afternoon. Professor chemerinsky i was just wondering if you would give your opinion on three justices. Oliver Wendell Holmes Louis Brandeis and Thurgood Marshall. Thank you so much. Guest Oliver Wendell holmes was one of the most celebrated justices in history. There are many of his opinions that arent applied that there are many of his opinions but i think are among the worst in history to this afternoon began by talking about buck versus delaware Justice Holmes said three generations of imbeciles are enough and state can impose involuntary sterilization sterilization. As Justice Holmes wrote the first cases about the First Amendment and allow the government to punish speech even when theres no realistic danger of national security. The first cases schenck versus message involving a man is certainly to leaflet arguing the military draft was involuntary servitude. For doing that he served 10 years in prison. Theres no evidence in military recruitment rick at the Supreme Court opinion by Justice Holmes upheld in the simpsons conviction. They both had very distinguished careers as active as lawyers before going on the bench. Louis brandeis very much was a lawyer who represented individuals workers, consumers. Brandeis is a distinguished justice on the court. He was a very powerful voice in favor of freedom of speech. They he is one the most eloquent writers to eloquent writers twos serve writers twos server in a Supreme Court justice. Thurgood marshall as the head of the naacp. Hes a lawyer who argued brown versus board of education Supreme Court. No lawyer did more to advance Racial Justice and Thurgood Marshall and then when he was a justice on the court he was very much a voice for that. Host would be it be fair to say Louis Brandeis and Thurgood Marshall and john roberts have something in common and in fact they were private lawyers lawyers for longtime . Guest yes and no. Yes they share something in common. They both argued many cases before the Supreme Court before becoming a Supreme Court justice at the no is ideologically they are different in who they represented is quite different. Thurgood marshall was always represented africanamericans and the cause of racial equality in the Supreme Court. Brandeis at times represented business but also argued in favor of upholding the laws to regulate this. John roberts as a lawyer was consistently on the side of business and has been that way is a justice. Host appointed you decide you want to be a lawyer . Guest my senior year of college. Open to that point if you ask made during any stage of college i would have told you i want to be a high school teacher. I took all of the College Classes to become a high school teacher. I did my student teaching. Unless it expires i believe im still a certified socials studies teacher in the state of illinois. I wanted to be like a be like the civil rights lawyers of the 1950s and 60s. I once do the kinds of things that Thurgood Marshall were doing. Host Erwin Chemerinsky is our guest and theres the cover of the books the case against the Supreme Court. Doug is in newport news virginia. Hi guys. Caller hello, how are you doing professor . I have two questions. The Affordable Care act is the lava law of the land, is that correct . I heard the question about the Affordable Care act but i miss the rest the question. Host isnt allowed to lend . Guest in knott. Caller can you tell me how governor nikki haley and governor bobby jindal had defied the Affordable Care act and i have another question. Im pretty sure Trayvon Martin had the right to go to the store and purchase his sweet tea and skittles and come back home. How can they convict a person in knott an unarmed black team in ferguson and so higher for those convictions when other people commit homicides and black people commit homicides and are convicted all the time . Host dead just a second it looks like the professor is a followup. Guest let me answer each of the questions and turned. The Affordable Care act calls on the states to create Health Care Exchanges but no state is required by congress to do something great is the law says the state does not create a Health Insurance exchange. The federal government can create a health care exchange. 62 governments have created Health Exchanges and the other 34 States Congress has done so. As to your latter question you identify an enormously serious problem in this country read there is an enormous problem with regard to police abuse, especially minorities particularly africanamerican man and there has been a failure for criminal Justice System or civil Justice System to deal with this. Host professor chemerinsky isnt the case that the Supreme Court just turned on health care in your view a legitimate case . Guest its clearly a legitimate case but that doesnt say what the outcome should be. Heres the problem. The law says that if a person purchases insurance on exchange they get a tax credit. But in 36 states the federal government created the exchange. Should the person get the tax credit if they buy insurance from the federal exchange . I think the answer is clearly yes. Congress wants to make sure that those who qualified economically could afford insurance from those exchanges and those 36 states the federal government has done so the only way people can afford is to get the tax credit. The challenges are people get the tax credits only if they purchase insurance from the state established exchanges. Thats what the case is about. Host in a subchapter you write the classic and i believe the most powerful argument for judicial review is the one first made for it, they need to enforce the limits of the constitution. What do you mean by that . Guest inmar briefers as madison in 1803 the Supreme Court said the constitution exists to limit government power. Those limits are meaningless unless they are enforced. Often the elected branches of government wont voluntarily choose to adhere to those limits to what we need is the court to be there to enforce the limits that the constitution places on government. Host so judicial review thumbsup still . Guest im still in favor of judicial review process utterly when you think of my clients criminal defendants including on death row guantanamo detainee, Homeless People they are not going to win in the political process. When his last time a state legislature adopted a law to increase the rights of criminal defendants quits when was the last time the state legislature had a lot to protect i think the courts are too often failed and we can make this a bigger better. Host cc in portland oregon. Hi. Caller two questions. On one the idea of strict constructionist for an originalist. Would that person be in favor of discrimination today and coming off the other caller about the police where did the police get their authority from . Is almost like its in the constitution that if they stop us we have to cooperate or if they ask us to do something with to do it. Where do they get their authority . Guest as to your first question the original constitution very much protected the institution of slavery. The 13th amendment adopted in 1865 prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude to change the original understanding. In terms of your latter question its always been understood that the government has whats called case power that the Fourth Amendment to the constitution says before the police can arrest or search a person there has to be a warrant. They has to be a reasonable search or arrest. The constitution presumes the existence of police under police power. Host at call close your home in Mission Viejo california. Hi you. He is gone, sorry about that. Lets move on to carbondale illinois. You are in booktv with professor chemerinsky. Caller hello. I have three questions. One is we have a plant called coppers Wood Treatment plant that started in 1902 and the citizens have not had any resolve with the contamination that has affected their community. My second question is when a person is in the county jail and has not been convicted i was denied the opportunity to register those persons to vote at my third question is we have a police force here who wishes to put police in Elementary School with the kindergartners to the sixthgrade. Where do people turn to and who can we turn to for these problems but this community is facing . Guest very quickly there is a federal statute, the superfund law referred to as that requires cleaning up toxic waste. You need to talk to environmental lawyer about that. Second in terms of voting a state can deny the right to