Transcripts For CSPAN2 Q A 20150403

Go for a hike. Go for a walk. You like in the at the issues, the word patterns there is a lot of walking that goes on. And things go bump up and economy. And i dont think the money saying. A prominent writer. I am told he takes like showers. And those kind of activities some people, maybe there is someone out there this problem i am not one of those people. Start occurring to me. C span do you give anything away . Apopka nothing that matters. Cspan did you think about what matters . Apopka icons and the hoagies. And so partly because of my admiration for the public intellectuals a good example. Cspan a little more of him. 1987. Socialism meant that the ideas of democracy would be extended through all areas. And even when someone asked me, do you regard yourself as a socialist i said, well if you permit me to define socialism i would define it as a belief in democracy as a way of life. Cspan cspan pragmatism. He is a pragmatist. What does that mean . Guest the worst writer imaginable. Early 20th century philosopher and and i am not a good person to talk about him. I just failed. But the thing about calling himself a socialist they grew out of that movement. But they grew out of that the early 20th century was the idea of changing the world. It was like a secular religion. In city college, the professors were okay, but the others were not great. The students were awesome. And so they would guess it cafeteria, alcove areas alcove one an alcove to. And in alcove one and alcove two. And they argued back and forth. And they were way ahead of the stalinists because they losing the arguments. If you if you look at the people who were stalinists in that alcove some of the greatest thinkers of that century. Daniel bell whole series of others so i am forgetting. Cspan hawthorne. He would come later. Guest he would come later, but it is about the intensity. And the confidence that the world was going is going to turn socialist or communist and getting the idea and so it was an intensity of believe. Cspan magazines why do you give these awards to magazine writers . Guest i believe i believe in magazines. I do believe that magazines change history. The knew republic until his recent distraction was the most influential American Group of the 20th century and did change history, creating history, creating progressivism, the voice from other lead productive of liberalism. So individualized. The blogger the column that it was community. But each committee at a. Of view. So commentary had one point of view, dissent at another. Of view a famous woody allen joke and so these were communities. Probably the happiest professional sound of my life, the weekly standard. And i do think you change history in groups, not so much as individuals. And then secondly longer is better. This is when i read to get my awards that i give out a chair six of them. So i am running out. The Magazine Article command when it comes to reading longer is better. Better than blogs, blogs are blogspot blogs about the books. Yet the mind runs downhill. You have to push yourself a pill. Cspan i read that you said you really cannot right. Guest that is my natural length. My natural length the atlantic and new yorker and that was my natural length. A newspaper column, 868 words. Cspan 806. 806. Guest that is my exact word count. Cspan was that everybody . Y . Guest the space on the page. You are going down one length of column. So that is what you do. The writing of the process you intend to write 13 or 1400. And so the cutting part cspan i read that you advise people to go to three places. What you talked about. Arts and letters daily. What are those . What do you get on any of those . Guest those are aggregator sites link to longer pieces out there in the world. My favorite right now so everyday they will link to three or four pieces that have been written. You can go on and get access to excellent. Cspan do you happen to know who owns it . Guest a guy in britain, i am now forgetting his name. Guest you pay a small amount and get access. Cspan arts and letters daily. Probably a little more academic. They link to advocate develop essays but a lot of overlap pieces of our writers, but art and that was founded he died about five or ten years ago. It is very strong. Cspan the impression was you got his comment was for smarter people. Guest a a series of links to longer pieces. More book oriented. Just follow what the interest are. I follow people on twitter. One of my favorite sites is marshall evolution. George mason university. He has an amazing mind. So so he will link to all sorts of really good things. High quality content. So if you of those people. This event. Cspan when we started how you changed from the time your written for the New York Times how has column reading changed . Guest we have more readers than ever before. The people are still gravitating toward the sources. Enough to be on it to getting the benefit. So i do think on this site for and. I do not think it is not like Walter Whitman the 20th century columnist for the oracle telling me what to think. Were not like that. We are not these people of great stature but conversations you started. You here about it for weeks and weeks. Cspan back in 2014 2014 you told the story about how you became a conservative. Run that and have you follow it. I am a native new yorker. He he grew up here. My family was somewhat leftwing. A place called a beer were hippies we go to be. [laughter] they took out their wallets threw it in the garbage can and set it on fire. To show how much they care about money and material things. I saw the money burning. And that was my 1st step over to the right. [laughter] cspan how much did your parents care about money . Guest that was at redeemer church, the church of new york. At 1st they violently objected objected. Cspan are they still alive . Guest very