this is "gps," the global public square. welcome to all of you. today on the show, the state of race in america. the killing of george floyd has opened up an extraordinary moment in this country. what does history tell us about the chances of bringing about real change? i will talk to the historians. then what kind of nations have fought covid most successfully? political scientist francis fugiyama has the answers. i'll bring you the answer --

are human beings inherently good or evil? first, my take. cities across the american south and west are getting pummeled, but new york city seems to have things under control as it begins to open up. so i have to admit, i'm excited. i know it will be a different city for a while with many aspects kurt vacurtailed. it's felt like an empty stage set. now lingering outside the cafes and bars, or simply walking on the streets. despite the mass, the space between tables and limits on people, urban life is coming back. >> i know, a lot of people say this would be the death nell, that people have discovered they don't know to leave in cramped

quarters. maybe they're right, but historically they've been wrong. in the 14th century, the bubonic plague hit florence hard, killing more than half the city's population, by some estimates. bocaccio decameron gave advice -- flee the city, isolate with a few friends, and gather in the evenings to eat, drink and tell interesting stories -- their verse of netflix. yes it was after that that they launched the ren sauce. in 1793, philadelphia was the leading met -- secretary of state thomas jefferson lived in the outside, and continued to

commute to work. he later wrote, this disease, like most evils are the means of producing some good. the yellow fever will discourage the growth of great cities in our nation. it didn't quite work out that way. critics say this time it's different. new technologies make it easy for people to work from home, the dangers of the disease will keep them away. there's some truth to this, but for perspective it's worth reading "triumph of the city." he points out u.s. cities faced a bleak future in the 1970s. globalization had killed off a great many manufacturings industries -- and allows people to live farther from the office. phone service had become cheap and easy, and add race riots, crime and mismanagement, you have a molotov cocktail, yet

cities came back. from finance to consulting to healthcase, despite the rise of fax machines, e-mail and videoconferences videoconferences, cities redeveloped themselves. glazer notes people gained huge advantages by being close to the action, meeting new people, learning day-to-day from mentors, and comparing notes, much of which happens accidentally. it's true the coronavirus has presented new challenges, but density is not the problem it's made out to be. manhattan, the densest part of new york city has a lower rate of infection that is any of the other boroughs. across the u.s., per capita rates are highest in some of the least densely populated regions. if you look abroad, massive cities have handled the virus stunningly well.

tie pay, hong kong and singapore are dense cities, and yet the covid-19 deaths have been amazing low. they have succeeded in this difficult situation, because perhaps as a consequence of the sars epidemic, they were prepared. they invested in health care and hygiene. they reacted to the virus early, aggressively and intelligently, now reaping the rewards. one rule seems clear -- bad leadership, misguided policies can sink a city, so if they founder this time it's not because of the pandemic and technology, but for the same reasons that countries and cities have failed throughout history -- bad government. go to cnn.com/fareed for a link to my "the washington post"

column, and let's get started. on july 5th, 1852, the escaped slave frederick douglass told a crowd in rochester, this fourth of july is yours, not mine. you may rejoice, i must mourn. he went on what to the american slave is your fourth of july? i answer a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the growth injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. here we are, 168 years later, and this july 4th weekend, many americans are wondering whether to celebrate or chastise their country? let's look at the extraordinary six weeks since the death of george floyd. with two historians, the author of "the hemmings of monticello."

and professor reed, let me ask you, are you hopesful this time it's different, or that this time it's different than some of the past cases? when you look back at history, do you feel there's been many moments where there's a kind of attempt to reckon with the past, and then it dissipates? >> well, yes, there have been those moments. i'm hopeful about this moment, you're absolutely right, there's something different about this. polls show that large numbers of americans think there should be some reckoning, some sort of changes in attitude about policing, about voters suppression, all of those things. i'm a hopeful person generally. i have to be, but i do know that unless concrete actions are, you

know, follow that hope, follow the starts that have been made, we will fall back into the problems that we've seen for so many years. >> tim, what strikes me is there's not been a white backlash to many of the things that have happened. i measure that in one simple way. i think it's fair to say that president trump tried to court such a backlash, yet he poll numbers have fallen. the reason joy joy is leading so significantly is not increased support among minorities, but decreased supports among whites. every since richard nixon, there has been a strategy, largely employed by republicans, to court this white backlash. why do you think it's not working this time? >> every so often candor enters