vote if a person has been convicted of a felony 1977 Supreme Court case, state cannot deny the right to vote to those before they been convicted including those who have been held in jail so a Civil Liberties lawyer would be the one to help you with that problem. Third theres nothing that violates the constitution by putting a Police Officer and a Elementary School. It may be unwise but its not unconstitutional. With the police can do to school is limited by the constitution. Host professor chemerinsky has the Legal Society contributed to some of the problems with regard to laws and with regard to enforcement . Guest of course it has. I think lawyers and judges deserve most of the blame because they are the ones responsible for the legal system but i also think lawyers and judges have done a terrible job of informing people about the constitution. More people in this country can name the seven than the justices of the United States. That is why we do is important. Host who are your two favorite justices, current justices . Guest on the Current Court i think Ruth Bader Ginsburg and sonia sotomayor. I think historically i would put John Marshall one of the first chief justice is an earl warren at the top of my list. Host and Justice Scalia, its often said that Justice Scalias writings are often quite vivid. Do you agree that . Guest it depends on what you mean by vivid. He writes superbly. I think hes one of the best writers on the court but hes also the most sarcastic justice to serve on the court. I think that is a tremendous disservice to the legal system. I think hes a terrible role model for my students and lawyers about how to write. I dont think sarcasm is a useful way of writing and i think he is giving an example of the scenes. The number of times i see students trying to model themselves after Justice Scalia or read lawyers. That way i dont think is constructed to be caustic in that manner. Host that call is ripping los angeles. Ruby you arent booktv. Caller my question for the professors what is your opinion on the students that you see at irvine who took the sled down . Do you feel their rights would be violated if they couldnt keep the u. S. Flag away from the common area . Posted can you explain this to the National Audience . Guest about 10 days ago a group of students voted to take the flag down from the lobby the Student Union building. At some. In jan or point in jan or the sierra flag tacked to the wall the building. The students were divided whether to keep the flag on the wall or to take the flag down. The student that he voted 64 to take the flag down off of the wall of the building. That attracted national attention. Much of it was misreported trade for sample the university of california irvine bans the flag on campus. Thats nonsense. There were six students who didnt want the flag on the wall wall. Its not a First Amendment case. The campus can decide if it wants the flag in the campus buildings. In fact another group of the student body decided to put the flag back. Its not a First Amendment issue. The government can put the flag and government buildings were once applied to be displayed. Host now your opinion of the case . Guest i think it is much ado about nothing. I think so much was made of this. I believe the American Flag should be in government buildings. I believe the American Flag should be in buildings on the university of california irvine campus. Whether the student body wanted the flag tacked on the wall doesnt go they have an enormous amount of attention but i dont think you deserve the attention we saw. Host are. Host omar is calling in from West Sacramento california. Hi omar. Caller hi. [inaudible] the 47 congressmen who wrote the letter to the government of iran trying to subvert the process of president obama and his administration that have been trying to secure and i just wanted to know what he thought about that and what was his opinion. Guest in 1799 Congress Passed the logan act. He makes it impermissible for anyone to contact a Foreign Government in order to change the policies of the white house. The logan act was adopted long ago. It was based on the notion that the president should be representing the United States dealing with Foreign Governments. In this instance this was published as an open letter in a newspaper to the government of iran. Certainly members of congress 47 senators have the right to express their opinion. On the other hand i dont think this is the most constructive way of developing foreign policy. Everyone agrees iran should not have nuclear weapons. The question is how to get there . I dont think these 47 senators will undermining the present is constructive foreign policy. Host joe is in pittsburgh. Joe you are on booktv. Caller hello . Did you hear me . Host we are listening. Please go ahead. Caller my question is in reference to the justices. Im more fascinated by the lawyers who defended dred scott. To me these two guys are the most interesting guys in the Supreme Court. [inaudible] the case not only involved him but it involved his wife and his children. I would like to know if you are familiar with this appeal . Guest i am familiar with them and its always interesting on who argued the case of the background. Let me add something to your question that huber the justices . Miniature member the majority of the justices set on the court when the dred scott case came down had been slaveowners. Some of them were still slaveowners. I would expect them to transcend that and they would have written a narrow decision not the broad one that they handed down. But we have to look at the context of the times. Im not excusing them but im just explaining. Host the case against the Supreme Court is set tos most recent book the conservative and a solid constitution came out in 2010. What was the focus of that book . Guest conservatives since Richard Nixon had run for president has succeeded in dramatically changing aspects of the constitution. They wrote of the wall that separated church and state. They have lessened fundamental rights. They have close access to the courts so the key difference from this book is this has much more of a historical focus and i was trying as hard as they can to focus on examples that both can agree to. Host the next call for professor subeight comes from terry in boise idaho. Terry please go ahead. Caller i was interested in any thoughts you had on the Second Amendment and also the most defining characteristic of the conservative and liberal mindset . Posted before he answers terry what is your view on the Second Amendment . Caller i believe its far too vague for us to develop good laws on it and im interested, i think it should be clarified somehow and if theres any possibility of it being clarified . Guest the Second Amendment says a wellregulated militia directs people to keep and bear arms shall not in 1791 when it was enacted until 2008 the Supreme Court always said the Second Amendment means what it said. Its the right of the people to have guns for the purpose of militia service. In 2008 in the case call District Of Columbia versus howard the Supreme Court said these Second Amendment individual guns at least in the home for their own safety. He was a 54 decision. I dont know when the views on the Second Amendment became so ideologically divided that the five conservatives on the court took the gun rights position. The four liberals on the court took the gun control position. Your specific question was will there be a constitution amended to clarify the Second Amendment . No. Its so hard takes a real social consensus. Twothirds of both houses of congress, threequarters the states and there is no consent about the Second Amendment for guns rights. Host the second part is question of his question what do you see as the mindset of a typical liberal and a typical conservative . Guest conservatives initially to the gun rights position. The right of people to keep and bear arms shall not be threatened. The liberal takes the position of look at the whole Second Amendment. Says a new militia is necessary. They favor gun control is a the Second Amendment is a right to own guns for purpose of militia service. Host time for tomball curls two more calls for professor chemerinsky. Bird from california were in the air. Caller hi mr. Chemerinsky. Thank god for you. You are a wonderful voice. Guest thank you. Caller i want to talk about the arbitration clause. For the life of me i dont know why that hasnt been struck down. In the first place the Bargaining Power of the individual its nowhere in sight