Transcripts For CSPAN2 In 20240703

Where why are there two versions of your book . Mary there are actually two books. The first was written about 10 years ago called adam and eve after the pill. It is about about a decade later, i published adam and eve after the pill, revisited which looks at society and christianity itself. We are taking in the biggest possible terrain. Host what are some of those macro trends that you have noticed . Mary it is a big story, but lets try to do the short version. I have been interested in tracing the faultlines that are beneath society as we know it. I am not a reporter. I tried to get underneath at the big things that are transforming our world. One of these things is the sexual revolution and the collapse of christianity, which begins in the early 1960s. Now, what is the effect of these trends . One thing that has happened is that emilys have gotten smaller. Families are more broken than they used to be. Many people live alone, who did not used to. This has been a transformative effect on our world, i think. The collapse of the family has meant that we are sending more people into the world that do not have asked. With the primal community, the community of the family. This is what we talked about on the surface, when we talk about the divisiveness of our politics, for example. When we talk about the fact that people seem polarized and at each others throat, i believe that this are they cumulated back that have resulted in children who are less socialized. They have resulted in people who know less about each other as human being. Host we are going to show a headline on the Boston Herald in the 1960s. This is about the fdaron contraceptives pill. You can see it on the screen. You can see it there. In your view, that event changed the world. Is that fair to say . Mary i think it was the most transformative thing since eve took the apple from the garden of eden. A transformed relations men and women, first of all. We have to go back to the early 19 to realize that people thought this would be a positive thing. They thought it would strengthen marriage by giving people more power over their fertility. They thought it would strengthen society because women would be able to join the work force in droves in longer tied to a large family. But something strange happened during the next few years. Instead of strengthening marriage, contraception had a distrust is effect. Suddenly, divorce is skyrocketed and cohabitation also skyrocketed. Abortions became legal and there were millions of those. So what happens here . Why is the thing that was supposed to liberate humanity having such a negative effect . Economists have looked at this and they believe that what happened was that the Birth Control pill meant that men were no longer responsible. There was no such thing as a shotgun wedding, which is a phrase that some listeners may not have heard. But if a woman. Pregnant, the man was held responsible. Birth control was a game changer in this way because it meant that women were how were held accountable, usually exclusively , whether or not they became, it was a womans problem, a womans issue. Simultaneously, that makes the man less relevant. There is a wonderful sociologist who wrote a book called the decline of males over 20 years ago, and he argued that the pill had essentially sidelined men. They were not needed anymore. Only when are in control of their fertility. These are seismic changes in relationships between men and women. Today, then we talk about men, i think that we are is the latest in this trend that i am describing that began in the early 1960s. Host you write a in adam and eve after the pill, revisited, that since the pill has been introduced, there has been a rise in abortions and unwanted pregnancy is. Mary that is why my first book talked about the paradoxes of the sexual revolution because a lot of the fallout was unexpected. I once me clear that i am not being mono causal. That is a bad word. Im not saying there is one cause or the deterioration that layers around us that is the one cause that has not been addressed sufficiently in sociology or by church leaders, or by others in authority. It is something that has become hard to talk about. I think we need to talk about it. What we did in the 1960s and beyond it began some of the worst problems of our time, i believe. Host just to give you is an idea of the themes that you are talking about in your book, you can expand on any of them that you want. A short quote, the sexual revolution endures, second to none. Second quote, six decades of social science establish that the most fish and play to decrease dysfunction is to increase fatherlessness. Third quote, christian believers are in open, Uncharted Waters and finally, post 1960s disorder was indeed generating casualties of all kinds. Anything that you would like to expand on . Mary all of it. I went to start with the idea of casualties. Everybody knows that these subjects are difficult. Everyone is in a family that is affected by all of the train under discussion. When i raise the issue of fatherlessness, i am not trying to point and make people do bad, i am trying to connect. So that the generations to come after may suffer a little less from the trends that we are describing. After the first adam and eve looked came out 10 years ago, there was one thing that surprised, the emotional resident of the book. This was not a selfhelp book. It was an undertaking to discuss the effects of the sexual revolution, anthropology it had nothing to do with theology. None of my books depend on the elegy at all. But i was very surprised by leaders who got in touch by email to say that this chapter on pornography really resonated with me. Let me tell you this story about how it destroyed my marriage. And they were even harder stories that i heard from all over. The sexual revolution is having negative consequence is that were not well understood. It seems to be vindicated by these personal stories, these raw testimonials people who wanted to talk about how they were worried about raising their child without a father, for example. There was a lot of emotional resonance and intensity that i did not expect. That is part of why i continue to look at that subject, resulting in the second book. Host one of the adam and eve books, you talk about a High School Girl in 1972, who was, and it was quite a scandal. Today, that does not raise an eyeblink. Mary that is a snapshot that tells us how the world changed after the 19. The story goes like this. I grew up in upstate new york. Down the street, at one point was a young teenager who got pregnant. It was the talk of the neighborhood because the father, who was a young soldier, did not intend to marry her. Needless to say, the scandal was not about her. What was thought scandalous was that she would be a single mother. She went away and had the baby, and returned to school. There was no social program, to my knowledge, that was directed at her. 20 years later, i lent back and was talking to a former teacher. She said a third of the girls graduating high school that year were pregnant. None of them were married. In this 20 year gap, i see what was repeated in america by the millions, where no longer was it thought that pregnancy is something that two people are responsible for. Suddenly, only one person, a frightened young woman, was responsible for it. That was a civilizational backwards. Host how to did you go from rural new york to washington . Mary i was fortunate. I went to Cornell University on eighth ownership. After that, i thought i might want to be last professor. I double majored, but i decided to take a year off. I started writing and i became involved in the work of you are journalism, especially the smaller, intellectual magazine. Back then, in the 1980s, they were very exciting place is to write for and to hang out in. I ended up as the assistant editor. And from there, i ended up doing some loose writing for some major officials in the reagan administration. One was Jeanne Kirkpatrick and from there, and it up each writing secretary of the george shultz. Host what is your fulltime job, currently . Mary we have four children and there is that. I did very little writing for about the, as they were growing up. Once they were in school, i came back to this. I am a Senior Research scholar and also, i hold a chair in washington dc. Host is it fair to say that you are a practicing catholic . Mary i try. Host your book adam and eve after the pill, revisited was written after Cardinal George fell. Who is that . Mary he was a very inspirational spiritual leader. I would not pretend that i knew him well, but he was kind enough to take an interest in of my writing. We had corresponded about some of the scenes in my book. For example, one thing that caught his eye was a meditation that i will about the theme of chaos. In 1930, when the great novelist converted to catholicism, he was asked by a newspaper why he did that. He just said, because in our civilization the chaos of his time was very different in the 1930s, the interwar. There was the carnage of the century. The chaos in our time is very different, yet you are seeing a in more detail than ever specified. I wrote an essay about that, answering chaos within christianity self. Cardinal george powell, because of the essay offered to write a forward for the book. Host he went on to write that the Church Teaching over