into the president's tweets. he just recently tweeted lone warrior. that really describes at the moment his efforts, as you said, to court a white backlash. president obama, when he spoke not too long ago, was talking about the diversity of the movement, the black lives movement, the movement on the streets in response to the murder of george floyd. he noted how different that was from the '60s. i would also point out to other sides -- i share with annette a sense of hope. in 2001, the state of mississippi had a referendum on what to do with the flag. two thirds of those participated voted to keep the flag. the state of mississippi just removed the flag without the kind of demonstrations and backlash that certainly would have happened if a governor had

done that in 2001, but the people of mississippi, the why people, there weren't enough to respond and oppose it. the second big change, after charleston, after the murder of nine african-americans in that church by white supremacists there were calls to remove the names of confederate general on the ten bases that had those names. the u.s. army opposed making those changes. well, in june, after the lafayette square fiasco, the u.s. military made clear in a number of very powerful ways that enough was enough, and there is a debate now, but republicans and democrats are arguing to change those names. those are just two examples of what i think is a

transformational change in the conversation of this country. >> annette, let me ask you about one area where it seems like we're talking past each other. this sense, i think, that people want a much broader reckoning about american history, and there are -- there is a response which i here sometimes -- not said as much publicly, people say, well, we've come a long way, we're not as racist as we were. it feels like these are two separate conversations, i would argue, at least, yes, of course there's a lot of progress the larger of question has this country rockened with the past and more, do you think that they have -- >> no, we have not. we have certainly acknowledged

it, but i think the events have told -- what you're talking about has been a feature of our society for a very, very long time. i think a number of americans looking at the video of george floyd being killed in the moment of pandemic when we're all feeling very, very vulnerable, had an opportunity to consider these matters in ways practices they had not before, but there's no doubt we've been talking past each other. that if there was a problem, it was a problem with black culture, problem with black families, sort of blaming the victim in this situation. i do think that we're beginning to have this discussion, but it hasn't been -- this is not something that we've been engaged in in an effective way up to this moment. i will say that i think a talk about the monuments, so forth, all of those things are important, but not as important as the things that got us here

when we started thinking about the nature of policing. that's a much tougher thing than bringing down a statue or changing the name of a school, whatever. >> all right. stay with us. when we come back, i'm going to ask annette gordon-reed, what to do about the jefferson mem yay. she wrote a pulitzer prize with her book. robinhood believes now is the time to do money. without the commission fees. so, you can start investing today wherever you are - even hanging with your dog. so, what are you waiting for? download now and get your first stock on us. robinhood. and get way more.ith wso you can bring yours

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historians annette gordon-reed and jeff nanaftali. what should we do about jefferson? >> well, i think i've made the distinct a number of times when people have asked me about the founding generation and confederates. i think the founding generation created america. if you think that's a good thing, it's worth commemorating. not necessarily celebrating, but commemorating the achievements. the jefferson memorial, for example, the replica, with the statue in the middle, is in my view an excellent place to explain the good things he did. the memorial was put up with the words along he wall, but also a section to talk about the fact

he was a slave owner, to talk about what that meant in the country and his attitudes about race, all those things as well. i think with the founderfounders --eve founderfounders --ever jefferson, washington and others -- it's a way to commemorate them but tell the truth about their lives. >> i think commemorate people for the achievements they had despite their having been slave owners, unlike confederate general, who were commemorated presumably for mutinying against the united states in order to support slavery. what do we do about wood row wilson? princeton just renamed the school. it seemed like he was honored for things that did not have anything to do with the racist views, so how do we think about

that? >> i think wilson is a have i interesting case. he was being honored for his views about international engagement, international peace, international organizations. i learned some time ago, thanks to my students, how wood row wilson had not appliied his 14 points equally to all the nations struggling at the time of the versailles treaty. and his merely racist with the recranes koreans who wanted to be liberated. his racism played a role. that's why i've never been comfortable with woodrow wilson being a hero. other presidents in way they