with an arbitration clause that is written into virtually anything whether we want to get a bank account a loan a credit card acrosstheboard or take it out of commerce of this country. Host first of all burn we are going to get an answer from professor chemerinsky but what is your interest in the arbitration clause . Caller i worked as a contact of the straighter for architecture firms for years. I am retired now. But i saw time and again as a matter of fact i was a member of the American Arbitration Association for some time. I know it well and its totally in favor of chamber of commerce. There is no way about that the selection of arbitrators, so many of them are retired judges. Host thank you sir. We have got it. Guest i agree. Im not against arbitration. If they would rather go do an arbiter than court they should be able to do so. My opinion is the same as yours. When lawyers impose arbitration on employees when manufacturers and merchants impose arbitration clauses on consumers they have no choice. In these instances is not a contractual agreement. Disfavors business over consumers over employees than it takes away the peoples right to their day in court. You know what concerns me is people have lost this right without even being aware of it. Host the last call for professor chemerinsky comes from michael in jamestown North Carolina. Michael you are on booktv. Caller thank you. My questions about the principle of stare decisis. As you know in 1979 the Supreme Court and the smith bee maryland case gave a decision i think it goes in Public Places where person has no reasonable expectation of privacy. As they turn over that information into the nsa. I a agree with the premise of the question. Host the case against a Supreme Court the most recent book and has been our guest at the campus of the university ever so of. Coming up one more panel today this is the nation magazine contributors after words to a yes for the callin program youre watching live coverage of the tucson a book festival on booktv. [inaudible conversations] please a and gentlemen will come to the nation magazine 150th birthday party. [applause] we are here at the tucson festival box with cspan booktv we have folks across america looking bad we are delighted to have them join us. [applause] my name is john and i write about politics with the nation. Is indeed dead is celebrating its 150th anniversary. 150 years of travel rousing and agitate the and investigating an objecting to call out the ugly of uses of Corporate Power to embrace the duty of movements for social and economic justice. [cheers and applause] it has spent zero long journey of 150 years we had to figure out where we would go with the pit. 4 the next 150 and we decided look at terry for the sun to soften several books because were told day pineda little speaker truth to power. [laughter] [applause] pooley are here to celebrate and highlight the courage to work of the nation and does. We dont want to spend too much time looking backward while we were founded by the abolitionist in 1865 we believe we have held true to the best of those values but we have not succeeded in all of our goals so would appears to have a lot ahead of. But if you were here in this room or watching so with that feels a phone you have become addicted to if you put it in the word nation 66866 that will tap into a world of the enlightenment and information. So please do that if you can rebut the of to tell you more about the magazine but right now so to give you a sense of what were working on now. And i assure you know, the remarkable Katha Pollitt. [applause] one of the few people who can come here to hold a thoughtful discussion of reproductive rights and feminism and then the next day give a seminar of poetry. , but talking about her new book which is the embrace of the struggle for the value of a society that respects womens reproductive rights in their struggles to be a part of all that we see for but also to get comfortable with words that a lot of people dont always say. Katha pollitt. [applause] next ever is lee fang an Investigative Reporter not to cast aspersion is but if you have a question about the Koch Brothers. [laughter] lee fang bottle is the modesty and shy that has investigated in and examined the role of billionaires and corporations and big money money, not to undermine our democracy. It is absolutely essential he recently joined the interceptor is a do project doing online investigative reporting and just this week wrote an incredible piece on how the fbi was working with local police to investigate for some reason the black law judge matter movements. The fact is with those difficult realities that they face in our society as well as why people would rather silence its rather than embrace the wisdom. Lee fang. [applause] police searched the country to figure out the elected official we have not found too much trouble with. [laughter] that we cannot let them on the panel we were stuck with only a blind and it was congressman Raul Grijalva. [cheers and applause] the cochair of the of her person if progressive caucus we have disagreed few times but the bottom line is hes worked very hard to make us disagree with him and more often than not one of the rare people really does speak truth to power so were very honored to have him. [applause] Katha Pollitt the nation is a diverse magazine if it does a lot of Different Things but one of the things we celebrate is americas oldest weekly journal of opinion. We express opinions but we dont like to express them that has been expressed to many times before for what might even be considered controversial. If you are a nation reader if you want controversy start with Katha Pollitt so i want to bring her in initially to talk about the value or usefulness to have a platform to express controversial and challenging opinions that 10 years from now could be conventional wisdom. It is of value to be. I love writing my column and look forward to when and analysts feel i dont have enough words and all have and space they should give me more space now that the format is slightly a different i can go over my 1,000 birds that feels like the extra 100 kurds is like an acre. Make a whole other form. Open his is a very important part of what the nation does and we have had strong and powerful forces i am so happy to have my colleagues and patricia, gary, and others people who have gone on a fly head but theyre all great. For me the fun of reading it is so important writers love to complain but if there really was that terrible thin while we go teach school or sell insurance or run the farm . What i love is to frame the argument to do research to Say Something that has not been said a million times already. Put has been said already often by the but to cut in in with political interest to Say Something fresh and new. That is wonderful. I love writing for the nation which i have been doing for many years. It is not an extension of of the nation but it does reflect it is a very common thing that they evil into writing a lot of books . Spee rick you write for a thousand words week after week then when you were faced with the book it does seem like the antarctic of white federalized i have been writing about these things with book is about abortion rights. So to take a deeper dive into that complicated subject to make a conversation in from blanks feels like a luxury and after that i stopped complaining to writing my column for ever 200 pages is really painful. Said to have a column or a forum by writing and my column for the nation is i get to interact with readers i know for they are and they know who i am. So what i have written florida newspaper for the oped him have to start from ground zero to explain your language to give the history of every think theres so little room to say the things you are trying to say and the great thing about the nation is you know, who your writing for. My readers are very forthright to tell the house from ibm and that is great i feel like it is a conversation and that is what i love. Sometimes get friendly greetings for those to relieve disagree. Guide to writing a lot about abortion rights i get letters that say Katha Pollitt abortion writer i am so much more than that what about my poetry . But i didnt get some cost ill mail but that is to be expected. If not then you were not pushing back enough. It is natural mostly people right if they dont like it if they like it they go on with their day. Either via is they cannot sleep until they write to you but that shows there is something to talk about. One