the years had been coherent and inconsistent. What did he mean by that . Mary he meant that the Catholic Church stood as a sign of contradiction in the world, that whatever was going on around it, it would continue the same teaching. Teachings go all the way back. When jesus tells the disciples that unlike the jews, his people are not allowed to divorce, for example. The disciples become the first christians complained that these are hard teachings, but there is a consistent there that has drawn people in. All things available to the romans, you name it. Divorce etc. They were off limit to christians. This teaching has not changed. Of course, we talk about mercy and redemption because those are also teaching, but the idea that human beings, if they were christians, were held to a higher standard has been consistent. It has repelled many people end up with the century. It has also drawn many others in. Host i want to go back to a quote that we read earlier. I want to talk about this. Christian believers are in open, Uncharted Waters. Mary under the pressure since the sexual revolution, Chris Kennedy has buckled. What i mean by that is, there is only the desire to accommodate these radical changes in the way that people live. Lets not be judging. Lets just soft peddled the teaching of christianity that people do not like and talk about the teaching they do like. Some churches, mainly protestant churches have completely abandoned these kinds of teachings that go all the way back to jesus. He lightened up on divorce and homosexuality. They lightened up on pretty much anything that the sexual revolution would claim was a prerogative. The interesting thing is the result has been institutional decline for the churches that ran this experiment. The anglican communion, for example, comes to mind. It is collapsing. I read a story recently with a headline that led, will the person to leave english schism please turn out the light . It is not only the anglican communion, every church that went in the nice direction has not flourished as a result. Here we have a paradoxical. Because he would think that being nice would make it more likely that people would show up in your church, but in the opposite is true. What has been learned is that strong churches or strict churches are strong, as the saying goes. The more the churches stick to their original foundations, the more likely they are to pull people in. This does not mean that that cap charge is thriving these days. But the collapse seems to have been worse with the churches that decided to get his the most unwanted teachings, the teachings that make our contemporaries the most uncomfortable. Host tie that into the 19 sees approval of the contraceptive live contraceptive pill. Mary the pill is the biggest temptation of all time. I think sex without consequence would be up there on what people want the most. It was widely embraced by catholics. And yet, what lease always that the churches, including the Catholic Church, shied away from traditional teachings because they did not want to make people uncomfortable in the post revolutionary era. So we have this dynamic where the decline of the family brought on by the pill fuels client and the practice of institutional religion and organize legion. We can talk a lot more about that. Host lets look at your book it is dangerous to believe. For more than two centuries, americans have prided themsves on their commitment to freedom of religion. Leaders who lead in a more secular direction maybe surprised to hear, but in recent years, that historic commitment has come under siege. Mary this is because the sexual revolution is on a collision worse with traditional christianity. There is no getting around it. Traditional christianity had a bedrock of that were unpopular in roman times and when unpopular ever sent. Along comes sexual revolution and its devoted partisans obviously, the opinions i am describing our minority opinions, but the question is, how destructive is that fight . I think it is very destructive of the u. S. Lets talk about how christian adoption agent has been shut down in some. Clearly, the pressure coming at them is from people who want to replace the teachings of christianity with the anything goes sexual revolution. I really believe this has become a rivals to christianity. We have to ask ourselves, is it good for those adoptees to miss out on a loving home just because the parents and it our christian . Is it good for the poor among whom the Little Sisters work with lawsuits about contraception, of all things . Well, who does that help . It does not help the Little Sisters or the poor, so my point is, when we see this collision will receive a 10 to cap good works done by christian, we are seeing something that is bad for the worst off among us, and i do not think this is well understood, but people who are ideological about the sexual revolution go after christian good work, routinely. This is not called out the people who it is hurting called out. Host i want to ask you about the Supreme Court decision on roe v. Wade last year. It affected years of eagle abortion. Should abortion be legal, in your view . Mary i am a constitutionalist and turning the question back to the state was an overdue constitutionalist correction. Dobbs was a very important decision and represent the first time the 1960s that there has been serious, institutional rollback on a question involving the sexual revolution. The Supreme Court says that it is wrong. We need to turn it back to the state. I think it may be a game changer, not only in the u. S. , but elsewhere in the world. What happened after roe v. Wade is that country after country came to adopt similar laws, came to legalize abortion red had always been criminalized. Both countries, i think, both leaders are having second. As well. This decision will reverberate, and i would predict that it would have it affect u. S. Because if there are more babies among us, that would be a humanizing thing, not a bad thing. This is another issue that we should talk about. What humanizes people . It seems like a question. Taking care of those smaller and weaker or older and sicker is one of the ways we are humanized. Additional families, up until the interruption of the 19, this was done routinely. Old people are taking care of and everybody knew what to do with a baby, etc. Im not saying we should go back to the 1950s, which is a decade i live in, but what im saying is babies have good effects, not the thanks, just as having to take care of other people has a good effect on people. With the collapse of the family, i think we have seen a generalized it has increased in our society, as people are out of the pack this of taking care of others. Simultaneously, as christianity is in decline, they are not being told that one of their jobs on earth is to take care of others. These two things have impacted us negatively. Host when you look at the election result, it favored those who are prochoice or favored abortion rate. Realistically, did this decision hurt your view, and a sense . Mary no. I am not a politics first kind of person. I want to know what is really going on out there and i would rather be right than to see my party. Host Mary Eberstadt is our guest and is the author of many books. We want to include you in this as well. Here is how you can participate. The numbers are on your screen. If you cannot get through on the phone line and still want to make a comment, try texting. This is texting number. If you do send a text, please include your first name and your city, if you would. Social media, several ways to contact us as well. Just remember at facebook and twitter. We will begin taking those calls in a few minutes. Mary eberstadts first book came out 2004 called home alone america. She wrote the loser letters in 2010. It is dangerous to believe just freedom and enemies in 2016. And adam and eve after the pill, revisited came out in 2023. The first book came out in 2013, and. We will begin taking questions. Mary eberstadt, the subtitle, how the sexual revolution needed identity politics. Put that together for as. Mary not only the u. S. Many countries in the modern world are in the of an identity crisis. Identity is all around us. Where is this coming from . Getting back to the world before the 1950s there were two answers that russian. One was horizontal and could be answered by my relationship with other men being in a family. If you were to say, who are you . A common response would be, i am a mother, and aunts, a sister, a cousin, and we could find our valves relationship wise that way. Most people have had them believe in the cosmos, and a deity, and a vertical relationship. So what happens when the family scatters and the churches go mute . What happens is that mention a wave of answering that russian of who mis off the table for many people. We see this migration into politics, into identity politics. And there is an important point here that i think is not well understood, especially among conservatives. Conservatives like to poke fun at the idea and call them snowflakes and say that jim he and lemuels are impossible to understand and they are so since it is. But when i look at those generation, i see suffering. I see real suffering, on account of not having what most human beings before us had. Robust families to give them connections, protection and love. A connection to organize legend that provides unity and