healthy and very alive. Truncated, but the event was it enough. They were in some sense 1950 intellectuals culturally conservative politically liberal, sort of centrist cold war democrat. They objected to the iran war. Takes you could humphrey supporters. I overdraw how leftwing that they were. Cspan i wondered if they cared about money. Because of because of that story do you care more about money . Guest i would not say that they cared about money. And i do not think that anyone would say they were materialistic. We had books in the home. And so it takes three generations to make a career command i firmly believe that. I grandfather was a lawyer, but a really good one. His writing, my parents were professors. So those three generations nurtured me in writing command that is true whether you are a plumber policeman, you inherit things from the previous generation of your family. You come to new york at an early age. I was fortunate to know what i want to do. And it is such good fortune to know at an early age their calling. Cspan is riding hard . Guest it is miserable. Cspan one of the people who came on the show an article the case for reparations. Lets watch this and tell us why you picked this. It sounds like a thing. That is what i am talking about. Policies that everyone is proud of, everyone is proud of the g. I. Bill. To come to terms with the fact that some portion of our population and ask ourselves the results of that it was not like africanamericans were emancipated welcome to the country. Housing policy redline specifically. 1968. Very much some of which we talk about. Disadvantaged. Cspan by the way, were linking to your columns. Why did you pick this particular article in the atlantic . Guest easily the most influential article of the year. It became one of the most read articles and the atlantic history, and the atlantic has been around for a hundred years. Second it is an article of propulsive force. And i think the strength of the article is what was talked about the redlining the discrimination that existed after the Civil Rights Act come after slavery, after slavery, the still existed and affected peoples lives some of it was a stealing stuff from africanamericans. The generational wealth affected that has just hit you over the head the continuous momentum of discrimination. He makes the he makes the case command he does not make it that strongly. Reparations. He mostly talks about reparations is basically a big recognition of history and facing our history and a more distinct way. I think once you start thinking about that practically you run into problems. How are we going to separate africanamericans that ancestors is slavery from those who came over and last 50 years. The 2nd problem politically very hard pick x or y successful africanamerican business person. Hard for me is a middleclass taxpayer to subsidize to subsidize, to give reparations, to give money to an affluent africanamerican. That is just a hard thing to do. I dont know, say barack obama. You know but that seems to me a mistake it does not mean that we cant think of policies that will help aggressive policies that will help. To his. Cspan that was in the atlantic magazine. If you had to pick a magazine that was consistent what would you pick . I have i have a great liking for the Atlantic David bradley. A lot of great magazines. And these are the two giants. A little more narrative and maybe a little more readily. A little more argumentative. And personally our biases toward that. These alerts. But barely a year is my no year has gone by without something. They are both phenomenal magazines. A more literary magazine. They just have more literary pieces. More personal as a pieces. The other things that are barely heard of. A lot of people know, know and then there is always the republicans. A very fine magazine. Out out of washington a very fun magazine called national affairs. From this year the gettysburg address. And i learned a lot. How do i said . I forget the exact number. Only 100 20 separate. Cspan 272 overall. Guest and she goes through each of those words or phrases and says where they came from, how they evolved over the years, what did lincoln mean by that . And so it is just a very deep dive into that speech that i found quite illuminating. Cspan well one of the things that you say an award to Michael Lewis. Guest he has gotten a few but superstars are superstars. Cspan those that may not know he has gotten a lot of attention. A guy i met who experimented but never really put him in the professorial type collided with the Money Management firm. Lets try. And so the guy says, well lets do it. They hook it up. They hit the button and go. Just doing maniacal things. And the 61 yearold ceo turned off and they cannot hit any buttons. Pulls the plug out of the wall. But there is i mean, sort of like the mark of the wall street mantoman overconfidence. So much trouble. Well cspan well Michael Lewis. Guest the statistic i know about that, men have tremendous confidence in their ability to spend swim. And extremely gender linked. I dont know if it is cultural or genetic. Tivo what is it about Michael Lewis . Guest restarted a career on wall street and then became a journalist for the new republic. I got to know him, 1st met him covering the primaries. The boring establishment. All of the weird candidates and the prose style and then they came to mccain. Some people do it as an exchange of information and i didnt know this from woodward himself but they get the source of information and its sort of a trade. And michael is just about the most charming and good human being as to imagine and people just want to be around him. They will say anything to get him to this area. And so i think that that is how they are able to get a lot of these stories. Cspan do you still do pbs on friday. Guest yes, i do a show called shield and brooke. Cspan