of the great struggles is they dont push to the limits or use the words that were not used to hearing on major tv shows on a regular basis of one of the things you do is challenge with other people are accepting hero controversially after 9 11 with the issues to stir people up in a fundamental way. I did that was my column about not flying the flag after 9 11 that will go on my tombstone i still cannot escape that i may express myself more carefully but we were all upset especially in new york but i think exactly the moment when everyone is being the most patriotic and coming together all the newsmen are wearing the American Flag lapels you have to challenge that automatic response because what we saw happen in was the next thing there is a war. And that is what happened. Instead of having your column drop to continue to write for the nation. [applause] lee fang has a lot of back story and worked for the online work and i know full well they noted a of the nation magazine the years know exactly the work he has done the one of the things that lead did after brock apollo was elected was spend one better part of a year travelling across the country to look at how very powerful interest were seeking to undermine his presidency. Not to say thinking he was the best thing since sliced bread but looking at how people meddle with the process to have a profound impact on our democracy the nation tries to look at the structure behind it so to talk about what we have done over the years but the real power in america and how that operates. Thank you for the organizers is humbling to be here. I hope to continue my relationship with the nation that is where my real Investigative Journalism is paired with commentary and is known as of liberal institution for many reasons but that does not prevent it without corruption on bad system issues in a structurally it fits into the society. Viewing as left wing that has not prevented to take on the left the there are a number of stories that are rejected from the nation and a number of stories took a leading role of investigating the left i did some blogging last summer on the neutrality Net Neutrality and some of the largest civilrights establishments to a lot of money from comcast and verizon then they went to the fcc and said we cannot have neutrality this is something the nation published even my employers fantastic investigation are looking over their corporate financing. I need to pause for a second to say the nations magazine publishes this then sends them out to mess with very powerful people who actually like the nation magazine and that is part of what makes it work. We have taken a look at some of the biggest failures the field of the administration headed never uncovered and one of the biggest promises of obama as the candidate was to close the revolving door to stop the influx of lobbyist to take control of key committees and federal positions but we never saw a bigger form so we saw that published around this time last year that looked at obama is promises on closing them revolving door to reform lobbying and everything they did that could be ordered down from certain positions in the administration increased the problems because what did the community to . It didnt register if you look at the number of registered lobbyist but it is increasing that increased amount goes away from the books under ground and a key is into the way that lobbying is more sophisticated and also pays for Public Relations to pay off academics or the think tank everything that needs to be done to influence in that larger systemic that we reveal is we had to lobby disclosure act for a number of years if you contact members of Congress Asking them to support the bill you are supposed to go to the secretary or the house clerk to register your activities. This law has been on the books for a long time and obama promise to increase enforcement but it has never been enforced ever. If you are a shadow lobbyist doing whenever a lobbyist and does if you dont register it doesnt matter they have never lifted a finger to go after these folks dash they have never had as a prosecution is a great story and has prompted action on the federal level but not much has changed as sometimes is the case but it is typical for a bond that does not hold back but is honest to take on the sacred cows in the big institutions in washington. You have up wonderful book from your examination over a longer period of time how health care became the issue that major media covers its but there is the back story most people are not aware of with corporate money or power or influence. Discos is what i was talking about the sophistication of the influence the most important policy issue objectively of the obama era is Health Reform to understand how this went down part of this is in my book the machine in march 2009 obama had a summit to say what our Political Capital into passing the Health Reform they had a summit from the Hospital Association pharmaceuticals cave into the microphone to say this will be different it is not like the early 90s we will work handinhand to pass something positive. We agree with the skyrocketing cost lets fix it together for broke. Looking at the coverage whether the New York Times or whenever everybody reported as such this Industry Group is it supportive to aircraft lot more innocent i had the privilege to tour the country to see them more underhanded tactics used to go to different town halls of course, some of this is organic but in many cases organizers funded by industry to coach to shout him down to do real the conversation so it isnt should we change the way we in for a prescription in judge drugs . Novas have the conversation about a great people at town hall. To make it more of a food fight. Such a track succeeds organizers to be a disruptive the money came back to a small group of industries that did not want the bill a of the donors who did not want it so this would have been perfect at the time. You continued to examine some people may have heard this story about the workers and their protest . Wrote a feature at how the retail and fastfood industry has responded theyre not exactly labor unions but Community Groups and foundations tried to figure out new organizing models for people who work at walmart and big box three tort retailers and there has been pushed back and won quick anecdote one that has organized farm workers is in florida with distributors the people that are actually at the register of topple bill to get consent to solidarity obviously the fastfood industry does not look like just like that organizing some cave with the soviet flag and started waving it. The colleague to pictures and then they looked at of blackberrys then they take pictures and other time. They did not know who this person was so we could identify the person not a surprise but there were funded by a fastfood Industry Group and it was their p. R. People. But these types of strategies were laid out with a conference in chicago later that year bragging about the way they could and undermine the social justice message of the growing movement by creating these distractions cynically tisane gentleman lee fang. [applause] congressmen Raul Grijalva people should be informed the substantial portion of the room are your constituents. [laughter] [applause] and their the age percent that likes their congressmen. [laughter] but most of the time you deal with the media you deal with those a dont tell you much more they added no or a little less. Give us a sense of the role or the value of having a publication that moves from the progressive position rather than asking why. Is quite an honor to be here it is a great opportunity to talk about something important of late of what were seeing in the country with media has become more of a controlled information in a system compared to the oldfashioned and clash of ideas to let people begin to with the debate of the discourse is a is to be more prepackaged and delivered. Publications like the nation after the acknowledged and the debate allies uncomfortable to make allies uncomfortable because they pushed of unnecessary envelope but one thing that is lacking is consistency in and i think the nation represents a consistent path that moves with the times a n the circumstances but consistently to keep that philosophy or set of values and they think that is very important for lack of nurture is a lack of a consistency, and i include myself to be consistent. With the lack of real attention to what we are doing to the historic consequences of what we