good works, and redemption, words like that, that we do not use them much anymore. These seem to be the things that people need in perpetuity. The fact that so many young people cannot reach these and go into politics and said i think it is a very plausible way of describing identity politics. Deferred with the word was first used in a document by radical feminist said that they were giving up on men. It did not trust anyone to have their back except for each other. It is where that phrase identity politics first appears. This is the generation that first the first move there is that men and women cannot get along longer any longer. It proceeds to black lives matter. The black lives matter manifesto was also again heteronormativity and the nuclear family. It also declared that there were apparently new problems in relationships men and women. This is all to say that identity politics not arrived at nowhere. It is coming out of a shattered, postrevolutionary world, and we should have a lot of empathy for the people drawn into this way of politics, even though this way of doing politics, i think is very device the u. S. Host to subside mething is to ensure more of it and this is essentially what the sexual revolution done. It has an inadvertent subsidize by raising the penalties for traditional mass. Mary a lot of people are puzzled by how androgynous society come. I am not because i think what has happened is that there is a sense of this thing of the human adam. The penalties for being traditionally feminine have risen. The traditional housewife is widely marked. The idea of getting married and having a family as your primary purpose in life makes you retrograde and makes people laugh at you. Simultaneously, men who are traditionally minded are also exiled for a different reason, because it is thought that they are patriarch and oppressive. These being the limiting cases, what we see is a lot of pressure to gravity towards a more androgynous mean. Therefore, it should not be surprising to see androgyny in beams, to see the hold that it has over the minds of the younger people. Host and from your book how the west really lost god, in a way that we are just getting to understand, it appears that th natural family as a the adual but recognizable muling of that is surely an important, overlooked part of the story about how western men and women came not to hear. Mary to make a long soy short, when sociologists looked at religion, there is a tendon for people to think, sure, such an family has a lot of kids because they are religious, because their religion tells them no. This applies across islam, judaism and christianity. The more religious people are the more children they are they have. That is assumed. In that book, i turned the thesis on its head and argue that maybe some of what we are seeing in the decline of her sanity is the fact that people are no longer living in robust, extended families. In other words, there is something about birth that trends many people into a different frame of mind, a trend and didnt frame of mind. There is something about standing at an open grave, that we do less and thus of, that confirms the notion that there is something about the cosmos. It is not just and a dead person. The less we do these things the lasix variance we have of birth, death and taking care of this pick, the less likely we are to get into something more internal than we are. That is what that book is all about. Host i went to read a couple of your quote, and i apologize if these are not original to you, but they stood out to me. You describe the 20th century as men have forgotten god and the 21st century as common men are at war with us mary in 1984, alexander gave an important address, in which he says that the problem of the 20th could be summarized in four words. Men have forgotten god. What he meant was that the carnage of the wars in the 20th century would not have happened, had systems really believed what they said. So, i took that quote and thought how we would describe our time. I think men are at war with in their way of trying to what i mean is that we are at war with the idea of a created order. From birth to death, where we see we want to be in control. There is the basic fact of male and female, which we also to control and there is an anger about this war on the created order that is new and another outcome of these radical changes began in the 19. Host lets hear from wayne in michigan. You are on with officer Mary Eberstadt. Caller i would like to ask about competitive religion, how we have a market of religion in america versus places where there is an official religion or state, which might be one of the reason organized religion is doing better here than in some other place. Specifically there is a rigid based on judaism and christianity with stories from profit and all. Pope john paul ii the i think the following folks viewed his as not so much a competitor but there has certainly been a lot of cultural stuff. I was wondering, what is your opinion on this . Do you view it as more positive or negative . Do you see it as more of a competitor . Host you have given us a lot to chew on air. Mary thank you for asking that russian. I do want to emphasize that in the how the what and how the west lost god, i limit myself to christianity and, to some extent judaism because islam is not something i have studied intense. You can generalize about all organized religion that they should at least they share this in common. They tell us that we have to work to be good. Our nature does not start out good. We have to work on ourselves. And once more, with the decline of christianity, i think theres being another unintended concept , which is the idea that we do not have to work on ourselves anymore. We are perfect just the way we are. If we want to walk out the door in our pajamas, we can do that. There is this radical autonomy that seems to rule in many places now, that would not be willing, if people took organized religion more seriously. Host edward in new jersey we had a good afternoon. Caller i think it is the opposite that secularism is actually better for the world. Prior to 1950, there were lynchings. The second point i will make is all of the godfearing bureaucracies the world are impoverished and the people pray five times a day and something. I think that secularism is the way of the future. Science, technology and logic is the only positive. Host do you consider yourself an atheist . Caller i would say i am agnostic. I am a freethinking individual. Just because he created us does not mean he controls us. Even if you could prove that there was a god, i would be against him. Mary i would make two points one is that the u. S. Became the most powerful country in the world during the years and which the public was churchgoing or synagogue going, or observant way. That is to say that i do not think there is much evidence for a clash between you and eyes capitalism. On another plane about whether it is good or bad first, there is a of evidence that we should consider here about what Church People go what churchgoing people do. Im not trying to romanticize it but it is a sociological stat statistic that people who go to church or synagogue, people who are religious are far more likely to give to charity, for example. As we see less christianity, we will see less of those kinds of good works. They are more likely to volunteer and even to donate blood. In other words, the constant message that you need to do good things seeps down at the grassroots level. It is anyway a way that is good for society. Host edward talked about science versus religion. Are they compatible or in competition, in your view . Mary i think that is a misunderstanding because of new atheism. Over 10 years ago now, on the bestseller list, there were several voices. Daniel dennett, Richard Dawkins what we saw in that new atheism was about religious people, ready idea was, not only were they stupid, they were bad society. It went Something Like this, religious people committed the atrocity of 9 11, therefore all religious people are terrorists. Even without elementary logic, who see that does not hold up. Host you also write in your books that atheist have a strong argument against organized religion because of child sex scandals, it but are a etc. Mary there is a lot of room to criticize the churches. The sex scandals was something that helped to prepare atheism. We are talking about behavior on the one hand and whether something is true on the other. You will get no argument from this order about the priestly sex scandals that i wrote about in length in level essays. However, the question of whether what teach what the church teaches is true is not separable from personal behavior. If anything, with the scandals proved is that people are born with original, and they had to redeem themselves. Host Mary Eberstadt, with four kids and writing, how did you manage to do the . Mary mostly, i did not. I did not write a lot when they were growing up. Host when you write your books, ready right where do you write them . Mary i write them in my head at 4 00 in the morning, and then when i wake up, i put them on paper. I make the notes in longhand and then i type out the argument. Host you are on the air. Caller thank you for taking my call. One question. When things better when youre young or better now . I find that the depends on you are and where you are in society. Growing