have benefited the country and the ways they're not permeated by the pinched racist views, then you have a moment where you're juggling. well, we should remember them for this as opposed to that. even richard nixon who engaged in real crimes still deserve credit to the opening of china. >> what do you think about jefferson, who wanted the league of nations, and yet re-segreg e re-segregated the federal democracy in an act of real overt racism. >> well, he was a terrible person. as for princeton, he made it from a sleepy college to something that we think of today as a great university, and he was a president of the united states, the league of nations, all those things that we honor, but i think it made sense to take his name off the school for

public policies, because the public policies were, as you said, he initiated public policies, sort of went backwards, re-segregated institutions. so i understand now wanting to be associated with him in that way. >> is it healthy, tim, to have having this debate. there's a lot of americans who feel, does this mean we don't honor our country? we don't celebrate our country? is it a sign of weakness or a sign of strength? >> it's a sign of strength. i think of our country as struggling between the realities of 1619, and the aseparational qualities of the enlightenment. even though jefferson didn't live the ideas he put forward, it's the struggle with the aspiration of our qualities,

that has led toward the bending of our justice that dr. king jr. and later barack obama talked about. if you talk about how we're aspiring to those values, and talk about how each generation has fallen short, i think that's very healthy. in a sense you're confirming the center ideas of the country. the founders didn't achieve those ideas, but the found respect didn't put a glass ceiling forever on them. each of our generations has been chipping away, using the powers of the principles as our tools. i think it's a sign of hope and a healthy democracy to be having this conversation. >> annette, tim, a fascinating conversation. thank you both for joining me. >> thank you for asking. >> thank you. japan has had 20,000 covid cases total since it recorded the first infection in january. this weeks the united states started hitting more than double

that number in the new cases every day. how do two nations have such a different experience with the same disease? stanford's francis fukiyama has the answer. crafting lasting fragrances begins in nature.

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as the covid-19 pandemic engulfed the globe, scientists and politicians have scrambled to learn about how to combat the

spread. so were authoritarian countries line china better equipment? can democracies slow the spread of virus with the free flow of information? or was a female laterer, like in new zealand, the key to success? there was a recent article titled "the pandemic and the political order." he's the director of stanford center of democracy, and development of the rule of law. francis fukuyama, welcome. >> thank you. what is your answer? >> i think it doesn't correlate at all whether you're a democracy or ought authoritarian democracy, because you'll see good and bad performers in both

categories. the real characters are different and they can be shared. one is obviously you need good state capacity. by that, public health system, adequate doctors, nurses, the people who run hospitals and organize the system as a whole, but i think the more intangible factor is a matter of trust.peo the government, and if they don't trust their fellow citizens,ing they're not going to comply with shutdown orders. they're not going to take the necessary protective measures, which can be quite burdensome, which we have seen from being indoors the last three months. sometimes it's a democracy that has that, south korea, taiwan or germany. sometimes an authoritarian government has that. i think that would be china at the moment. but then there's democracies that haven't done so with you

and auto cracies that haven't done so well. >> you wrote a book about public trust. what i'm intrigued by is, where does it come from? you look at a place like hong kong, which i was fascinated by. even though there are protests about the government and protests about the legitimacy of the government. there was still a social trust which said when the government says wear a mask, you wear a mask. when the government tells you -- how do you describe that? >> i think there's two different sources. one is deeply historical. in the united states we have a political culture that really does not trust government. the flag with the rattlesnake that said "don't tread on me"

this goes back to the 18th century where americans don't trust the government. there's a more proximate cause that has to do with polarization. in my view the degree of polarization we have in the u.s. is the single biggest weak why is of a country as a society. it means citizens don't trust one another, they also don't trust the government, below it's a blue state governor in control or someone like president trump that is running the federal government. that's what's hobbled the united states to have the ability to respond acwattly. >> what you fit is the united states is the only country, i think in which the response to covid has been politicized in the sense that wearing a mask is

a political statement. observing social distance is a political statement. i have struggled to look in other countries, and you don't find it in a similar way. i wonder if there's a similarity -- like the response of climate change is highly polarized and politicized where almost nowhere, even in australia, isn't. >> that's true, and it's an unfortunate thing about the u.s., but i think there's a common thread not between democracy and poor response, but between populist leaders and poor responses. for example, in addition to president trump you've got jair bolsonaro in brazil and obredor.