decided that this moment with the batf failing to put that Historic Context in front of the American People it gets weaker. We limit the discourse it is a war of those words i have heard deferreds framing and messaging. I am really bad at that. I get really bored. [laughter] said to be a practitioner of electoral politics the issue of consistency is important in the fight to stay at of Decision Making with the lowest common denominator. But one thing that has been helpful if i did not come to the progressive caucus that all of a sudden i am a progressive for the academic paper i have read but it is distinctive how you grow up to see time and history and that is why i am a progressive. Guide love the man many of us are still there but we were the symbolic no weaver the voyager to count on with iraq and military spending, intervention you could count on this to be the though on the issues that led to the broadway. But with time we began to feel that progressive caucus had to provide alternatives to provide a context to those ideas and budgets initiatives the legislation. We are Getting Better but it is also in the context of what we do nobody knows about. I think their new media has been a good to us from the traditional the fed and the newspapers here in tucson said is too bad. And not evaluating but that is too bad. [laughter] and in his radio has disappeared. The public radio continues to provide coverage of the debt is replicated all over the country so the nation and other publications have broader depth that is so important to the democracy i remember the clash over the Affordable Care act we wanted to universal single payer is we lost that. [applause] we lost that early in the process so we regrouped to come with a public option option after that was rejected by the senate may also lost that we voted for the Affordable Care act on the theory it is incremental to get this to the next steps some data now were fighting to retain what we have its not a lesson but just the way the politics are right now dominated by a short burst of slogan and steered by many in the nation continues to poke at that balloon and it is good for the democracy and all said to push the envelope because that is the hardest thing for three that i have seen to be consistent so of the American People have to look at the historical consequences and right now without information it is hard to urdu. We actually gave you a hard time moving off single payer them rethought that you should then we gave you a hard time on the public option we didnt play view but it kept pushing beyond understand of first he has not always got a pat on the back from the nation but one place where we wrote about you quite a bit is where you stood up in arizona on the fight over immigrant rights and what arizona was doing to limit protections and just take a moment to talk about that. The point was the boycott to do it over again a little more delicate . [laughter] but had been said that left at the consequences and the cost to the state by not dealing with it that social fabric grift the danger of not solving or dealing with that issue with builtin tolerance with that tranquility of the nation but retrospect i was right. [laughter] [applause] congressmen Raul Grijalva ladies and gentleman. [applause] actually conferred read why he was condonation and Magazine Panel because one of our most famous phrase is is i was right to live your decades later. [laughter] truth of the matter is a nation has been right. We were right about lgbt before anybody else or to meet the reverend Martin Luther king, jr. A regular contributor to the magazine in the early stages of the Civilrights Movement and to talk about the fact a 725 an hour is not a page f15 dollar is closer. We also like to say the congressman is one of there their people to realize when we are right. [laughter] we will go to some of your questions for in the series the spirit of cspan and go to the microphone. We would love dash your questions and dash as you work your way step up to the microphone but with a one and other elements, the nation in magazine a this point is spending a lot of time on the president ial race and rustling frankly the question is it time we have a woman as president of United States . Past time. [applause] but also whether a particular woman might be the perfect choice. [laughter] i think sarah palin would be good. [laughter] would have led just say about that is if Elizabeth Warren says 5,000 times i am not running then maybe we should listen to that. There is a pipe dream element to this that wishing would change things that the candidate who is ready to go in and all prepared is a very clinton and that nothing she is terrible. Id rather see her as president and dirty sanders failing to win. Not that he is so common. [laughter] but have my stage of life i figure i have maybe 20 or years to be aware of food the president is. [laughter] i would really like to see that women president and a prochoice democrat. Right now Hillary Clinton is my best option and i am sticking with her. [applause] suggest to confer you cannot easily say i am right, he is year. Said in a guy would also like to vote for a womans president maybe we could get elisabeth the reason imf here at the microphone because one of the things i thought was the most impressive from the caucus was the peoples budget for some reason that got next to no air time anywhere. We have in our editor not only wrote about it for the nation into slipped into her Washington Post column may be with the great preacher predicates may have mentioned it this way abc. [laughter] we may have done our part. Is seen something that was crafted by 60 percent support for or against Something Like the rest of the panel is it dead . Because clearly the Budget Priorities of the Current Congress are not helping anybody were least the people that matter. We have a hardball question coming your way congressman. We will submit did eric roulette out next week with the progressive caucus. The hardest decision is to attach said david to its. [laughter] it is for everyone but differ from the Democratic Caucus budget and differ from the republican budget we deal with the reality of deficit but also with the reality of of the economic agenda wage disparity, income inequality and indeed for jobs and in a way that talks about raising revenue as well. Is a good budget we did not do a good job as members ourselves we didnt let people know we had it this time it will be a much more aggressive effort we will have our time on the floor. Not just five minutes in the budget has inc. For our five major points lower transaction in tax minimumwage issues that are part of the budget is an alternative would have their reasons we have progressives in the caucus so with no economic agenda we will have the budget we hope you give us your opinion. As optimistic as the congressman is there is a political discourse were not a lot of space is given to alternative budgets especially if they suggest you might want to tax the rich people. [laughter] that system whether with congress over the media to solve the basic problems of society. The very first bill passed and signed a of the president of this congress because it was packaged with the reauthorization was is exemption to the end user Commodity Trading basically a special gift for critters traders derivatives traders i like watching political ads in in revenues but i remember a single politician talking about end user exemptions but i dont remember as having a healthy debate about it. [laughter] but this is the first spill into saw a lot of lobbying activity with hundreds of lobbyists with there of little coalition and the lobbyists were working on this with the Previous Congress that went on to become chief staff to those that are in office today d. C. Media comes out every year with the top hired guns of the year. With the biggest lobbyist one of those top guns was present chief of staff to the senator from ohio so that revolving door the monday is a part of it or the media failure unfortunately the nation cover this. Ever old friend Alex Cockburn yet used to say the magic and the cynical thought coming into your mind. My question in follows up your answer. Even with a goalpost moved with those fiduciary duties and Public Officials with your investigation or analysis of the Koch Brothers have you found something now or by the previous standard amount to criminality . One that we are concerned with left and right with the money end compete campaigns when Citizens United was handed down it was on the