up my and privileged, it was a totally different world than africanamerican and his panic who are now doing much better. There are people who are also doing worse. I do not know how you make the judgment as to society is better or worse. You have to look at individuals. There are an awful lot of things. I look back and i honestly think that there were some things that were much better and there were some things that were much worse. That is just a comment. Thank you. Mary thank you. That is a nuanced view. I am starting from the premise that what people need connection with other and using a variety of evidence to support the. For instance, let us talk about Animal Science, which is something that i at some length because we have learned things from animals in science. We have learned there is no such thing as the lone wolf. Do not run around by the elves anymore than people do. They inherit the style of nuclear families. This is true other mammal that have been studied. I is this . Because a gives them protection, of a kind because you are safer in numbers and also because from an evolutionary respect, this is where social learning takes is a animal families. Monkeys learn how to be monkeys watching other monkeys and connecting with them. We see this most clearly in the remnant on animal separation that was done under harlow, where babies separated by mothers are quickly become dysfunctional. Usually so dysfunctional that they can no longer be returned to the Animal Society what does this tell us . That animals are notional when they are created from their own. The funny thing is that we can usually indicate of others. We know that elephant suffer if they are separated from their elephant families. This is why elephants are no longer in circuses. We also suffer when we have these article disconnection around us, we do not have friend do not have families to depend on. The Animal Science is one of the most important that supports what i am. Host are you referring to the Catholic Church or protestant churches as well . Mary if i say christianity i am talking about. Host is there a difference when it comes to some of the topics that you are just seeing active mary in general, protestants have suffered the biggest collapse, the denomination decided to with traditional teaching like like marriage. Some of them have also click. I do not want to say conservative and liberal by tradition minded and less tradition i needed. There is no doubt that the trend is affecting all of the churches. Host have you looked at the growth of megachurches the prosperity god will of the jewelss Joel Holstein mary the church in other words, people still need churches with teaching, but they are churches that they come with us on today because we are nice host a text nice. Host a text message. The question is, my background is retired instructor at kentucky Law Enforcement academy. I have researched societal problems affecting lawenforcement and society. I believe a major contributor is secularism. I can point at november 1963. Furthermore on discussing leadership issues about the lack of humanitys i80, i believe your writing or onpoint. Can you please address secularism and sexual revolution . Mary first, let me say thank you for your service. Secularism and the sexual revolution. My view, in a nutshell the sexual revolution came like a big party that got out of control. Now it is 2 00 in the morning and nobody wants to call the police on the party, but everybody realizes that that has happened needs to be done. How does that connect to secularism . The revolution became a great temptation and people wanted to embrace it. Part of what made it possible raise was to stop taking christianity that is part of the story about the decline in christianity said like a brick wall against that party that was going on, and people decided they did not want. They said they would walk away because the church was not painted or they would walk away because religion was just for superstitious people. But if you look at the historical documents, but is making people walk away is because they do not want to be told to do, things that became harder after the invention of the Birth Control pill. Host how does Climate Change in the mosaic . Mary i am not a scientist, but in a way of the about Climate Change makes me hope. The reason i that is because acm are passionate about something out so example of Climate Change. There were protests about it. They will become more acclaimed because of it because they believe that is the right to do. It seems to me short between concern for nonanimate creation, Climate Change, and discern animate, human beings, families, other people. There is a lot of potential synergy there. Host manuel, joran with you are on tv with Mary Eberstadt. Go ahead. Caller i used to teach at two mainline law school. My last name is ramos. You can look me up. Clinton invited me to the white house as they used to call us spanish top 100 panic spray conference. It was a nice nation, but i grew up as a rich kid in havana, cuba. I was born in cuba and i just had my 70th Birthday Party at my old country club. Host i apologize for interrupting, but why did you call in today . What would you like to respond to . Caller i want to thank the pope. We know that obama had to go behind. I was born under fidel. And i want to thank the pope and on a, the amount change of relationship between my two countries. You can imagine how emotional i was about that but i want to ask you some people say i am sort of like that john lennon song where, the world would be a lot better without religion and without borders. They use that in the olympics and japan and cuba like to put it on tv all the time, but host do you agree with that sentiment . Caller my question to you, my theory is that they are dangerous because of the cuban missile rising. We all know about missile races that was the closest the world ever came to being destroyed. John f. Kennedy, as we all know, was our first catholic president. What people do not know is that fidel cash was also raised by catholic nun and priest, so we have two very rich, essentially white dies with a conflict almost bringing the world host i apologize. We are going to leave it there. If there is anything that Mary Eberstadt wants to respond to, otherwise theyre going to move along. Please go ahead with your question or comment. Caller yes. Are you doing . I enjoy your works very much. Your books are very enlightened. I would like to ask how you feel about the recent events on the border and how you also feel about mr. David berkley, i believe his name is. Host david berkley. Im not sure who he is referring to their. But when it comes to the border is that something about or write about . Mary that is a political question that i am not particularly written about. Having worked in the u. S. Government, i know that i believe in putting the National Interest first. We can have discussions about what exact, but in other words a question about american National Interest and that is as far as i have gotten. Host last two callers mentioned borders, manual and ed talked about the fact that open borders as far as cuba is concerned, the communists, is a good thing. Anything there . Guest not actually. Host craig in tulsa. Caller appreciate cspan and command Mary Eberstadt for the work she is doing, it is outstanding. I wanted to speak about theres people calling in at point to members and groups, members and groups are not the whole group and not the philosophy behind the group or the beliefs. I look at the statement it is christianity or chaos. I think thats absolutely true and for the atheists i will step back and say the principles of the bible are chaos to make it palatable to them but even an atheist would have to admit the principles in the bible create a structure for society that is not chaos and you take ephesians 5 and 6 in the bible talks about the family structure, psychology and sociology, put it up against it and tested you find out the psychology and sociology used in those scriptures really does work. It makes children who respect authority and children who respect law and thats the next generation we need so i think from a functional psychologist or pragmatist it works and we should use what works so i just wanted to state that and thank you for the work you are doing. That brings up a good point which is i have a disagreement with the new atheists about this. The new atheists presented a paradigm in which you can believe in god or not believing god and the true paradigm is that everybody believes in something. It is how we are made. It is part of our nature which we have to get passionate about something which is why we need to ask the question you are asking which is what is true here, is it true that a religion that tells people to love one another actually has effects on people that makes them better members of society, i agree that the answer is yes. Host 202 is the area code, we have an hour left in our conversation with Mary Eberstadt, 748eighty two hundred. If you live in east and central time zone and want to participate 202748820 one, for those in the mountain and pacific time zones, and cant get through on the phone lines, want to make a comment you can do it via text or social media, text line 748eighty nine zero three. Please include your first name and your city if you would and when it comes to social media just remember booktv or our email