moon, but that was 40 years ago. the u.s. is essentially sitting on the bench in the current space race. will that hurt it back here on earth? and is america coming apart? that's what the author of a controversial new book says. i'll ask him about it. but first, here's my take. something caught my eye the other day. pat robertson, the high priest of the religious right, had some startling things to say about drugs. "i really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol," mr. robertson said recently. "i have never used marijuana, and i don't intend to," he said, "but it's just one of those things that, well, i think this war on drugs just hasn't succeeded." the reason robertson is for legalizing marijuana is that it has created a prison problem in america that is well beyond what most americans imagine. he's right. here are the numbers. the total number of americans under correctional supervision, prison, parole, et cetera, is 7.1 million, more than the entire state of massachusetts. no other country comes even close to our rates of incarceration. we have 760 prisoners per 100,000 people. most european countries have one-seventh that number per capita, so it's adjusted for population. even those on the high end of the global spectrum, brazil, poland, have only one-quarter of the number we do. if you say this is some kind of enduring aspect of america's wild west culture, you would be wrong. in 1980, our rates of incarceration were a quarter what they are now. what changed was the war on drugs and the mindless proliferation of laws that have created criminal penalties for anything and everything. if you don't believe me, listen to pat robertson again. >> we here in america make up 5% of the world's population, but we make up 25% of jailed prisoners. we have now over 3,000, a number that must be much higher than that, but over 3,000 federal crimes, and every time the liberals pass a bill, i don't care what it involves, they stick criminal sanctions on it. and so we have the jails filled with people who are white collar criminals. >> in the past two decades, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education. in 2011, california spent $9.6 billion on prisons versus $5.7 billion on higher education. since 1980, california has built one college campus. it has built 21 prisons. the state spends $8,667 per student per year. it spends about $50,000 per inmate per year. why is this happening? well, prisons are a big business now. they are privately run. they have powerful lobbyists, and they have bought most state politicians in america. meanwhile, we are bankrupting our states and creating a vast underclass of prisoners who will never be equipped for productive lives. i never thought i would say this, but god bless you, pat robertson. let's get started. i promised you sex, religion, and politics. so, here it is all mixed up, as it is mixed up these days in the 20lectio, and i have a great panel to talk about it. andrew sullivan blogs at the daily beast. he is a former editor of the "new republic." john meecham, from random house, formerly the editor at "newsweek." he is publishing a new biography of thomas edison, and if history is any indication, it will win the pulitzer prize. and matt frank is director of the center on religion and the constitution at the witherspoon institute. welcome all. first, andrew, i have to ask you, as somebody who grew up in england, but grew up a devout catholic, you are watching these elections taking place all over the word. really, outside of the arab world, we are the only country in which religion is deeply embedded in the day to day political discourse. you look at england, france, germany. it would be unthinkable. >> yes. >> the only other place. if you watch the egyptian elections and american elections, there's a lot of religion. why? >> well, i think two things. one, that america has always had a much more religious public discourse and has always had more devoutly religious phenomena than the rest of the world, and i think that's partly because of the separation of church and state, which an old professor of mine at oxford used to say that he supported the church of england as a bull work against religion, and it certainly succeeded in england where there is an astonishing amount of unbelief and secularism. i also think that this country is less secular than when i arrived 25 years ago. i do think that there has been a new development partly through the crisis of christianity and the modern world in which politicized christianity fusing with one political party is the new development, and certainly when you see, for example, the catholic hierarchy, basically coordinating with one political party in congress, or you see the notion that evangelicals will only really vote for one political party and not the other, and when you see a candidate like rick santorum absolutely saying that i am -- i see no separation between politics and religion that they are one in the same thing, and that is what my -- that is new. that is not something that was happening even 25 years ago. >> so when you look 25 years ago, john, i mean, one would have thought superficially that there was more religion in politics in the sense of the religious right, jerry fallwell, pat robertson. all that seemed to die out, but andrew seems right. it's sort of in a strange way, i has entered the mainstream body politic as opposed to being on this fringe and liberty baptist college. >> i guess i would argue that i don't think it went away. i think that the press and popular politicians notice it with some episodic fervor, but you are talking about a country to go to andrew's point, where someone tried to rewrite the preamble to note our loyalty to jesus, and that was beaten back, a country that has long had an argument about whether there should be a constitutional amendment declaring us a christian nation. no president can plausibly talk about his candidacy, his life, his vision for the country, without an allusion to the all mighty, to some kind of with -- with some kind of theocentric illusion. what is there -- and i think andrew got to it -- is you have an allegiance in which religion has become largely a partisan force. it has always been a political force. that's different than being a partisan force. this alliance with one party, which is something that started in 