presumption of the super pacs for the unlimited amounts of money with them a campaign that is under regulation. To say you would go too far for billionaires to milliondollar contributions but the Koch Brothers have taken advantage of this landscape but the problem is the federal of regulator that is supposed to enforce the fire wall has never investigated the problem. The f ec is charged with enforcing the firewall. Because they are set up to have three democratic commissioners they deadlocked every time so when someone brings them credible evidence it is pretty clear from reading the news that they ask the big donors to fund the super pac so to hire any suggested we have any investigation. But it is hard to say if theyre actually breaking the al lot. We dont have the fcc is looking into the issues. With that megadeath fundraiser events who share her views and the lobbying priorities will funnel all the money together at the last meeting there is news they will spend 1 billion collectively with the next election cycle. And the candidates attend these also. They give presentations and they all talk if there is supposed to be a firewall it is clearly violated the tender grass probably violate as well but for this big money ever we dont see the investigation that should be done with federal authorities. I will go to the nation magazine had a story last fall on a gentleman from arizona who met with a coat brothers and told him what a good kafiri heat would be. I have a question from a heartfelt desire that we do make a difference in our government and we have a place to do that and the discourage mitt we feel is simply when you talk about the lobbyists for wealthy people making decisions are choosing candidates what role does the party play really in all of this that refuse to go to the convention and there would have created a large agenda is that really the way it works now or is it more a fact it has already been done before we get to that place . What really works because it is discouraging some days. Congressman you are a democrat. [laughter] i really believe the party, my party and its role in the future is very important but like all organizations like the Democratic Party there is always the struggle internally to what its value and so will will be so that his constant. But i still believe that apparatus in organization is important to the American People whether economic or social led Democratic Party has stepped up to the the country to do that. But i also understand with neutrality is an important fight the there is a neutrality among organizations that was a good win for groups unaffiliated with congress in the process that brought a lot of great pressure and information into members of congress. I thought it was a victory for them over organizations historically were aligned with us civilrights organizations that were bought out then suddenly against the efforts of these groups but i thought this outside presence and similar issues raised very important and revitalizes the party. But it is a struggle internally. That is why with the full Democratic Caucus in congress we have the progressive caucus because we feel there are points of view that the to be at the table all we dont always do with the lowest common denominator second level note the nations coverage of politics is about the struggle of both parties who puts money where and once upon a time the nation had a relatively warm spot for the Republican Party because founded in 1865 it did a lot of good stuff so we know about the evolution of parties. Thank you for your questions Raul Grijalva can you tell me what will happen if the Supreme Court strikes down obamacare . 11 Million People better presently insured will not be. The things whole Political Landscape changes and a the viability to rally around a single payer will be upon us but 11 Million People will be without health care that Health Delivery system like the hospitals will have a tremendous financial crunch that will hurt. In human toll and a huge economic and financial toll to the nation as a Supreme Court rules against that. The number 11 million neece to be in everybodys forefront and never to finally that hospitals are starting to come on of the uncompensated care crisis the had the last two years that was double down that will be very bad. This is a question for teeeight teeeight let your ideas to reinvigorate the Womens Movement . To lou groups at University High school the had a small group of young women feminist. What ideas . The effect is fabulous to hear about the local groups. I am modestly encouraged because i feel young women really are becoming more interested in feminism and a broader kind of feminism than maybe was the case to attend or 15 years ago. Reproductive justice, a Sexual Assault on campus issues but the issues that i feel that are completely a crucial everybody is for it but not a lot going on about it is equal pay a child care all the boring and a pressing issues that dont move too much for word are essentials for womens equality. If there is no system of child care bin you never get women participating in the workforce in the equal way. It is not possible. If there isnt strong antia sexual discrimination law in force then there will always be a lot of women being pushed out of jobs. I would like to see a little more attention to the economic side then we currently see. But maybe that will happen as she said optimistically. [laughter] i am very optimistic alibi to think all of you to our world. As a book festival talk about art and culture and books because they are in danger in the southwest. Congressman Raul Grijalva you know how theyre taking the box out of the libraries and schools i would like to get an update because there is such a fear of culture and literature look at the best sellers there is never latinos or very few asians there is not enough in the culture to elevate the multi a cultural voices we have seen that here in arizona and also in california my friend says she can only speak for 10 or 58 minutes in spanish. I have gone through a school in my town by yet they have never brought the Spanish Speaking artist to that school. I will put a message in spanish. [speaking spanish] cree arjuna the states and to have to speak english so racy racism and that multicultural fere when people tell me i love french but it scares me but i dunno what people say about me. So this freer summit permeated the landscape so they are pulled a and began to apply to get an update here in arizona to challenge each of us with this wonderful festival to look at multicultural literature as the voice of the heartland and the voice of our people and ancestors. What can reduce to promote our multicultural voice . [applause] if i had that touchstone and would have touched that all long time ago to deal with what you make the statements that you make this sickening part about the banning of books and highschool said was legislative Legislature Said no. With a committee set up to select books decided maybe dr. King or chavez were not biographies decent enough to be part of the history curriculum on and on. That kind of censorship with legislative it is really bad it becomes part of a systematic thing going on. But i am trying to find with the context of immigration immigration, i really believe underneath the veneer of ice with Immigration Reform why we dont have it there is a political advantage to keep the issue unresolved so you continue to drown in heerlen dash hate and fear with us versus them. It is selling american what is happening to our country. Also to drive this issue is not only the political expediency the countrys demographically change. But it will change so a lot of people react to the profiling. You should all know along with terry holt with Terry Holt Burkett was the parent of her roe and deserves a round of applause for all her great work on the programming for the tucson festival of books. [applause] just as is the person who has been organizing a 150th anniversary for the nation and i think you have something you want to throw in. A question for you john. I will be really quick. I just wanted to clarify what happens when i text the word nation to the number 66866 . I think you will become frankly a better person and writer. You will learn more about the nation and how you can connect. I can wait for that to happen but i think what will actually happen is you will sign up for the free email newsletter. Thats exactly right. The shamelessness of just donovan. [applause] brothers and sisters, before we break off here let me tell you on sunday night there are a lot of other programs here. On sunday night filmmaker Barbara Koppel who won the oscar for whenever documentaries in the past has made a documentary on the nation magazine and it will be debuted in the southwest at the loft theatre. We hope folks will come out for that and also tonight some of us will be at the International Brotherhood of electrical workers hall at 7 00 6 37 tonight to talk about labor in the southwest. Most of all we are delighted to be here at the tucson festival of books with this wonderful crowd with Katha Pollitt and congressman grijalva. Thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] you are watching book bocce beyond cspan2 live coverage of the seventh annual tucson festival of books. We are in a campus of the university of arizona and a gallagher theater which is in the Student Union building. Its a Beautiful Day here in tucson. If you happen to be in town tomorrow come on down. The festival continues in booktv will have another 7. 