address booktv cspan. Org. March 26, 2023, the wall street journal, you cant cancel me, i quit. What was this oped . I was invited to give a speech at berman university. I was excited about it, never having been there. And i looked up the local museum which apparently has a great collection of paintings and i was generally ginned up for this and then before i got there, a typical thing happened in an exaggerated fashion which is that some students decided that i was a fascist, i have a photo advertising my talk where someone wrote fascist and misspelled it, posters advertising my speech were taken down on campus and in the local Student Newspaper i was being called names that i really cant think there was any truth to like hater. I was called dangerous, et cetera. It turned out the speaker before me had a very bad experience of this kind of cancellation, giving a talk on dostoevsky, people lined up with posters saying he was a bad person and all of this, he had three armed guards who guarded him during his talk, there were students who left the talk so other students couldnt come in et cetera. In other words this is cancel culture on parade and i thought about it and i thought maybe it was time to make a statement in a different direction and not to have to play this stupid game and so instead of going and giving my talk with armed guards and being subject to people calling me names that i dont deserve, i wrote an oped in the wall street journal saying that i was canceling myself because i think speakers in this toxic environment have the power not to play the game. Instead, i sent 25 of my books to the president s office at the university so students could get them for free and wrote the piece in the wall street journal and gave a class by zuma. My point to the speakers or anybody worried about cancel culture is you can reframe the situation. Host the cancel culture situation you faced, is that different than it was even 20 years ago as far as allowing a controversial speaker, i dont mean to call you controversial but somebody with a point of view . It is much different now. Much more menacing because there is an air rationalism about it. Some people show up with their mouths duct taped shut, for example, some speakers have been subjected to poundings on the wall and threats of violence. Social media inflames all this because what happens is instead of reading one of my books and taking exception to it, what people involved in this cancellation are doing is cherry picking anything so they will find a quote from a radio interview given 20 years ago and taken out of context and make you look bad and this kind of cherry picking is very destructive because it distracts from what an author is trying to do, distract from an argument so again, this is not something that we have to do and if more people cancel themselves you will see less of this, thats my hope. Host from your book primal screams you mention the Allison Stanger Charles Murray incident in Middlebury College in primal screams. Guest yes, we need to talk about the air rationalism out there that we see among the inflamed young and particularly among followers of identity politics. This has nothing to do with an intellectual disagreement with the speaker, this has everything to do with an unbound kind of derangement, that the state these students get themselves into. In the case of Charles Murray and Allison Stanger, if we reduce what happened at middlebury to plain english, a bunch of ablebodied College Students attacked a 70 plusyearold man and sent his hostess on campus, a middleaged professor, a woman, to the hospital with an injury. How does this happen . The answer goes back to some of what i write about, people are very disconnected from one another. They are not being socialized, many of them, in their families or by other institutions like religion and so they are arriving on campus is gravitating into identity politics and unraveling as a result. This is something we need to understand, this is not business as usual, this is about being attacked ad hominem, being called a hater, transferable, lgbt q phobic, a racist. These are not the labels that were thrown around by the vietnam war protesters back in the day or the civil rights movement. These are new ad hominem labels that bear no observable relation to reality. Theres an unreality we should be concerned about. Host what did the Charles Murrays Allison Stanger incident, professor stanger didnt necessarily agree with Charles Murray but wanted to have this dialogue and this conversation. Guest that was especially striking to the facilitator who was just in the room and she was collateral damage. Host what is happening on campusesnd elsewhere today is not merely a pseudopolitics of self regard. It is all panic all the time served up with more than a smidgen of violence. You used the word panic. Its no secret that Mental Illness has been rising among the young. Your for to the first book i published, home alone america which was about young people, children and adolescents and theres a whole chapter about what we can see already 20 years ago which was the rising anxiety, distress, panic and depression especially was real, therapist didnt think this was some artifacts, didnt think they were better at discovering it, they thought the young people they were seeing were increasingly exhibiting these kinds of traits, that trend described 20 years ago has intensified so much that it is often a frontpage news story, whenever the latest study comes out. Why are we seeing all of this Mental Illness . This psychiatric trouble . Theres no doubt social media plays a part of this, social media is throwing gasoline on the fire. The obsession with imagery is gasoline on the fire but im trying to get at what is the fire about . I think it is about this freefloating lack of connection the tapping destructive effect on young people. Host please go ahead with your question or comment for Mary Eberstadt. Im enjoying this conversation but i had two quick questions, first of all, the secularization, at what point in American History do you think it started happen . I think it started to happen in the late 1800s and the second question is where is this going . We are seeing the breakdown of institutions, breakdown of law and order, if we dont turn around and recognize that we need god in our country we are just going to end up in a total collapse of our society and so i would like to get your perspective on that. Thank you. To take that last part, i do want to say there are reasons for being hopeful here because it is easy to despair about some of these issues that i take home from the fact that between the publication of the first adam and eve booked 10 years ago and now with the new one it has become possible to talk about these things more broadly than it used to be. Back when the first book came out, to question the sexual revolution in any way was just forbidden. It wasnt talked about in the mainstream press, people write me off as a religious fanatic even though theres no theology in the book, the book is meant to appeal to all readers, all of my books are. Ten years later weve seen a number of books, in different countries, all of them written by women and all of them questioning what i was questioning 10 years ago which is this new world we live in good for romance . Is this new world good for children and weve seen secular writers start to take on this question so im really encouraged by that because if you look at bad episodes of human history, if you look at for example the problem with gin the long live english people were having in london right before the Victorian Era, terrible things afoot, children drinking gin, mothers were drinking gin, pregnant women were drinking gin and reformers went after this and said this isnt good for you, this isnt good for the baby and the result was a religious awakening and social awakening and it became one of the reforms of the Victorian Era to stop people from hurting themselves quite as badly. That, it seems to me is the most likely outcome of where we are now which is why it is important to draw attention to it. Host i just saw an article that the survey of english anglican bishops, the overwhelming majority said yes, it is true, england is no longer a christian nation. What does it say to you . The thesis about how the west lost god is correct, but what happened was the collapse of the family in england and other places became inextricable from the collapse of the church even though the anglican communion was trying to make nice, trying to play ball, we wont push so hard these things people find objectionable. Despite all of that trying, england is no longer a Christian Country or country in which the majority of people identify as christian. Host the 1980s, the moral majority, ronald reagan, was that a religious reawakening . Guest not from the point of view of sociology but it brings up an interesting point, theres a tendency to be hegelian about this stuff and to think that religion is in inevitable decline. Certainly the atheists talk about it that way and even religious people often think about it that way which is why they despair because they think that this is some historical process thats going to end with everybody being the village atheist. But history itself refutes that point of view because what we see if we look at examples from history is religion doesnt go like this. Religion waxes