Provider. Many books including race matters and brother west living out loud. Robert george has written making men moral and conscience and its enemies. Robert george, when did you first meet the man sitting next to you . Must have met in the 1990s after brother cornell came and we were together in faculty, seminars under the auspices we didnt know each other very well. We would just say hello, we interacted a bit in the seminars. We began teaching together in 2007 and there is a whole story behind that. I dont know if you want me to go in that kind of detail but that is when our teaching and friendship began. Host how did the teaching profession again . A brother named andrew. A good student who studied with both of us. Called cream, my course, resin mucin, david hume, he was taking a course from me on civil liberty and he asked me who i would like to have dialogue with, who was a conservative, i would love to have a chance to engage in dialogue. We got together, we had a 45 minute dialogue based on a recording, the recording was over, we continued to talk for at least two or three hours. We have to continue this conversation, we have been gone 11 or 12 years, teaching at princeton. The adventures of ideas. But we had a wonderful time. Family and others, so good to me. We love to engage in the subject matter, the truth is bigger than us and beauty is bigger than us. We aspire to it. Host our meeting that began the teaching partnership, the green light moving in and green bag. Host so they wanted to have a feature. And interview of one professor by another professor. Andrew with a religion maker. That is right. For the very first issue they contacted brother cornell and said we want you to do the interview and who would you like to interview . He said he would like to interview me. Is not a conversation but an interview. A very deep conversation. Andrew came to me and said professor george, starting the magazine, and interview feature, the first interview, feature cornell as an interviewer, we told him he could interview anybody he wanted and he would like to interview you, would you like to be interviewed by professor west . Let me get this straight. He could interview anybody he wants and he said he would like to interview me . That is right. I want you to send a message to professor west, tell professor west professor george says it is i who should be seeking baptism from you. Brother andrew is a brilliant religionmaker did not catch that reference to john the baptists baptism of genius jesus in the jordan river your so he responded by saying ha . He will understand what i am talking about. Of course i will do it. That wonderful dialogue was recorded and we went on and on and i am holding my hand on the car latch for half an hour and a couple weeks after that the senior members of the faculty got a letter from the dean of the college and encourage senior faculty members to teach freshman seminars, we want more interaction, more established scholars and freshmen. When i saw that letter and the request we teach seminars it occurred to me what we should do is have that conversation we were having. And enthusiastic princeton freshman. A story behind that, once the word got out we were teaching this together. Had to read the essays to see which ones we would choose. After that we decided not to do that. We let the registrars office, and they would do it on a firsttime firstserved basis, students were supposed to sign up, and 7 00 on a particular morning and 7 00 that morning they passed the computer system. The beautiful thing about princeton at harvard, princeton, undergraduate education, handson, 16 students there, each registering the thesis focusing on the undergrads, harvard, yale, berkeley, chicago and other wonderful places. Highquality undergraduate education, and i loved harvard and howard and more. I believe in the truth. Speaking the truth. This is under running too. We invited you to talk about your books but why didnt you do that together . We talk about Harvard University press and princeton University Press interested in having us do that and we have two busy guys and a lot of responsibility and obligation, we traveled around having public dialogues, we will get to it. And we have done some of those to gather and the Washington Times and washington examiner. Also princeton magazine. One thing you do in your book is the class of orthodoxies, and your views. That is how philosophy works and education and learning works, that is how scholarship proceeds especially, though not exclusively in humanities and social sciences. We learn giving an argument, providing reasons, producing evidence, letting a critic respond to that, intellectual life in the western tradition, began with socrates engaging critics, subjecting their views of criticism and permitting him to subject their views to criticism. Cornell and i are oldfashioned socratic scholars, we believe in that kind of education. Host you spend a lot of time talking about socrates. Absolutely, very much so. Erasmus used to say think socrates, pray for me. He is a christian, we understand the richness of the socratic athens tied to the prophetic legacy of jerusalem, self interrogation, self questioning, deep education, transformative dialogue, talk about this all the time. How do we learn how to die . We die when we gives more mature, more willing to grow and develop. A matter of trying to keel the prejudice and the narrow ways to be expensive to be fallible, endless progress, in the name of what you are after. Host would it be fair to say your books are about selfexamination . The prophetic legacy of jerusalem, selfexamination. The matter of self giving, giving himself, emptying himself at the deepest level, take this love and see what we can do because i love you. What you get is socratic legacy of self examination, judaism, christianity, muslim, islam and so forth, one of surrendering to something bigger than you to get that fusion of selfexamination and prophetic witness that you cant love until you take a risk or cant love unless you do it through giving our disagreements, did some human overlap. Whatever the