5 hours of live coverage. Five more author panels, five more callin opportunities and you can find a the full schedule at booktv. Org. In just a minute one of the presenters at the nation Contributors Panel will be joining us for a callin and that is Katha Pollitt to regular viewers of booktv and cspan know now has been on our air many times and her most recent book is called pro reclaiming abortion rights is the name of her book. If you would like to talk about abortion and politics politics 202 is the area code 74882000 for the city in Eastern Central timezone 7488201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific timezones. Katha pollitt welcome to booktv in tucson. Thanks for being with us. Thank you so much for having me. Host when did we as a nation start having discussions debate about the issue of abortion . Guests oh well in one sense there has been a very long debate going back to the 19th century which was when abortion was criminalized. A lot of people dont know that abortion was legal in the United States until after the civil war in most states. Then there was a big campaign against abortion and Birth Control and became completely illegal even to send information through the mail. It remained that way until the 60s. Host that when you say was legal was it because it wasnt illegal or was it specifically legalize . Guest it was not a subject of law. Host and nobody really talked about it are dealt with it . Guest into states connecticut and new york there were laws that are intended to protect women from dangerous drugs that people were using, herbal preparations but except for that it was pretty much no subject of litigation. Host today in 2015 do you see a threat to abortion rights and if so from where . Guest oh definitely. We are one Supreme Court justice away from losing roe v. Wade which would there are back to the states and contrary to what people like this might want that and what will happen to those women then . I think even if roe v. Wade stays legal on paper there are laws being passed in states that would severely limit access for women especially women who dont have a lot of money. Its a very serious problem. What was your goal with pro or goals . Guest i had several goals. I wanted to flip the whole script where abortion is terrible abortion is something you should feel ashamed of a guilty bout and if you have an abortion because you are raped well okay but if you have voluntary sex forget it because to me abortion is not just some abstract right on a piece of paper. Abortion is part of what is essential for women, legal abortion is essential for womens equality. I also think its good for society that children be born in an intentional way. It shouldnt just be you get pregnant accidentally and thats the rest of your life. I dont think this is a good way to organize society. Host now beginning at the texas book festival you have been at a couple of book festivals we have covered live on booktv. One of the things that struck me about the texas book festival was the number of women coming up to ask questions thing i have had an abortion. Guest that was astonishing. It was like a baptist revival. It was really something in the system part a response to my book which is i think theres a pentup conversation that up until now we mostly had speaking about their own abortions women who regret it and go to state legislatures and say i regret my abortion so it should be illegal for everybody. This makes no sense where some have had abortions said it has helped their lives and they are not sorry have been very disempowered from speaking out because there is a lot of sexual shame and stigma associated with abortion but with abortion predicting that more women can talk openly and freely about their reallife experiences the better it is. We should hear from women who read it and we should hear from women who do not regret it. Host Katha Pollitt is our guest from the nation and we will put the phone numbers up and take your calls. We will begin with a call from sam in ashland oregon. Salem viewer on booktv. Caller the nation magazine has been a standard in my house will hold for years. Its the only magazine that comes out with true articles. I wish more people would get the nation magazine and im excited about the conference that is taking place right now right now on tv. You can only watch this on cspan. Host salem and ashland oregon anything you would like to say about the 150th anniversary . Guest well is so exciting. We are the oldest journal of news and opinion in the United States. It started in 1865 and its amazing that we are still here so we have to plan ahead for the next 50 years. Host any significance to the fact that it was founded one month before the civil war ended . Guest well i think it did come out of the civil war struggle and the coalition of what we would now call liberal causes around that. But you know its a great and laborious long history. Host katrina vanden huevel who is the editor has been on cspan many times as well. Kathy is going from at the wyoming. Kathy you are on with Katha Pollitt. Caller hi. I believe women have the right to choose and ice have. Its just innate with me and always have. On one hand they say they believe in the sanctity of life and yet america is continuously killing women and children with the drones, fake wars come or real etc. And i dont know why we used this argument that we believe in the sanctity of life on one hand that we can kill on the other . Why isnt this something thats brought up because i think its a very valid argument. Guest well its a good of partial argument and i think people do bring it up. Its a different argument because people can say look the pope is against Capital Punishment. People can always claim to some pacifistic wonderful moral person and you lose the point that most people oppose legal abortion are not necessarily against Capital Punishment and more. And even if we have Capital Punishment and war a abortion should be legal because abortion saves womans life and helps women to be equal. Host s Katha Pollitt the phrase believe in life or guest life is always going to be a strong word, stronger word than choice by choice is also also the gord words that people are getting a little tired of choice in trying to broaden the framework which not just your right up until birth to decide not to have a the baby or not at all the things you need to be good a good parent and have a good family life. Fighting is racism in fighting against poverty, fighting against Domestic Violence and i think thats really good and really important to broaden out the framework. Right now what it is oh the fetus is so sacred and wonderful but as soon as the fetus is a baby forget it. The republicans its cut, everything. Host lee lind is an encino new york. Please go ahead with your question or comment. Caller thank you for taking my call and thank thank you cap up for the work you are doing. My question is i am a stepfather of four beautiful young daughters. I love them and i love my wife dearly and we have raised them with the decision to be honest about reproductive rights to seek out planned parenthood and other organizations that can help them out throughout their journey. You know one of them is now registered nurse. Another one is now a teacher. The other one is a bit of a free spirit but the fourth one is 14 years old in new york city as we speak attending a Robotics Convention 96 gpa. You know, i have the strong support of system personally for females and reproductive rights. What can i do as a