how long is it to. Guest at 12 to 14 minutes which in tv time is a lifetime. Cspan how long have you been doing it . Guest about 2001. Also we do it on fridays during the first block. But i have been doing that since late 90s. So every friday afternoon i have a little bit of a routine and i drive down to pbs and i commune with the catholic liberals from massachusetts. Cspan two columns a week what they do day do you read them in the hardcopy newspaper . Guest they come out tuesdays and fridays and as of now they used to come out monday and thursday night, but as of now they come out on tuesdays and fridays. Cspan how often do you go out and speak . Guest i go to events, sometimes speaking at a conference or a town. I would say on average once every 10 days. Cspan for money . Guest sometimes for money and sometimes not. Cspan when you go out for these performances, what do you always try to do when you are in front of an audience . Guest there are a couple of things. First, never waste a sentence. So my speech, if im giving a speech to a college there will be 45 or 50 minutes and every single sentence has a note attached because i dont want some filler in their. And if you have filler it just gets boring so fast. The second thing, this comes with experience, you have learned to trust the audience and that means that you just have to show what you have and show what you have. Sometimes it shows youre vulnerable and you tell jokes. I remember watching mitt romney, his wife ann, mitt romney never threw himself in the audience, and ann was just naturally curious mitt romney is a perfectly fine speaker, but it does not connect as much. You just have to trust that you can be horrible. Talk to them in a way that is heartfelt for you and their other ways of public speaking. And there are people that dont really keep their attention longer than eight minutes. And so yes the audience will accept radical shifts. And we will accept those shifts and so you have to accept those shifts. And then there is one that starts off with humor. And. Cspan how do you deal with criticism. I will show you a clip of this back in january 2014. This asks about critical stuff. Theres an argument that if you smoke weed and makes you dumber. But we are nurturing a moral ecology in which its getting harder to be the sort of person that most of us want to be an eyesore to reject that argument because i know that you can smoke and it can open you up to new perspectives, new ways of looking at the world, this is why creative people have been smoking marijuana for centuries. This thought that its the ruination of your life is completely baseless. There are a lot of smart people who use a little bit just like they use one in a little bit. Guest just on a factual matter he is wrong about this if you are an adult that smokes weed, it does not affect your brain but if you were a teenager does. Cspan how old are your kids . Guest my youngest is 15 and my oldest are in their 20s. It definitely has a very negative effect and i think thats something to be taken seriously. As to the effect on crete in turn creativity, people have studied this and they found they certainly have the illusion that you are more creative when youre smoking, the people have not found much evidence and they did tests and things like that. So that is a matter of dispute. But as for disagreement. What he was talking about, that is what i am trying to do and i have a point of view, he has a different point of view i am throwing it out it comes from the word volley. And out of that process people make up their minds until we get to higher level of understanding. So im honored about that and i think we are all honored when people Pay Attention to what we say. Cspan have you ever seen a . Guest know, i had not. Cspan did you know what happened . Guest no, there will be some huge response and i dont have time to cover what happened. I am amazingly oblivious. Cspan as i was doing research i kept running into the story. There was a piece of his gun on me that was critical, can you talk about that . Are you divorced or not . Guest i am divorced and i dont personally orly we talk about it but yes. Cspan you had written that you are against divorce . Guest i had certainly written no marriage and i certainly do believe in marriage and i totally believe in marriage. I think one of the things that i read in general is how it is the most important decision in your life and yesterday i was reading a book. Cspan what is the name of the book . Guest the road to character. There are people ranging samo johnson and others, they have a great sense of this. And when we think of this we think of the world. But its a confrontation of yourself you have to take the parts are that we continue and make them the strongest. Cspan how did you pick those 10. Guest they recognize each character. The book took about 10 years to write. It sort of accumulated over that time and i learned so much. And the process of writing it is certainly worth it. This is easily part of this and it was published in april from random house. Cspan lets go back to this. You have done this since 2004. You are talking about 11 years. And this is a piece that was written, called the end of man. So lets get your take on that. It used to be that you were a guy with high school but didnt have a College Degree but you had a specific set of skills and with the help of the union you can make yourself a pretty good middleclass life that really isnt true anymore. There is a new economy that is different in size and strength which was what has helped men along all these years. What it requires now is a different set of skills, you basically need intelligence, you need an ability to keep in focus, to communicate openly to be able to listen to people, and to operate in a workplace that is much more fluid than it used to be. Those are the things that women do