barriers are we are going to find that overlap as we wrestle with the various issues. One point i make to our students is self surrender which is a christian i agree, cornell is the ultimate obligation and the paradox of christianitys fulfillment, or what it is like. I stress in order to get to the point you are capable of that we need selfmastery. To control your own desires, your own wants, your own passion, put them under the control reason is in charge, appetite or passion, when things are disordered, passion is in charge, harnessed to the goal, creating rationalizations for activity that can only harm us and others. How do we get to that . Here is selfexamination, liberal arts education, get to selfmastery by subjecting ourselves by interrogating assumptions putting on the table, our most cherished, deepest identity, they dont want to do that. We human beings being human, we tend to wrap our emotion around convictions. If we didnt do that we would never be motivated, the common good for human rights and human dignity, if we wrap our emotions too tightly we become bogged down. And subjecting ourselves, assumptions, arguments to criticism. We become incapable of being what we should expire to, interrogators of ourselves. Host in your book making them moral, laws do not make them moral, only men can do that is only by freely choosing to do the morally right thing for the right reason. Is that something you agree with . Absolutely. This is something so badly needed in the present day because we live in a Market Driven society, image and position and the status you lose quality of character, soul craft has to do, the ways of being human relate to various virtues and various values, talking about moral character is something the market cant teach you and the professional cant teach, something deeper going on. That self surrender is about love, integrity, honesty, decency, we talk about selfmastery in regard to socrates, one of the charges of western civilization is why did socrates never cry and jesus never laughed . Socrates never crying meant he much primacy on selfmastery rightly so, that is not the proper response to your mothers funeral. But tears are the proper response. Jesus wept, socrates never cried. There is a love for wisdom that is important but you have to out Socrates Socrates and make your way to jerusalem, the tears of a hated people and the persecuted people, enslaved people, pharaoh and jesus weeps for jerusalem, lazarus, precisely because he selfmastery has a role but not enough. Surrender is what it is. Tears shatter the numbness, shatters callousness, indifference and lets one know low and behold, you are a human being like everybody else, you are hauling for help like everybody else. You attend black churches, 25 years of working in this place, the best of those black churches is we are people who have been hated for 400 years but teaching about love. That is high quality salt craft. And in his own tradition is that. Any human being face the question what is the point of my life. What is worth living, what is worth doing, what is worthwhile . Every human being is in a certain culture formed by that culture, act in the context of that and has to react to what is coming in that culture and every human being, powerful temptations because it is easy to believe, we live in a culture that reinforces our believe that what is worth living for his status, prestige, social standing, wealth, power. Those are not in themselves bad things and to condemn those as if they were bad in themselves, wealth isnt bad in itself, power isnt bad in itself, depends on how you use those things. To make them what is fundamental, to make the ultimate goal is to fail to see what human life is all about and what is worthwhile. To make people understand integrity, honor, decency, these are what are truly fundamental and make life worth living, this is what we should aspire to not for their own sakes wealth and glory or power or influence or social standing. They are superhigh achievers. Those students are going somewhere and have big futures, investment banking, lawyers and other fields and they can do a lot of good but they faced powerful temptations to believe it is standing, status, influence, power, wealth with other people, what really matters. And through our entire lives, you havent gotten close to being there until you have the strength of character, the selfmastery, what is good and true. And william student, in this culture, you might be called to stand up for what you believe in, arrive at a view if youre truly openminded to engage and arrive at a set up that marks you as an outsider, someone to be rejected and integrity to stand for that knowing it could cost you in terms of further education, when we think back to socrates, we know how he died. Made them drink the hemlock, he is a martyr. Refused to go silent on the truth even when the truth, didnt want to hear it. Free speech and intimidated speech. Gets you in deep trouble, getting a lot of deep trouble. Dealing with unpopularity based on his own commitment to understanding a person of integrity. And in progressive circles, not a question of popularity, we reject the chains of conformity and want to be nonconform, in the world and not of the world and against the world and tied to a kingdom that is so much greater and grander. My great pastor, the kingdom of god is within you that everywhere you go you want to leave a little evidence behind. Coldness, cruelty, oppression, resentment, and the ways of the world. And nonconformist. And accountable there, feed into acknowledging the critical character of your own standing. Tribalism today, big problems all around the world. If your own convictions, your own reflections, your own inquiries lead you to a view on the team in this one and you can be in big trouble. That is true whether you are a progressive like me in the most recent president ial campaign could not in the end vote for donald trump, regard him as morally unfit to be president of the United States, dont want to litigate that right here but using this as an example. Because i wouldnt play for the team i got