male, what can other males do who are interested in this journey and in this fight to help carry it forward and i thank you for your time. Guest that is such a good and important question. That really is part of the story and i think that the prochoice Movement Needs to welcome that and men need to find a way to be active. I think you are right, a lot of prochoice and dont know how to engage. Or havent really felt that they need to engage because women are doing such a great job. I would say you know try joining a local prochoice group see if you can help with clinic defense defense clinic events. Dont you show up that call the clinic and see if he useful when they are swarmed by antichoicers. Raise money, donate money. There are conferences all over. Go to one of them and try to connect with people that are already active. You know all the usual stuff. It just takes a little for men to get involved in some site you are doing a wonderful job already. Host Katha Pollitt if a couple the woman decides she wants to have an abortion and her partner, her husband doesnt want that do you feel that he has a right to be part of that decision . Guest no i dont. Its her body. Shes the one that is going to go undergo childbirth and pregnancy and probably do most of the childcare too. When i hear people saying he should be involved in the decision whether they mean . Of course is their relationship is good and solid and stable she is going to talk to him but what if it isnt . What if its a one state a one night stand . I think somebody has to make the decision and it has to be the person in his body those events are taking place. Host larry in colombia note. Caller kudos to cspan by the way but theres one area it seems to be the nation has been strangely silent unless im missing it and that is the war on isis, the bombing of iraq and syria. Editorially i dont see a position on that. Maybe one column and on ukraine its very clear where the nation stands. So katha having thought about the editorial position isis in the war going on there. Guest you know i cant really speak to that. I work at home. I write my page. Thats pretty much it. Im i am not part of any editorial decision so you will have to take this up with someone who is more responsible. Im almost like a freelancer they are. I get a salary but im not really connected to the week by week editorial decisions. Host we invited Katha Pollitt to talk about her book pro reclaiming abortion rights talking about abortion and politics specifically. Caller thanks to Katha Pollitt for all the work you do and i have to say one person you mention the woman state legislator saying i so regret my abortion. Newt gingrich and Ronald Reagan could show up and complain they regret their first marriages and probably regret the first three or four. I forget what number he is at and i like what the previous caller said what can he do . I it made it to point, i have friends who support the Republican Party and their mostly sane people. In my experience most of them are crazy about fewer taxes than they want a free government. But i make it a point to ask them very calmly, so what are you doing about your party and the way they are squeezing their medical care. The Republican Party has become a machine for producing teenage star unwed mothers. Its like they hate them. They hate them. But they are doing their best to help. Host mags, lets let Katha Pollitt respond to what you said. Guess i. Guess i just wanted to say what you said about regret is appointed make in the book which is life is full of regrets. People regret their marriage paper. People regret the jobs they have done and their nonmarriages. Life is just a path of mistakes it sometimes seems that but we dont say yes the law that we should ban marriage because half the people regret their marriage. Abortion rights are about what the law should be. Its not really all about the feelings. And even if many women, i dont think many women do in the studies dont support the idea that they do but even if a lot of them said that would be a retrospective judgment on what they decided to do at the time. Women are adults. They should be able to make decisions including making decisions that later they decided the wrong decisions to make. And its only because its women that they put this whole, we are so obsessed with peoples feelings. This is another thing i say the book. This is all about the way we are trained to think about women reality tv. Its all about your feelings in judging other women and a whole lot of negativity. I think we really need to say women are able to make a decision that is the best decision that woman can make. Thats it. Host do any insurance plans pay for abortion . Guest yes, some do but fewer and fewer. One of the effects of obamacare has been to make it easier harder for insurance to pay for abortion. Host why is that . Guest well thats because the Republican Party whose base is to be found on the religious right wants to squeeze abortion as far as possible and make it harder and harder for people to get them. And i would say, i want to say antichoice people think about this. You have thrown in your lot with a party that is the party of Cutting Health care for poor people. How can you do that . You are with the party that wants to cut Unemployment Insurance and wants to cut every benefit for children every benefit for single mothers wants to deprive poor people of medicaid by not taking up medicaid expansion. Thats all republican, republican republicans so how can you talk all the time about the fetus and its rights but not children come i to understand that. Host we are at the tucson festival of books in our next caller is from two sam tucson. Mary anne, hi mary anne. Caller hello . Host we are listening please go ahead. Caller hello. Ive written several letters which have been published in the paper. My grandfather Practice Medicine before roe v. Wade. When i was old enough to understand it when he died my mother told me about the struggles that he went through because he was incredibly kind and decent doctor. He wants to help these women but he couldnt. I have written these letters and basically this is my contention. Most women who are in my category and above can get an abortion. Its the poor, the young, the helpless and others who are having to struggle and that to me means that perhaps we should have some kind of a group that would bring some sort of action that might get an amendment to the constitution rather than struggling with more decisions by the Supreme Court. I dont know how it would be done but im very much afraid that this baby the only way out of this situation. Host marianne we have Katha Pollitt answer that cannot ask you just a little bit of a personal question . What age group are you in . Caller actually i am 82. Host do you remember as a younger woman anyone having an abortion or anyone talking about this issue . Caller sure. I mean im not that old and i certainly remember how happy i was when roe v. Wade passed and as i said my mother had told me the stories about the struggles that my grandfather had when he was completely unable the women came to him and he would try to place and say i will find a wonderful home for your baby and i will help you get through this and the woman would say one of them in particular would say i couldnt do this. If i had this child i couldnt give it up through abortion and he could do nothing for her. This particular woman went to the guy in the country up the river who did abortion and she lives. And thats why i say its a desperate situation. Every time i hear abortion clinics being closed and everything i just wonder if there isnt a way to get a constitutional amendment . I cant see any other way. Host that is mary anne in tucson. Katha pollitt. Guest i dont know about a constitutional amendment. Ravi cowade is a constitutional law and it does what the constitution, gives abortion constitutional protection. But you know i just want to say one more thing which is the caller are so right about illegal abortion. I think there is this picture the people have the hard it is to get an abortion if we ban that women wont have it. This is not the way it works at all. My mother had an illegal abortion in my greatgrandmother had an illegal abortion back in belarus in 1914. And she died. I think people have an idea that this law people will still do it. They will be safe and it will be much more traumatic and painful. Host we have a few minutes left with our guest Katha Pollitt. Karen and santa fe. Hi aaron. Caller hi, thank you for taking my call