extremely well as we are seeing today. Cspan a couple of things there. What have you found about people in this . Guest this is not a skill i have a friend who is also a writer. And he is here in town. We will talk about a subject sometimes a personal subject sometimes a subject in the world. What strikes me right away is that there is a normal rhythm oh we are talking about this and then we move on. But my friend pete lingers. If i Say Something that happens in my life he will ask him questions and then in my mind the timing is bad okay we are going to move onto something else. But he will ask another four or five questions. So he stayed with it and he stays with the subject. And that is such a phenomenal capacity for listening. Cspan how would you grade most people in listening . Guest most people including myself are bad. We are thinking about what are we going to say, we are not really present for the person. Or our mind is just wondering and we are not hearing the nuance and then we are forgetting and i just forget so much. You know, there are a couple of people that are really good and almost professional listeners. I would put you in that category, that is what you do. The other person that has been in a similar role with me was jim, he interviewed me many years and what is interesting is that the job you have people do not appreciate how much they question this whole frame of the conversation, it sets the emotional tone and everything. People like this are 12 to 14 minute segments, some people they have questions written down and they are going after those questions no matter what its what you say. And some people do questions are going to circle. And i would say that that is utterly ridiculous, then i would give a bunch of reasons, and then he says its ridiculous. And that ability to ask a question in here what is crucial live on tv is a very rare skill. So i think that that made him a phenomenal listener. Cspan what about the other point, the skill and the focus . Guest thats a problem for a lot of us. The ability to have patience, we are just in a world and theres all this talk about what it is doing to us. And i dont think its just a Strong Social trust, but the one thing i think the technology is doing is shortening attention span. So we have been sitting here for about 30 minutes and i guarantee you that this is the longest time on this day that i will go without checking my phone. I check my phone constantly. Someone says if you want to drive a mouse crazy, give it in a regular pattern of rewards. Like you give it a treat in any way in any given another treat. Its a more regular pattern of rewards that you become addicted to and i always think the next one is going to be really great and im constantly checking. And i will be writing every few minutes and i will check. It becomes a weird addiction. Cspan do you relate to your kids by the phone . Guest the text a lot. Cspan what you see about the change in long form or thinking or reading that you can comment on and i have a friend who just loves dancing children. And if theres anyone who loves dancing kids, it is certainly her. So i saw a video of a kid in tibet who is trying to fall asleep. He was just tired and sort of drifting around like mad. I think that a lot of young people these days sort of are very user generated and its just a waste of time. Cspan since you were 15 years old you have followed this person cspan Bruce Springsteen in europe. What year . Guest we went to madrid in Southern France and we saw two concerts. And its hard because ive listened to his voice more than anybody else outside of that and ive listened to him constantly. His lyrics move me and there is an epic quality and a romantic quality to his writing and he emotionally opening you up. So ive always loved him for that. He is probably 61 years old now. This is three hours and 50 minutes of energy, like you are seeing. And im sort of off on the side and he is singing a song called one in the usa. And so there are 65,000 spaniards singing along with him that i was born in the usa and i wanted to say no you were not. And the third album coming was on the cover of time and newsweek and it was just one of the most gigantic albums of all time. The trajectory wouldve been to go bid. To become ubiquitous and to move out of his roots and become a big pop star. And he went more new jersey smalltown. And there was a return to the particular ground that he knew well. What struck me is that that decision was artistic genius because people will react to your own particular environment that an artist creates and they will enter that world with you. People enter this world with you and tolstoys world. They want a particular world and they will go there with you. So i was with all of these spaniards and french people and its a lesson for staying rooted in that spot. For many creative people stay rooted in that spot. He puts on the best rock performance show ever. Cspan we have done music and magazine writing and column writing. Guest we were riding and we began to see them through the eyes of producers which meant that we had financial decisions. So i was in love with movies for the first 30 years of my life and im just not in love with him anymore and my Favorite Movie is the searchers with john wayne, its a very complicated movie, a western version of the trilogy and its about a guy who is savage, his character is savaged because they need him to preserve law and order and because of that he is shut out of Domestic Society and he sacrifices himself for the social order and so its very fun to watch but theyre also concerned about individuals. Cspan lets talk more about this. Here is another clip of sidney hook. Today people say oh, no, thats not enough. And you must oppose not merely discrimination but you must be in favor of reverse discrimination. You must judge people on the basis for the membership