i think they're quickly racing to the top of bad responses as a result of their polarization. >> how would you describe some of the successful countries in asia in terms of the key to their success? is it some kinds of a c concern. >> there's a respect for bureaucracy, education and experti expertise. in south korea, for example, the management was delegated to a health professional who was running their centers for disease control. she became the single-most trusted person because of her competent. so there's a kind of, i think, a

cultural inclination in that part much the world to trust people in government, to think they know what they're doing because they're educated and have expertise. obviously that's not something that applies in many other parts of the world. finally, when you look at the democracies and dictatorsships, as you said, there isn't a clear correlation. there's good and bad on both sides, but when people look at the u.s. and china, generally they would feel, despite a bad start, china has handled it better than the u.s. does that matter in a geopolitical sense? >> you unfortunately matters. people aren't looking statistically at democracies and authoritarian governments as a whole. they're looking at that one comparison. i would say it's worse than what you just said. the united states look so bad, we're not even out of our first

wave, and i think it's going to hurt america's standing. i think the united states has an opportunity to correct this. the one important check is an electoral check. we'll reach that point in november. it's not an unrecoverable situation, but i do think that right now the united states looks like it's a country in decline and a lot of people are taking notice of that. >> frank fukuyama, always a pleasure. thank you. >> thank you, fareed. next, the world may seem dark, but my next guest humans are hardwired for kinds in. a hopeful history of humankind, when we come back. learning, a. try our new gummies for 30 days and see the difference. for spending a perfectly reasonable amount of time on the couch with tacos from grubhub?

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indeed midst of the covid crisis, humanity issues continue unabated. terror continues, murders and shootings actually up in some american cities despite lockdowns. the stay-at-home orders are thought to have caused incidence of domestic violence to spike. that's why i want to hear from the author of "humankind, a hopeful history." pleasure to have you on, rut gere. let me begin about what you're arguing against in this book, which is what you call the thin veneer. >> there's when there's a small change in our circumstances or

we're in the midst of a crisis, we review our true selves, we start looting and plundering. you see it with the notion of sinners, and the enlightenment philosopher, that people are just selfish, and i think it's fundamentally wrong. >> so what is the strongest evidence? >> we look at what happens after natural studies. what happened in 2005 after katrina, after new orleans was flooded. we all still remember, you know, what was in the press back then. again, the stories of murders and rapes, looting, plundering, but we actually know from sociology, that what really happens also after katrina, but every single time after a

earthquake or tsunami, people pull together, from the left or right, rich, young, poor, old, we have case studies that prove this over and over again, so i advise people to look less at the news, because that often makes you cynical, zoom out a bit and look at what science tells you. >> the iconic explanation for the thin veneer of society, is "the lord of the flies." young boys abandoned on the island and it turned into a pretty savage, all against all, they band into groups. you have something interesting to say about a real-life version of "the lord of the flies." >> yes, i remember reading "the lord of the flies" when i was 16 or 17, and feeling quite depressed. i wondered, has it ever happened? can i find one case in all of world history where real kids,

shipwrecked on a real island, what would actually happen? it turns out, yes, it did happen. a long time ago, 50 years ago in 1966, there were six kids from tonga, an island group in the pacific. they were students of an anglican boarding school. they said we're going on an adventure, stealing a boat. they drifted for eight dade in a storm, shipwrecked on this island, and survived for 15 months. i managed to track them down, actually, and it turns out they're still the best of friend, because that's how they survived, by staying friends. the real "lord of the flies" is the exact opposite. >> you do have the nazis, auschwitz, world war i, the

barria of isis, the pol pot. how do you square all of that with your cheerful history of human beings' essential goodness? >> i wouldn't say that i'm arguing that people are naturally good. i think we have evolved to be friendly, which is different. this is what biologists are arguing. they talk about survival of 9 friendliest. for millennia, it was the friendliest who had the most kids, so the biggest chance of passing on genes to the next generation. it's important to emphasize there's a dark side to this friendlyness. so obvious we do the most awful things in the name of comradeship and we don't want to let down our own group. i arrive at a paradoxical thought. we are shaped by evolution to work together, but cooperation

sometimes leads to creating horrible things. so i want to connect this to the present. the do batebates of defurnishen, in this attitude that human beings are nasty, even we let up even slightly, all hell will break loose? or are we assuming too much nastiness, and we could take our foot off the accelerator or the brake, depending on how you make the metaphor work. >> what you assume ouch people is what you get out of. if you assume people are just deep down selfish and savages, your schools and workplaces, the way your police will operate. you'll create a lot of bad things. if you turn it around, also in policing, i think he can move to