and wanes in the world, looks like a wave. For example, in victorian london there was marked more religiosity than there had been in the preceding years and the idea that only materialism drives out god, the richer we got the nurse the less we need religion is falsified by the example of victoria london, the religious revival was led from the top, it was the people at the top of the socioeconomic ladder who were more likely to be going to church and professing belief. We see this pattern in the United States including today. Similarly, after world war ii there was a religious boom in all the countries of the west including places that are very secular today like new zealand for example and across europe. People came back from the war and filled the churches. You can see this reflected in what hollywood was offering, all of those sword and sandal movies, christian stories, the 10 commandments, the singing none, whatever, the point is that people are going back to church and this revival which this religious boom which is not nearly as well known as the baby boom that accompanied it continued up until 1963. In other words this kind of lazy hegelian is in the tells us whatever is going on will go on inevitably until the end is refuted by historical example. Host text message from nicole, Mary Eberstadt, you are overgeneralizing, i have two friends who are stayathome mothers, housewives and no one mocks them, i have other friends mocking moms wives, the working moms would love to be stayathome but their families need two incomes to make ends meets. The cost of living is too high. Guest its impossible to have conversations about such large subjects without overgeneralizing. Im sure everyone can think of counterfactual 20 given point being made but in saying the stayathome mom, i have become socially less acceptable option in the dominant conversation is eminently defensible because the social pressure is on the side of moving into the paid workplace and the economic pressure. Host you may be familiar with david in new york. Hi, david. Caller i think we need to understand that this woman is a science denier. Science deniers, if they were to get their way would have hidebound christianity, which would start by expelling jews, than muslims or the other way around and then they would start working on christianity, catholics are always at the top of the list, and before you know it, while they are encouraging you to read your bible at the dinner table, men and maybe women in white cakes riding up and down in the middle of the night, weve seen that before, this breeds it and men in brownshirts, running up and down streets breaking glass, that is what happens. Shes going to deny it of course but that is what happens when science deniers, she wants the big bang, even adam, my god. At tiny piece of quantum head. Guest science denier, men in brownshirts, men in capes. That was a good example of the kind of pushback one can get bringing up these kinds of issues and the fact that it is largely ad hominem is the point i was making earlier. I do want to make one comment about the brownshirts, the suggestion seems to be that religious people end up as nazis. To make a factual historical correction, that was not the case, that was part of the point, to demonstrate the ideology responsible for mass murder in the 20th century were ideologies devoid of religious faith, the nazis were antichristian, the communists were antichristian, and to try to connect the dots so the christian end up as nazis is not historically plausible. Are you a science denier . It when somebody says that me, maybe they havent, to you, what do you think that means . It to label. I think its an epithet. An epithet is not an argument. I feel the same way about trans photo but for example. Thats an epithet. What in the world is that supposed to mean . Nobody explains, they just hurl these things around to discredit people and i cant respect that. Host glenn in washington. Caller good morning on this end of the world. My comment, my ears perked up when Mary Eberstadt talked about labels. Ive come to the conclusion the word woke is being used by the right and from the left without knowing what they are talking about. As a 60yearold man it sounds like code for the most vile form and they are using it as a weapon and nobody seems to do anything about it. When a man from florida calls everybody woke, where woke goes to die, what you are really saying is that vile form. It seems plain to me, nobody has called out. Host we are going to leave it there. I will ask Mary Eberstadt about your thoughts on the word woke and wokesm. Guest the United States was largely founded as a protestant nation and there were all kinds of revivals through the years including in upstate new york where i come from which was a hotbed of these things and there was not one but two, quote, great awakenings as they were known. The word woke does seem to capture there was something about identity politics that has a religious impulse, a religious flavor that is somehow connected to the revival president is protestantism that was dominant in the country and so it is defense hubble to use that word. Host Mary Eberstadt is the author of several books, you can see them behind her, we will show them to you on the screen. Her first book, home alone america, homealone america the hidden toll of day care, behavioral drugs and other parent substitutes, the loser letters a comic tale of life, death, and atheism which we havent talked about yet came out in 2010, really lost god, adam and eve after the pill paradoxes of the sexual revolution, its dangerous to believe religious freedom and its enemies, 2016, primal screams, how the sexual revolution created identity politics came out in 19, am adam and eve after the pill revisited came out this year. One of the things we like to do is ask our guests what they are reading and what some of their favorite books are. We got the favorite books from Mary Eberstadt and then we got a thesis which im going to read part of to you, a little more interesting when you add instead of just the title. Favorite books, the master and correctly . Did i say that i dont spesian but close enough. Host vile bodies and decline and fall, anything by shakespeare, later readiig fan of detective thrillers, philr anpd james, masters of the genre, what is the master and margarita . Guest it was written in stalinist russia by a playwright and author who somehow managed to survive. Its impossible to describe but briefly, it is a fantastic novel about the intersection of truth in writing and falsehood and oprah russian and it is so vividly told that the author could not publish it in his lifetime because it would have meant his death. It was a critique of communism, but theres a famous line in the book that is my favorite line from all of literature, disconsolate author sitting there, his manuscript has been thrown into the fire and he thinks that all of his lifes work is in vain and another character who is a supernatural character declares manuscript dont burn, and it magically comes back to him. In other words, all of the labor isnt for nothing because once something is written it is very hard to get rid of it. It doesnt mean you see its effect in your lifetime. The author of that novel never lived to see the effects it would have but one of the effect it had when it was published is caught fire around the world, figuratively speaking, and the phrase manuscripts dont burn became a slogan for freedom speaking people. I thought that was a beautiful story and why it is one of my favorite books. Whats the best way to reach shakespeare and understand . Guest to see it live and uncorrupted, to see it on stage is my favorite way of reading shakespeare. Host currently reading, over the summer Mary Eberstadt wrote to us i read an outstanding book by public intellectual called the apocalypse of the sovereign self recovering the christian mystery of personhood. Its a gripping in depth analysis of how the collapse of christian anthropology is leading to social and psychological dissolution. Mostly, on working through a big stack of historical and other books about upstate new york, one of the most fascinating and largely unknown petri dishes of the american experiment from the iroquois confess very devilish confederacy through the burned over district with its unprecedented religious ferment is a Game Changing erie canal and subsequent rust belt on up to the opioid and heroin crisis that has devastated parts of the state, all of it taking place against the background of for bidding natural beauty. This is a place you have to understand to understand our country and its pioneer history. I grew up in ten or so hamlets and villages scattered across the state. In the next few years i hope to break new ground on telling some of its Amazing Stories in different genres at medias. Whats the story you want to tell about your home territory . Host guest i want to credit a friend of mine, pj orourke who had dinner with me almost exactly 10 years ago and asked me what was on my mind and i started talking like that, what is on my mind is upstate new york and telling some of these stories and historical intersections and trying to get the hang of the place because i dont think most are americans are aware of its richness and we talked more and more and pj got on fire with the idea that i should write not in one genre, not a memoir, he said in any