1980. remember, the first time most americans heard the word "evangelical" was when jimmy carter ran in 1976. that was the mainstreaming of that. you ended up as soon as 1988 with that with george herbert walker bush having to say that he was born again. i've always thought that he thought they were talking about mulligans, but he had to say that. right now what you're seeing, i think, is a republican party that feels utterly unenthusiastic about its frontrunner and is looking for passion and the passion in this case is coming from a very, very conservative roman catholic. >> the passion is all in religion? >> i'm not sure i agree with this -- the country becoming less secular. i mean, i can't even think five years ago that people would actually admit that they were atheist, and now it's routine. people say, oh, i'm an atheist. it is. what i'm saying is that people are coming out as atheists and, you know, you have maybe 14% or 15% of the population basically saying that they are nonbelievers, and probably a lot more who are now moving away from the church. i mean, this whole move away from religion and towards spirituality, so i'm not sure that we are getting less secular. i think that what's happened is that the people who are campaigning, and these are mostly republicans, have been appealing to the base, and i don't think this will work in a general election. i think it's only -- will only work in a republican primary. where they're talking about church and state in a way that is totally unamerican. rick santorum says we're a christian nation, and that he really doesn't believe in separation of church and state. what is he talking about? and then to go on and say he is an american. what he is espousing is the thing that they all hate the most, which is islam and the way -- and the islamic state, which is a theocracy. what sounds to me when they're talking about religion is that they want to make this country a theocracy, which is totally anti everything this country stands for. >> let me triangulate between sally and andrew here. i lean more towards sally's side in thinking that the country has not become more religion in the last half century. a half century ago, john f. kennedy had to prove his bona fides as an american because there was something darkly not quite american about catholics in the eyes of many protestant leaders in this country, and his speech to the houston baptist ministers was his breakthrough that might have been decisive in that election, but there is a tradition of criticism of kennedy's speech going back even to john courtney murray at the time. you know, wondering if kennedy hadn't been too defensive, too distancing from his faith, and, you know, essentially promising to be uninfluenced by his religious upbringing as president. he declared himself -- i just reread the speech yesterday. he declared himself against an ambassador to the vatican, for instance. he declared that it would be somehow improper for pastors or prolats to try to influence the votes of the people or the -- or the actions of public officials. criticism is fairly widespread of this speech. the great michael mcconnell, a former federal judge and not a catholic himself gave a talk at notre dame in which he roundly criticized kennedy's speech as contradicting many of the traditions of the freedom of religion. >> we'll pause for a break. promise you sex when we come back. we will get to sex, contraception. 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[ female announcer ] sometimes, all you need is the smooth, creamy taste of werther's original caramel to remind you that you're someone very special. ♪ werther's original caramels. and we are back with andrew sullivan, john meecham, sally quinn and matt frank. sally, in general, it seems as though the argument goes from liberal groups that by bringing up this contraception issue the republicans have kind of waged a war on women that every woman looks upon this and says why are these men telling us what we should do? do you think the feeling is as widespread that the republicans now have a serious problem with the women -- the woman vote if there is such a thing? >> i definitely do. i think that they have made a terrible mistake, and i don't know how they can rectify it. as i was saying earlier about the primary versus the general election, it may play well during the primary. i mean, look after rick santorum started talking about women should basically stay at home and women should not be in combat. i don't think that that will be true in a general election. i think that the republicans have really hurt themselves. not just with democratic women, but if you look at 98% of catholic women who use contraception and 99% of women use contraceptions, the idea of saying, well, i would consider banning contraceptions and allowing states to ban contraception, it's just insane in terms of a politic strategy. i mean, you have over half the population is women, and they're all using birth control. so, i don't understand how they think this is going to be a winning argument. >> but matthew, obviously, he must believe it. forget about the politics of it. this comes from a place of, you know -- >> there isn't any war on women involved here, and there isn't any war on access to contraception. and, you know, the premise of your question, fareed, was interesting. it's not the republicans who brought up contraception. it's the obama administration, which has promulgated an hhs mandate that all insurers, including many religious institutions and employers, cover contraception with no deductibles and no co-pays, and this is new. this is a new policy under obama care, and the catholic church and many other faith groups as well, are objecting to this as a serious assault on religious liberty. contrary to sally's view, i think the religious liberty issue is going to help the republicans in the fall. >> what do you think? >> i think ultimately that conservatives are messing with the wall at their peril because the original metaphor came from richard hooker, the anglican divine. roger williams picked it up, the founder of rhode island. the idea of a wall of separation between church and state was not to protect the state from the church, but the church from the state. if every argument of domestic policy becomes explicitly religious, the american -- i think the