in groups and i say oh, no, we always opposed back the secretary of the National Association seized on a phrase [inaudible] and if you believe that justice should be like this [inaudible] guest s and now sidney hook odyssey was objecting to affirmative action or. The case of reparations is an acknowledgment of race and built on a racial category. Cspan he changes some things in his life come out you have as well. What are your biggest changes when it comes to ideology . Guest i started off on the left and then i went to the right i went to National Review i worked for the weekly standard. And a lot of that was trying on different things. It took me a long time to figure out what i believe. I just had to try on different clothing and now i think i have a couple of guiding stars in what i believe and i think that i am more into this now. One is an irish politician. The world is really complicated and therefore when we are doing the work in government or anything else, we should be very cautious and we should not get aired in about this supposedly hour. So that is a conservative believes in the great wisdom in general where change should be constant. You should have change, but it should be constant. And hamilton was a great believer in social mobility. He was poor and his mother died when he was young and he goes very fast to become a war hero in the revolution and then a very successful treasury secretary. And he wanted to create an American Economy that would make it possible for poor boys and girls to rise. So that tradition led to the Early Republican Party and that modesty or belief in social mobility are the two starts and i think that they make me a leftwing republican but certainly a moderate conservative in that category. Cspan when she hired you for the New York Times, what did she have you represent . Guest they didnt have any category, there was no assignment with what i was supposed to write about. Obviously i was a conservative hopefully one that readers can stand, i come from new york. But the times gives us freedom. We are copy editors and we have people who edit, but we do not have any reviews and we are not told what to write about. We are free agents and we can do whatever we want. Cspan we have an ability on our site to go in and read this and we are about out of time what book would you recommend that you have read i dont care when, to want that wants to get into this world of thinking . Guest i would read an essay called hedgehog and the fox. The fox knows one thing and knows many things. A religious book is by a poet named christian. A beautiful book on what face looks like in the very beautiful book. Then i would go back and read george orwell. Not the novel but we collection of essays and its about political issues and he was one of the greatest political essayist of all times. Cspan david brooks has been our guest, you can read his new book available for preorder on amazon even now and also in the New York Times twice a week. Thank you for talking about this with us. Guest it is a pleasure for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at qa. Org. This is also available via cspan podcast. Cory gardner said you need to be firm and your principles but flexible in the details and i think that it reflects the harsh polarization we are seeing across the country and the methodology that all the senators and congressmen and women all the state legislatures can adopt we can come together and solve these issues. My favorite quote came from the secretary of the senate giuliana too says a member to be humble and have a strong work ethic. The kinds of people that you meet on the way up you will meet on the way back down i think its particular in congress itself, oftentimes we have a lack of true statesman. As much as i may disagree with him, john mccain did something last year, he committed to the Veterans Affairs reform bill. Maintaining how staying away from torture is essential to the character of our democracy and at the point where we have people who are willing to cross the aisle and make these decisions with people who they may not often agree with, that is essentially what we need to maintain would be security and integrity of our nation as we go on. High School Students are generally ranked in the top one one . Its the senate youth program. We will have on sunday night on cspans q a. Here are some of our featured programs for this Holiday Weekend on the cspan network. Saturday pm eastern state senator and gubernatorial candidate wendy davis on the challenges facing women in. And then Jack Nicklaus received the congressional gold medal for his contributions to the game and community service. On booktv, saturday night at 10 00 p. M. Eastern on after words. Cornell west on the radical and political thinking of Martin Luther king jr. Sunday at noon on indepth, live threehour conversation with Investigative Reporter for the Washington Post Ronald Kessler who has written 20 books, including escape from the cia the sins of the father, and others. And then East Carolina University professor Charles Calhoun on the obstacles faced by ulysses grant. And then on american artifacts, Patrick Schroeter take this on a tour of appomattox courthouse in virginia on april 9 1865. All this week we have booktv in prime time on cspan2. Coming up next tavis smiley talks about africanamericans in the criminal justice system. The Obama Administration and civil rights and economic justice. The publisher of smiley books, the coauthor or author of more than an dozen books including the covenant, the rich and the rest of us and death of a king the real story of dr. Martin luther king jr. s final year. Host we usually dont start with a question but what is the proudest moment of your career so far to. Guest wow. Well, i dont need to sound snarky or snippy, but i hope its yet to come. I feel fortunate that i am now 15 years on