genre you can manage, if you want to do fiction tell it is fiction, if you want to do memoir tell it is memoir because he said no one has your stories, thats another great line, not this about me. No one has any individual story except the individual. So i am hoping to do what pj wanted me to do, to write about the history and characters and perhaps return to fiction. The loser letters a comic tale of life, death, and atheism was fiction, and it was one of the best adventures of my literary life some more of that might be in order. Host pj orourke has said in that chair for this program, did a while back, wouldnt necessarily put you two together as friends. Guest pj and his wife and my husband and i and a couple of other friends grew up together, or tried to. Host we talked about the loser letters a comic tale of life, death, and atheism and the fact that it is fiction, i dont want to say sarcasm but that the word i am thinking of. Thloser letters, cheering for pornography and omnivorous sex and by extension broken homes and abuse and screwed up kids and the sexual revolutions fallout may not be everyones thing but most of you new atheist guys have made it yours, i respect all that. Guest hard to explain as satire can be but this goes back to the new atheism. Im sure your member the years dominated by talk of is their god, is there god . There were proofs and pushbacks and most people who were not in the atheist camp who are trying to respond to this taking it at face value and writing serious books, many other people wrote serious books, the claim that science and christianity are incompatible, why new atheism is wrong. I wanted to take a different tack because i suspect when it comes to these questions of are you religious, are you not religious, there is more going on under the surface than philosophy 101 arguments over whether god exists. They have to do with deep personal issues, reasons for not wanting to believe. I get to this by inventing a female character named af christian, shes a fan girl of the new atheism, writing letters to the new atheist trying to help them up their game saying you have to do this and you have to do this to make it better so we will all be atheists in the end. In the course of these letters her own personal story comes out and you can see the connection between her rejection of god and what happened in her life that has made her reject this way. So it was a great adventure that in 2017 this novel was adapted for stage, it premiered at, it was very exciting and would love to do more work like that. Host next call for Mary Eberstadt comes from jack in san diego, you are on booktv. Caller good to speak to you this morning. I was in the advertising business for many years, and advertising for that, three additions and one of the issues on my mind, a new graphic work to make communications, i come up to explain how to communicate. It goes back a ways. The power of being connected. In my studies the amygdala in the brain interprets the sensory of eyes and ears, the major territory, whats going on in the environment. If those are negative signs, this was in the gloom, once we feel we are using our territory we will have anxiety, the amygdala tells the pituitary gland we need all that here host can you bring this to a conclusion, bring it to your point . Caller i am there. It sets up a conflict, and if communications and things destroy someones territory and make them think it is shrinking and we have more and more and more people in the world, a huge sharing or breaking apart of territory on a massive scale. Host anything you want to respond to . Guest in the book primal screams theres a chapter in which i invent two fictional characters, one, a man who came of age in the 1950s and another, his grandson, brandon was the name i made up, coming of age now, so its about the difference in social life between the boomers and millennials, gloomers, acts of human subtraction, brandons life, not just at his grandfathers because so many have been subtracted by fatherlessness, abortion, shrinkage of his family and other things i talked about. And the feeling of losing, and losing human connections. Host are you familiar with Jordan Peterson . What do you think of his ideas about instructions . Guest i cant say i recognize those words but i have seen the kinds of crowds that he brings in, young men. I saw him bring traffic in a major American City because he filled the stadium, and what ive seen of him, he is giving young men what they need which is practical talk about how to be a man and his work connects with mine, im trying to describe, hes a wonderful speaker, its not about him, trying to describe the supply side of this, where are these young men coming from. Host a text message from jim in university place, washington, subject, god. What definitive proof do you have, or know, that god exists . Proof, not belief . Guest if i had that, we wouldnt be having this conversation. I would direct you toward how though how the west really lost god, that is where i tried to get at the idea that there is a deep connection between lived experience and religiosity and the more we live apart from other people, the less we understand why everybody before us has been theo tropic or leaning towards god. This is true across cultures, people want to connection with the cosmos. They want to connection beyond themselves. Generally speaking new atheist and other atheists aside, but this is the human story for the most part. Host Mary Eberstadt, and coopted by politicians in a negative way . Guest yes. One of the things that might make people believe in original sin is how corrupt the relationship between the church and the state can be and how confounding it can be when, for example, we have kings with divine rights thanks to themselves. No argument from this quarter about how the church has often screwed up itself and had corrupt leaders or had leaders with earthly motivations rather than supernatural ones. Host going back to the kings and queens with divine right to rule, it was always said that elizabeth ii truly believed that she was chosen, and that whole viewpoint has faded off, hasnt it . That these families have the divine right to rule . Host if the guest if you are talking about the royal families there subject to the same secularizing trends we were talking about so it would be surprising to hear any of them claim the divine right at this point. Host mike, detroit, good afternoon to you. Caller teen i was raised by the world war ii generation. When i look at this Democratic Party and its constituency, marxists, socialists, globalist progressives and gestapo tactics. Look at hitler or stalin or mussolini, they targeted the same types of people, people with religious values, family values, people, democratic principals, parents, wanting the parental rights, didnt want to see their children mutilated by the state and it seems like this is a party that worships the state above all else and i wonder if you see the parallels there. Guest what i see and what i write about is the relationship tween the crackup of the family and the welfare state. The welfare state as we know it has arisen largely in response to the trends that im describing. It comes in to bankroll broken homes. It comes to be a political super daddy in homes without a daddy. In this way, we see the decline and the family and the rise of the welfare state perpetuating each other. That is not the way we are used to thinking about the welfare state but it is the bedrock underneath we talk about why we need social programs. Im not being a libertarian here but that to me is the deepest level. Host has the state become our new religion . Guest certainly, if not the state, then things that people used to get to power. This is what identity politics is all about. Host Mary Eberstadt, back to the pill, how has the pill and the sexual revolution changed economics . Guest i rely on W Bradford Wilcox of the university of virginia who has done great work establishing if we had the same rate of intact marriage as we had in 1984, most households would be significantly better off. This is the reason we need to talk about family policy in america. Its directly related to the economic troubles that many people experience, divorce is expensive, the single mother household is difficult and not pointing fingers here come my own mother was a single mother for a while, and very sturdy ground about that and knowing how hard it is, part of the economic problem today is a people problem, a problem of subtraction, of not having as many hands as we need to do the work of having a household. Host mary, please go ahead. Caller i want to start by saying the us legal scholar named harold berman, the religious foundation of western law and he was speaking of kristin them. My question to mary is about the destruction of the rule of law and secularization, what are the main groups and organizations that take these legal actions to destroy the rule of law and how to restore the public good and rule of law to return to kristin them and heal a lot of these things and i thank you. Guest attacks on Christian Charities are usually launched by the American Civil Liberties union and other groups aligned with identity politics, which is lgbt q versions thereof. How do we get to a better place . This is why we need to shed light on these things because we can have hope but it is like any situation where there is a patient