a very different kind of society. in the book i look at the criminal justice system they have in norway, which is in almost every single way the opposite of what the u.s. has. on the one hand they very powerful community policing, where the police officers is a social worker, that really tries to establish trust in the community, and then the prisons, they are like they very strange almost like holiday resorts, where inmates have the freedom to make music, with their own studio and label, which is called criminal records. i thought this is crazy, this is nuts. they have lost it, but then you look at the evidence, you look at the recidivism rates, for example, the chance that someone will commit a crime once they get out, and nowhere as low as in norway. the u.s. could learn quite a bit from other countries here. >> all right.

you have given us a lot to thing about, certainly a lot to hope for. thanks so much. >> thanks for having me. we will be back in a moment. don't forget, if you miss a show, look for a link to my podcast. it would be for me to discover all of these things that i found through ancestry. i discovered my great aunt ruth signed up as a nursing cadet for world war ii. you see this scanned-in, handwritten document. the most striking detail is her age. she was only 17. knowing that she saw this thing happening and was brave enough to get involved and do something- that was eye opening. find an honor your ancestors who served in world war ii. their stories live on at ancestry. $$9.95? no way.? who served in world war ii. $9.95? that's impossible. hi, i'm jonathan, a manager here at colonial penn life insurance company, to tell you it is possible.

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and the hidden smiles. the foggy glasses, and the sore ears. the determined looks, and the muffled laughs. a simple piece of fabric makes a big statement: i care. let's all do our part to slow the spread. wear a mask. learn more at covid19.ca.gov.

my book of the week is "humankind." this is one of those books that tries to make you see the world and all of history in a different light and it mostly succeeds. whether you agree with it or find ourself arguing with it -- and now for the last look. july's a month that celebrates democracy and liberty. from america to france's coming up soon, but this july we should

really note something else. the erosion of democracy. one more grim consequence of covid. as larry diamond noted recently, democracies were already weakening over the last decade, the pandemic pshed open the door for an autocratic power grab and many leaders jumped at the opportunity, all in the name of fighting the disease, of course. if the fragile transition is under threat. the parliament postponed that nation's first free and fair election and then extended the prime minister's term without inputt from opposition parties and ma lay yeah, the new government effectively closed due to covid-19 and ousted the corrupt leaders returned to positions of power while the opposition is shut out. perhaps most notably, hungary's populist leader was given rule by decree in mashlg and observers worried that the

extraordinary powers are here to stay. the law also allowed officials to punish the publication of what they determined was fake covid news with jail time. in fact, data from the international center for not for profit law found that pandemic responses in 40 countries curtailed free expression in this way. from india and indonesia to nepal and nicaragua, governments cracked down on critics in the name of supposedly fighting misinformation. now, tunisia took the opposite approach, the cabinet promising public funds to independent media to stay afloat and if you look closely the pandemic has actually strengthened people's desires for democracy. south korea's recently socially distant vote had the country's highest turnout in almost 30 years. malawi's vote, a re-run, also ran smoothly bringing to power

the opposition leader. and the world's largest ever civil rights protests showed that civic engagement is alive and well, even the lockdown protests indicate the health of free assembly. in germany, the constitutional court overturned a ban on demonstrations ruling that pandemic or not the people had a right to protest. and that country's still managed to bring down infection rates quickly and so far avoided any second wave and that is the ultimate irony of these political maneuvers. democracies from south korea to germany have shown themselves to be perfectly capable of handling this disease without any new emergency powers. and at that very moment demagogues are using this very pandemic to destroy democracy. thanks to all of you for being part of the program this week. i'll see you next week. and the best routines in life did,

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hello, everyone. thank you so much for joining me this sun. i'm fredericka whitfield. we have staggering new numbers of this epidemic. florida just reporting nearly 10,000 more cases today and that's on top of yesterday's huge numbers which set a single day record for all states with more than 11,400 new infections con if you remembered on saturday. arizona and texas seeing massive spikes leading officials to accuse the states of reopening too early but everyone as we see cases surge president trump is downplaying concerns telling a