american impulse is going to be to try to drive religion farther to the edges, producing a counterreaction and a very unpleasant situation. every argument does not have to have a theological component. >> what does contraception really have to do with religion? i mean, it is such a trivial matter. if people were in the public square arguing how their faith in jesus has saved them, if they were arguing about the necessity for daily prayer, if they were bearing witness to their actual faith, then i don't think anybody would be concerned about this. that would be, in my view, a great thing. if i heard more catholic bishops actually arguing for the truth of our faith as opposed to seeking control things like contraception. and, let's face it, on that issue it is not the catholic church. it is the catholic hierarchy. most catholics disagree with the hierarchy and they have long since disagreed with them. it is the catholic hierarchy, the evangelical right. that's the weird thing. rick santorum hasn't won catholic votes. this is not about catholic conscience. 98% of them clearly don't have a conscience problem with contraception. they're not being -- their conscience isn't being violated whatsoever. my concern is that the church and the churches have become politicized. they regard their primary, if you listen to how the bishops prepared for this moment, how they strategized for it, how they attempt to want to bring obama and make him a one-term president because of this, that is alienating a lot of ordinary catholics who actually want to be catholics. they don't want to be political operatives. >> well, i mean, i think all we have to do is look at a picture of all of those guys testifying. this is about celibate men making a decision for millions and millions and millions of women. and i think that picture alone will make a huge difference. you talk about it not being about -- contraception not being about religion, but they equate it to abortion because they talk about the morning after pill, which is in effect murder. and so once you get into abortion, which they consider some forms of contraception, then that becomes a whole different issue. it then becomes a religious issue for them, but i just wanted to say one more thing. when you are talking about this whole issue of separation of church and state, obama is going to face a real problem in the fall because right now 15% to 20% of the people in this country believe that he is a muslim, but i think in this case the same people who, 15% or 20% who think that mormonism is evil, are the same 15% or 20% who think that obama is a muslim. i think this is going to be a really interesting sort of playoff. >> the last word. >> yeah. i'm glad that sally brought up the board of -- the morning after pill, ella, plan b, these are, in fact, abort efficients, and i think this is the cause of so many other groups joining the catholic church in regarding the hhs mandate as a serious inroad on religious authority. abortion is also, i think, the reason why you see the republican party attracting religious people of morally conservative views. it's not that the religious right has somehow chosen the republican party as its vehicle for establishing some sort of theocracy. they've been essentially written out of the democratic party on a rail, tarred and feathered, and i think that a secular elite which regards abortion as a very important woman's right has simply captured the democratic party. it's virtually impossible to be a pro-life democrat anymore. >> we have to leave it at that. andrew sullivan, john meechum, sally quinn, matt frank, thanks for joining us. up next, what in the world? you have see china dominate smaller countries, but there's one small nation with a population of just 5 million that seems to be playing spoiler. i'll tell you who it is when we come back. that wrong didn't i? [ male announcer ] want great taste and whole grain oats that can help lower cholesterol? honey nut cheerios. and here's what we did today: supported nearly 3 million steady jobs across our country... ... scientists, technicians, engineers, machinists... ... adding nearly 400 billion dollars to our economy... we're at work providing power to almost a quarter of our homes and businesses... ... and giving us cleaner rides to work and school... and tomorrow, we could do even more. cleaner, domestic, abundant and creating jobs now. we're america's natural gas. the smarter power, today. learn more at anga.us. ♪ when your chain of supply goes from here to shanghai, that's logistics. ♪ ♪ chips from here, boards from there track it all through the air, that's logistics. ♪ ♪ clearing customs like that hurry up no time flat that's logistics. ♪ ♪ all new technology ups brings to me, that's logistics. ♪ now for our what in the world segment. in the playground of foreign affairs, you think that size matters. the biggest bully always wins. that's often true, but i found it interesting to track one story of a relationship where size and clout didn't matter. the big country in question is china. as china has grown, they've been able to throw its weight around with its smaller neighbors. take the example of tiny nepal. it's sandwiched between two bigger powers, india and china. china is the world's second largest economy, and india ranks tenth. nepal is not even in the top 100. it often has to bow to the demands of its bigger, more powerful friends. while india has traditionally had more influence over it, that role is now switching to china. china has doubled aid to nepal. it's building roads there and a railway linking the two countries. obviously, china wants something in return, and it seems to be getting it. for the last two decades, thousands of tibetans have escaped to neighboring nepal every year, often heading onwards to india. that number has now dropped sharply to just a few hundred. as china tries to cement its control over tibet, it has asked nepal to police its border and stop tibetans from escaping. nepal has complied. china's influence stretches far and wide. it is using its growing economic clout to influence countries as far afield as angola and zambia. sometimes, size isn't everything. china has met its match in a tiny country to the west. it has a population of just five million, about one-fourth that of the city of shanghai. like nepal, it begins with an n. the co