a lot of heat. You want to elect Hillary Clinton . I didnt want to elect Hillary Clinton, i opposed her too, f anything worse than donald trump. That got pushback from other people at cornell was in the same position. When he refused to support Hillary Clinton after she got the nomination, on the conservative side, the liberal side, Progressive Side, from the left, he wouldnt say i wont said a silent on the team. Host how many times have you been arrested . Been arrested . Going to jail . He has been jailed. How many times i bailed you out. Last time in ferguson. Got a call for my brother and he knows about that. Love, respect and support that he has has vital action. Cornell, 2016 i was being sworn in in the International ReligiousFreedom Commission and was elected chairman, sworn in as chairman by chief Justice John Roberts at the Supreme Court, i asked cornell if he would do me the honor of holding the bible for me. We have wonderful people upstate new york. Where is that . Up there. This is a special bible. The wonderful people there gave us the bible, big, beautiful bible, imagine what that must of costa poor woman in Harriet Tubmans time, ask live with no money, something about her faith, treasured that bible, and gave us the bible on loan when i was being sworn in chief robertss chambers, as we were walking up the steps in front of the Supreme Court to go into the building, as we walked past a couple Police Officers i see one of them take cornells i and the two of them, cornell and the officer stare at each other and give them a head nod and we continue walking in as i turned to brother cornell and say what is that all about . He said Brother Robert, this is the first time i have been to the Supreme Court when i wasnt here to get arrested. We are so early. That was Martin Luther king day. Chief Justice Roberts was the magnificent moment. A new 25th addition of your bestselling book race matters. In the new introduction to that book, you write we live in one of the darkest moments in American History, a bleak time of spiritual blackout. Spiritual blackout, relative eclipse of integrity, honesty, decency, we have normalized mendacity, we made lies a normal way of life and naturalized criminality, we made crimes look as if they are natural, drone strikes, wall street, engaging in predatory lending, market manipulation, so many different ways peoples humanity is violated. We need a call for prophetic fight back. In a moment of spiritual blackout, not just a political issue but moral and spiritual issue and it is only by example, we need young people to say progressive brother conservative brother still have love, still have respect, willing to fight, willing to disagree, by example. Want to see sermons, the dominant soul craft, smartness. Obvious, obvious, obviously this or that, a word for the in crowd, part of a smart crowd. Like wisdom at the deepest level, no accident that donald trump, the smartest in the room, a sign of his spiritual emptiness, a symptom of a society that idolized smartness and richness, we want to talk about balls, barack obama dropped 22,000 and his last year. Drone strikes 506, the nobel peace prize, respect the coke, hide and conceal when it comes to morality and spirituality it breaks through ideology, not rightwing or leftwing or center but moral and spiritual substance deepening political ideology. What im trying to say is we are in catastrophic times, ecological catastrophe, nuclear catastrophe, moral catastrophe, survival of the slickest and smartest but economic catastrophe, three individuals in the bottom, 160 million, 360 have wealth equivalent to 50 of fellow citizens. This is grotesque. This looks like louis xiv times. Now we have well to do, tightening the benefits for the poor, what happened to these, the orphan, the widow, the fatherless, the muslim, the jew, gay and lesbian and so forth, spiritual orientation. The book is about where are we 25 years after i wrote the book in 93, spiritually immoral. I agree with the thrust of it. We disagree with things like markets, inequality in itself, economic inequality. The problem is not the market economy which lifted millions of people out of poverty. My critique is we have traded in a freemarket economy for phony capitalism, big and powerful firms can use Big Government to regulate competitors off the field, big firms, for the price of regulation and welcome it because small up sale competitors cannot welcome it. When it comes to economic equality i think any justice will be an economic inequality, i dont have as a goal economic equality. I have as a goal equality and dignity, equality of the declaration of independence, all men are created equal, we are all of equal worth but i chose a career as an academic. Not a particularly high paying deal, made a lot more money, gone to Business School and made more money than. I dont have any problem as long as it is fair, my worry is not free quality, my worry, considerable extent lost, and close to people, my high school friends, this is donald trump, why . They are feeling the effects of being neglected, being left behind, and bigotry and prejudice, certainly on the basis of their own experience of a cultural elite, and have nothing but contempt for the values of people, those are trump voters. Still criticizing some bad things, but i think it is a mistake to imagine those supporters of donald trump are just racists and bigots and horrible people, they have legitimate grievances know when in either party, donald trump reached out to them, whether they were wise, to look at their tribute, i have debated that with relatives and friends, but he noticed those people were forgotten or left behind, waged on their economy. And benefited. Do you agree with that . They are a diverse lot, some who are in fact, racist or misogynist and homophobic, doesnt exhaust the whole group. There are other racists the alt right and also a slice of trump voters who voted for bernie and voted for obama. You have to keep track of that diverse city. You never went to downplay the vicious legacy of the White Supremacy in this country. You cant allow it to be the only t