who is ill. The first thing a doctor has to figure out is what the problem is. What im trying to describe is the problem. One of the things that it points to is the need to try out profamily policies at the state level, the federal level, anywhere we can try to devise incentives to keep a couple in the same home doing the hard work of raising children making their Financial Lives easier. There are politicians who talk about these options. Im not a politician myself so i tend not to go there but theres a role for government to do overdue experimentation. Host Mary Eberstadt, i found in your writing this trilogy. Father with a small f, father with a capital f and patriot. What is that reference . Guest we havent talked about another kind of decline, the decline of patriotism. This we see very clearly among the young, and to me it is one of the most surprising findings because i always regarded myself as a patriot, most people who worked in government get an enhanced sense of patriotism so what does this mean . In one of the chapters in the new book adam and eve and the pill revisited, i suggest theres a relationship between these three declines, decline in religion, belief in a supernatural father, decline of the family, often meeting absence of the natural father and decline of attachment to countries. What is ailing many people today is not just that they cant find a church or dont want a church or just they live in small families are no families at all, but Robert Putnam wrote so beautifully about, this is increased over time. So not being connected to community is another way of being lonely for people. That is why i speculate that may be this attachment is like a muscle. It is striking that we see simultaneous attachments. Host cornelius is calling from alexandria, good afternoon. I want to wish everybody a happy labor day tomorrow, this is constitution months, patriot day, september 11th, so we need to celebrate all of that. I want to talk to you first and then go to Mary Eberstadt. I found out, 2008, Abraham W Bolden senior echo of daily platter so he would be a great guest, from President Biden so he would be a great guest, tried to prevent president kennedys ssn nation. Host his referencing out older program. Caller im an african american, 62 years old. We were in the prayer, the pledge, the National Anthem and the National Anthem, the white schools had the prayer and the pledge and the National Anthem and integrated, the pledge and the National Anthem. I believe as you that the democrats pretty much taken all of this stuff out. If you look at the communist manifesto they completed everything. I have an idea for you. With Ai Technology coming out and the military revealing that these aliens which i believe are fallen angels and stuff that would be a good book for you to look into because they want to ai jesus, ai god and ai to rewrite the bible, Artificial Intelligence so that is my comment, god bless you, peter, god bless you, mary. Host you have a blessed day as well. I want to go back to the technology because we had cars and phones over the years and everybody has lamented this is going to lead to the end of society, these things seem to be exponential in what we do with them and how we isolated, is that a fair statement . Guest absolutely and the social science is proving it. How do we control it . To me it is a little like the example of tobacco which was ubiquitous when i grew up. Every adult i knew smoked and you could smoke in hospitals back then if you are near the oxygen tank. It is kind of unbelievable now. What makes it unbelievable now . There was a Reform Movement that arose that people didnt want to listen to but over time, with 600 studies showing that tobacco can cause harm people started changing their minds and this is why we can no longer smoke in restaurants, and why fewer and fewer people smoke. There was a change in public consensus. I am not saying that to attack smokers but as an example of norming of society when faced with sufficient proof of harm. That day is coming i think for the smart phone. I think the harm that it can do are going to be increasingly well understood and particularly strategies for keeping kids off it are going to proliferate. Host cornelius brought up Artificial Intelligence which have you thought along those lines . Guest no. Im still looking for the regular intelligence. Host dan, please go ahead. Caller you left out one of christianitys branches, the eastern Orthodox Church, that believes in the mystical relationship between the individual and the church, to serve that relationship and in that sense it distinguishes from the catholic system which insists on a relationship with the church as the means to get through to god so that when you have prestore other problems the church seems to be dealing with it and the Orthodox Church whatever the church does, its only function is to serve the relationship between the individual and god and you deemphasize that relationship to the detriment of christianity which was originally set as a relationship between the individual and god that he can never escape, no matter how fallen or wherever he might be, part of it at all times in his life. Guest i dont have a comment. I wasnt trying to sideline orthodoxy but thank you for that thought. Host when you hear people say i am spiritual but not religious what does that mean to you . What do you here . Guest diy religion, im going to do my own religion and it is understandable people would think this. People who believe that dont understand our capacity for selfdelusion and what i mean is this. Say i am devising my own religion and i like to play texas hold them which i do. I am not going to devise a religion that says gambling is a sin. I will put that off the table because thats not in my interests to come up with a religion that stopped me from doing something that i like. You could continue the metaphor. If im designing a dinner party and a vegan, im not going to put steak on the table. It is just to say that we have a very strong tendency to do things that are in our immediate interests, but gratify us and i dont think anybody designing his own religion is going to make a mans on himself. Judaism and christianity of all kinds, do they point to truth, what are they there are 4 . We can spend our lifetime examining those questions but whether spiritual but not religious is the same thing as organized religion, absolutely not. Host bill has the last word. Caller sharing my search for regular intelligence with you. I dont think it is going to be found on this program but i do have a question. The religious right, the evangelicals believe that trump is the chosen one. Is donald trump really the chosen one . Host before we get her to answer that question or talk about that, what is your experience with religion . Caller i was born and raised a catholic, to that end i am recovering. Host thank you. Evangelicals, christian right, donald trump, recovering catholic, anything you want to address . Guest the specific question, is donald trump the chosen one . This is just not something that has been given to me to know. Host what about the evangelical right and their support of donald trump . Guest i dont know why the evangelical right is singled out in this way. There are a lot of people in it who like what he stands for or what he says he stands for, who like his policies, four years of his administration and those people have as much right to vote for who they want as president has anybody else yet for some reason they are always the ones put in the petri dish of whom people ask why are they supporting donald trump, we should have even scrutiny across other groups. Host do you consider yourself evangelical right . Guest no. Host what does that mean . Guest it is usually a protestant thing. It has been very wedded to politics, desiring certain political outcomes like the end of roe versus wade for example, but it is not where i come from. Host if somebody wants to read one of your books, which is the one you would recommend and why . Guest you said it wouldnt be hardball. Thank you. People interested in the relationship between the sexual revolution and the decline of religion and family, how the west really lost god. Please note that all the books are addressed to the general reader. Some of them have lots of footnotes but they are footnotes because i didnt want to distract. Im writing for regular people and have no theological or other presuppositions and the arguments of the books. I hope to change some minds for some of those represented by callers today who take exception and i thank them for their relative civility. Host Mary Eberstadt, thank you for being on in depth on booktvs 25th year on the air. Guest it has been a great pleasure, thank you. A healthy democracy doesnt just look like this, it looks like this. Where americans can see democracy at work, citizens are truly informed, our republic thrives. Get informed, straight from the source on cspan, unfiltered, unbiased, word for word, from the Nations Capital to wherever you are, the opinion that matters most is your own. This is what democracy looks like. Cspan powered by cable. Holly is an Award Winning journalist and author of an american the shakers and nation. They created. His writing has appeared in the atlantic, the guardian, new republic, th the guardian, the new republic, the washington post, l. A. Times and elsewhere. He lives in los